generations, and is the subject of an elaborate memoir printed in
the Thirty-first Annual Report of the Prison Association of New York,
1876. It includes no less than 540 individuals of Jukes blood, of
whom a frightful number degraded into criminality, pauperism, or
disease.

It is difficult to summarise the results in a few plain figures, but
I will state those respecting the fifth generation, through the
eldest of the five prolific daughters of the man who is the common
ancestor of the race. The total number of these was 123, of whom
thirty-eight came through an illegitimate granddaughter, and
eighty-five through legitimate grandchildren. Out of the thirty-eight,
sixteen have been in jail, six of them for heinous offences, one of
these having been committed no less than nine times; eleven others
led openly disreputable lives or were paupers; four were notoriously
intemperate; the history of three had not been traced, and only four
are known to have done well. The great majority of the women
consorted with criminals. As to the eighty-five legitimate
descendants, they were less flagrantly bad, for only five of them
had been in jail, and only thirteen others had been paupers. Now the
ancestor of all this mischief, who was born about the year 1730, is
described as having been a jolly companionable man, a hunter, and a
fisher, averse to steady labour, but working hard and idling by turns,
and who had numerous illegitimate children, whose issue has not been
traced. He was, in fact, a somewhat good specimen of a half-savage,
without any seriously criminal instincts. The girls were apparently
attractive, marrying early and sometimes not badly; but the
gipsy-like character of the race was unsuited to success in a
civilised country. So the descendants went to the bad, and such
hereditary moral weaknesses as they may have had, rose to the