The Marietta journal. [volume] (Marietta, Ga.) 1866-1909, 1896-12-17
REMARKABLE HEREDlTY.
Professor Pellmann of Bonn Uniyers;5 ;,
SHOWS How Crime Reretc C.i,.

~AoS SAii-te ottSetS SrImCs
The hereditability Of crime has
long been a problem that has exer-
c1sed the minds Of sociologists and
crlmlnologists Of all countries. 1t is
commended by some scientists that
when child develops criminal pro-
cllvltles the fact is due motor at
least not so much-to an inherently
defective brain as to the tainted at
mosphere in which it is reared; that
conscience, the moral sense-to quote
the words of DR.. HI. S. Williams in
a recent essay upon the subject-re-
fleets the individual environment
during the period of Elasticity, when
conscience is forming-that is, in
childhood and adolescence.
DR.. Williams contends that there
are good as well as bad tendencies in
everybody, and that in the great
majority of cases criminals have
failed to better themselves simply
because they were human and could
not rise superior to the surroundings
amid which they were born and
brought up.
There is a good deal of logic in
this argument, which is that adopt
ed by many thinkers who have
made a special study of this impor-
tant question. But there is equal
logic IN the reservations of others
who claim that habitual criminality
may be, and in many notable cases
IS, a form of moral degeneracy that
is inherited, like certain bodily dis
eases and drunkenness.
This latter contention has Just re-
ceived striking confirmation from
Professor Pellmann of Bonn univer-
sity, Germany. Professor Pellmann
has made profound study of drunk
enness, its causes and effects. With
infinite labor and perseverance he
has taken bad cases of persons adj
dicted to inebriety in different parts
of his country and traced the habit
back through many generations I'M
til he has been able to present tabu-
lated biographies of hundreds de-
scended from some original drunk
ard.
Professor Pellmann now comes
forward with the account of Ger
man Jane Cakebread in the person
of Frau Ada Jurke, who was born
in the year 1740, and who, it is to be
hoped, will forever hold her unen-
viable record as the transmitter of
depravity to more than 700 of her
descendants.
Frau Ada Jurke was 60 years of
age when she 'paid her debt to ma
ture, and for the last 40 years of
her inglorious life was a drunkard,
a thief and a-tramp. Herdescendants
have numbered S34, of whom 700
have been traced by Professor Pell-
mann in local records from youth
to death.
OF the 700 he found that 1O6 were
born out of wedlock There were
142 who were beggars, and 81 more
who lived from charity. OF the wo-
men 1S1 lived disreputable lives.
Seventy-six members of the family
were convicts, of whom were SEN
fenced for murder. The remainder
were more or less addicted to excess
i've tippling.
Altogether the German savant es-
Inmates that Frau Ada Jurke and
her descendants have cost the state
that is, the taxpayers--no less than
$125, 900, 900 for maintenance, etc.
This monumental instance of in.
herent depravity is certainly a
strong argument in favor of those
who assert that, however unexcep-
tionable the environment of a child
may be, and whatever advantages
of precept and example it may en-
joy, the faint of vice transmitted to
it through successive generations
will inevitably manifest itself at
some period or other of its career
New York Herald.