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Show ? I ' BY "JOCK" BELLAIRS. ti There died in Pqris. Franco, the ; 1 j'ctlicr day, a man whose service to ' vsoclfety outranks that of any other gcneonan of modern time. , I Yfct this man died almost "un-Wept, "un-Wept, unhonored and unsung." ( After death this man's brain wag 'j weighed, and this brain was found ilo be of abnormal weight. This Vfact followed a brief, an very brief, icable announcement to the world . Jthat Monsieur A.phonso Bertillon I was dead. , i Years hence, historians likely i will class this man's achievements ln behalf of the world in the front I ;'ranft. Today, the. petty sortie of a ffew Mexican brigands command more attention. Such is the homage we pay to men of affairs. L Alphonse Bertillon, the world's grcltcst exponent of anthropometry', anthropome-try', author of the Bertillon system ol measurements of criminals, perhaps per-haps the mightiest .rm the police . 1 of the world have to hole1, down the horde of crooks that unceasingly ) Tjcrop up. here, there and every- i where, was given a passing men-I men-I .Jtiotr in the daily news dispatches iwh.cn his great brain ceased to urge ''v J&r ithe organs of life and his hearth k beals stopped. Yot no general oC-.j- ;tbls or the old world, no admiral, f no soldier of wa., fortune or oE'i-'$fci' j'peaee, no captain of Industry, did V '44 ft y.more to strengthen society than did i, 'rh ihls-man. V A In police circles Alphonse Bcr-X'$ pillion, is known in every niche of tf ;(the world. Humanity at largo?;, & g) Jknows of the man oecausc of the''? 'tysiem. But what this system is. , M ihow it was invented, what good, It sTTp i jdoes. how it became a universal'" ' jp'l :adjuuct to every crime fighting or- A j&anizatlon tho mundane sphere' Eovcr. is as little known as is ' tho "'V 'Klencesof astronomy?"' " :' Alphonse Bertillon was, at the v , itlme of his demise, and for a third ' ." tft a century prior thereto, Chief"' - ;. ,(of Judicial Identification Service cf France. His was a mighty de-' ' ; 1 ' S8l&$ ST 1" 1 Afel,S;&fr fffiM, tU?prc5'spd; Measuring the left foot WWmMPW0M Mmk. jflKW " oney having tho subject stand mMmwMMm- $ -wSMMMWMf a sory Dr bench, the left foot jM ' 'HM0 rcstlns on this and the right foot V 'itMWmmW AWtf$m$kmm4 allowing all the weight of the body "The eye sees in things only what it looks at in them, and it looks only at that of which tho idea Is already present In the mind." It may be suggested that thc Bertillon Ber-tillon system grew out of the uso or photographs, I. o., the old rogue'3 gallery, an institution new almost obsolete. Bertillon entered tho French pollco system when young. He was a student, as are a great number of thc old country policemen, police-men, and he strove, with others, to better tho conditions which handicapped hand-icapped tho agents of society in tho interminable war against crime. Ideas were suggested by many. Eer-tlllon Eer-tlllon himself created Ideas. Mono were feasible. Ho was tho first to suggest that the human ear, after a certain age. was Immutable, and ho wished for a time to have casts or exact measurements taken of the outer and inner car of each criminal. crim-inal. This might have been a good tiling. But it carried with It no means of classifying tho criminal. Ten years after 3ortillon entered tho servico there were 100,000 photographs pho-tographs of criminals in the archives ar-chives of tho pollco in Paris. And there was no means of classifying these. Thus a criminal could give a different namo and unless tho prison authorities were able to identify him off-hand, it meant days and days of laborious and often useless research to find the corresponding corre-sponding photograph. Bertillon sought a means of overcoming this. He bent his great mind to thc work and in the course of time ho evolved the system which now bears his name. It Is based on tho thrco points which Dertlllon himself pointed out: "Tho almo&t absoluto immutability immuta-bility of the human framo, after the twentieth year of tho age. Tho height only, or to bo more exact," said Bertillon. "tho thigh bono often continues to "grow for two or three years ' longer, but so littlo that it is easy lo make allowance for It. Experience shows that this small Increase