Pauline Tarnowsky's Les Femmes Homicides

Translated by Kayla Toohy and Boniface Noyongoyo

This translation of Les Femmes Homicides, by Praskov’ia Tarnovskaia, or Pauline Tarnowsky as her name has been Westernized, presents an important historical work in English for the first time. Tarnowsky, a neuropathologist and one of the first women allowed to attend medical school in Russia, has been called by some as the “first woman criminologist.” In Les Femmes Homicides, she uses a sample of rural peasant women who had committed homicide to test the “born criminal theory” often associated with Cesare Lombroso and to expand the theoretical explanations for the women’s homicides to include heredity and social impacts. This first volume includes Tarnowsky’s theory, methodology, and the first two categories of women she studied who were incarcerated for homicide.

Tarnowsky’s progression from the original endeavor of identifying born criminals based on physical characteristics to the assertions she makes on the influences of biological and social factors are progressive for her time and an important contribution to the development of the discipline. Her meticulous methodological and extensive theoretical considerations regarding the intersections of her criminal population (e.g., race, environment, time, place, unity, and other social conditions) make this one of the first comprehensive studies on female offenders to use a control group to make comparisons among consistently homogenous criminal and non-criminal populations. She calls upon what we now know as the social sciences to study and explain homicides committed by women, eventually denouncing the importance of Lombroso’s theory of “born criminals.” Some images of the women of Les Femmes Homicides as well as a Bibliography can be accessed by instructors under the Instructor & Student Resources tab.

This historical work is essential reading for scholars and students engaged in criminology, homicide studies, social history, history of criminological ideas, criminal law, social sciences, and gender studies.