Heredity of feeble-mindedness / by Henry H. Goddard.

Goddard, Henry Herbert, 1866-1957.

Date:: [1911]

Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Heredity of feeble-mindedness / by Henry H. Goddard. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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tubercular and feeble-minded. Two of the sisters married. One had at least two feeble-minded children, the other had one. Coming back to the father of our child, he married the second time a normal woman who gave birth to three normal children and one who died at two years. Chart VIII (in two parts) is in some ways the most astonish¬ ing one we have. There are in the institution at Vineland five children representing, as we had always supposed, three entirely independent families. We discovered, however, that they all belonged to one stock. In Chart VIII, A, the central figure, the alcoholic father of three of the children in the institution, married for his third wife a woman who was a prostitute and a keeper of a house of ill-fame, herself feeble-minded and with five feeble-minded brothers and sisters. One of these sisters is the grandmother represented on Chart VIII, B. On A it will be seen that this alcoholic man was four times married. He comes from a good family but was spoiled in his bringing up, became alcoholic and immoral—a degenerate man. His first wife, however, was a normal woman and it is claimed that the two children were normal. For his second wife, he took out of the poorhouse a feeble-minded woman. Her children were: two normal, one that died young, and one feeble-minded. He married the third time. The woman was the prostitute above referred to. She had three illegitimate children, all feeble- Chart VIII, A. minded. After their marriage, they had three children, all of whom, are feeble-minded. Two of these are in this institution.