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UTampa Assistant Professor of Criminology Kayla Toohy recently traveled to Italy to research information related to the work of Pauline Tarnowsky, the lost mother of criminology.

Tarnowsky, the first female criminologist, researched female homicide, and her theories incorporated information that is commonly regarded in the present time, a century ahead of commonly held ideas, said Toohy. However, little was known about her until recent research was published, including that of Toohy’s translated material.

Now, Tarnowsky’s Les Femmes Homicides – Part I is published in English for the first time, thanks to Toohy’s work on the translation conducted with colleagues Lin Huff-Corzine and Boniface Noyongoyo.

The project started for Toohy during her doctoral program in 2018 when Toohy’s co-researcher Huff-Corzine approached her to join in the ongoing effort to translate Tarnowsky’s published work. When Toohy traveled in the summer of 2024 with a RISE grant to Italy to study Tarnowsky, she perused a rare second edition of Lombroso’s book. It credited Tarnowsky for her contributions and the photographs she took of the women they studied, but it did not list her as an author.

“She’s been cited in some of these very instrumental publications without having really been discussed widely in the discipline,” said Toohy. “Most of the historical context of our discipline has been attributed to the contributions of men. We didn't often hear about the contributions of women in this time period.”

Toohy spent up to an hour, sometimes more, per page translating Tarnowsky’s Les Femmes Homicides – Part I—a 282-page book—from French to English. She said she felt pressure to authentically represent the largely forgotten female researcher.

Toohy’s work can impact the international field of criminology by helping criminologists better understand the context and the social environment in its early development, she said.

“It's always nice to add additional voices to those early perspectives so that we can understand what we might have been missing all along,” she said.

Equally important was finding Tarnowsky’s original photographs.

Some early criminologists thought people were “born criminal,” said Toohy, and could be identified by certain physical characteristics. Tarnowsky spent 20 years in the field photographing and interviewing female murderers, prostitutes and other criminals to identify these physical attributes.

But sometime in her life, Tarnowsky’s her work shifted, resembling some aspects of 21st-century criminology.

“By the end of her work, she had largely, I don't want to say, dismissed, but she had started to understand that, yes, maybe there were some biological factors that were related to criminality, but actually it was more the environment and the social context,” Toohy said.

Tracking down Tarnowsky’s work was the biggest struggle, Toohy said, because the forgotten criminologist had no comprehensive archives.

“It's been really hard work because you don't always know where to look,” Toohy said. “It's like you're looking for the next clue that's bringing along the following stage of that discovery process.”

She struck gold in Torino at the Museo di Antropologia Criminale Cesare Lombroso. Tarnowsky was once a student of Lombroso’s, and some of her work was stored there.

Toohy appreciates adding to the historical fabric of criminology through her research and translations, but she’s also taking away her gratitude.

“It feels empowering that female researchers can more openly contribute to a lot of the science that is ongoing in today's world.”

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