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Skull of a prostitute, Pavia (North of Italy), late XIX century.
Unidentified photographer, albumen print.
Lombroso collected numerous data on the shape and size of skulls to compare and include in statistical calculations. Like many positivist scientists of his time, he gave more importance to biological facts than to explanations of social phenomena. The search for degenerative signs and physical anomalies also concerned prostitution, assimilated by Lombroso to real delinquency.
This photograph probably belongs to a series of images exhibited at the first International Congress of Criminal Anthropology (Rome, 1885) by Angelo Scarenzio of the University of Pavia, these images were exhibited together with skulls, brains, plaster and wax casts of the face of prostitutes and their protectors, accompanied by a craniometric table.