Bertillonage
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The Bertillonage is one of Alphonse Bertillon developed anthropometric system for identifying individuals based on body measurements. This is an early biometric recognition process .
The system was used in Great Britain, France, the USA and Germany , among others , but largely replaced worldwide after a few decades by dactyloscopy (fingerprint process) as an identification system due to punctual inaccuracies in identification and high effort . In the method of photographing the face from two different perspectives (see illustration), which is still used today, elements of Bertillonage are still used.
context
In France, the physical marking of criminals by branding was finally banned by law in 1832. The courts were thus faced with the problem of identifying repeat offenders. But they also wanted to clearly identify “ tramps ” and habitual criminals who frequently changed their place of residence and name. At the time of Bertillon it was hoped that it would be possible to clearly identify people, especially support in the fight against violent anarchists. But interest in the Bertillonage went far beyond that. The foreword to the German edition of Bertillon's handbook says: “We must not disregard the fact that the system is also suitable for solving other questions than the mere recognition of evildoers, such as the determination of the physical personality, the undeniable identity of an adult corresponds to the most diverse needs in our modern cultural life. "
Basics
The system developed by Bertillon between 1879 and 1880 was later named Bertillonage in his honor. Bertillon was head of the identification institute at the police prefecture in Paris from 1882. The Bertillonage consists of four elements:
- the standardized photographic recording of a person,
- the "Portrait parlé" (memory picture),
- the standardized measurement of people,
- a "signaling registry".
Photographic capture
In order to ensure the comparability and standardized evaluation of the recordings, Bertillon constructed a special apparatus. The imprisoned person was seated on a swivel armchair and recorded with an apparatus designed by Bertillon "which allows face and profile photographs to be taken one after the other on the same plate and without the patient having to change his position on the chair ".
Detailed instructions stipulated which part of the face should be focused on, how the lighting should be set up, etc. Profiles always had to be taken from the right so that police officers when looking for criminals knew from which side they should approach the suspect in order to face and compare photography. These recordings were glued to index cards and supplemented with anthropometric information, i.e. information about body measurements, as well as the name and date of birth of the person depicted according to a precisely specified nomenclature.
The "Portrait parlé"
With the help of precise specifications for the description of nose and ear shapes, etc., the images stuck on an index card were expanded to include a « portrait parlé ». This “spoken portrait” was a help for the investigators. Bertillon believed that “the best, and even the only, means for the detective to memorize a photographic image is to make a detailed and complete description of it in writing ... The investigator in charge of the difficult task To investigate and arrest a criminal with the hand of a photograph must be able to describe the features and the shape of the persecuted person out of the head, to make a kind of "memory picture" out of it in one word. "
Instructions for describing an earlobe - 1895
Instructions for describing an ear - 1895
Memory picture after Bertillon
Back of the memory image
Measurement of the people
Bertillon took up the outward appearance of the person. According to a precisely defined procedure, eleven body measurements were taken with the help of specially developed equipment and the measurements were entered on index cards. The regulations extended to the regulation for reading and dictating the measurement results.
In order to uniquely identify a person, Bertillon determined the following eleven body measurements:
- body length
- Arm span
- Seat height
- Head length
- Head width
- Length of the right ear
- Width of the right ear (later replaced by the width of the cheekbones)
- Length of the left foot
- Length of the left middle finger
- Length of the left little finger
- Length of the left forearm
Measuring the length of the right ear - 1895
Ear Knife - 1895
The procedure was based on the following assumptions:
- A person's body measurements remain essentially unchanged after the age of 20.
- As the number of correctly measured body measurements increased, the risk of mix-ups decreased.
- By measuring and registering these body dimensions, one can identify a person beyond doubt.
The system developed by Bertillon was based on the statistically proven assumption that people clearly differ in their physical dimensions.
The signaling registry
The values obtained during the measurement of the people were converted into exact digits in the so-called anthropometric signaling, which could be collected, exchanged and compared within the authorities' apparatus. Since around 100,000 suspects were recorded in the Paris police prefecture alone within the first decade, Bertillon developed a "signaling registry". The fact that three sections of roughly the same size - small, medium, large - were created for each limb of the body meant that the search for a specific person could be reduced to a manageable number of index cards. Bertillon applies here a "law of nature" discovered by Adolphe Quetelet : "Everything that lives, grows or passes away, fluctuates between a maximum and a minimum, between which the variety of gradations spreads, the more numerous, the closer they are to the mean, the closer they are to the ends of the rows, the rarer. ”( normal distribution ).
history
Bertillon succeeded in identifying a recidivist offender for the first time on the basis of his body measurements on February 20, 1883. By 1905, the Paris police were able to identify a total of 12,614 recidivist offenders through the Bertillonage.
