Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
Speaker 1: of iHeartRadio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Holly
Speaker 1: Frye and I'm Tracy V. Wilson. We mentioned quite recently
Speaker 1: that an al fALS Bertion episode was coming, and in
Speaker 1: a shocking turn of events, here it is with very
Speaker 1: little delay. Yes, unlike so often when it's like four
Speaker 1: years later. If you have noticed that there is also
Speaker 1: a Bertillon episode in the archives, yes, that's true. This
Speaker 1: one is not exactly an update. It's got a much
Speaker 1: different focus than that one that talks a lot about
Speaker 1: his police work and some of the ways he innovated,
Speaker 1: which we don't talk about much in this one beyond
Speaker 1: some of the key elements of the Bertillon system. But
Speaker 1: I really wanted to look at his life story a
Speaker 1: little bit more and who he was as a person.
Speaker 1: So that's why we are revisiting alfals Bertion. Bertil is
Speaker 1: a man who definitely is a mix of really positive
Speaker 1: achievements and traits and also a whole lot of really
Speaker 1: problematic issues. He's a very complex human. Bertil developed a
Speaker 1: system of identification via body measurements that was designed to
Speaker 1: identify whether crime suspects had an existing criminal history. It's
Speaker 1: just worked sort of. But his contributions to police work
Speaker 1: have kind of been occluded by some terrible missteps he
Speaker 1: made in his career after that. I'm just going to
Speaker 1: tell you upfront, this is one of those episodes where
Speaker 1: there are a lot of parentheticals where we just have
Speaker 1: to point out that there is a threat of racism
Speaker 1: through his entire story. I don't want to detract from
Speaker 1: it by jokingly saying you're going to get a lot
Speaker 1: of this, but just brace for it. It's one of
Speaker 1: those things we're just acknowledging because in a lot of
Speaker 1: cases it doesn't do any good to really dig into
Speaker 1: it and go, here's how this was racist. One thing,
Speaker 1: the very title of it, you will know is super racist.
Speaker 1: So know that going in as we examine Alfonse Bertillon.
Speaker 1: Alphonse Bertillon was born April twenty third, eighteen fifty three
Speaker 1: in Paris, France, and he came from a family of innovators.
Speaker 1: His grandfather, Jean Baptiste Bertignon, served in the military under
Speaker 1: Napoleon Bonaparte before becoming a chemist. In that role, he
Speaker 1: made improvements to the distillation process and invented a sugar
Speaker 1: purification method. Jean Baptiste also invested in one of the
Speaker 1: first gas works in Paris, helping to usher in the
Speaker 1: age of the literal city of lights. Alphonse's father, Louisdolphe Bertillon,
Speaker 1: studied medicine at the Sorbonne, although his true passion was engineering,
Speaker 1: and he sort of combined the two when he realized
Speaker 1: he could measure humans and used that data to compile
Speaker 1: statistical tables. Some of these tables were inherently racist. Ui
Speaker 1: Adolf eventually became France's head of vital statistics, and Alphonse's brother,
Speaker 1: Jacques Bertignon followed their father in that role. Alphonse's mother
Speaker 1: was Zoe Guiller Bertillon, who had married Louis Adolf in
Speaker 1: eighteen fifty. According to a biography written in the nineteen fifties,
Speaker 1: Zoe had wanted to name their second son Alfred, but
Speaker 1: Louis Adolf had forgotten the name they had chosen when
Speaker 1: he went to register the birth and so incorrectly went
Speaker 1: with Alphonse. That is really quite a charming story in
Speaker 1: that biography, where she's just like okay, fine, like they're
Speaker 1: just really happy about their new baby, who apparently screamed
Speaker 1: a lot. When Alfonse was just a few months old,
Speaker 1: the Bertillons moved away from Paris to Molmoor and See,
Speaker 1: about ten miles or seventeen kilometers north, and this move
Speaker 1: was precipitated by a growing distrust of the science community
Speaker 1: in Paris at the time, as scientific discoveries move the
Speaker 1: populace forward to people behind them were sometimes seen as
Speaker 1: causing unrest. Uh but this move was very good for
Speaker 1: the family for other reasons because being in the country
Speaker 1: seemed to help Alfonse, who had been kind of sickly
Speaker 1: from the time he was born, gain a degree of
Speaker 1: health and level out a little bit in terms of
Speaker 1: his child development. The family stayed at Monmorency for three years,
Speaker 1: and they moved back to Paris in eighteen fifty six,
Speaker 1: settling in on the Rue de Bruze. Alphonse sounds like
Speaker 1: a scamp as a kid. He was a curious child,
Speaker 1: but not really interested in structured learning. When he struggled
Speaker 1: in school, his parents hired a tutor for him, but
Speaker 1: he was pretty merciless with this tutor would hide his
Speaker 1: glasses and play tricks on him. Because he had been
Speaker 1: sickly as a small child and still had some health issues.
