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Alphonse Bertillon
Notation of Scars, Schematic Drawings
1893 (ca)
Albumen silver prints
Metropolitan Museum of Art
The Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation Fund, through Joyce and Robert Menschel, 2016, Accession Number: 2016.6
LL/113478
(Curatorial description, Accessed: 4 September 2021)
Born into a distinguished family of scientists and statisticians, Bertillon began his career as a clerk in the Identification Bureau of the Paris Prefecture of Police in 1879. Tasked with maintaining reliable police records of offenders, he developed the first modern system of criminal identification. The system, which became known as Bertillonage, had three components: anthropometric measurement, precise verbal description of the prisoner’s physical characteristics, and standardized photographs of the face.
A prisoner being "Bertillonaged" was first subjected to eleven different anthropometric measurements taken with specially designed calipers, gauges, and rulers. To ensure that the results were accurate and consistent, Bertillon meticulously choreographed the movements and gestures of both prisoner and police clerk. These photographs show Bertillon himself demonstrating his technique for measuring the middle finger.
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