"At a Glance:" The Role of Diagrammatic Representations in Eugenics Appropriations of the "Infamous Juke Family"

Abstract

The case of the Juke family is one of the most notable episodes of the history of eugenics in the USA. The Jukes were initially brought to the fore in the 1870s by a famous investigation that aimed at estimating the interplay of heredity and environment in determining the problems of poverty and crime. This inquiry triggered a harsh confrontation between two polar interpretations of the study, an "environmentalist" one and a "hereditarian" one. It was with the later reassessment of the case made by the Eugenics American Office (ERO) in the 1910s that the controversy was considered closed with the victory of the eugenicists' hereditarian stance. As a result, the family was made a living proof of the alleged hereditary nature of crime and pauperism and a case study in support of the eugenicists' plea for the sterilization of people deemed the bearers of hereditary defectiveness. In this article, I explore the role played by pedigrees and other diagrammatic representations in the eugenicists' appropriation of the meaning of the case of the Juke family and the role played by this appropriation in asserting the superiority of the ERO's method of work over rival approaches.

Keywords: Arthur Howard Estabrook; Eugenics; Jukes; Pedigrees; Richard Louis Dugdale.

Fig. 1

A widely reproduced poster portraying the legacy of Ada Juke (Norton 1937)

Fig. 2

Ada Juke’s illegitimate legacy (Dugdale , between pp. 14 and 15)

Fig. 3

Ada Juke’s legitimate legacy (Dugdale , between pp. 16 and 17)

Fig. 4

Genealogical tree of the illegitimate descendants of Ada Juke (Estabrook , between pp. 4 and 5)

Fig. 5

Genealogical tree of the legitimate descendants of Ada Juke (Estabrook , between pp. 18 and 19).

Fig. 6

Occurrence of criminality and honesty in Delia’s and Effie’s descendants (Estabrook , between pp. 66 and 67)

Fig. 7

“The Juke charts compare the family as known to Dugdale in 1875 and again to A. H. Estabrook in 1915, forty years later ... Pictures of various members of the family and their living conditions are shown. By A. H. Estabrook” (Laughlin , p. 148 (caption) and p. 149 (image))

Fig. 8

Pedigree showing the occurrence of sex offence (Estabrook , p. 56)

Fig. 9

Occurrence of criminality in the Jukes (Estabrook , p. 64)

Fig. 10

Pedigree showing shiftlessness in the Jukes (Davenport , p. 81)

Fig. 11

Posterity of Ada Juke - Analysis of pedigree of inheritance of shiftlessness. (Davenport, Charles B. Undated. “Posterity of Ada Juke: Analysis of pedigree of inheritance of shiftlessness.” American Philosophical Society, ERO, MSC77, SerI, Box 44, A:35–8.)

Fig. 12

Field work for The Jukes in 1915 (Estabrook, Arthur H. 1910 circa. “Field work for the Jukes in 1915, Arthur Estabrook photographs from Ulster County, New York.” University of Albany, SUNY, SPE, XMS 80.9, Box 1, Folder 1–27, ID# 1268.)

Fig. 13

Pedigree showing the Inheritance of colour-blindness (Earle , p. 350)

Fig. 14

The triangle of life in an American biology high-school textbook (Peabody and Hunt , p. 541)

Fig. 15

Triangle of life with heredity as “substantial basis” and environment and training as “swinging factors” (Goldsmith , p. 379)

Fig. 16

Triangle of life, the old idea (Goldsmith , p. 378)

Fig. 17

Pedigree chart of Wallen Wallace Smith (Laughlin , p. 321)