WEBVTT - Alphonse Bertillon 0:00:01.360 --> 0:00:04.280 Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production 0:00:04.400 --> 0:00:13.920 of iHeartRadio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Holly 0:00:14.000 --> 0:00:18.160 Frye and I'm Tracy V. Wilson. We mentioned quite recently 0:00:18.600 --> 0:00:21.239 that an al fALS Bertion episode was coming, and in 0:00:21.280 --> 0:00:24.079 a shocking turn of events, here it is with very 0:00:24.120 --> 0:00:28.800 little delay. Yes, unlike so often when it's like four 0:00:28.880 --> 0:00:32.720 years later. If you have noticed that there is also 0:00:32.760 --> 0:00:36.120 a Bertillon episode in the archives, yes, that's true. This 0:00:36.200 --> 0:00:39.360 one is not exactly an update. It's got a much 0:00:39.360 --> 0:00:41.800 different focus than that one that talks a lot about 0:00:41.800 --> 0:00:44.559 his police work and some of the ways he innovated, 0:00:44.600 --> 0:00:47.320 which we don't talk about much in this one beyond 0:00:47.360 --> 0:00:50.800 some of the key elements of the Bertillon system. But 0:00:51.040 --> 0:00:53.120 I really wanted to look at his life story a 0:00:53.159 --> 0:00:55.240 little bit more and who he was as a person. 0:00:55.400 --> 0:01:00.640 So that's why we are revisiting alfals Bertion. Bertil is 0:01:00.680 --> 0:01:04.120 a man who definitely is a mix of really positive 0:01:04.160 --> 0:01:07.160 achievements and traits and also a whole lot of really 0:01:07.200 --> 0:01:12.319 problematic issues. He's a very complex human. Bertil developed a 0:01:12.360 --> 0:01:16.039 system of identification via body measurements that was designed to 0:01:16.160 --> 0:01:21.200 identify whether crime suspects had an existing criminal history. It's 0:01:21.280 --> 0:01:24.960 just worked sort of. But his contributions to police work 0:01:25.000 --> 0:01:28.200 have kind of been occluded by some terrible missteps he 0:01:28.319 --> 0:01:32.360 made in his career after that. I'm just going to 0:01:32.400 --> 0:01:34.640 tell you upfront, this is one of those episodes where 0:01:34.680 --> 0:01:36.760 there are a lot of parentheticals where we just have 0:01:36.840 --> 0:01:38.959 to point out that there is a threat of racism 0:01:39.040 --> 0:01:45.040 through his entire story. I don't want to detract from 0:01:45.080 --> 0:01:47.080 it by jokingly saying you're going to get a lot 0:01:47.080 --> 0:01:49.080 of this, but just brace for it. It's one of 0:01:49.120 --> 0:01:53.000 those things we're just acknowledging because in a lot of 0:01:53.000 --> 0:01:55.240 cases it doesn't do any good to really dig into 0:01:55.320 --> 0:01:57.800 it and go, here's how this was racist. One thing, 0:01:57.920 --> 0:02:00.640 the very title of it, you will know is super racist. 0:02:00.760 --> 0:02:05.320 So know that going in as we examine Alfonse Bertillon. 0:02:06.400 --> 0:02:10.480 Alphonse Bertillon was born April twenty third, eighteen fifty three 0:02:10.600 --> 0:02:14.399 in Paris, France, and he came from a family of innovators. 0:02:14.639 --> 0:02:19.079 His grandfather, Jean Baptiste Bertignon, served in the military under 0:02:19.200 --> 0:02:23.520 Napoleon Bonaparte before becoming a chemist. In that role, he 0:02:23.560 --> 0:02:27.400 made improvements to the distillation process and invented a sugar 0:02:27.520 --> 0:02:31.880 purification method. Jean Baptiste also invested in one of the 0:02:31.919 --> 0:02:35.040 first gas works in Paris, helping to usher in the 0:02:35.160 --> 0:02:40.920 age of the literal city of lights. Alphonse's father, Louisdolphe Bertillon, 0:02:41.080 --> 0:02:45.600 studied medicine at the Sorbonne, although his true passion was engineering, 0:02:45.639 --> 0:02:48.480 and he sort of combined the two when he realized 0:02:48.520 --> 0:02:52.720 he could measure humans and used that data to compile 0:02:52.880 --> 0:03:00.160 statistical tables. Some of these tables were inherently racist. Ui 0:03:00.200 --> 0:03:05.200 Adolf eventually became France's head of vital statistics, and Alphonse's brother, 0:03:05.400 --> 0:03:10.720 Jacques Bertignon followed their father in that role. Alphonse's mother 0:03:11.120 --> 0:03:14.440 