Speaker 1: He was entirely willing to exploit that to just get
Speaker 1: out of work. When Alphonse was eleven, he was sent
Speaker 1: to a boarding school that special in difficult students. He
Speaker 1: was there for a semester before the Bertignon family received
Speaker 1: a letter that basically said no amount of money was
Speaker 1: worth dealing with Alphonse. As a scholar, he excelled in
Speaker 1: botany and natural history, but he just did not have
Speaker 1: any interest in other subjects. At the same time, the
Speaker 1: family was trying to decide what to do with their
Speaker 1: precocious thirteen year old Zoe Bertillon became gravely ill. Her
Speaker 1: exact illness is unknown. It's been theorized that she may
Speaker 1: have had some sort of bacterial infection that led to sepsis. Alfons,
Speaker 1: his older brother Jacques, and their younger brother George attended
Speaker 1: her deathbed, and Alfonse is said to have fainted in
Speaker 1: the moment that she died. As the family was mourning,
Speaker 1: Luis Adolf had taken the two younger boys to Orno
Speaker 1: la cousadle Bach, near France's border with Andorra. It was
Speaker 1: a place that he and Zoe had spent time when
Speaker 1: they were first married, and there Alphonse got some tutoring
Speaker 1: from his father, who realized that his mental child mostly
Speaker 1: just needed to be challenged by education to engage with it.
Speaker 1: This is something, of course, that is recognized as part
Speaker 1: of a person's learning profile now, but in the mid
Speaker 1: nineteenth century it was often mischaracterized as laziness or a
Speaker 1: lack of focus. I think folks still struggle with being
Speaker 1: branded lazy when that's not really what's going on today.
Speaker 1: But to be clear, Alphonse was stubborn about the whole
Speaker 1: idea of studying things he did not have a natural
Speaker 1: interest in, and this recognition of Alphonse's need for stimulus
Speaker 1: did not result in him becoming a good student or
Speaker 1: having courses tailored to him. Perhaps more than anything else, though,
Speaker 1: this period brought Alphonse and his father much closer. Before
Speaker 1: her death, Zoe had been the parent that Alphonse had
Speaker 1: been close to. But Alfos did have to go back
Speaker 1: to school, and he was eventually enrolled at the Imperial
Speaker 1: Lise at Versailles. This initially seemed like it might be
Speaker 1: a good fit, but all of the same problems arose
Speaker 1: once the newness of that situation had worn off. He
Speaker 1: not only didn't work on his studies, he actively worked
Speaker 1: with some of his friends to disrupt class. Eventually, the
Speaker 1: Imperial Lise sent Louis d'lfberthion a letter very similar to
Speaker 1: the one that he had received from the previous school.
Speaker 1: They had been able to deal with his behavior until
Speaker 1: an incident in which Alfonse, who this sounds wild to me,
Speaker 1: had been secretly making hot chocolate in his desk with
Speaker 1: the spirit lamp for himself and his friends started a fire.
Speaker 1: But then, when he was confronted about it with literal
Speaker 1: smoke coming out of his desk, instead of opening the
Speaker 1: desk and revealing what had gone on, he hit his
Speaker 1: teacher over the head with a book that ended his
Speaker 1: formal education. But this happened just as the Frank Oppression
Speaker 1: War began, so it's also possible his education would have
Speaker 1: been put on hold then. Anyway, he managed, how it
Speaker 1: is unclear, to take and pass the baccalaureate examination in
Speaker 1: science and Literature on his own a couple of years later,
Speaker 1: at the age of twenty. Alphonse wanted to sort of
Speaker 1: bask in that accomplishment, but his father wanted him to
Speaker 1: get a job, so much so that Luis Adolf found
Speaker 1: one for him as a junior bank clerk. This went
Speaker 1: about as well as you might think young person being
Speaker 1: pushed into a job by their parent. It's unclear exactly
Speaker 1: how this posting ended for Alphonse. It was a short
Speaker 1: lived situation, though. Next Alfonse was sent to England with
Speaker 1: the hope that some time abroad would mature him, and
Speaker 1: he found London to be a bit alienating. He noticed
Speaker 1: immediately that people stared at him just when he was
Speaker 1: walking around, and one of his friends, who was also
Speaker 1: French but living in London, explained that it was because
Speaker 1: he dressed like a Parisian and that set him apart
Speaker 1: from the rest of London. He wanted to revamp his
Speaker 1: wardrobe to try to blend in better, but Louis Adolph
Speaker 1: refused to send him money for that, so the normally
Speaker 1: pretty aimless Adolf Bertillon suddenly was hunting for jobs, and
Speaker 1: he landed a position teaching French for very low pay
Speaker 1: at a collegiate school. This was really challenging because he
Speaker 1: didn't really speak English much at all at this point,
Speaker 1: but he did manage. He next moved to a position
Speaker 1: as a private tutor, and he started to suggest to
Speaker 1: his family that maybe after he was done in London.
Speaker 1: He would go to university in England or in Scotland,
Speaker 1: but his father did not want to spend the money
Speaker 1: to enroll him in a university given his education history.
Speaker 1: Al Fose moved on to another job, teaching French and
Speaker 1: London until he was recalled to his home country for
Speaker 1: military service in the ongoing Francoprussian War. In eighteen seventy five.