Is more than compensated com-pensated for by tho curving of tho . vertebral column, which, commencing com-mencing about the twentieth year, continues to accentuato Itself by degrees until old ago. "Tho extreme diversity of dimension dimen-sion which the human skeleton presents pre-sents when compared In different subjects, to such an extent that it would bo difficult. If not impossible, impossi-ble, to find two Individuals whoso bony structuro Is, we will not say exactly identical, but even sufficiently suffi-ciently alike to make any confusion confu-sion between them possible "The facility and comparatlvo precision with which certain dimensions di-mensions of tho skeleton may be measured In tho living subject by means of calipers pf very simplo construction." Then Bertillon gavo to the world eleven parts of the human anatomy anat-omy which his studies indicated never changed. . The30 were: . 'J, Height of a person standing; roach, length of the outstrotched arms from finger tip to finger tip; trunk, or height of a man sitting; length of tho head; width of the head; length of right car; width of right ear; length of left fout; length of left middle finger; length of left little finger and length of the left forearm. MAX, OXCJC M13ASUIU2D. IS MARKED FOR LIFE. These measurements arc takon In a rigorously uniform -ray. Tho. French system of measures apply everywhere wherever this idea is In vogue. Thus measurpfl nro drawn down to fractions of n.illomotors. The height Is takon barefoot. The reach of the' extended arms is registered reg-istered by uso of a "mural graduation gradu-ation whoso contimetrical vertical lines are adapted to oil heights." The torso measurement Is analogous to that of thc full height In tho head measurements tho expert takes maximum dimensions. Caliper Cali-per compasses aro used. Tho length la taken from the hollow at tho root of tho nose to the most prominent pnrt of tho back of tho head. Thc width Is taken just forward for-ward of and slightly above tho cars, Tho right ear measurements are taken on thc maximum axis and Uio soft parts of the car are not RENTER Portrait of Al- phon'se Bertillon. Upper Up-per left Measuring the ear. Upper right Measuring the depth of head. Above right center Measuring length of foot. Below, right center Measuring the height of man sitting. Lower Low-er left Making a photograph. photo-graph. Lower right Measuring Mea-suring middle .finger, v- - going by tho 'figures taken of tho arIous parts, to the exact pocket in a card ihdex file, in which thc criminal's previous measurement and photograph may be reposing. And Bertillon always stood ready to prove that in tho entire world it was Impossible to find a dozen measurements meas-urements alike. Ho allowed for errors er-rors in the figures covering this by a rule of comparison and vitiated such a condition by a system of verbal photography almost as unerring un-erring as the system of measurement measure-ment Itself. This may bo called tho descriptive descrip-tive Bertillon. This he Invented tern for measuring out defects. Thus, all scars, warts, moles, any defect whatever,, are measured and described on tho Bertillon card of ovcry criminal. Bertillon gavo no heed to tho common descriptions. A pug nose, an aquiline probosola did not. appeal to him. Ho drew noses with these descriptions ridges concave, rectilinear, convex; concave-slnuo.usj rectilinear sinuous and convex sinuous. The Bertillon oar numbers twenty-four, and he laid -stress on the forehead whether It was receding. Intermediate or vertical. ver-tical. He had noses with the base elevated, horizontal and depressed. Briefly, ho allowed nothing to pass unnoticed that might- leadto the absolute identification of a criminal. He gave Tils system, his classification, classifica-tion, to the photograph system; and strengthened the arm of the- law So per cont The Bertillon system Is not the finger print system. Both are used In thc great police departments of v tho world. One 'aids the othr.' It took Bertillon years and yeafa to perfect his work and more time to, give It in book form to the world. And it to'k him moro time to convince the world of thc wortb of tho discovery. DOUBTING WORLD ,;. HARDEST TO CONVINCE. "You "rnust have had an awful time inventing your system," a friend suggested to him one day. 