As previously mentioned, even with photography it could be difficult for law enforcement to know after an arrest if they had an experienced criminal on their hands deserving twenty years in the slammer or a first-time offender who could reform and go on to lead an upstanding life.

In 1879, French criminologist Alphonse Bertillon, a former records clerk for the Paris police, developed a system that addressed this challenge by cataloguing human characteristics that couldn’t be changed by dropping twenty pounds, changing a beard to a goatee or going from a blond to a redhead.

The Bertillon system was based on the idea that no two people could be exactly alike and that measuring their body parts would be the best way to catalog their unique characteristics and identify them later. Bertillon’s measurements included:

• Head length
• Head breadth
• Length of the middle finger
• Length of the left foot
• Length of the “cubit” (forearm from elbow to middle fingertip)
• Shape of the ears, eyebrows, mouth, and eyes
• Tattoos and scars

You can learn how to use Bertillon’s system from a guide published in 1889- posted HERE (you’ll have to “borrow” the book from archive.org but it is free).