ABSTRACT
Richard Dugdale, a New York City merchant, discovered the criminalistic “Jukes” family while doing volunteer research for the Prison Association of New York. In the following extract, he first describes how he happened upon this family, breeding promiscuously on the shores of the Finger Lakes. Eventually he traced the Jukes back to an ancestor, Max, born in the mideighteenth century. By collecting biographical data from jail, hospital, and poorhouse records, Dugdale believed he could trace and estimate the differential impact of heredity and environment on Max’s descendants. He dubbed those descendants the “Jukes,” even though they in fact had a variety of family names, and he designated all those with whom the Jukes married or cohabited as members of the “X” blood. These groupings gave the impression of two vast, monolithic family groups whose heredity could be traced through generations.
