And it didn't take long for most of the system to be overtaken by the modern-day practice of fingerprinting. The Bertillon System was far from perfect - and some of Bertillon's investigations did fail. We could then, theoretically, have distilled images of, to note only two of many possibilities, the typical pickpocket or typical forger.' 'It was an age of science, and some thought of the mug shot as a useful component in 'scientific law enforcement.' Indeed, there are surviving efforts by police departments to superimpose photographs of certain types of criminals on top of one another. Papke, a professor at Marquette University Law School, explains the response as such: The Bertillon System made its debut on the world stage when it was demonstrated at the Chicago World's Fair in 1893. San Jose Police Department A mugshot of Bertha Boronda, a woman charged with 'mayhem.' 1908. (They sure knew how to write catchy titles back in the 1890s.) Mugshots Then And Now He also published a book describing his process for posterity called Signaletic Instructions Including the Theory and Practice of Anthropometrical Identification. By 1888, he became the chief of France's newly-established Department of Judicial Identity. Unsurprisingly, the Bertillon System in France earned him major praise. And by 1884, that number increased to 241. In 1883, Bertillon identified 49 repeat offenders. The mugshot - one photo of the subject facing the camera and one taken in profile - was perhaps the most important element of the system.īefore long, the system showed success - so it was implemented all across France. It served as a sort of 'fingerprint' in an era before actual fingerprinting was a common police practice. The idea was that each person's combination of measurements would be more or less unique. So he developed what came to be known as the Bertillon System of documenting and organizing criminals and suspects.Īccording to the system, the police would measure a suspect's head length, head breadth, the length of the middle finger, the length of the left foot, and the length of the 'cubit,' or the forearm from the elbow to the tip of the middle finger. Paris was in the middle of a crime surge, and in Bertillon's view, the police's skills weren't up to snuff. In 1879, as a police clerk, he grew frustrated with the department's ad hoc methods of identifying and documenting criminals and suspects. While both his father and brother were expert statisticians, Bertillon himself was very much a black sheep.Įxpelled from the Imperial Lycée of Versailles, Bertillon spent four years in the French army before securing a low-level position in the Parisian police.

1894.īertillon was an unlikely trailblazer. Alphonse Bertillon/The Metropolitan Museum of Art Augustin Dupuis, an anarchist photographed by Alphonse Bertillon.

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