was Zoe Guiller Bertillon, who had married Louis Adolf in 0:03:14.480 --> 0:03:19.040 eighteen fifty. According to a biography written in the nineteen fifties, 0:03:19.400 --> 0:03:23.520 Zoe had wanted to name their second son Alfred, but 0:03:23.760 --> 0:03:26.720 Louis Adolf had forgotten the name they had chosen when 0:03:26.760 --> 0:03:30.040 he went to register the birth and so incorrectly went 0:03:30.080 --> 0:03:34.720 with Alphonse. That is really quite a charming story in 0:03:34.760 --> 0:03:39.480 that biography, where she's just like okay, fine, like they're 0:03:39.520 --> 0:03:42.040 just really happy about their new baby, who apparently screamed 0:03:42.040 --> 0:03:45.280 a lot. When Alfonse was just a few months old, 0:03:45.280 --> 0:03:48.280 the Bertillons moved away from Paris to Molmoor and See, 0:03:48.320 --> 0:03:52.360 about ten miles or seventeen kilometers north, and this move 0:03:52.520 --> 0:03:56.160 was precipitated by a growing distrust of the science community 0:03:56.200 --> 0:04:00.320 in Paris at the time, as scientific discoveries move the 0:04:00.360 --> 0:04:03.400 populace forward to people behind them were sometimes seen as 0:04:03.480 --> 0:04:07.160 causing unrest. Uh but this move was very good for 0:04:07.200 --> 0:04:10.080 the family for other reasons because being in the country 0:04:10.120 --> 0:04:13.120 seemed to help Alfonse, who had been kind of sickly 0:04:13.320 --> 0:04:15.920 from the time he was born, gain a degree of 0:04:15.960 --> 0:04:18.279 health and level out a little bit in terms of 0:04:18.600 --> 0:04:23.080 his child development. The family stayed at Monmorency for three years, 0:04:23.400 --> 0:04:25.960 and they moved back to Paris in eighteen fifty six, 0:04:26.360 --> 0:04:30.520 settling in on the Rue de Bruze. Alphonse sounds like 0:04:30.680 --> 0:04:34.000 a scamp as a kid. He was a curious child, 0:04:34.120 --> 0:04:38.160 but not really interested in structured learning. When he struggled 0:04:38.200 --> 0:04:40.719 in school, his parents hired a tutor for him, but 0:04:40.839 --> 0:04:44.320 he was pretty merciless with this tutor would hide his 0:04:44.440 --> 0:04:47.760 glasses and play tricks on him. Because he had been 0:04:47.839 --> 0:04:51.120 sickly as a small child and still had some health issues. 0:04:51.240 --> 0:04:54.800 He was entirely willing to exploit that to just get 0:04:54.839 --> 0:04:58.200 out of work. When Alphonse was eleven, he was sent 0:04:58.240 --> 0:05:02.640 to a boarding school that special in difficult students. He 0:05:02.720 --> 0:05:05.840 was there for a semester before the Bertignon family received 0:05:05.839 --> 0:05:08.440 a letter that basically said no amount of money was 0:05:08.480 --> 0:05:12.800 worth dealing with Alphonse. As a scholar, he excelled in 0:05:12.839 --> 0:05:16.240 botany and natural history, but he just did not have 0:05:16.680 --> 0:05:20.560 any interest in other subjects. At the same time, the 0:05:20.600 --> 0:05:23.000 family was trying to decide what to do with their 0:05:23.040 --> 0:05:27.880 precocious thirteen year old Zoe Bertillon became gravely ill. Her 0:05:27.920 --> 0:05:30.760 exact illness is unknown. It's been theorized that she may 0:05:30.800 --> 0:05:35.120 have had some sort of bacterial infection that led to sepsis. Alfons, 0:05:35.200 --> 0:05:38.400 his older brother Jacques, and their younger brother George attended 0:05:38.400 --> 0:05:41.240 her deathbed, and Alfonse is said to have fainted in 0:05:41.279 --> 0:05:44.960 the moment that she died. As the family was mourning, 0:05:45.080 --> 0:05:48.240 Luis Adolf had taken the two younger boys to Orno 0:05:48.320 --> 0:05:52.800 la cousadle Bach, near France's border with Andorra. It was 0:05:52.839 --> 0:05:54.920 a place that he and Zoe had spent time when 0:05:54.920 --> 0:05:58.240 they were first married, and there Alphonse got some tutoring 0:05:58.279 --> 0:06:02.560 from his father, who realized that his mental child mostly 0:06:02.640 --> 0:06:06.360 just needed to be challenged by education to engage with it. 0:06:07.440 --> 0:06:10.719 This is something, of course, that is recognized as part 0:06:10.720 --> 0:06:13.920 of a person's learning profile now, but in the mid 0:06:14.040 --> 0:06:19.040 nineteenth century it was often mischaracterized as laziness or a 0:06:19.160 --> 0:06:22.920 lack of focus. I think folks still struggle with being 0:06:22.960 --> 0:06:25.800 branded lazy when that's not really what's going on today. 