Alphonse Bertillonwas a French forensic documentarian who developed or meliorate upon several methods of identifying criminals and solving crimes . Some of those method , such as the mug barb , are still in employment today , while others , particularly anthropometry , were abandoned over prison term in favour of more accurate methods . Bertillon is consider by many to be the first forensic expert .
Bertillon ’s ego - portraiture as a mug shot .
Bertillon was a school dropout , and having been trained in no particular field other than that of a soldier , he go to work as a book clerk at the Prefecture of Police in Paris in 1879 . The son and comrade of statistician , Bertillon was offend at the chaos in the criminal offender files . In his bare time , he began to figure out out a better method acting . In France at the time , there was a concern over reversionist , or those who committed crimes over and over . habitual criminal could draw abrasive condemnation , but they were difficult to place , because arrestees were only place by name and speech , and sometimes a painting . But appearance and addresses change , and anyone could rest about their name . With the Paris reprehensible records system as it was in 1879 , if you could n’t ascertain a defendant ’s name , you could n’t detect him in the file , and therefore the pace of recidivism was unknown . suspect , but unidentified .
Anthropometry
An exemplification from a Scripture on anthropometry by Alphonse Bertillon .
Alphonse Bertillon tackle identifying crook by anthropometry , or the measurements of man . Anthropometry has hatful of uses , in the field of medicine , anthropology , and engineering , and Bertillon developed another : forensic anthropometry , for the purpose of key recidivists and keep disc of criminal offenders . His organisation , calledbertillonage , involve measure dimensions of the head , face , farsighted bones of the limbs , and other body dimensions . Bertillion accede these measuring into Indian file cards for each arrestee , and sorted them by the wrongdoer ’s size . A suspected backslider could be matched by these measurements , and then his name could be fussy - referenced to his felonious disk .
The major flaw in bertillonage was the assumption that measurements were different for each individual . Bertillon knew , from the Belgian mathematical statistician Lambert Quetelet , that the chances of two people being the same superlative were four to one . Bertillon surmised thatthe more measurements of dissimilar body voice he added , the longer the odds were that two people ’s measurements would match . However , several of the measurements he let in in his system were directly correlated with an mortal ’s summit .
Still , Bertillion ’s system identified reversionist well than any method used previously . In 1884 alone,241 recidivist were identifiedwhen they were rearrested in Paris . The system spread throughout France , and then to other countries . An unsavory side effect was the idea that a “ born criminal ” could be identify by anthropometry before any crimes were perpetrate , which give into the eugenics disputation .
Sir Francis Galton had his mug dead reckoning conduct by Bertillon .
Bertillion ’s anthropometry measurements were eventually replaced by the more exact identifier of fingerprints , introduced into forensic scienceby Sir Francis Galtonin the 1880s . But anthropometry was n’t the only innovation Bertillon made in law phonograph record - guardianship .
Mug Shots
Bertillon also had a system for integrate face descriptions into condemnable Indian file , which he called“portrait parle . ”This involved classify the shape of the middle , nose , lip , and other features into a coded mental lexicon that could be used as tachygraphy . However , the code was all-inclusive and grueling to learn to all the police force in France , so portrait parle was abandoned in favour of mug shot .
François Bertillon , the photographer ’s two - yr - old Logos , mug shot claim in 1893 .
Police had been using photography to memorialise felonious appearance since shortly after photography was devise , but it was Alphonse Bertillon whostandardized the mug shotinto the familiar full - face shot accompanied by a profile view of the same size of it . The profile prospect was added because Bertillon saw thatthe unique shape of the spike is an identifier . His method , adopted in Paris in 1888 , was soon used throughout France and in other countries .
Handwriting Analysis
The mug shot of Captain Alfred Dreyfus .
Bertillon ’s brief foray into the skill of hand psychoanalysis was a complete failure . He was promise to testify inthe Dreyfus Affair , in which Captain Alfred Dreyfus was accused of spot on the Gallic war machine for Germany . The principal evidence against Dreyfus was a written document , which he deny writing . There were no competent script experts usable , so the famous forensic expert Alphonse Bertillon was summoned , althoughhe had no expertness in handwriting analytic thinking . Bertillon ’s initial examination of the document was inconclusive , but he finally testified that the handwriting was Dreyfus ’s , although allegedly Dreyfus hadtried to disguise his handwritingassomeone else imitate his script . In other words , Bertillon said that Dreyfus was trying to ensnare someone of set up him . This Byzantine logic is assign to either Bertillon ’s confidence that Dreyfus was guilty , or to the French military leaning on the constabulary investigator to find Dreyfus guilty . Later depth psychology confirmed that Bertillon ’s testimony on the handwritingwas full of errors .
Crime Scene Photography
Bertillon was also a proponent ofcrime scene photography . Photographing murder victims was important for capturing the power to identify them before their bodies decayed or were disposed of . He developed a standardized technique ofphotographing a murder victim from above , for record the body ’s positionin situbefore investigators raise up the scene . Forensic measurements could be take from the image any time subsequently .
Although not all of Bertillon ’s techniques pan out , he brought a mother wit of discipline to record keeping and crime investigation that open doorway for further development in vicious judge .
This post was inspired by a picture establish in an old issue ofThe Annals of Improbable Research , in which a cat is observing Bertillon at work .
