This Frenchman went down in history as a famouscriminologist, the creator of a special method, according to which the recognition of criminals was to occur by measuring individual parts of the human body and head. Alphonse Bertillon - ridiculous for many people - had access to prison cells, where he was engaged in measuring the physical parameters of prisoners.
Him for drawing up an anthropometric portraitIt was necessary to make 15 measurements. For example, find out what the length of the thumb or little finger, determine the diameter of the head, the width of the forehead, etc. His bustling movements caused smiles, and sometimes obscene jokes of prisoners, but no one could imagine what this unseen gentleman with curly head would achieve and dandy mustaches - Alphonse Bertillon. The contribution to the criminalistics of this person is actually very large. He is the founder of the method of identification based on anthropometric data, which was later named after his name Bertilonage.
Родился будущий криминалист в 1853 году, 24 April, in the French capital. His father is a famous statistician and physician Louis Adolph Bertillon. He was a member of the Anthropological Society of Paris, and his grandfather, Achilles Giyar, was a distinguished mathematician and scientist who was known in scientific circles throughout Europe. In short, the boy had excellent genes, but he did not have much success at school or at university, he was even expelled from the Imperial Lyceum at Versailles. Then the young Alphonse Bertillon wandered around the French province for several years.
Альфонс Бертильон (фото его вы можете увидеть в article) in contrast to eminent relatives did not have a propensity for science. He was unsociable, pedantic, taciturn, distrustful - a typical introvert. He had a sarcastic disposition of character, was extremely vicious and quarrelsome, he could throw a scandal over a trifle. Because of this, he had to change schools three times. In the adult life, he was once dismissed from the bank, where his father had arranged for him without explanation. And then Alphonse Bertillon decided to change the situation and left France, settling as a French teacher in one rich English family. But the relationship did not work there either, so he had no choice but to return to his homeland.
Alphonse also did not know how to communicate with women orinteresting to spend time. He was completely devoid of musical ear, as well as the perception of the beautiful. At the age of 22, the young man was mobilized into the royal army. Apparently, and here he had a hard time, because of his unsociable character.
After a few years, leaving the service, AlphonseBertillon was actively looking for work, but no matter how he tried, he could not find anything suitable. In addition, he never received a higher education, and this complicated his search. In the end, the young man decided to once again seek help from his father.
After some time, Louis Bertillon managed to arrange his son in the Police Prefecture of Paris for the position of assistant clerk. Thus, Bertilion in 1879 got into the police environment.
When Alphons first came to the officejudicial identification, he was very disappointed, so his stupid and almost meaningless seemed to him his forthcoming work. Strangely enough, this not only did not prevent him from his activities, but, on the contrary, made him think about the problem of modern criminology. The employees of his department sometimes laughed at the attempts of a colleague to change something and could not even imagine that the founder of the new method was Alfons Bertillon. Forensic science from his light hand in that period had a lot of progress.
Daily staff of his department accounted forwrite down and revise hundreds of thousands of cards describing people who have ever committed a crime. However, Bertilion, born and raised among mathematicians, felt that there was something wrong with his work, that there was no systematization that could help in his work. And so, recalling the anthropometric parameters, he began to measure those or other parts of the body of the suspects and with these data filled out questionnaires that were instituted on criminals.
Knowing this person’s biography is almost impossiblebelieve that he is the founder of a new era in forensic science. After the method proposed by him was adopted and gained popularity, articles appeared in the press with loud headlines - “French genius Alfons Bertillon and his theory of identification of judicial errors”, “Long live the“ bertilonage ”method - the greatest discovery of the 19th century!” .
In the period when Bertilion created a newmethod, there was no possibility of photography or fingerprinting - identification of the person in accordance with fingerprints. Since information about criminals was not systematized, some information was recorded in the cards, that is, they presented a verbal portrait. However, these descriptions suited many thousands of people, moreover, there was practically no information about their anthropometric data.
Alphonse realized it was stupid to write superficialcharacteristics of the type of high-low, fat-thin. It is much more important to enter in the questionnaire the exact height, shoulder width, arm length to the finger tips, etc. That is, to make measurements of those human parameters that are constant. Moreover, identification in the future should not go on one or two parameters, and 14-15. The probability of error in this way will be minimized. Or rather, A. Bertillon found that when fourteen parameters are combined, for example, height, length of the upper body, circumference and length of the head, length of the hands and feet, as well as each of the fingers, etc. of a mature person, the chance of coincidence will be 1 to 250 million.
Of course, his proposal for draftinganthropometric portrait was taken with distrust. However, he was given a chance to work on it and prove its effectiveness. Colleagues laughed at how he, taking a ruler in his hands, compared the faces of the criminals in the photographs, measured the distance between the eyes, the length and width of the nose and nose, etc.
Then the criminologist received permission from the authorities andHe visited prison cells, measuring prisoners. Of course, every time he was honored with some kind of greasy jokes from the prisoners, but he did not pay attention to this and painstakingly went towards his goal.
Each time he was convinced that he was right.theories: the dimensions of 5 body parts are not the same at the same time. Already in possession of evidence supporting his theory, he presented his designs to the authorities. But it was necessary to systematize all this in order to make it convenient to use the data when identifying criminals. Of course, Alphonse Bertillion also had to deal with this.
The presentation of the final version of his method was to take place only after he decomposed everything on the shelves and could be used by the forensic experts from all over the country.
After the measurements were collected, it was necessary to create a card file in which one could easily find the necessary questionnaire.
According to Bertillon’s theory, when usingcard files of 90,000 questionnaires can be recorded in the first place as the main feature of the length of the head, and then all the questionnaires can be divided into three main groups. In this case, each will have 30,000 cards each.
Then, if in the second place to put such a parameter as the width of the head, based on this method, the unit will go in 9 groups, each of which will be 10,000 cards.
If we use 11 parameters, then in eachthe box will be only 10-12 profiles. All this he presented to the prefect of the French criminal police, Mr. Syurte. True, that was initially difficult to understand the infinite figures listed in the columns, and he advised him not to disturb him any more with nonsense. However, Alphonse did not give up and did his best to prove the correctness of his theory. And then he was given a 3-month trial period.
Of course, the chances of proving your theory withinsome three months were very small, but Alphonso was lucky. He needed to identify at least one criminal, information about which was contained in his complex filing cabinet. And this meant that the offender had to commit a crime during these three months of data to Bertillon and was detained by the police.
To the great joy of Alphonse, such a caseintroduced himself on the 80th day of probation, when he was already in despair. He was able to prove his theory, and he was soon appointed director of the identification service of the French police. Then there was the high-profile case "Ravachol", which brought him fame not only in France, but throughout Europe. The criminalist system was called a genius, and he himself was considered a national hero. However, "thanks to" the terrible nature of his subordinates hated. But that was Alphonse Bertillon!
Dactyloscopy, which was invented later, was recognized as more accurate, and only after its introduction, the bertilonage system receded into the background.
In 1893Alfons issued a forensic manual, which he called the “Instructions for Signaling”. The author gave diagrams and drawings of those tools that were necessary for the study, as well as drawings that showed methods for measuring body parts.
He also gave directions forpolice registrars how to fill out questionnaires. By the way, by this time A. Bertillon was invented the method of signal shooting, according to which the criminal was photographed using a special metric camera in 3 types: in profile, full face (1/7 of full size), and also in full height ( natural quantities). These pictures should also have been attached to the questionnaires of people who once committed a crime and got into Bertillon’s card file.
