As Alphonse Karr said to his friend:

66 Make you the tour of the world, I will make the tour of my garden.

"What are you going to see abroad? How proud you will be in your first letter to tell me you have seen women tattooed and painted in diverse colours, with rings in their noses.

"And I will answer you: 'Well, my good friend, what occasion was there for going so far? Why did you go further than two streets from your own house? There was nothing to prevent your looking at your sister-in-law, who, after the example of a hundred other women you are acquainted with, puts pearl white and rouge upon her brow and cheeks, black upon her eyelids, blue to increase the apparent fulness of her veins, and passes rings through her ears in the same manner that savage women pass them through their noses. Pray, why is it more strange to pierce one cartilage than another? Can the difference be worth going so far to see?'"

So writes Alphonse Karr, and this is the true spirit of the philosopher.'

1 Alphonse Karr, A Tour round my Garden, edited by Rev. J. G. Wood, 1865, p. 9.

THE STUDY OF MAN

CHAPTER I

MEASUREMENTS AND THEIR IMPORTANCE IN ANTHROPOLOGY

N°

science can progress or be definite without measure

ments of one sort or another. What, then, are those made in anthropological inquiries, and for what purposes are they made?

Speaking generally, we may roughly class anthropological measuring into three groups:

1. As a means of analysis and classification.

2. As a test of efficiency.

3. For identification of individuals.

(1) The Identification of Criminals.-Let us commence with the least important from a scientific point of viewthat for the recognition of individuals. People whom it is necessary to recognise with such precision are generally those who are wanted by the police.

Few of us probably have ever so much as given a thought to the subject of the identification of criminals, but a little reflection will lead to the conclusion that this is really an important problem. In this, as in so many other matters

relating to criminology, the British are far behind some foreign nations.

In

The methods hitherto adopted by our Government have been inadequate, and, consequently, largely ineffectual, although a very successful system of criminal identification has been in operation in France for a dozen years. 1895, however, a fresh departure was made, and Dr. Garson, the well-known anthropologist, was appointed by the Government to take charge of a new department in England for the identification of criminals.

It will be obvious that a precise method of identification not only expedites justice and saves expense, but at the same time it is a safeguard to the prisoner, preventing him from being punished for the crimes of others.

The identification by means of measurements was inaugurated in Paris towards the close of 1882, according to the methods advocated by M. Alphonse Bertillon in 1879. This system has been extended to the whole of France by M. Herbette, Director of the Penitentiary Department.'

The subject we are about to consider is a method by which habitual criminals may be recognised who give a false name or refuse to give one at all.

An old offender, once more in the hands of the law for some fresh offence that he has committed, has every reason for wishing to conceal his real name or the name under which he has been previously convicted. He sometimes takes the name of a person who has never been accused of any offence. He thus escapes the heavier punishment which

44

'Cf. English translation of an address, given by M. Louis Herbette, at the International Penitentiary Congress at Rome, November, 1885, Melun, Administrative Printing, 1887; also A. Bertillon, Notice sur le Fonctionnement du Service d'Identification de la Préfecture de Police," Ann. Stat, de la Ville de Paris, 1887 (1889); and F. J. Mouat, "Notes on M. Bertillon's Discourse on the Anthropometric Measurement of Criminals," Journ. Anth. Inst., xx., 1890, p. 182.

usually follows a second conviction. A large number of these professional criminals are wanted for other offences than those for which they are actually in custody, or they have very sufficient reasons for thinking that they are wanted by the police for some previous offence of which they have been guilty. Criminals do not scruple to interchange names amongst themselves, though by preference they assume those of honest men; some even assume the names of those whom they have at some previous time robbed. It so happens that in France criminals, as a rule, no longer give aliases, but are eager to give their own names, as they do not wish to appear to have anything to hide. Further, owing to the certainty of this method of identification, English pickpockets left Paris in large numbers, so that in about three years the convictions were reduced from sixty-five to nineteen. Criminals arrested in foreign countries have still greater facilities for deceiving.

The usual descriptions which generally accompany the international exchange of judicial records-" chin round, face oval, eyes grey," etc.-have never led to the recognition of criminals, save in the realms of romance.

Photographs are certainly preferable to descriptions of any kind, but photography solves only a part of our problem. The experiment tried in Paris has clearly demonstrated this. In the course of ten years the police made a collection of the photographs of 100,000 persons. Is it possible to search through these 100,000 photographs whenever an arrest is made? Clearly not. But, after all, the assistance rendered by photography is very small. A vast experience in human physiognomy is required to recognise in many of these photographs that they are the portrait of the same person taken at different times and under different conditions. As a matter of fact, photography is hardly of any use, and is now employed in Paris only as a subsidiary