The Juke Sisters?

The Jukes: A study in crime, pauperism, disease, and heredity became one of the most well-known eugenic family studies. The study was first published in 1877, based on the research of R.L. Dugdale, and then reexamined by Arthur Estabrook with the support of the Eugenics Record Office in 1916. Taken together, the Juke family studies were used as evidence that generations of moral degenerates and criminals emerged when the ‘feeble-minded’ were allowed to ‘propagate’. This article reviews the story of the Jukes, including their true identities, and concludes that Dugdale did not adequately investigate the parents of the Juke sisters. Instead, he concocted a ‘family’ that lived in a location where relationships were complex. The research that followed only compounded these errors, as the political agenda of eugenics overrode scientific knowledge and ignored the poor quality of the original data.