However, the system was superseded in most American and European nations within two decades after the much easier-to-perform dactyloscopy prevailed. Remarkably, however, Bertillon himself was able to carry out the first identification of a murderer in Europe on the basis of his fingerprints in 1902. But this fact also made him doubt the advantages of dactyloscopy. After Bertillon's death in 1914, Bertillonage was abandoned in France in favor of dactyloscopy, which had been widespread worldwide by then.
In the United States, a fallibility of the system emerged in 1903: the criminal Will West was measured and his data compared with those of the convicts already registered. A card was found that fit almost perfectly, but wasn't the right one:
Will West: 178.5, 187.0, 91.2, 19.7, 15.8, 14.8, 6.6, 28.2, 12.3, 9.7, 50.2 William West: 177.5, 188.0, 91.3, 19.8, 15.9, 14.8, 6.5, 27.5, 12.2, 9.6, 50.3
Due to inaccuracies in the measurement of the body length, a few millimeters of deviation always had to be tolerated, as the end points could not be determined exactly. Since Will West, initially suspected, vehemently refused to acknowledge the result, further investigations were made. Fortunately for him, the second William West was found, imprisoned since 1901 and very similar to him in many ways.
Bertillonage is inferior to dactyloscopy for various reasons. The system is very complex and prone to errors. The possibility of mix-ups could not be ruled out 100% even when eleven body measurements were taken. In fact, at least one mix-up, the aforementioned Will West, could be proven beyond doubt. However, the identity of names in the individual case mentioned contributed to the fact that conclusions were drawn prematurely; In addition, the procedure was not carried out in full, so that other elements of the Bertillonage apart from the index card were not used in this case. However, expensive special measuring devices, trained personnel and a lot of time were required to take the measurements. Because of these disadvantages, the simpler dactyloscopy quickly gained acceptance.
However, some elements of the Bertillonage have been preserved in the criminal investigation service to this day. The face shapes and nose shapes distinguished by Bertillon formed z. T. the basis for the creation of phantom images .
Representation in the media
In the movie Chicago from 2002, elements of Bertillonage are taken up in individual shots (measurement of arm span lengths and body height on a measuring device typical of the Bertillonage method).
Web links
- Rolf Sachsse: Call for violence . Telepolis , January 24, 2001
- The Identification of the "West Brothers" ( Memento from February 18, 2007 in the Internet Archive )
literature
- Alphonse Bertillon: The anthropometric signaling. 2nd increased edition with an album, authorized German edition by Dr. v. Sury. Bern and Leipzig 1895.
- Milos Vec: The trail of the perpetrator. Bertillonage, Daktyloskopie und Jodogramm: Advances and Promises of Scientific Criminology around 1900. In: Juridicum. Zeitschrift im Rechtsstaat, No. 2/2001, pp. 89–94, juridikum.at (PDF).
- EJ Wagner: Science with Sherlock Holmes: And the beginnings of forensic medicine. Weinheim 2008.
Individual evidence
- ^ EJ Wagner: Science with Sherlock Holmes: And the beginnings of forensic medicine. 2008, p. 106.
- ↑ Dr. v. Seury in the foreword to the German edition of Bertillon's textbook. In: Alphonse Bertillon: The anthropometric signal element. 1895, p. LXXV.
- ↑ Milos Vec: The trail of the perpetrator. Bertillonage, Daktyloskopie und Jodogramm: Advances and Promises of Scientific Criminology around 1900. 2001, p. 90. rg.mpg.de (PDF, p. 3).
- ^ Karl Wilhelm Wolf-Czapek : 1911, p. 54.
- ↑ Alphonse Bertillon: The anthropometric signal element. 1895, p. XIII.
- ^ Rolf Sachsse: Call to violence. 2001.
- ↑ Alphonse Bertillon: The anthropometric signal element. 1895, p. XXXVIII.