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Lately there has been much concern with what is called “The Criminal Face.” It appears that there is a certain type and shape of head and features that always goes with the commission of crime. If you have it, there is no escape. You might as well go right away and ask to board in the penitentiary.

Experts can explain to you this criminal face, feature by feature and line by line. But the real trouble with the expert is that he always knows beforehand that the face he is analyzing is that of a man who has committed a crime. That colors his conclusions. What if we were to put before him, as a criminal, the face of a philanthropist? What then?

Thus we take the picture of a certain face and we know that it is in reality the face of a kindly old professor. Indeed, we have recently, let us say, seen it described on the occasion of a presentation of his portrait to the city in the following terms:

portrait of a sage

“The face of this distinguished scholar is known and loved by thousands who have listened to his inspired and inspiring words. It is a broad face, a kindly face, the face of a man with a wide heart, whose broad lineaments seem to indicate a corresponding breadth of sympathy. But there is a firmness, too, in the wide mouth, and character in the large but firmly chiseled nostril. The brow slopes nobly from the projecting frontal bones, the head is wide, of a width that tells of the capacious brain within. The ear is large, noble, and mobile, and the scant and snow-white hair remains as the mark of honor of a life spent in the service of mankind.”

But put the same portrait before the graphofacial expert, or facial graphologist, and tell him that it is a picture of a criminal recently sent to jail for life plus ten years, and ask him where he can see the tendency to crime, and this is the analysis you will receive of the countenance of the venerable scholar:

dangerous criminal

“The photograph is that of a male about sixty years of age, with marked criminal tendencies. Note the flat face, indicating complete absence of thinking power. There is something almost simian or ape-like in the width of the mouth, while the low, sloped forehead is but little higher in development than that of the most degraded savages. Such brain as this man could have would be sunk so low towards his neck as to be of little use to him. The premature loss of practically the entire capillary growth of the scalp, with the utter loss of pigment in the remaining part, indicates a life evil and irregular to the last degree.”

Or suppose, in the same way, that a facial graphologist looked at a picture of a great war hero, he would say:

“What a stern, soldierly face, the face of a man accustomed to command, keen, penetrating, and able at the same time to be ruthless, but always to be just.”

But show him the same picture and tell him that it was taken from the criminal records of the New York police, and he may say:

“We see here the true type of the hardened criminal—the small brain, the wide-set eye, and the dull look that indicates moral irresponsibility, etc., etc.”

But the trouble is that the world is coming to attach more and more importance, too much importance, to experts. When the facial graphologist gets a little further, we shall find our courts of law following in his wake. The face itself will become a crime and our police court morning records will contain little items after this fashion:

a menace to society

“Albert Jones, who later on gave in his name as coming from Chicago, undertook to take his face down town yesterday afternoon with the apparent intention of parading it on Main Street. Police Constable Simmons noticed Jones’s face moving through the air and at once arrested him.

“On being taken to headquarters and submitted to expert examination, it was found that his face was criminal in a high degree. The stunted lobes of his ears, for which he received six months in jail, are only one among varied evidences of guilt. He was given from twelve to fifteen months for various parts of his brain that were absent.

“The lack of eyelashes drew a caustic condemnation from the court, which warned Jones that a face like his is more than society is prepared to tolerate.”

Or things may go even a little further than this, and we may find the “facial criminal” filling a still larger field, thus:

criminal outbreak

“Telegraphic advices inform us that the city of Minneapolis and the surrounding suburbs are in the throes of a crime wave of unprecedented magnitude. The situation was precipitated by the arrival of a large excursion party of holiday visitors from the Doukhobor Settlement in Manitoba. It was noticed as soon as their faces emerged from the excursion train that they represented a mass of criminal possibility of dangerous volume. It was computed that not one in ten had had a hair cut once in ten months.

“The brachiocephalic index of nearly every one of them was of a kind to alarm the police force, while the facial angle of those who had the hardihood to show it justified immediate arrest. The entire excursion party were put on summary trial under the new Criminal Faces Statute and were ordered deported into Canada.

“Immediate difficulty arose, however, when the Canadian official refused all permit for reëntry into the Dominion, on the ground that men with faces like theirs are debarred from entry into a British country. The Canadian claim is that the men’s faces were all right when they left Manitoba, but took on their present criminal character when they got out at Minneapolis. For the time being, the entire party will be placed in a detention home.”

Ah, yes, and that last word “home” suggests to me another development that is bound to come when the criminality of the face is fully recognized. People will see that the proper thing to do for the criminal face is not to punish it, but to try to reform it. The idea will be replaced by the idea of redemption. A criminal face will be put into a home, where it will be surrounded with kindly and pleasant influences, where it may hear over the radio moral talks and sermons such as will cause the lobes of its ears to lengthen and will gradually lift up the lid of its brain to a normal height.

The situation will be marked by the appearance of such items as the following:

successful redemption

“John Henry Thomas, aged 70, was released to-day from the Central Criminal Face Reformatory, having been placed on parole by the authorities. The old man had spent the greater part of his life in the Reformatory, having been arrested at the age of twenty on a variety of charges, involving not only the lobes of his ears and the cubic capacity of his cerebellum, but the structure of his spinal ridge itself. His tendency towards homicide was too marked to permit him to remain at large.

“The old gentleman, in stepping out again into the sunlight after his long incarceration, expressed his appreciation of all that had been done for him. Not only had the lobes of his ears gradually assumed a harmless and even benevolent shape, but his cerebellum, formerly too small, was now larger than he could use and practically empty. All tendency to crime was declared vanished. The old gentleman did, indeed, in leaving, attempt to bite the warden’s ear, but this was not attributed to any remaining criminal tendency. It was rather thought to be an evidence of a new playfulness engendered by his long opportunity for improvement.

“It is understood that Thomas intends to devote the remainder of his days to work as a facial graphologist.”

In other words, my dear readers, my advice is—never mind your face. What if you do look like a criminal of the most dangerous type? You may not be really fitted for it at all.