Alphonse Bertillon

Infobox Person
name = Alphonse Bertillon


image_size = 200px
caption =
birth_date = birth date|1853|4|23|mf=y
birth_place = Paris, France
death_date = death date and age|1914|2|13|1853|4|23|mf=y
death_place = Münsterlingen, Switzerland
occupation = law enforcement officer and biometrics researcher
spouse =
parents = Louis Bertillon (father)
children =

Alphonse Bertillon (April 23, 1853—February 13, 1914) was a French law enforcement officer and biometrics researcher who created anthropometry, an identification system based on physical measurements. Anthropometry was the first scientific system police used to identify criminals. Until this time, criminals could only be identified based on eyewitness accounts, which are known to be unreliable. The method was eventually supplanted by fingerprinting, [As reported in, "A Fingerprint Fable: The Will and William West Case". http://www.scafo.org/library/110105.html] but "his other contributions like the mug shot and the systematisation of crime-scene photography remain in place to this day." [Kirsten Moana Thompson, "Crime Films: Investigating the Scene". London: Wallflower Press (2007): 10]

Alphonse Bertillon was born April 23 1853 in Paris. He was a son of statistician Louis Bertillon and younger brother of the statistician and demographer Jacques Bertillon.

Bertillon began as a records clerk in a police department. Paradoxically he got this job as a protegé of his prominent father. Being an orderly man, he was dissatisfied with the "ad hoc" methods used to identify captured criminals who had been arrested before. This motivated his invention of anthropometrics. Bertillon's road to fame was a protracted and hard one as he was forced to do his measurements in his spare-time. He used the famous La Santé Prison in Paris for his activities facing jeers from the prison inmates as well as police officers.

In 1882 Bertillon presented a criminal identification system known as anthropometry but later also known as "Bertillonage" in honor of its creator. In this system the person was identified by body measurement of the head and body, individual markings - tattoos, scars - and personality characteristics. The measurements were made into a formula that would apply only on one person and would not change. He used it in 1884 to identify 241 multiple offenders, and the system was quickly adopted widely by American and British police forces. Part of its benefit was that by arranging the records carefully, it would be very easy to sift through a large number of records quickly given a few measurements from the person to be identified. While it might not always give an exact match, it would allow one to narrow the pool of possible people and then to compare the person with a photograph.

The system was eventually found to be flawed, however, because often two different officers made their measurements in slightly different ways and would not obtain the same numbers. Measurements could also change as the criminal aged. It also could identify two individuals as the same person, unlike fingerprinting. In 1903, the system was discredited when a man named Will West arrested in Kansas was found to be a previously arrested man with anthropometrics, but fingerprinting contradicted this.

The system was widely used by French police and in other European countries. In France it was popular enough that it was widely used even after the advent of fingerprinting. One audacious member of the Bonnot gang sent police his fingerprints because he knew they did not have them, just his physical measurements.

Bertillon was a witness for the prosecution in the Dreyfus Affair in 1899. He testified as a handwriting expert and claimed that Alfred Dreyfus had written the incriminating documents.

Bertillon also standardized the criminal mug shot and the evidence picture. He developed "metric photography" that he intended to use to reconstruct the dimension of a particular space and the placement of objects in it. Crime scene pictures were taken before the scene was disturbed in any way. He used mats printed with metric frames that were mounted along the side of the photographs. Photographs pictured front and side views of a particular object.

Bertillon also created many other forensics techniques, including Forensic document examination, the use of galvanoplastic compounds to preserve footprints, ballistics, and the dynamometer, used to determine the degree of force used in breaking and entering.

Alphonse Bertillon died February 13 1914 in Münsterlingen, Switzerland.

Bertillon is referenced in the Sherlock Holmes story"The Hound of the Baskervilles" in which one of Holmes's clients refers to Holmes as the "second highest expert in Europe" after Bertillon. Also, in "The Naval Treaty", speaking of the Bertillon system of measurements Holmes himself "...expressed his enthusiastic admiration of the French savant". In the Arsène Lupin story "The Escape of Arsène Lupin" by Maurice Leblanc, Lupin escapes by exploiting the same flaws in anthropometry that led to its eventual disuse.

Bertillon is also referenced in the Caleb Carr novel "The Alienist". The Isaacson brothers, who are detectives, mention that they are trained in Bertillon system.

Notes

External links

* [http://www.cmsu.edu/cj/alphonse.htm Central Missouri State University: Criminal Justice: Alphonse Bertillon]
* [http://chnm.gmu.edu/courses/magic/plot/bertillon.html Example of Bertillon Measurements in practice]
* "Instructions signalétiques" at http://www.bookmine.org
* [http://www.genealogytoday.com/guide/criminal-records.html Ancestral Criminal Records] - includes Bertillon cards.