Speaker 1: He became part of one hundred and thirty ninth Regiment
Speaker 1: stationed in Rome, which is right in between Vichy and Lyon.
Speaker 1: He was moved at some point from an infantry to
Speaker 1: a clerical role, and also decided that when he was
Speaker 1: done he would go to medical school, so he started
Speaker 1: to use this downtime in the service to study medical texts.
Speaker 1: He became fascinated specifically with the skeleton. In a biography
Speaker 1: in the nineteen fifty six, author Henry T. F. Rhodes
Speaker 1: states that even at this early point, Bertillon was quote
Speaker 1: devoted to and almost obsessed with a specialized problem. This
Speaker 1: was the dimensions of the human skeleton. That fascination with
Speaker 1: the human skeleton would feed into the way that Bertion
Speaker 1: eventually made a name for himself. But before we get
Speaker 1: to that we'll pause for a sponsor break. After his
Speaker 1: military service, Berthion returned to Paris, and while deciding what
Speaker 1: his next move would be. Because it turned out he
Speaker 1: didn't end up wanting to go to medical school, he
Speaker 1: got typhoid fever and that delayed any plans that he
Speaker 1: may have had in mind. But he may have also
Speaker 1: been starting to panic a little at how far behind
Speaker 1: his brothers and friends he was in terms of a career,
Speaker 1: so he asked his father to help him again. Al
Speaker 1: Foals was able to get a job working for the
Speaker 1: police department of Paris as a records clerk with the
Speaker 1: help of his father. He started in that job on
Speaker 1: March fifteenth of eighteen seventy nine, and the twenty five
Speaker 1: year old Bertien found that he had walked into a
Speaker 1: mess of disorganized records. One of the biggest problems is
Speaker 1: hard to imagine happening today. Police in France and a
Speaker 1: lot of other parts in the world had a hard
Speaker 1: time knowing if somebody who was brought in on an
Speaker 1: arrest or even sentenced to jail time, had a prior
Speaker 1: criminal record. There were forms that were filled out every time,
Speaker 1: but a combination of corruption sloppy practices and lying on
Speaker 1: the part of detainee meant that those forms were largely meaningless.
Speaker 1: A lot of this just wound up coming down to
Speaker 1: whether a police officer remembered a suspect from a previous offense.
Speaker 1: Adding to that, everybody seemed to include their own set
Speaker 1: of information on any intake documents, and there wasn't a
Speaker 1: set list of criteria that was supposed to be used.
Speaker 1: Before the eighteen thirties, that had been standard practice in
Speaker 1: France to brand criminals, so it was easy to see
Speaker 1: if somebody had been arrested before that was finally recognized
Speaker 1: as inhumane and stopped, and nothing had really been developed
Speaker 1: to identify repeat offenders in place of this branding, and
Speaker 1: so this is, you know, forty some years later, that
Speaker 1: they're still having all of these problems. After the branding
Speaker 1: was outlawed, thank goodness and al false, Bercielle decided that
Speaker 1: he would just restructure the whole system, and on October first,
Speaker 1: eighteen seventy nine, exactly two hundred days from the day
Speaker 1: he began the job, Bertion submitted a report to his boss,
Speaker 1: Monsieur Antrieu, the Prefect of Police. This was a preliminary
Speaker 1: version of the system that he would eventually develop, but
Speaker 1: he had devised a way to uniquely identify people in
Speaker 1: a large group through a systematic series of measurements of
Speaker 1: their bodies. Bertillon had figured out a way to plug
Speaker 1: those measurements into formulas that could sort people into various
Speaker 1: groupings of similarities and then make that data accessible and
Speaker 1: searchable in a way that a person could process a
Speaker 1: newly arrested suspect and then check pretty easily to see
Speaker 1: if that person had a prior record. For a very
Speaker 1: simplified example, Bertillon had made an initial sorting of all
Speaker 1: the records by head measurements, so you would need to
Speaker 1: measure the person in question and then see if you
Speaker 1: needed to look in the cards that were small, medium,
Speaker 1: or large, and so that already eliminated two thirds of
Speaker 1: the possible options. The remaining one third would then be
Speaker 1: separated in a similar way by the next measurement, and
Speaker 1: so on and then so on again, so you might
Speaker 1: arrive at kind of a subdivision of people who had
Speaker 1: the same forearm length from elbowcrease to wrist, all grouped together.