0:06:25.920 --> 0:06:29.600 But to be clear, Alphonse was stubborn about the whole 0:06:29.640 --> 0:06:32.920 idea of studying things he did not have a natural 0:06:33.000 --> 0:06:37.640 interest in, and this recognition of Alphonse's need for stimulus 0:06:37.680 --> 0:06:40.359 did not result in him becoming a good student or 0:06:40.400 --> 0:06:44.720 having courses tailored to him. Perhaps more than anything else, though, 0:06:44.760 --> 0:06:48.520 this period brought Alphonse and his father much closer. Before 0:06:48.760 --> 0:06:51.640 her death, Zoe had been the parent that Alphonse had 0:06:51.640 --> 0:06:55.120 been close to. But Alfos did have to go back 0:06:55.120 --> 0:06:58.080 to school, and he was eventually enrolled at the Imperial 0:06:58.160 --> 0:07:02.120 Lise at Versailles. This initially seemed like it might be 0:07:02.160 --> 0:07:05.400 a good fit, but all of the same problems arose 0:07:05.480 --> 0:07:09.159 once the newness of that situation had worn off. He 0:07:09.240 --> 0:07:13.040 not only didn't work on his studies, he actively worked 0:07:13.040 --> 0:07:16.840 with some of his friends to disrupt class. Eventually, the 0:07:16.880 --> 0:07:20.920 Imperial Lise sent Louis d'lfberthion a letter very similar to 0:07:20.960 --> 0:07:23.640 the one that he had received from the previous school. 0:07:24.320 --> 0:07:26.880 They had been able to deal with his behavior until 0:07:27.000 --> 0:07:30.880 an incident in which Alfonse, who this sounds wild to me, 0:07:31.040 --> 0:07:34.200 had been secretly making hot chocolate in his desk with 0:07:34.280 --> 0:07:38.600 the spirit lamp for himself and his friends started a fire. 0:07:39.200 --> 0:07:41.800 But then, when he was confronted about it with literal 0:07:41.880 --> 0:07:45.320 smoke coming out of his desk, instead of opening the 0:07:45.360 --> 0:07:47.840 desk and revealing what had gone on, he hit his 0:07:47.880 --> 0:07:52.120 teacher over the head with a book that ended his 0:07:52.200 --> 0:07:55.800 formal education. But this happened just as the Frank Oppression 0:07:55.880 --> 0:07:59.080 War began, so it's also possible his education would have 0:07:59.080 --> 0:08:03.520 been put on hold then. Anyway, he managed, how it 0:08:03.600 --> 0:08:07.640 is unclear, to take and pass the baccalaureate examination in 0:08:07.760 --> 0:08:11.120 science and Literature on his own a couple of years later, 0:08:11.240 --> 0:08:14.640 at the age of twenty. Alphonse wanted to sort of 0:08:14.880 --> 0:08:18.080 bask in that accomplishment, but his father wanted him to 0:08:18.120 --> 0:08:22.040 get a job, so much so that Luis Adolf found 0:08:22.120 --> 0:08:25.480 one for him as a junior bank clerk. This went 0:08:25.600 --> 0:08:29.280 about as well as you might think young person being 0:08:29.280 --> 0:08:34.280 pushed into a job by their parent. It's unclear exactly 0:08:34.320 --> 0:08:37.040 how this posting ended for Alphonse. It was a short 0:08:37.080 --> 0:08:42.160 lived situation, though. Next Alfonse was sent to England with 0:08:42.200 --> 0:08:45.520 the hope that some time abroad would mature him, and 0:08:45.559 --> 0:08:48.640 he found London to be a bit alienating. He noticed 0:08:48.760 --> 0:08:51.320 immediately that people stared at him just when he was 0:08:51.360 --> 0:08:53.959 walking around, and one of his friends, who was also 0:08:54.040 --> 0:08:56.760 French but living in London, explained that it was because 0:08:56.800 --> 0:08:59.640 he dressed like a Parisian and that set him apart 0:08:59.679 --> 0:09:02.920 from the rest of London. He wanted to revamp his 0:09:02.960 --> 0:09:05.520 wardrobe to try to blend in better, but Louis Adolph 0:09:05.559 --> 0:09:08.960 refused to send him money for that, so the normally 0:09:09.040 --> 0:09:13.040 pretty aimless Adolf Bertillon suddenly was hunting for jobs, and 0:09:13.160 --> 0:09:16.480 he landed a position teaching French for very low pay 0:09:16.559 --> 0:09:20.080 at a collegiate school. This was really challenging because he 0:09:20.120 --> 0:09:22.480 didn't really speak English much at all at this point, 0:09:23.000 --> 0:09:26.120 but he did manage. He next moved to a position 0:09:26.160 --> 0:09:28.560 as a private tutor, and he started to suggest to 0:09:28.600 --> 0:09:31.560 his family that maybe after he was done in London. 