Anthropometry – An Obsession with Identity
Illustration demonstrating correct method to measure ears. (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Open Access)
One of the great obsessions of the nineteenth century was identity—not their own, but that of others.
There is the myth that prior to the 1800s identification systems did not exist because of an absence of technology; they simply didn’t have the means to create them. The truth is there was little to no need for such a system. Prior the Industrial Revolution, most individuals spent their lives where they were born and were, by default, known to their community; they didn’t need papers to prove who they were. When they traveled, Identities were established with letters of introduction, or, for itinerant artisans, the “tools of their trade” (individuals whose trade necessitate travel, such as stone masons).
That is not to say no attempts were made. France issued the first passports in 1792 requiring both domestic and foreign travelers to carry them. The intention was to prevent crime and suppress dissent by controlling people’s movements, but without photographs, and only vague descriptions listed in the passports, it was a failure.
The rise of industrialization brought sweeping social changes not least of which was the substantial numbers of people migrating from their villages, where they were known, to sprawling cities where they were not. Social mobility became more fluid and the traditional visual indicators of status were more easily mimicked which meant imposters were more difficult to identify. Recommendations from common acquaintances continued to be a practice, but with the arrival of trains and other modes of public transportation, more people were travelling further and more often which made verifying someone’s identity almost impossible. This fed a longstanding mistrust of strangers and stoked the fear that there were unidentified criminals roaming free and mingling with respectable folk. This fear fueled the creation of technologies and methods of identification.
The key is that the obsession with identifying honest, law-abiding individuals; it was about identifying law-breakers, in particular repeat offenders (referred to as recidivists after 1844). Laws existed to impose heavier and harsher penalties upon individuals arrested and convicted on multiple occasions. The belief was that a few individuals were causing most of the crime, and, if you removed them, cities would be safer. Well intended, the laws were near useless given the low rate of success identifying repeat offenders. With no independent method in place, the legal system was reliant upon the honesty of the convict to provide their real name every time they were arrested.
It was in an offender’s interest not to have previous arrests discovered. Not only were sentences longer, it could result in transportation. In England, until 1886, minor offenses could result in transportation to Australia if the individual had multiple incarcerations. On average, they were imprisoned 4.2 times prior to the conviction that led to transportation, and two-thirds of those final convictions were for petty theft. Henry Patterson (an eight-time offender) was transported for stealing a pair of boots.
Aliases were one method of avoiding detection, lying about religious affiliation was another. Some prisons would house only Catholics while others were for Protestants. A false declaration meant time was served in a different prison, eliminating the chance of being recognized. (Some Catholics would identify themselves as Protestant to get extra time out of their cells. Catholics had mass once a week; Protestants had Bible study every day.) Providing false information was not only for hiding from the law. On March 10, 1883, after his father’s death, William Willcock (real name Walter Harvey) petitioned from Millbank Prison to change his listed religion from Roman Catholic to Protestant. He had made a false declaration to conceal his conviction from authorities and his family.
The use of aliases was only part of the problem for law enforcement. Records were local. If you were convicted in London, it was only in London where record of your incarceration would exist. Go on to commit a crime in Manchester and your previous arrests would never be discovered. Often, it was more specific than that: discovery of recidivism depended on you returning to the same prison.
Early methods to identify criminals had been used in Europe and America, including branding. France abolished the practice in 1832, but Russia continued late into the century (often branding a convict’s face). Amsterdam branded the ball of the thumb, sometimes employing symbols to indicate the nature of their crime. Colonial East Jersey used the letter “T” on the hand to indicate a conviction for burglary, an “R” on the forehead for a repeat offender, and the infamous “A” for adultery.
From its first appearance, law enforcement agencies tried to use photography to record and identify recidivists, but the early technology was cumbersome and expensive. In the middle of the century, when the it became easier to take a picture had improved, Gustave Macé, head of the detective division in Paris, required all criminals to be photographed. This remained ineffectual. There were no standards by which photographs were taken, facial hair obscured features, and hair was allowed to cover the ears. By 1880, Paris had 75,000 photographs of convicts which they filed in alphabetical order in cabinets, boxes, even in the hallways. In the absence of an efficient cataloguing system, searching through the collection to identify previous arrests was, at best, time-consuming, more often, it was impossible. A similar obstacle was one factor which delayed the adoption of fingerprinting as the sole means of identification.
None of the institutions—not government, law enforcement, prisons, or courts—had the bureaucratic ability to house or retrieve large numbers of identification files; the latter of which proved to be a significant shortcoming throughout the century. Registers of criminals were catalogued alphabetically, or chronologically by the date they were entered onto the docket. Later lists added age, place of birth, hair color, stature, complexion, and identifiable marks (scars or tattoos). Given that the records continued to be stored alphabetically, the additional information did little to improve the rate of detection. This made the system reliant upon the honesty of the individual being arrested. Even if they did provide their real names, without standardized spelling, a single individual could appear in multiples places in the records. France tried to overcome this shortfall by implementing a phonetic system of cataloguing.
