ABSTRACT
As fascinating as they are as a source for administrative, crime, and social history, the wanted notes contain still another layer of information that relates to both Enlightenment reforms of education, widely understood, and to the diffusion of new scientific insights ‘on the ground’: both medical and sociological jargon about diseases or physical appearances (e.g., pockmarks, freckles) became more frequent over time. From the turn of the nineteenth century onwards, more and more qualitative and, above all, value-judgements about the delinquents' character (or lack thereof) became more common. This chapter offers novel insights into both the dissemination of medical and scientific (body) knowledge among the mostly illiterate rural poor and an enquiry into how the choice of terms became de facto monopolised by centrally processed printed wanted notes. In other words, these pages reveal the degree to which ‘the Enlightenment’ contributed to the emergence of anti-scientific stereotypes describing what later would become known, in Francis Galton's words, ‘the Criminal Types’.
