galton.org 11
Description of the Composites
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true to their kind have become established, and are one of the saddest
disfigurements of modern civilisation. To this subject I shall recur.
I have made numerous composites of various groups of convicts,
which are interesting negatively rather than positively. They produce
faces of a mean description, with no villainy written on them. The
individual faces are villainous enough, but they are villainous in different
ways, and when they are combined, the individual peculiarities disappear,
and the common humanity of a low type is all that is left.
The remaining portraits are illustrations of the application of the
process to the study of the physiognomy of disease. They were published
a year ago with many others, together with several of the portraits from
which they were derived; in a joint memoir by Dr. Mahomed and myself,
in vol. xxv. of the Guy’s Hospital Reports. The originals and all the
components have been exhibited on several occasions.
In the lower division of the Plate will be found three composites, each
made from a large number of faces, unselected, except on the ground of
the disease under which they were suffering. When only few portraits are
used, there must be some moderate resemblance between them, or the
result would be blurred; but here, dealing with as many as 56, 100, and.
50 cases respectively, the combination of any medley group results in an
ideal expression.
It will be observed that the composite of 56 female faces is made by
the blending of two other composites, both of which are given. The
history was this—I took the 56 portraits and sorted them into two groups;
in the first of these were 20
portraits that showed a tendency to thin
features, in the other group there were 36 that showed a tendency to
thickened features. I made composites of each of them as shown in the
Plate. Now it will be remarked that, notwithstanding the attempt to make
two contrasted groups, the number of mediocre cases was so great that the
composites of the two groups are much alike. If I had divided the 56 into
two haphazard groups, the results would have been closely alike, as I
know from abundant experience of the kind. The co-composite of the
