ABSTRACT
This chapter concentrates on the ambivalent reception of criminal anthropology in British scientific and fictional writing, challenging previous readings of popular fiction which have often seen it as acting in collaboration with such determinist theories. It discusses in more detail with specific reference to Grant Allen's serial An African Millionaire, and the references this series makes to the work of Alphonse Bertillon and Francis Galton in identifying the criminal through physiological methodologies. The first text to address what was to become known as criminal anthropology was Cesare Lombroso's L'Uomo Delinquente, published in 1876. The chapter demonstrates in relation to Sidney Paget's illustrations for the Holmes stories, the images often provide a kind of fractured narrative in themselves; anybody following the story presented by the images of the final episode of An African Millionaire would certainly find Vandrift more guilty than Clay.