0:09:31.600 --> 0:09:34.760 He would go to university in England or in Scotland, 0:09:35.440 --> 0:09:38.120 but his father did not want to spend the money 0:09:38.160 --> 0:09:41.840 to enroll him in a university given his education history. 0:09:42.640 --> 0:09:45.440 Al Fose moved on to another job, teaching French and 0:09:45.640 --> 0:09:48.640 London until he was recalled to his home country for 0:09:48.800 --> 0:09:54.120 military service in the ongoing Francoprussian War. In eighteen seventy five. 0:09:54.200 --> 0:09:56.520 He became part of one hundred and thirty ninth Regiment 0:09:56.600 --> 0:10:00.480 stationed in Rome, which is right in between Vichy and Lyon. 0:10:01.400 --> 0:10:04.280 He was moved at some point from an infantry to 0:10:04.360 --> 0:10:07.520 a clerical role, and also decided that when he was 0:10:07.559 --> 0:10:10.200 done he would go to medical school, so he started 0:10:10.200 --> 0:10:13.559 to use this downtime in the service to study medical texts. 0:10:14.160 --> 0:10:18.520 He became fascinated specifically with the skeleton. In a biography 0:10:18.679 --> 0:10:21.560 in the nineteen fifty six, author Henry T. F. Rhodes 0:10:21.559 --> 0:10:25.560 states that even at this early point, Bertillon was quote 0:10:25.600 --> 0:10:30.200 devoted to and almost obsessed with a specialized problem. This 0:10:30.480 --> 0:10:34.920 was the dimensions of the human skeleton. That fascination with 0:10:35.000 --> 0:10:37.840 the human skeleton would feed into the way that Bertion 0:10:38.000 --> 0:10:40.800 eventually made a name for himself. But before we get 0:10:40.840 --> 0:10:52.920 to that we'll pause for a sponsor break. After his 0:10:53.000 --> 0:10:56.640 military service, Berthion returned to Paris, and while deciding what 0:10:56.720 --> 0:10:58.760 his next move would be. Because it turned out he 0:10:58.920 --> 0:11:01.920 didn't end up wanting to go to medical school, he 0:11:01.960 --> 0:11:04.840 got typhoid fever and that delayed any plans that he 0:11:04.880 --> 0:11:07.480 may have had in mind. But he may have also 0:11:07.520 --> 0:11:10.280 been starting to panic a little at how far behind 0:11:10.320 --> 0:11:13.280 his brothers and friends he was in terms of a career, 0:11:14.440 --> 0:11:18.719 so he asked his father to help him again. Al 0:11:18.800 --> 0:11:20.960 Foals was able to get a job working for the 0:11:20.960 --> 0:11:24.160 police department of Paris as a records clerk with the 0:11:24.160 --> 0:11:26.880 help of his father. He started in that job on 0:11:26.920 --> 0:11:30.040 March fifteenth of eighteen seventy nine, and the twenty five 0:11:30.120 --> 0:11:32.839 year old Bertien found that he had walked into a 0:11:32.960 --> 0:11:37.840 mess of disorganized records. One of the biggest problems is 0:11:38.120 --> 0:11:41.720 hard to imagine happening today. Police in France and a 0:11:41.760 --> 0:11:43.600 lot of other parts in the world had a hard 0:11:43.640 --> 0:11:46.200 time knowing if somebody who was brought in on an 0:11:46.280 --> 0:11:49.960 arrest or even sentenced to jail time, had a prior 0:11:50.040 --> 0:11:53.920 criminal record. There were forms that were filled out every time, 0:11:54.040 --> 0:11:58.960 but a combination of corruption sloppy practices and lying on 0:11:59.000 --> 0:12:03.160 the part of detainee meant that those forms were largely meaningless. 0:12:03.880 --> 0:12:06.040 A lot of this just wound up coming down to 0:12:06.120 --> 0:12:10.439 whether a police officer remembered a suspect from a previous offense. 