'Not half as hard a time as' I did to got the world to believe in it," ho roplied. Bertillon was a gracious character. charac-ter. Chief of Detectives Samuel B. Allender asserts Bertillon was one of the greatest men of tho past century. "He performed a duty for tho world which soclctj- should recognize recog-nize substantially," said Chief Allender. Al-lender. Once Bertillon was asked ,to write an article on "The Gentleman Gentle-man Burglar." He wrote tho article. So far as thp subject was concerned It was brief. "Thoro Is no such thing," he wrote. Bertillon made ono mistake in ( ? .1111 JJ-V. )"artment. Under his direct supervision super-vision rested the proper classification classifica-tion of more than 200,000 criminals and Upon his shoulders rested tho rponsibillty of being ablo to lden-& lden-& Uly any or every one uf these at moment's call. And an Identification Identifi-cation in thc old countries, particularly partic-ularly France, means much moro 'than we consider it here. It must L be an Identification without tho I fishiest particlo of doubt. And in ytbesb daj-s of aliases, fast travel and heterogeneous population, day ?l tcr day, tho task was herculean. i-ct Bertillon made it- easy and his Work has given tho t-ntire world r a& absolute control of tho criminal Xi situation. Craft cannot measure g against the science of anthropology and.'lto proper measurements. And t tlie world owes Alphonse Bertillon 4ue devoir for this. TKLEVEN MEASUREMENTS 3 rAKEN OF CRIMINALS. ? Tho Bertillon system Is" generally 2 Understood to mean a rcesuremcnt f ALL parts of tho body. Not so. i hcre are but eleven measurements rini there Is likelihood of error In tlieae. But Bertillon covered those-I those-I Possibilities with so much that tho . Question of error is now not even 'i "tested. The Bertillon system rorks with tho photograph. But iivii ,nvntor of this modo asks his Isclplca to analyze each photo-f photo-f SraPh given of a criminal, learn Its J every nnei overy mark, reproduce Lu In the memory so that it be-P'omes be-P'omes a verbal portrait For, as rUlibn was wont to quote: Is taken with a largo callpor rule on tho big toe sido. Tho mlddlo and littlo fingers of tho right hand aro measured at right angles from the joint at thc back of tho hand by means of small branches of tho caliper. The left foroarm is measured from the point of tho elbow el-bow to thc extremity of tho middlo finger, tho forearm being bout at an acuto angle with tho arm and hand extended fiat on tho table, palm down. Bertillon classified these measurements measure-ments or descriptions. Ho narrowed nar-rowed thc figures down to n science so that where a man was onco measured, It Is tho simplest thing In tho world for tho operator to take the second figures, trace down by V t though he guaranteed, years ago. that In tho anthrometrical file of 90.000 methodically classified adult descriptions in the Paris Bertillon department, It was impossible to find an exact duplicate .within ' a millimeter. Tho average human boing speaks of eyes as gray, brown, black or bluo. Bertillon gave to tho pollco of tho world a chart for tho description de-scription of tho eyes alono and in this thoro aro forty-two combinations. combina-tions. This in addition to defects. Ho built around his favorlto adago that "Nature makes no leaps"' and so ho furnished each Bertillon operator op-erator with charts of the nose, forehead, fore-head, oars and other parts of the body, together with rules and a s,ys- his life. He was called as an expert ex-pert on handwriting by tho prosecutors prose-cutors of Captain Drayfus during that memorable French Army scan- ( day and, as nn expert, ho recog- nlzed certain specimens of handwriting hand-writing as that of tho accused roan. This had a great deal -to do with tho conviction. Later, when developments, de-velopments, confessions and sul- , cides proved these documents to havo boon forgeries, tho storm descended de-scended almost to the door of Ber-. Ber-. tlllon. His sincerity and great j worth alone preserved him. Bertillon was a man o medium size. Mo was perhaps 5 feet S Inches tail, had a light clear eye, dark' well trimmed hair and a small Van Dyke beard. . s V't . : .. .' ' - 'VW''. .. .... 1 |