The Baltimore County union. [volume] (Towsontown, Md.) 1865-1909, 1905-09-02
She grabbed
At her skirts behind.



At her skirts behind.
BERTILLON, MEAsURER OF MEN.
''I learned the foundations of my
finger print knowledge from the
English"
This striking and at the same time
Enthusiastically modest utterance
was made to me in an interview, says
a writer in the London Daily Ex-
press, by M. Alphonse Bertillon. the
great French anthropometrical ex-
pert, the man whose name is closely
associated the world over with the
Identification of criminals by measure
ments and finger prints.
M. Bertillon was fresh from the
witness box at Bow street, where he
had been giving some of his deadly
finger print evidence with regard to
the recent CHASTITY crop of Paris MUIR
ders.
In appearance M. Bertillon is the
serene thinker rather than the man
of action, the scientist of the cloister
rather than the public figure of the
forum. To talk with him is to see
that he has thought out the finger
print system bit by bit, arch by arch,
loop by loop, whorl by whorl, even
as he has thought out the science of
anthropometry millimeter by milli-
meter.
A high forehead, we'll balanced
brow, thin oval face, pair of Sc
rene dark eyes. a dark mustache,
obviously French, but not too pro-
nounced in curl, a trim dark beard,
complexion strongly reminiscent of
parchment, long and delicate fingers,
tallish, lightish frame, and the rib
bon of the Legion of Honor almost
imperceptible on the lapel of his coat
such. in brief, is M. Alphonse Ber-
tillon, the terror of criminals.
do you think, M. Bertillon," I
asked him, ''that the science of meas
urements will ever supplant the sci
ence of finger prints 7"
"No," he answered, very quietly.
81 think the human measurement
system will supplement and assist
the finger print system in the ulti.
mate marking down and tabulating
of practically every known or poten-
tial criminal in the civilized world.
The sister sciences will go hand in
hand.
1.-The science that is based upon
the fact that each different individual
has among his bones certain character
istic shapes and dimensions will march
forward in unison with the science
which arises from the circumstance
that the finger prints of practically
everybody are different from the
finger prints of anybody else. Both
these truths and the application of
them in every day criminal search
and detection have been of enormous
service to us in France, and have
helped to rid respectable society of
many of the human harpies who prey
upon it."
"And what led you to take up the
study and practice Of finger print
science?"
Reading of the work of Herschel
and Galton, looked into what they
were doing as pioneers of the finger
print system. became deeply inter
ested. I soon found that they were
right, and I started collecting finger
prints of friends and of criminals
myself"
my subsequent experience in ac-
tual criminal practice has shown me
that if two finger prints tally exactly
it is practically certain that they are
the prints of one and the same person,
however many of the population OF
the entire world may have passed that
way and have handled the articles on
which the print has been made"
And the sister science to finger
prints, your own gift to the world,
the science of the measurement of
man, how did you first come to think
that out? 7"
"Well," answered M. Bertillon,
with the ghost of smile and tiny,
deprecating shrug of the shoulder,
81 saw the need for some such sys-
tenn for the Identification of crini-
nails. / saw that the evidence of the
photograph and the official descrip-
ton might very easily be made USE
11-o o.,I ;rIaaJ hoe ;,, ,,,o~xy ,,,aru
cases been quite nullified by the
criminals own little tricks of dis
guise. All the previously photo.
graphed and officially described crimi-
nal had to do was to altar the style of
doing his hair and the color of it, to
distort his features in one of the we'll
known ways, to remove or add a
mustache, a beard, to alter the eye
brows, or what not, and he had passed
beyond the likelihood of recognition.
but a man cannot change his
bones. He cannot disguise the exact
length of his nose, of his forearm,
the length and width of his head, the
length of the left middle finger, the
length of the left foot.
Experience soon taught me that
these bony portions of the human
frame rarely undergo any material
change in the adult, and that practi-
cally no two persons in the civilized
world have the same combination of
measurements. This great central
fact, together with the marvellous
faithfulness of the finger print record,
has been of immense assistance to us
in France in the detection of crimi-
nails, and the more of these records
we take the more strongly is the eff
cacy of the two systems of finger