leçon

Portrait Parle class, France (LOC)

from The Library of Congress

• 4 older comments, and then…
• skillful north said:

  anyone read French and know what this is about?

• frapit said:

  It says 'Formulaire du portrait parlé'. Portrait parlé, aka Bertillon system, first scientific method of criminal identification, developed by the French criminologist Alphonse Bertillon (1853-1914). The system, based on the classification of skeletal and other body measurements and characteristics, was officially adopted in France in 1888 and soon after in other countries. Fingerprinting, added later as a supplementary measure, has largely replaced the system

• skillful north said:

  THANKS. Was it a racist thing?

• Abi Sutherland said:

  No, it wasn't a racist thing. It was an attempt to identify people uniquely, the same way that fingerprints do. Instead of being fingerprinted, arrested criminals were measured in a number of specific ways, on the theory that that combination of measurements was unique to them. It failed mostly because it required a lot of training to get the measurements right, and because fingerprinting came in shortly after it was invented. It also had the disadvantage that it wasn't usable in all the ways a fingerprint is. No one leaves a complete set of Bertillon measurements at a crime scene!

• skillful north said:

  Thanks for the clarification.