0:12:11.400 --> 0:12:14.920 Adding to that, everybody seemed to include their own set 0:12:14.920 --> 0:12:18.080 of information on any intake documents, and there wasn't a 0:12:18.200 --> 0:12:21.000 set list of criteria that was supposed to be used. 0:12:21.679 --> 0:12:24.440 Before the eighteen thirties, that had been standard practice in 0:12:24.520 --> 0:12:28.280 France to brand criminals, so it was easy to see 0:12:28.320 --> 0:12:33.439 if somebody had been arrested before that was finally recognized 0:12:33.480 --> 0:12:39.640 as inhumane and stopped, and nothing had really been developed 0:12:39.679 --> 0:12:46.679 to identify repeat offenders in place of this branding, and 0:12:46.760 --> 0:12:49.440 so this is, you know, forty some years later, that 0:12:49.480 --> 0:12:52.160 they're still having all of these problems. After the branding 0:12:52.200 --> 0:12:55.719 was outlawed, thank goodness and al false, Bercielle decided that 0:12:55.800 --> 0:12:59.920 he would just restructure the whole system, and on October first, 0:13:00.160 --> 0:13:03.559 eighteen seventy nine, exactly two hundred days from the day 0:13:03.600 --> 0:13:07.680 he began the job, Bertion submitted a report to his boss, 0:13:07.720 --> 0:13:12.840 Monsieur Antrieu, the Prefect of Police. This was a preliminary 0:13:12.960 --> 0:13:15.480 version of the system that he would eventually develop, but 0:13:15.520 --> 0:13:18.520 he had devised a way to uniquely identify people in 0:13:18.600 --> 0:13:21.599 a large group through a systematic series of measurements of 0:13:21.640 --> 0:13:25.160 their bodies. Bertillon had figured out a way to plug 0:13:25.200 --> 0:13:28.600 those measurements into formulas that could sort people into various 0:13:28.679 --> 0:13:32.400 groupings of similarities and then make that data accessible and 0:13:32.440 --> 0:13:35.120 searchable in a way that a person could process a 0:13:35.200 --> 0:13:39.080 newly arrested suspect and then check pretty easily to see 0:13:39.080 --> 0:13:42.400 if that person had a prior record. For a very 0:13:42.440 --> 0:13:45.800 simplified example, Bertillon had made an initial sorting of all 0:13:45.800 --> 0:13:48.800 the records by head measurements, so you would need to 0:13:48.840 --> 0:13:51.320 measure the person in question and then see if you 0:13:51.400 --> 0:13:54.640 needed to look in the cards that were small, medium, 0:13:54.760 --> 0:13:58.600 or large, and so that already eliminated two thirds of 0:13:58.600 --> 0:14:02.520 the possible options. The remaining one third would then be 0:14:02.559 --> 0:14:05.800 separated in a similar way by the next measurement, and 0:14:05.880 --> 0:14:09.840 so on and then so on again, so you might 0:14:10.040 --> 0:14:12.439 arrive at kind of a subdivision of people who had 0:14:12.480 --> 0:14:17.080 the same forearm length from elbowcrease to wrist, all grouped together. 0:14:17.520 --> 0:14:19.640 There would be a card for each of those people 0:14:19.680 --> 0:14:22.800 in a set that match those measurements, and a police 0:14:22.840 --> 0:14:25.640 officer would use that measurement to find the card set 0:14:25.680 --> 0:14:28.560 and then sift through just a couple a dozen cards, 0:14:29.240 --> 0:14:32.040 not all the cards, to see if the same suspect 0:14:32.040 --> 0:14:35.680 had been previously booked or incarcerated. I feel like this 0:14:35.720 --> 0:14:40.840 is sort of a dichotomous key for humans. If anybody 0:14:40.960 --> 0:14:46.560 remembers that from like biology class, additional measurements could be 0:14:46.600 --> 0:14:49.560 searched the same way to cross reference and verify the 0:14:49.640 --> 0:14:53.800 identity of the person at hand. The entire system was 0:14:53.840 --> 0:14:57.320 predicated on Bertillon's realization that no two people would have 0:14:57.680 --> 0:15:04.640 all identical measurements. Uh. I will say this sounds maybe fiddley, 0:15:05.720 --> 0:15:10.000 but it sounded completely cocka mamy to Prefect Andreelle. Also 0:15:10.080 --> 0:15:12.760 that no two people having all identical measurements did come 0:15:12.800 --> 0:15:15.600 back to bite him. We'll get to that. Bercion was 0:15:15.680 --> 0:15:19.240 really disappointed that his superior did not see the functionality 0:15:19.280 --> 0:15:22.440 of this system, so he decided he would further refine 0:15:22.480 --> 0:15:25.040 it over the next six