One of my favourite crime history heroes is Alphonse Bertillon, the French criminologist who began as a humble clerk and ended up developing a system for identifying criminals that was used worldwide.
Alphonse Bertillon was born in Paris on 22 April 1853. Despite his father being an accomplished statistician (and later his younger brother Jacques), Alphonse’s educational achievements were patchy and he failed to complete medical school. Keen to find a post for his 26-year-old son, Monsieur Bertillon procured him a position in the Préfecture de Police, as a records clerk. Alphonse’s job was to copy the details of known criminals onto index cards. But he soon realised that he could do far better, and over the next two years, he developed his own recording system.
Using the knowledge that the structure of the adult body doesn’t change throughout its life span, and that no two individuals would measure exactly the same, Bertillon devised his anthropometric system, later known as Bertillonage, which was based on the measurement of 11 separate body parts. In 1879, he presented his idea to the police department and it was formally adopted four years later. During the first year, Bertillon used his new system to identify some 300 habitual offenders. He published a complete guide to the system in Identification Anthropométrique.
Once the suspect had been measured, the information was entered onto a card, with additional information such as personal history, past convictions and other physical features. At a time when offenders were adept at changing their appearance through the use of disguise, facial hair and tattoos, Bertillon sought to overcome this by developing further innovations, such as a letter code for distinctive features, and charts of different eye colours and nose shapes.
Alphonse Bertillon’s most famous achievement was the creation of the ‘portrait parlé’ (speaking portrait), which involved photographing an individual’s profile as well as their face. The ‘mug shot’ became the standard process for photographing suspects in 1888. Bertillon was also the pioneer of forensic photography, both in capturing the images of convicted criminals and at crime scenes. At crime scenes, he used a camera on a tripod to record the setting and to take measurements of the affected area. In addition, he developed research into footprinting and ballistics.
Towards the end of the 19th century, Bertillon’s anthropometric system was used all over the world, until it was eventually replaced by fingerprinting. At home in France, his meticulous record keeping contributed to the arrest and conviction of serial killer Joseph Vacher, known as the French Ripper, in 1897.
Such was Bertillon’s international fame that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle made references to his expertise in his iconic stories. In The Hound of the Baskervilles, Dr James Mortimer stated that Sherlock is ‘the second highest expert in Europe’. When the disgruntled detective enquired as to whom is the first, Mortimer replied:
‘To the man of precisely scientific mind the work of Monsieur Bertillon must always appeal strongly.’
Alphonse Bertillon died on 13 February 1914, in Paris, aged 60. He is buried in Père Lachaise cemetery. He had pledged his brain to the Mutual Autopsy Society and it was dissected shortly after his death.
I will be studying the pioneering achievements of Alphonse Bertillon in a future project about Victorian detectives.