Even if records were found, the system was cumbersome. Scotland Yard estimated it required over eight hours to match a single individual to an existing file, and Holloway Prison estimated it at ninety man-hours. Unless recognized by one of the guards, repeat offenders were able to conceal previous arrests.
The solution authorities devised was anthropometry: the scientific study of measurements and proportions of the human body. Lambert Quetelet, a Belgian statistician suggested that no two people had exactly the same body measurements in 1840.
England was first to devise a method of identification based on the person’s body in the form of the Register of Distinctive Marks in the 1870s. It divided the body into nine areas: head and face; throat and neck; chest; belly and groin; back and loins; arms; hands and fingers; thighs and legs; feet and ankles. It divided each area by marks or physical peculiarities that could be used for identification. The Register was published in book form, bound and released annually. it was a cumbersome resource that did little assist in the detection of recidivists. To identify a repeat offender, not only must you know the person’s name, you must know the year in which they were arrested. Arnould Bonneville de Marsangy provided a solution to this problem (which the British were slow to adopt). He proposed using the index card file which meant cards could be added or removed without upsetting the system, allowing records from multiple years to be kept together. To its disadvantage, the cards were filed alphabetically.
The identification system that emerged was devised by Alphonse Bertillon was was implemented by the Paris police in 1882. Within its first year of use, it identified 241 recidivists and 680 by 1892. The speed at which records were retrieved also increased. It became known as the Bertillon System, or Bertillonage, and, by the end of the century, had been adopted by many countries.
We’ll go into further detail about Bertillonage, its success, its cataloguing system, its shortcomings, and its eventual abandonment for fingerprinting in the early twentieth century. (New York State Division of Identification continued using the system until 1931.)
Eleven measurements made were taken: height, head length, head breadth, arm span, sitting height, cheek width, and the lengths of the left middle finger, left little finger, left foot, left forearm, and right ear. It was theorized that these areas of the body were least susceptible to weight gain or loss, or aging; they are known as osseus lengths. The Bertillon cards included descriptions of the prisoner’s eyes, ears, lips, beard, hair and skin color, ethnicity, forehead, nose, build, chin, general contour of the head, hair growth pattern, eyebrows, eyeball and orbit, mouth, physiognomic expression, neck, inclination of shoulders, attitude, general demeanor, voice and language, and habiliments. The cards were separated according to gender and were catalogued according to head size: small, medium, and large. The system identified 241 recidivists within the first year and 680 by 1892 in Paris at a much faster rate.
Shortfalls could not be avoided. To be successful, measurements had to be taken in a precise manner, which they weren’t. This created a degree of inaccuracy which decreased its effectiveness and increased the amount of time required to retrieve files. It was this margin of error which eventually saw its replacement with fingerprints
Anthropometry was used for more than identification of convicts. It was considered a way to identify “criminal potentiality.” Criminal behavior was believed to have a biological element; it was not a choice, it was a predisposition. It was part of a larger belief that an individual’s personality and characteristics manifested themselves in the body. Phrenologists believed that a person’s intelligence and disposition determined the shape of their skull. Multiple studies were carried out to identify the physical markers for criminality. In 1844, Hubert Lauvergne published study of Toulon convicts, arguing a correlation between skull abnormalities and criminality. The most vocal supporter of fingerprint identification, Sir Francis Galton, believed that the indicators of criminality were to be found those whorls and arches. Others studied photographs, body proportions, and tattoos of convicts intent upon finding a way to identify criminals before they committed a crime.
This theory of markers was tied up with the belief in atavism (the reversion to something ancient or ancestral). This is the era of Darwinism and evolution and anthropometry argued that criminals were biologically different from law-abiding citizens; they were deviant because they were less evolved, or were evolving backward to a more primitive, violent state. This meant that only certain classes of society were prone to committing crime, and factors such as poverty played no role in criminality. These theories formed the basis for eugenics, a term Sir Francis Galton coined.
Today we know these theories have no basis in fact, but in the nineteenth century, many highly respected individuals, believed them to be true and behaved accordingly. Though anthropometry assisted in the identification of criminals, it also ushered in one of the darkest theories about mankind.
Bibliography
Cole, Simon A. Suspect Identities. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 2001).
Goldfarb, Bruce. 18 Tiny Deaths. (Naperville, IL: Sourcebooks, 2020).
Johnston, Helen, Barry Godfrey and Jo Turner. “’I am Afraid She is Perfectly Responsible for her Actions and is Simply Wicked’: Reconstructing the Criminal Career of Julia Hyland.” in Kilday, Anne-Marie, and David Nash. Law, Crime and Deviance since 1700: Micro-Studies in the History of Crime. (New York, NY: Bloomsbury, 2017), pp. 210-225.
Rogers, Helen, “Making their Mark: Young Offenders’ Life Histories and Social Networks.” in Kilday, Anne-Marie, and David Nash. Law, Crime and Deviance since 1700: Micro-Studies in the History of Crime. (New York, NY: Bloomsbury, 2017), pp. 227-249
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