Speaker 1: There would be a card for each of those people
Speaker 1: in a set that match those measurements, and a police
Speaker 1: officer would use that measurement to find the card set
Speaker 1: and then sift through just a couple a dozen cards,
Speaker 1: not all the cards, to see if the same suspect
Speaker 1: had been previously booked or incarcerated. I feel like this
Speaker 1: is sort of a dichotomous key for humans. If anybody
Speaker 1: remembers that from like biology class, additional measurements could be
Speaker 1: searched the same way to cross reference and verify the
Speaker 1: identity of the person at hand. The entire system was
Speaker 1: predicated on Bertillon's realization that no two people would have
Speaker 1: all identical measurements. Uh. I will say this sounds maybe fiddley,
Speaker 1: but it sounded completely cocka mamy to Prefect Andreelle. Also
Speaker 1: that no two people having all identical measurements did come
Speaker 1: back to bite him. We'll get to that. Bercion was
Speaker 1: really disappointed that his superior did not see the functionality
Speaker 1: of this system, so he decided he would further refine
Speaker 1: it over the next six weeks, and then he submitted
Speaker 1: an updated version of the report, hoping that this time
Speaker 1: it would convince Andreau of its value. This time, he
Speaker 1: was told very clearly the police had an established record
Speaker 1: keeping method and it was fine. And in response, Alfonse
Speaker 1: Bertillon told his superior that the system was actually a
Speaker 1: mess and of little practical use. It probably went over
Speaker 1: really well, but because he was a new clerk who
Speaker 1: had no prior experience in the field, he was told
Speaker 1: to simply drop it. And because his father had been
Speaker 1: the one to get him that job, Louis Adolph Bertillon
Speaker 1: got another letter about his son, this one suggesting not
Speaker 1: that he was unfocused or high spirited like the ones
Speaker 1: he had received when Alfonse was in school. This one
Speaker 1: suggested pretty bluntly and kind of grossly that there might
Speaker 1: be something actually wrong with Alphonse, mentally like maybe your
Speaker 1: kids should get treatment. But once Alfalse showed his father
Speaker 1: what he had been working on, the Elder Bertion totally
Speaker 1: understood it, and he had some insights into why other
Speaker 1: people might not. Initially, this combination of statistics with physiological
Speaker 1: analysis had never been used in quite this way. It
Speaker 1: was complex, but it did really make it possible to
Speaker 1: find existing information about a person if they were in
Speaker 1: the records, and to build up his database of cards,
Speaker 1: which got pretty large. Bertion had visited prisons and took
Speaker 1: measurements of inmates as well as taking the measure of family,
Speaker 1: friends and associates, so he had a pretty big data
Speaker 1: set that he could show, hey, look this works. This
Speaker 1: use of anthropometry not just the measuring of the human
Speaker 1: but the study of those measurements was not a new concept.
Speaker 1: It's still used for a variety of applications today. It
Speaker 1: is a study that has a lot of problematic issues
Speaker 1: in its history because often the data collected had been
Speaker 1: used to try to make connections about race and behavior.
Speaker 1: The pseudosciences of phrenology and physiognomy are based on it,
Speaker 1: and there have been many, many, many anthropologists over the
Speaker 1: years who have announced incorrect, generalized conclusions about groups of
Speaker 1: people using anthropometry as their evidence. Today this is mostly
Speaker 1: used for things like designing seats for cars and airplanes,
Speaker 1: for things like clothing size for manufacture. But in the
Speaker 1: eighteen eighties, Bertanil was not trying to use interpretive analysis
Speaker 1: to suggest that people with measurement X were more likely
Speaker 1: to commit a certain type of crime, although the system
Speaker 1: did get used that way by some police departments. We
Speaker 1: have talked about that on the show recently. He was
Speaker 1: just trying to show that no, two people would have
Speaker 1: the exact same data set, and that if you set
Speaker 1: up a system correctly, you could use their unique profile
Speaker 1: to search for them in a big system. This also
Speaker 1: has some problems to talk about in a bit. They're
Speaker 1: different problems though than trying to say that you can
Speaker 1: tell whether somebody is a criminal by what their head is,
Speaker 1: Like yeah, and he even said as much in an
Speaker 1: interview with prior podcast subject Ida Tarbell at one point
Speaker 1: like no, no, no, that's not what this is for.
Speaker 1: You cannot make the connection that like a man with
Speaker 1: blue eyes will do X, Y or z, Like this
Speaker 1: is literally just to find people, although he was also
Speaker 1: aware that people were going to make those jumps, and
Speaker 1: although Alphos's organizational system was not getting any recognition at work,
Speaker 1: with his father's encouragement, he continued to refine it on
Speaker 1: his own time. He had a growing collection of measuring tools,
Speaker 1: and he made continuously updated records of himself and other volunteers.
Speaker 1: The list of measurements eventually included the length and width
Speaker 1: of the head, the length of the middle finger, the
Speaker 1: length of the left foot, and the length of the
Speaker 1: forearm from elbow to the end of the middle finger.
