The Bertillon system
"Every measurement slowly reveals the workings of the criminal. Careful observation and patience will reveal the truth."
—Alphonse Bertillon, French criminologist
Surveying the suspect's body
After the invention of photography, police began to keep "rogues' galleries," disorganized photographic collections of suspects and convicts. What was needed was a way to retrieve images and information quickly. In 1879, Alphonse Bertillon invented a method that combined detailed measurement and classification of unique features with frontal and profile photographs of suspects—and which recorded the information on standardized cards in orderly files. Bertillon's system was based on five primary measurements: (1) head length; (2) head breadth; (3) length of the middle finger; (4) the length of the left foot; (5) the length of the "cubit" (the forearm from the elbow to the extremity of the middle finger). Each principal heading was further subdivided into three classes of "small," "medium" and "large." The length of the little finger and the eye color were also recorded. Bertillon's system was later overtaken by fingerprinting, but the Bertillon "mug shot" endures.
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/visibleproofs/galleries/technologies/bertillon.html
Friday, June 19, 2009
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Bertillon’s system seems pretty sophisticated for what they had available to work with. It’s hard to image how it could be used on a regional or national basis since it would be cumbersome. There were no electronic databases to work with yet. My guess is that the level of detail recorded was to minimize the chances of a false identification.
ReplyDelete