The Bertillon System: An Early ID Management System

In a post the other day, I made a brief mention of the Bertillion system, also known as anthropometry, Bertillonage and the Bertillon system. "Bertillon system" seems to be the most common usage. Developed for use in criminal identification, the Bertillon System was an extremely important early attempt at using objective, measurable details of the human body for use in establishing an individual identity with a high degree of certainty.

Before 1882 establishing an individual's unique identity usually involved the testimony of trusted individuals. In a criminal trial, witnesses to a crime would swear that they did or didn't see the suspect commit a crime. Establishing a criminal history might rely upon a police officer under oath to establish the suspect's criminal record* [1].

With the invention of anthropometry, a system of body measurements of adult individuals for personal identification, Alphonse Bertillon, then working with the police in Paris, changed all that.

Divided into three integrated parts, Bertillon's anthropometrical system consisted of:

♦ Bodily measurements conducted with the utmost precision and under carefully prescribed conditions of a series of the most characteristic dimensions of bony parts of the human anatomy;

♦ The morphological description of the appearance and shape of the body and its measured parts as they related to movements "and even the most characteristic mental and moral qualities"; and

♦ A description of peculiar marks observed on the "surface of the body, resulting from disease, accident, deformity or artificial disfigurement, such as moles, warts, scars, tattooings, etc."[2]

Bertillon's system, which made the jump across the Atlantic in 1887, was greatly enhanced by advances in photography.

Here's a great example of a Bertillon record from Jersey City, New Jersey 1898 [3]

For a much larger view, Click here.

The Bertillon system was eventually abandoned world-wide because it failed to provide reliable and unique measurements, was too cumbersome to administer in a uniform manner and (unlike fingerprints) it didn't rely on a single measurement of any part of the body for identifying a specific individual.[2]

* Definitively establishing a criminal history that would merit harsher punishment than that meted out to first time offenders might (in certain times and places) also rely upon the highly effective, though irreversible, methods of dismemberment (cutting off the hands of thieves, etc.), branding, scarring and tattooing [1].

UPDATE: 
An observation: the measurements on the left half of the front of the record (the Bertillon measurements) appear to be in centimeters (metric system) while the height and weight on the right side are in standard units.

UPDATE II:
Something of a continuation of this post: The Death of the Bertillon system and the History of Fingerprints

Sources:
[1] Origins of the New York State Bureau of Identification by Michael Harling
[2] Alphonse Bertillon and Ear Prints by forensic-evidence.com
[3] Jersey City Police Department Bureau of Criminal Identification (B.C.I.), New Jersey, USA

See Also:
Alphonse Bertillon - Wikipedia.com