Speaker 1: There were also notes recorded of body shape, any scars, tattoos,
Speaker 1: or other unique identifiers, eye color, hair color, and it's
Speaker 1: listed as like hair quality. It sort of comes down
Speaker 1: to like hair texture and like is it thick, is
Speaker 1: it thin? Is it curly? Is it not. He also
Speaker 1: included a fairly new technology, which was photography. We've talked
Speaker 1: about the history of photography many times on the show before,
Speaker 1: so this is not really new information. The de geratype
Speaker 1: was introduced in eighteen thirty nine, four decades before this
Speaker 1: work by Bertillon, and in those four decades it had
Speaker 1: progressed considerably. It still was pretty new though. The first
Speaker 1: mass market camera was still about ten years away, and
Speaker 1: there was already photography in use in police precincts, but
Speaker 1: it wasn't really commonplace. Bertil felt that his measurement system
Speaker 1: would be even more useful if he could attach standardized
Speaker 1: photos to the records. He established measured distances from the
Speaker 1: chair that the subject was seated into the camera, and
Speaker 1: the full front and full side angles they would be
Speaker 1: photographed from. This system, known as portrait parlai, is considered
Speaker 1: the invention of the mug shot. If you've ever seen
Speaker 1: old mugshots, from Europe in particular, in which there were
Speaker 1: what looked like rulers and calipers and things like that
Speaker 1: to position the subject's head. That's because they're using the
Speaker 1: bertail age system, or a variation of it. He had,
Speaker 1: in the meantime, not for this work, gotten a promotion
Speaker 1: from being a junior clerk, but he was still kind
Speaker 1: of used as a pain in the neck and an
Speaker 1: outsider within his department. He did his job and was
Speaker 1: apparently pretty good in terms of work ethic, but he
Speaker 1: did not really make any friends at the police department.
Speaker 1: But he was befriended by a young woman by chance.
Speaker 1: When crossing the street one day, she asked him if
Speaker 1: he would help her cross because she was nearsighted and
Speaker 1: she was afraid of traffic, and he obliged, and once
Speaker 1: they had crossed, they introduced themselves to one another. Her
Speaker 1: name was Amelie Otar and she had recently moved to
Speaker 1: Paris from Austria. When she mentioned she earned a living
Speaker 1: giving German lessons, al Fall said he had always wanted
Speaker 1: to learn German. That was a complete lie. He hated
Speaker 1: that subject in school. As he was feeling stagnant in
Speaker 1: his job. Bertillon wrote a book to occupy himself during
Speaker 1: his time, and this book was titled Le Ras sauvage
Speaker 1: or The Savage Races. Holly didn't find a lot of
Speaker 1: information on this book's specific contents, but it's usually dismissed
Speaker 1: as a messy, poorly researched title that was more of
Speaker 1: Bertillon's musing on things he didn't have a lot of
Speaker 1: exposure to than on any kind of actual scientific exam
Speaker 1: of anything. Also, based on its title, seems like it
Speaker 1: must have been incredibly racist. This book did not do well,
Speaker 1: but he had dictated it to Amalie and the two
Speaker 1: of them had become very close, and soon she was
Speaker 1: taking notes for him regularly. I did find, i should say,
Speaker 1: French language versions of it, and my French is okay,
Speaker 1: but not really good enough to plow through a book
Speaker 1: of pseudo information of me, like fake scientific search. So
Speaker 1: just if anybody's like I found this book, well yeah,
Speaker 1: but not an English language version for good reason, I imagine.
Speaker 1: Not long though after the publication of this book, his
Speaker 1: boss Andreau retired and the new prefect, whose name was Cemcas,
Speaker 1: had heard of Bertion's project, and unlike his predecessor, he
Speaker 1: was really interested in it, and he gave Bertillon a
Speaker 1: chance to prove that this system would work. He had
Speaker 1: three months to do it, with the help of two
Speaker 1: assigned clerks, and he had to find at least one
Speaker 1: repeat offender in the system through his method. It took
Speaker 1: some time, but eventually he did manage to match a
Speaker 1: newly arrested man with a previous visit to the Paris
Speaker 1: police department. The timing of that first match in February
Speaker 1: eighteen eighty three, was unfortunately overshadowed by the death of
Speaker 1: Alfonse's father, Luis Adolph. Despite that loss, eighteen eighty three
Speaker 1: was pivotal for Bertillon in more positive ways. He built
Speaker 1: on that first success by identifying more and more recidivists
Speaker 1: in the police records, and he proposed to and married Amili,
Speaker 1: who had been an important part of his efforts. She's
Speaker 1: said to have compiled more than seven thousand of the
Speaker 1: cards used for this system. She had, by all accounts, beautiful,
Speaker 1: easily legible writing, so she really made the whole system
Speaker 1: easier for users. By the end of eighteen eighty three,
Speaker 1: Bertillon had identified forty nine duplicate offenders in the Parisian
Speaker 1: police bureau records. By the end of eighteen eighty Fourertion's
Speaker 1: process had identified two hundred and forty one repeat offenders.
Speaker 1: This was all proof enough for his prefect to start
Speaker 1: instituting the system officially. Bertion was tasked with getting a
Speaker 1: department up and running, and police staff from other countries
Speaker 1: soon were visiting Paris to learn this system and bring
Speaker 1: it back to their own offices, and Bertion had some
Speaker 1: very high profile successes. His system was used to identify
Speaker 1: an anarchist who was plotting a bombing, as well as
Speaker 1: a man who had faked his own death and then
Speaker 1: continued to commit crimes. An eighteen eighty six article ran
Speaker 1: in papers around the US titled identifying Prisoners, and it
Speaker 1: announced the new system as a triumph. It read, in
Speaker 1: part quote, the latest method of identifying prisoners which has
Speaker 1: been introduced into France by Monsieur Alfonse Bertian, and which
Speaker 1: is now successfully practiced not only in the chief French prisons,
Speaker 1: but in Russia and Japan. As well as the exact
Speaker 1: measurement of the prisoner on his arrival at the jail,
Speaker 1: a photograph is also immediately taken, and by these means
Speaker 1: the many mistakes which have been made by a trusting
Speaker 1: photographer only are avoided. In eighteen eighty eight, France had
Speaker 1: established its Bureau of Identification, with Alphonse Bertillon as its director.
