The Phantom at the Limits of Criminology

Abstract

These two Gothic revelations mark respectively a beginning and an ending. The beginning is that of what became known as the ‘science of criminology’, generally accepted as having its origin in this discovery in 1870 by the Italian physician Cesare Lombroso. It was to lead to an explosion in criminological theory that was felt throughout Europe and the United States. The criminal might be identified, categorised by science, and science was to be in the vanguard of the fight against crime. The ending is that of a crime novel, Fantômas, written by Marcel Allain and Pierre Souvestre and published in 1911. The book (published in translation most recently by Picador in 1987) was a sensation in its time-thirty-one sequels immediately followed it, and five films by the director Louis Feuillade were released. As the above quotation demonstrates, it is a work in which the criminal evades capture, thereby proving his superiority over the scientific theory and practice ranged against him.

I was carrying on for several months researches in the prisons and asylums of Pavia upon cadavers and living persons in order to determine upon substantial differences between the insane and criminals, without succeeding very well. At last I found in the skull of a brigand a very long series of atavistic anomalies…. At the sight … of these strange anomalies the problem of the nature and of the origin of the criminal seemed to me resolved. This was not merely an idea, but a flash of inspiration. At the sight of that skull I seemed to see, all of a sudden, lighted up as a vast plain under a flaming sky the problem of the nature of the criminal.¹

He thrust the assistants away, and plunging his hands into the hay that was soaked with blood, he seized the severed head by the hair and stared at it … ‘Oh, curse him! Fantomas has escaped! Fantômas has gotten away! He has had some innocent man executed in his stead! I tell you, Fantômas is alive!’²