Word: bertillon
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Author Thorwald considers his sub ject in four tidy divisions. ∙ CRIMINAL IDENTIFICATION, the funda mental problem of detection, began to be a science in 1879, when Alphonse Bertillon introduced a system of anthropometry involving some eleven bodily measurements of each criminal. Fingerprinting, long a form of signature in the Orient, was introduced to Europe by Britain's William Herschel, and it had to compete with anthropometry until 1904, when two prisoners at Fort Leavenworth were found to have identi cal features, practically identical anthropometric measurements and identical names: Will West. Only their fingerprints were different, and within seven...
...wordplay, both criminal and legal. An Englishman kicked off his boots on the gallows to disprove his mother's prophecy that he would die in them; a British judge, asked why he dubbed a certain barrister "Necessity," answered: "Because he knows no law." It corrects popular misconceptions: Bertillon, far from creating fingerprint identifications, was skeptical of their value. It shows how greatly writers can misconceive: Conan Doyle protested that developing character in detective stories could only endanger the plot. Perhaps its most unforgettable statement is a sentence concerning Scotland's High Court of Justiciary. "The maximum penalty which...