Speaker 1: Bertion's career was clearly taking off, but his arrogance was
Speaker 1: about to trip him up. We'll talk about his involvement
Speaker 1: in the Dreyfus affair after we hear from the sponsors
Speaker 1: that keep stuff you missed in history class going. As
Speaker 1: use of bertillonage began to spread, there were naturally detractors.
Speaker 1: One of the biggest early criticisms was simply disbelief that
Speaker 1: there couldn't be duplicate people within the system. In a
Speaker 1: statement in eighteen ninety three, Bertillon said, quote the ideal
Speaker 1: card of the average man more exactly than Frances banand
Speaker 1: that is to say, individual in whom all the measurements
Speaker 1: correspond exactly to the average dimension, quite simply does not exist.
Speaker 1: It is never found even in the most central section
Speaker 1: of my cabinets. There are, of course, cards which approach
Speaker 1: this ideal configuration, but the related measures never approached each
Speaker 1: other so closely that they can be confused. That assertion
Speaker 1: would be proven wrong. There were other issues with the system,
Speaker 1: and we're going to get to them in a moment.
Speaker 1: But here's the thing. Bertillon was stubborn when it came
Speaker 1: to criticism. He was terrible at hearing anybody criticize his work,
Speaker 1: and he always insisted that the critic was the one
Speaker 1: in the wrong. Bertion's arrogance caused a great deal of
Speaker 1: harm when he was asked to consult on the case
Speaker 1: of Captain Alfred Dreyfus, which we've covered on the show
Speaker 1: as a two parter the short version. Dreyfus was tried
Speaker 1: for selling military secrets to Germany in eighteen ninety four.
Speaker 1: A key piece of evidence in this trial was a
Speaker 1: handwritten document which contained information about state secrets and their sale,
Speaker 1: and Bertil was asked to analyze the handwriting. Now, he
Speaker 1: was not a handwriting expert, but his reputation had become
Speaker 1: so well known for his police work that people thought
Speaker 1: he was the obvious choice. In the six years since
Speaker 1: the Bureau of Identification had been formed, he had developed
Speaker 1: other means of using his mathematical formulas to measure both
Speaker 1: people in evidence, and he thought he could similarly use
Speaker 1: it to analyze handwriting. And this was disastrous. Bertillon undoubtedly
Speaker 1: biased by anti Semitism, which was an enormous problem in
Speaker 1: France at the time, determined that Dreyfus, who was Jewish,
Speaker 1: had forged his own handwriting in an effort to conceal
Speaker 1: his involvement in this traitorous sale of state secrets. He
Speaker 1: explained to the court at the trial that Dreyfus had
Speaker 1: formed the letters using a square grid as the first
Speaker 1: disguise passed, and then worked from that version to make
Speaker 1: a bad copy of his own writing. Bertil may have
Speaker 1: believed that he had figured out a criminal mastermind's method,
Speaker 1: but what he really did was get a totally innocent
Speaker 1: man exiled to Devil's Island and spark an enormous cultural
Speaker 1: rift and giant anti Semitic backlash in France. But even
Speaker 1: when new evidence came to light indicating that the real
Speaker 1: trader was Ferdinand Walsen Esterhousi, including a confession, and not Dreyfus,
Speaker 1: Bertillon continued to vehemently assert that Dreyfus had to be
Speaker 1: the guilty party. His testimony during Dreyfus's second trial was
Speaker 1: described this way by a member of the press. Quote
Speaker 1: now and again, Monsieur Bertillon's voice rose in hateful shrieks.
Speaker 1: There were interludes when he clenched his fist, struck the bar,
Speaker 1: swearing that Dreyfus was the trader. The voice rang out
Speaker 1: with passion and excitement. You beheld in him, the man
Speaker 1: vain unto madness, with confidence in his atrocious fantasies. He
Speaker 1: was at last taking his revenge for all the insults
Speaker 1: of those who had called him a fit subject for
Speaker 1: an asylum of the insane. Bertillon never conceded that he
Speaker 1: had been wrong in this matter, even after real handwriting
Speaker 1: experts had proven his conclusions and his methods false, and
Speaker 1: he proclaimed this correctness even to his deathbed. While this
Speaker 1: scandal caused them damage to his reputation as a handwriting expert,
Speaker 1: and his work had contributed made in a major way
Speaker 1: to a very real crisis, the family cost was greater.
Speaker 1: Alphonse's brother, Jacques, also a well respected statistician, was married
Speaker 1: to Polish physician Caroline Schultz. Caroline was Jewish, and Jacques
Speaker 1: was so upset by Alpha Vonse Bertillon's insistence that Alfred
Speaker 1: Dreyfuss must be guilty that these two brothers had a
Speaker 1: massive falling out and they did not speak for years.