weeks, and then he submitted 0:15:25.080 --> 0:15:27.840 an updated version of the report, hoping that this time 0:15:27.920 --> 0:15:31.960 it would convince Andreau of its value. This time, he 0:15:32.120 --> 0:15:35.720 was told very clearly the police had an established record 0:15:35.760 --> 0:15:39.480 keeping method and it was fine. And in response, Alfonse 0:15:39.520 --> 0:15:42.120 Bertillon told his superior that the system was actually a 0:15:42.160 --> 0:15:46.080 mess and of little practical use. It probably went over 0:15:46.120 --> 0:15:49.040 really well, but because he was a new clerk who 0:15:49.040 --> 0:15:51.600 had no prior experience in the field, he was told 0:15:51.640 --> 0:15:54.960 to simply drop it. And because his father had been 0:15:54.960 --> 0:15:58.160 the one to get him that job, Louis Adolph Bertillon 0:15:58.360 --> 0:16:02.680 got another letter about his son, this one suggesting not 0:16:02.800 --> 0:16:05.600 that he was unfocused or high spirited like the ones 0:16:05.640 --> 0:16:08.280 he had received when Alfonse was in school. This one 0:16:08.400 --> 0:16:12.440 suggested pretty bluntly and kind of grossly that there might 0:16:12.480 --> 0:16:16.400 be something actually wrong with Alphonse, mentally like maybe your 0:16:16.480 --> 0:16:20.240 kids should get treatment. But once Alfalse showed his father 0:16:20.360 --> 0:16:23.600 what he had been working on, the Elder Bertion totally 0:16:23.720 --> 0:16:26.360 understood it, and he had some insights into why other 0:16:26.400 --> 0:16:31.320 people might not. Initially, this combination of statistics with physiological 0:16:31.360 --> 0:16:34.920 analysis had never been used in quite this way. It 0:16:35.040 --> 0:16:37.600 was complex, but it did really make it possible to 0:16:37.680 --> 0:16:40.360 find existing information about a person if they were in 0:16:40.400 --> 0:16:43.760 the records, and to build up his database of cards, 0:16:43.800 --> 0:16:47.040 which got pretty large. Bertion had visited prisons and took 0:16:47.120 --> 0:16:50.520 measurements of inmates as well as taking the measure of family, 0:16:50.560 --> 0:16:53.440 friends and associates, so he had a pretty big data 0:16:53.480 --> 0:16:56.560 set that he could show, hey, look this works. This 0:16:56.800 --> 0:16:59.960 use of anthropometry not just the measuring of the human 0:17:00.520 --> 0:17:03.800 but the study of those measurements was not a new concept. 0:17:03.880 --> 0:17:08.400 It's still used for a variety of applications today. It 0:17:08.480 --> 0:17:12.280 is a study that has a lot of problematic issues 0:17:12.280 --> 0:17:15.880 in its history because often the data collected had been 0:17:16.000 --> 0:17:19.200 used to try to make connections about race and behavior. 0:17:20.040 --> 0:17:24.119 The pseudosciences of phrenology and physiognomy are based on it, 0:17:24.160 --> 0:17:27.320 and there have been many, many, many anthropologists over the 0:17:27.359 --> 0:17:32.679 years who have announced incorrect, generalized conclusions about groups of 0:17:32.760 --> 0:17:38.080 people using anthropometry as their evidence. Today this is mostly 0:17:38.200 --> 0:17:41.400 used for things like designing seats for cars and airplanes, 0:17:41.480 --> 0:17:44.159 for things like clothing size for manufacture. But in the 0:17:44.200 --> 0:17:48.040 eighteen eighties, Bertanil was not trying to use interpretive analysis 0:17:48.080 --> 0:17:51.880 to suggest that people with measurement X were more likely 0:17:51.960 --> 0:17:55.800 to commit a certain type of crime, although the system 0:17:55.840 --> 0:17:58.399 did get used that way by some police departments. We 0:17:58.600 --> 0:18:01.000 have talked about that on the show recently. He was 0:18:01.119 --> 0:18:04.280 just trying to show that no, two people would have 0:18:04.359 --> 0:18:07.440 the exact same data set, and that if you set 0:18:07.480 --> 0:18:10.400 up a system correctly, you could use their unique profile 0:18:10.480 --> 0:18:13.840 to search for them in a big system. This also 0:18:13.920 --> 0:18:17.200 has some problems to talk about in a bit. They're 0:18:17.200 --> 0:18:20.040 different problems