Fifth generation of the Juke Family

Fifth generation of the Juke Family

Dugdale, R. L. (Richard Louis), 1841-1883

Eugenics

Genealogical tables

Juke family

One of the first and most influential of the eugenic studies of a pseudonymous family, Richard L. Dugdale’s The Jukes traces the origins of imprisoned members of the same family back to the colonial period to examine inherited and environmental tendencies to poverty, crime, and disease. Dugdale estimates the financial cost to society of maintenance of the Jukes and concludes with, “Over a million and a quarter dollars of loss in 75 years, caused by a single family 1,200 strong, without reckoning the cash paid for whisky, or taking into account the entailment of pauperism and crime of the survivors in the next generation, and the incurable disease, idiocy and insanity growing out of this debauchery, and reaching into the third and fourth generations. It is getting to be time to ask, do our courts, our laws, our alms-houses and our jails deal with the question presented?”

Arthur H. Estabrook, a field worker of the Eugenics Record Office, later used Dugdale’s original research and traced Juke descendants to produce a follow-up study, The Jukes in 1915. Estabrook displayed photographs of the Jukes along with some of his data at the 1921 International Exhibition of Eugenics in New York.

Portion of a chart showing the fifth generation of the Juke family following page 16 of “The Jukes” : a study in crime, pauperism, disease and heredity ; also further studies of criminals by R. L. Dugdale

Dugdale, R. L. (Richard Louis), 1841-1883

G. P. Putnam’s Sons

1877

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Boston Medical Library Rare Books Collection (2.G.5)

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0001946

Gift of the Lowell Hospital Association to the Boston Medical Library, 1907