Speaker 1: Over time, the bersionage method was recognized as having problems.
Speaker 1: From the very beginning of it being put to practical
Speaker 1: use in police departments around the world, its flaws became
Speaker 1: more and more apparent. For one thing, there were a
Speaker 1: lot of devices that needed to be acquired and then
Speaker 1: maintained and constantly calibrated for measuring. For another, there was
Speaker 1: significant training needed for implementation. Any clerk or officer who
Speaker 1: was going to use those many devices and tools needed
Speaker 1: fairly advanced instructions on how to use them, and different
Speaker 1: users would often return different measurements of the same subject.
Speaker 1: Sometimes the same user would return different measurements on the
Speaker 1: same subject if they took a second set. Bertillon, as
Speaker 1: he always did, denied all of this, stating that quote,
Speaker 1: anyone who is not an imbecile could learn to measure
Speaker 1: in five minutes and never forget the process. This system
Speaker 1: also did not really account for things like the way
Speaker 1: a person's body changes as it ages, so as a
Speaker 1: subject aged, it was less and less likely that they
Speaker 1: would match up with a Bertillon card from their younger years. Additionally,
Speaker 1: incidents started to pop up where two different people were
Speaker 1: identified as the same person, something that Bertillon had insisted
Speaker 1: was not possible. By the end of the nineteenth century,
Speaker 1: as finger printing started to be adopted by many law
Speaker 1: enforcement offices, the Bertillon system, which had briefly been hailed
Speaker 1: as a revolutionary tool, started to fall out of favor.
Speaker 1: Did not take long after its introduction. Bertillon had initially
Speaker 1: rallied against the use of fingerprints, although over time they
Speaker 1: started to be included with Bertillon cards in police files.
Speaker 1: The mug shot, however, with its standard front and profile
Speaker 1: images that's endured despite the scandal of the Dreyfus affair.
Speaker 1: Bertillon continued to be given awards for his work criminology,
Speaker 1: and he continued in his work until in nineteen thirteen,
Speaker 1: he began to experience the sensation of being extremely cold
Speaker 1: at all times. He could not seem to get warm
Speaker 1: no matter what amount of heat he was exposed to,
Speaker 1: and he shivered constantly. He was also starting to have
Speaker 1: trouble with his eyesight. After he was diagnosed with pernicious anemia.
Speaker 1: His younger brother George, donated blood for a transfusion, and
Speaker 1: initially this helped a great deal, but the effects wore
Speaker 1: off and he needed a second and then a third transfusion,
Speaker 1: and George was the donator on all of it, so
Speaker 1: it was taking a toll on him as well. He
Speaker 1: kept working for months as this was going on, and
Speaker 1: there's no denying that he was getting weaker and weaker.
Speaker 1: In early nineteen fourteen, he was nominated for the Legendarner
Speaker 1: Officers Rosette, but people were reluctant to give him this
Speaker 1: award unless he met one condition. An emissary was sent
Speaker 1: to Bertillon's home, where at this point he was having
Speaker 1: to stay in bed, and told him that he would
Speaker 1: receive this award only if he retracted his assertion that
Speaker 1: Dreyfus had written the document known as the Bordereaux, which
Speaker 1: had been a key component of that case. Bertil reportedly
Speaker 1: yelled no at the visitor repeatedly. That was the end
Speaker 1: of that. On February thirteenth, nineteen fourteen, alse Bertigon fell
Speaker 1: into a coma. He died at eleven PM and was
Speaker 1: buried at Perlischez Cemetery. In the September nineteen fifteen edition
Speaker 1: of the Journal of the American Institute of Criminal Law
Speaker 1: and Criminology, lawyer and author Raymond B. Fosdick wrote quote
Speaker 1: in the death of Alphonse Bertillon in February nineteen fourteen,
Speaker 1: the anthropometric method of identification probably suffered its final blow.
Speaker 1: For a decade, his prestigian personality were the only supports
Speaker 1: of a system that in Europe at least, had been
Speaker 1: fast losing ground. Persistently, even stubbornly, he endeavored to save
Speaker 1: the method would was the product of his genius and
Speaker 1: which bore his name, But he lived to see it
Speaker 1: discarded in nearly every country in Europe except his own,
Speaker 1: and even in France. Now that the weight of his
Speaker 1: influence and his really compelling personality are gone, it is
Speaker 1: doubtful whether his system of identification will be continued. One
Speaker 1: of the issues that arises when looking at Bertillon's life
Speaker 1: is that there are some big gaps in the information.
Speaker 1: One cause was that his wife Emily and her grief
Speaker 1: destroyed a lot of his papers after he died. As
Speaker 1: a consequence, we really don't know a whole lot about
Speaker 1: his personal thoughts on a lot of the events that
Speaker 1: took place during his life. His actions and behaviors once
Speaker 1: he started on the system that would be the basis
Speaker 1: of his life's work show a man that was driven
Speaker 1: by our pursuit of the truth, but also distracted from
Speaker 1: that truth by Hubris. Perhaps the best summation of the
Speaker 1: complicated Bertillon was written by Richard Fairbrother and Julian Champkin
Speaker 1: in twenty fourteen for the periodical Significance, in which they
Speaker 1: said he was quote passionate about measuring everything that could
Speaker 1: be measured and some things that could not really be measured.