though than trying to say that you can 0:18:20.080 --> 0:18:23.600 tell whether somebody is a criminal by what their head is, 0:18:23.720 --> 0:18:26.600 Like yeah, and he even said as much in an 0:18:26.640 --> 0:18:29.719 interview with prior podcast subject Ida Tarbell at one point 0:18:29.760 --> 0:18:31.920 like no, no, no, that's not what this is for. 0:18:32.080 --> 0:18:34.240 You cannot make the connection that like a man with 0:18:34.320 --> 0:18:36.720 blue eyes will do X, Y or z, Like this 0:18:36.760 --> 0:18:39.680 is literally just to find people, although he was also 0:18:39.720 --> 0:18:42.439 aware that people were going to make those jumps, and 0:18:42.520 --> 0:18:46.680 although Alphos's organizational system was not getting any recognition at work, 0:18:47.160 --> 0:18:50.439 with his father's encouragement, he continued to refine it on 0:18:50.520 --> 0:18:54.560 his own time. He had a growing collection of measuring tools, 0:18:54.600 --> 0:18:59.920 and he made continuously updated records of himself and other volunteers. 0:18:59.600 --> 0:19:02.840 The list of measurements eventually included the length and width 0:19:02.880 --> 0:19:05.560 of the head, the length of the middle finger, the 0:19:05.640 --> 0:19:07.639 length of the left foot, and the length of the 0:19:07.640 --> 0:19:10.480 forearm from elbow to the end of the middle finger. 0:19:11.040 --> 0:19:15.359 There were also notes recorded of body shape, any scars, tattoos, 0:19:15.400 --> 0:19:20.080 or other unique identifiers, eye color, hair color, and it's 0:19:20.119 --> 0:19:22.560 listed as like hair quality. It sort of comes down 0:19:22.600 --> 0:19:25.440 to like hair texture and like is it thick, is 0:19:25.480 --> 0:19:28.080 it thin? Is it curly? Is it not. He also 0:19:28.160 --> 0:19:32.399 included a fairly new technology, which was photography. We've talked 0:19:32.400 --> 0:19:35.879 about the history of photography many times on the show before, 0:19:35.960 --> 0:19:39.000 so this is not really new information. The de geratype 0:19:39.160 --> 0:19:42.840 was introduced in eighteen thirty nine, four decades before this 0:19:42.960 --> 0:19:46.280 work by Bertillon, and in those four decades it had 0:19:46.320 --> 0:19:50.480 progressed considerably. It still was pretty new though. The first 0:19:50.800 --> 0:19:54.600 mass market camera was still about ten years away, and 0:19:54.680 --> 0:19:58.399 there was already photography in use in police precincts, but 0:19:58.520 --> 0:20:02.800 it wasn't really commonplace. Bertil felt that his measurement system 0:20:02.840 --> 0:20:06.360 would be even more useful if he could attach standardized 0:20:06.440 --> 0:20:11.040 photos to the records. He established measured distances from the 0:20:11.160 --> 0:20:14.040 chair that the subject was seated into the camera, and 0:20:14.119 --> 0:20:16.480 the full front and full side angles they would be 0:20:16.520 --> 0:20:22.320 photographed from. This system, known as portrait parlai, is considered 0:20:22.400 --> 0:20:24.840 the invention of the mug shot. If you've ever seen 0:20:24.920 --> 0:20:28.360 old mugshots, from Europe in particular, in which there were 0:20:28.359 --> 0:20:31.600 what looked like rulers and calipers and things like that 0:20:31.720 --> 0:20:35.520 to position the subject's head. That's because they're using the 0:20:35.560 --> 0:20:40.080 bertail age system, or a variation of it. He had, 0:20:40.160 --> 0:20:43.360 in the meantime, not for this work, gotten a promotion 0:20:43.600 --> 0:20:46.360 from being a junior clerk, but he was still kind 0:20:46.400 --> 0:20:47.920 of used as a pain in the neck and an 0:20:47.920 --> 0:20:51.480 outsider within his department. He did his job and was 0:20:51.520 --> 0:20:54.200 apparently pretty good in terms of work ethic, but he 0:20:54.240 --> 0:20:57.120 did not really make any friends at the police department. 0:20:58.320 --> 0:21:01.720 But he was befriended by a young woman by chance. 