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The
discovery of the “fossette” and the theory of the criminal
man
Later editions of Criminal Man and the development of Lombroso studies
The last studies
The Cesare Lombroso Museum
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Cesare Lombroso the Inventor of Criminal
Anthropology
Cesare Lombroso was born in Verona on 6 November 1835 into
a wealthy Jewish family. In 1852, he enrolled at the Faculty
of Medicine, University of Pavia, where he graduated in 1858.
Lombroso’s fame rests above all on his theory of the atavistic
or born criminal, the individual whose physical structure
possesses the degenerative traits that differentiate him
from the normal, socially well-adjusted man. Lombroso first
showed an interest in the poor, the marginalized and the
insane in his youth, when, as a young doctor, he travelled
through the Lombardy countryside distributing pamphlets,
printed at his own expense, to the peasants who were victims
of pellagra. In 1859, he enrolled in the Military Medical
Corps during the campaign against banditry and was invited
to Calabria for three months. Here Lombroso studied the Calabrians,
their language and folklore. His interest in crime dates
from 1864, when he studied the soldiers’ tattoos and the
obscene tattooed phrases that distinguished “the dishonest
from the honest soldier”. Lombroso understood, however, that
tattoos alone did not suffice in order to understand the
criminal’s nature and that it was necessary to define the
traits of the abnormal individual, the criminal and the madman
by using the experimental method of positivist science. In
1866, he was nominated visiting lecturer at the University
of Pavia. On 10 April 1870 he married Nina De Benedetti.
They had five children including Gina, the second, who wrote
her father’s biography.
In 1871, Lombroso became the director of the Pesaro asylum,
which proved to be a fruitful professional experience, during
that period he drew up a proposal that he presented to the
ministerial authorities, which was to establish criminal
asylums for mentally disturbed individuals who committed
crimes and for dangerous mentally disturbed individuals.
The following year he returned to Pavia and began the studies
that would lead to his “theory of the criminal man”. |
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