Jukes

juks, The, a family of New York State, famous in the records of crime and pauperism. In 1874 Mr. R. L. Dugdale, while investigating the prison records of that state, became interested in the repeated recurrence of certain names. On tracing the matter he found that two Jukes sisters, one of them known as Margaret, the Mother of Criminals, married two brothers named Max. He made investigation of the family extending through several generations. He obtained the particulars relative to over 700 of the 1,200 members of the family, all related by blood. He found that of these 140 had been imprisoned for crime, and that 280 had been paupers dependent upon public support. The history of the family is often referred to as an argument against permitting people of low physical and moral standard to marry and bring up families destined to become criminals, or, at best, public charges.