Notes

Abstract

WE regret to announce the death on February 13, in the sixty-first year of his age, of M. Alphonse Bertillon, director of the anthropological department of the Prefecture of Police in Paris. M. Bertillon, following the custom of his family, devoted himself to the study of human races. At the beginning of his career he paid particular attention to those characters of the body which might be used for the purposes of identification. In 1885, when he was in his thirty-second year, he published the first draft of his famous system of identification and registration of criminals under the name of “Instructions signalétiques.” The principle on which his system rests is that no two individuals are alike in all their bodily measurements and proportions. In 1893 Bertillon's system was introduced to British prisons. The system which, in the hands of Bertillon himself and of his pupils, worked satisfactorily, proved to be untrustworthy when applied. by a heterogeneous body of observers. Even in the hands of experts, exact measurement of the living body is difficult of attainment. Hence in 1901 Bertillon 's system was replaced in this country by one founded on finger imprints, a method which had been developed in India by Sir Edward Henry. It is popularly supposed that M. Bertillon invented the system of identification by finger-prints, but this is an error. Dr. Henry Faulds, in NATURE of October 28, 1880, indicated how finger-prints might be applied to ethnological classification; and his was the first printed communication upon the subject, though public and official use of finger-prints had been made by Sir William Herschel in India some years before. M. Bertillon added the finger-print method to his own about 1891, after its advantages had been urged by Sir Francis Galton. Although Bertillon's system has proved defective in practice, still the merit of realising that a scientific system of measurements and observations could be elaborated to serve the purposes of the State will always stand to his credit. Under his system an enormous number of observations of the utmost scientific value have been accumulated and placed at the disposal of anthropological students.