SCIENTIFIC DETECTION OF CRIME — SANNIE 345 



When however, in France, the Law of 27 May 1885 introduced trans- 

 portation as an additional penalty for certain persistent offenders, it 

 became urgently necessary to find a more satisfactory solution. Since 

 1878, Bertillon, a clerk at the Prefecture de Police, had been responsi- 

 ble for filing the cards of persons already convicted. He had been 

 struck by the poor and unsatisfactory means employed for that pur- 

 pose, and set out to find a solution for the problem. 



Very often advances in a science are achieved by people who are not 

 primarily concerned with that science. Pasteur was a chemist and 

 mineralogist, but it was his discoveries in the field of medicine that 

 immortalized him. Bertillon was not a policeman but, by training, 

 background, and heredity, an anthropologist. His father, grand- 

 father, and brother did anthropological work. It was the time when 

 Broca's school was at its prime. Throughout his youth, Bertillon 

 had associated with the foremost anthropologists in France and 

 Europe; with these he had discussed the value of anthropological 

 measurements, and he was familiar with them all. It is therefore not 

 surprising that he should have thought of applying these methods — 

 accurate methods based on exact measurements — to the solution of 

 a problem that appeared to have no connection with them. 



To identify anyone is to establish a relationship between a given 

 individual and certain morphological characteristics observed in that 

 individual. But these morphological characteristics must satisfy cer- 

 tain imperative conditions, having regard to the aim in view. They 

 must be absolutely stable throughout the life of the individual ; they 

 must, at the same time, be as specific as possible, i. e., the group of 

 characteristics found in any given individual must be found only in 

 that individual and in no other. Lastly, they must be easy to record, 

 with the use of simple equipment and elementary methods. 



Bertillon approached the question as an anthropologist and, in de- 

 veloping his method, selected the forms of measurement with which 

 he was familiar. The only anthropometric measurements that can 

 easily be taken from a living being with sufficient accuracy are the 

 dimensions of the bones. He therefore chose bone measurements, 

 although they did not fully satisfy the two conditions mentioned 

 above. They are not absolutely stable throughout life, and they 

 change until the process of growth is completed. Secondly, they are 

 not strictly specific, even when considered in combination. Our de- 

 partment has come across certain twins whose measurements were, as 

 nearly as could be measured, exactly the same. 



Despite these drawbacks, Bertillon succeeded in assembling on a 

 single card a collection of bone measurements distinguishing any 

 given individual. At the same time, he worked out a method of filing 

 which enabled him unerringly to trace the individual for whom he was 

 looking from among the hundreds of thousands of cards accumulated. 