0:21:02.119 --> 0:21:05.359 When crossing the street one day, she asked him if 0:21:05.359 --> 0:21:08.359 he would help her cross because she was nearsighted and 0:21:08.400 --> 0:21:11.520 she was afraid of traffic, and he obliged, and once 0:21:11.520 --> 0:21:15.040 they had crossed, they introduced themselves to one another. Her 0:21:15.119 --> 0:21:17.840 name was Amelie Otar and she had recently moved to 0:21:17.880 --> 0:21:21.600 Paris from Austria. When she mentioned she earned a living 0:21:21.640 --> 0:21:25.040 giving German lessons, al Fall said he had always wanted 0:21:25.040 --> 0:21:28.680 to learn German. That was a complete lie. He hated 0:21:28.680 --> 0:21:33.439 that subject in school. As he was feeling stagnant in 0:21:33.520 --> 0:21:37.600 his job. Bertillon wrote a book to occupy himself during 0:21:37.600 --> 0:21:41.760 his time, and this book was titled Le Ras sauvage 0:21:42.000 --> 0:21:46.679 or The Savage Races. Holly didn't find a lot of 0:21:46.720 --> 0:21:51.320 information on this book's specific contents, but it's usually dismissed 0:21:51.320 --> 0:21:54.399 as a messy, poorly researched title that was more of 0:21:54.440 --> 0:21:57.119 Bertillon's musing on things he didn't have a lot of 0:21:57.160 --> 0:21:59.880 exposure to than on any kind of actual scientific exam 0:22:00.320 --> 0:22:04.879 of anything. Also, based on its title, seems like it 0:22:04.960 --> 0:22:09.280 must have been incredibly racist. This book did not do well, 0:22:09.560 --> 0:22:11.760 but he had dictated it to Amalie and the two 0:22:11.760 --> 0:22:14.560 of them had become very close, and soon she was 0:22:14.600 --> 0:22:18.320 taking notes for him regularly. I did find, i should say, 0:22:18.320 --> 0:22:21.000 French language versions of it, and my French is okay, 0:22:21.080 --> 0:22:24.840 but not really good enough to plow through a book 0:22:25.000 --> 0:22:30.879 of pseudo information of me, like fake scientific search. So 0:22:31.920 --> 0:22:33.920 just if anybody's like I found this book, well yeah, 0:22:33.960 --> 0:22:36.800 but not an English language version for good reason, I imagine. 0:22:38.000 --> 0:22:40.840 Not long though after the publication of this book, his 0:22:41.000 --> 0:22:45.840 boss Andreau retired and the new prefect, whose name was Cemcas, 0:22:46.200 --> 0:22:49.280 had heard of Bertion's project, and unlike his predecessor, he 0:22:49.440 --> 0:22:52.439 was really interested in it, and he gave Bertillon a 0:22:52.520 --> 0:22:55.760 chance to prove that this system would work. He had 0:22:55.840 --> 0:22:57.800 three months to do it, with the help of two 0:22:57.840 --> 0:23:00.400 assigned clerks, and he had to find at least one 0:23:00.640 --> 0:23:04.440 repeat offender in the system through his method. It took 0:23:04.440 --> 0:23:07.199 some time, but eventually he did manage to match a 0:23:07.240 --> 0:23:10.240 newly arrested man with a previous visit to the Paris 0:23:10.280 --> 0:23:14.359 police department. The timing of that first match in February 0:23:14.400 --> 0:23:18.840 eighteen eighty three, was unfortunately overshadowed by the death of 0:23:18.840 --> 0:23:23.560 Alfonse's father, Luis Adolph. Despite that loss, eighteen eighty three 0:23:23.680 --> 0:23:27.200 was pivotal for Bertillon in more positive ways. He built 0:23:27.240 --> 0:23:30.639 on that first success by identifying more and more recidivists 0:23:30.680 --> 0:23:34.360 in the police records, and he proposed to and married Amili, 0:23:34.640 --> 0:23:37.040 who had been an important part of his efforts. She's 0:23:37.080 --> 0:23:40.000 said to have compiled more than seven thousand of the 0:23:40.080 --> 0:23:44.960 cards used for this system. She had, by all accounts, beautiful, 0:23:45.200 --> 0:23:48.520 easily legible writing, so she really made the whole system 0:23:48.600 --> 0:23:51.640 easier for users. By the end of eighteen eighty three, 0:23:51.680 --> 0:23:56.119 Bertillon had identified forty nine duplicate offenders in the Parisian 0:23:56.119 --> 0:24:00.520 police bureau records. By the end of eighteen eighty Fourertion's 0:24:00.520 --> 0:24:04.040 process had identified two hundred and forty one repeat offenders. 0:24:05.000 --> 0:24:07.600 This was all proof enough for his prefect to start 0:24:07.600 --> 0:24:11.840 instituting the system officially. Bertion was tasked with getting a 0:24:11.880 --> 0:24:15.080