Speaker 1: Besides ah false, Bertillon, you are a quandary. I will
Speaker 1: talk so much about the various ways he has discussed
Speaker 1: in our Behind the Scenes on Friday, but in the
Speaker 1: meantime I want to talk to you about Stroganoff. This
Speaker 1: is from our listener Chelsea, who writes, Dear Holly and Tracy,
Speaker 1: I want to begin by thanking you both for such
Speaker 1: a wonderful podcast. I've been a listener since the beginning,
Speaker 1: and I have loved listening to the podcast mature and
Speaker 1: grow over time with the two of you making it
Speaker 1: your own. You've done such a phenomenal job of tackling
Speaker 1: difficult and interesting topics, and I always can't wait to
Speaker 1: hear what's next. This is a little late because I
Speaker 1: listen exclusively when driving, so I'm always a bit behind sidebar.
Speaker 1: You never have to apologize. We suffer the same problems
Speaker 1: when we're going about our lives. We fall behind on
Speaker 1: the things you love all the time. Chelsea continues, I
Speaker 1: just listened to your Oops All Noodles episode, and I
Speaker 1: was excited that you were covering beef stroganoff. My husband
Speaker 1: and I have had a long standing disagreement about how
Speaker 1: to make stroganoff, going back to the beginning of our marriage.
Speaker 1: He does the majority of the cooking since he's better
Speaker 1: at it, but stroganoff is something that I feel confident about.
Speaker 1: The First time I made it, he couldn't believe I
Speaker 1: was adding tomato paste and leaving out the mushrooms because
Speaker 1: I don't like them. He thought that was absolutely ridiculous
Speaker 1: because his recipe uses paprika instead. He claimed that adding
Speaker 1: tomato paste and emitting mushrooms change the intent of the dish.
Speaker 1: I said this was how I learned to make it,
Speaker 1: and that I would stick with what I know. This
Speaker 1: has become such an inside joke between us that now
Speaker 1: years later, when we're meal planning for the week, if
Speaker 1: stroganov is suggested, it becomes an entire family discussion about
Speaker 1: are we making moms stroganof or Dad's strogan Off, complete
Speaker 1: with a lot of knowing glances and the kids taking sides.
Speaker 1: Imagine my delight when you said that tomato panes was
Speaker 1: added as an ingredient in the early nineteen hundreds. It
Speaker 1: was so great that I shouted ha while driving. I
Speaker 1: was in the middle of dropping one kid at preschool
Speaker 1: and driving to volunteer at the other kid's school, but
Speaker 1: I had just enough time to swing by home and
Speaker 1: interrupt my husband working in his home office with a
Speaker 1: triumphant I was right. I love this so much. Once
Speaker 1: he understood what I was talking about, he asked me
Speaker 1: to cite my sources. He knew he couldn't argue with
Speaker 1: me when I told him I heard it from you,
Speaker 1: because he was the one who originally insisted I listened
Speaker 1: to the podcast. He did want to make it known
Speaker 1: that he was also right about the mushrooms. Thank you
Speaker 1: for always adding knowledge and delight to my drive. I've
Speaker 1: attached pictures of our dog, Carlton. He is twelve and
Speaker 1: has always been a crabby old man dog who just
Speaker 1: wants to lie in the sun or be under a
Speaker 1: pile of blankets. Cheers, Chelsea. Okay, first, of all, Carlton
Speaker 1: is hilarious and adorable. I love a grumpy dog there.
Speaker 1: He's so cute. I want to scoop him up and
Speaker 1: kiss him, and he'd be like, please do not. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean that's the saying that I discovered too when
Speaker 1: doing the Stroganoff research, is that there are a lot
Speaker 1: of different versions because it propagated throughout the world and
Speaker 1: at different regions that different people created their own kind.
Speaker 1: So in my opinion, there's no wrong kind of stroken off. Ever.
Speaker 1: I'm not a tomato paste person, but if you are
Speaker 1: and you love that, awesome. I'm like heavy on the
Speaker 1: sour cream and mushrooms person on that one. But I'm
Speaker 1: just glad that everybody is cooking delicious things and that
Speaker 1: it is something that they are good naturedly poking fun
Speaker 1: at each other about, not an actual argument. If you
Speaker 1: would like to write to us about the way you
Speaker 1: make stroganoff, or any other dish or anything else we've
Speaker 1: talked about on the show, you can do that at
Speaker 1: History Podcast at iHeartRadio dot com. You can also find
Speaker 1: us on social media as Missed in History, and if
Speaker 1: you haven't yet subscribed, you can do that on the
Speaker 1: iHeartRadio app, or anywhere you listen to your favorite shows.
Speaker 1: Stuff you missed in history class is a part reduction
Speaker 1: of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Speaker 1: Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.