1870 ALPHONSE BERTILLON
Around 1870 a French anthropologist devised a system to measure and record the dimensions of certain bony parts of the body. These measurements were reduced to a formula which, theoretically, would apply only to one person and would not change during his/her adult life. This Bertillon System, named after its inventor, Alphonse Bertillon, was generally accepted for thirty years.
In 1888, Bertillon was made Chief of the newly created Department of Identity in Paris, where he used anthropometry as the main means of identification. He later introduced fingerprints, but relegated them to a secondary role in the category of special marks.
Bertillon was involved in the first recorded case of a conviction using fingerprints in Paris in 1902, but still maintained that anthropometry was the superior system.
The Bertillon System never recovered from the events of 1903, when a man named Will West was sentenced to the U.S Penitentiary at Leavenworth, Kansas. There was already a prisoner at the penitentiary at the time whose Bertillon measurements were nearly exact, and his name was William West.
Upon investigation, there were indeed two men. They looked exactly alike, but were allegedly not related. Their names were Will and William West respectively. Their Bertillon measurements were close to identify them as the same person. However, a fingerprint comparison quickly identified them as two different people.
The West men, it was later discovered were identical twin brothers.
© Centrex, National Training Centre