Recognized HTML document
Previous Index Next

144   Life and Letters of Francis Galton

A serious mis-statement more or less frequently made was that Bertillon who ultimately adopted the finger-print system of identification had initiated it. This pained Galton extremely, because he actually introduced Bertillon to the method, but the latter at the time feared practical difficulties such as the want of education in his employees. Bertillon's letter of June 15, 1891, in a reply to a letter of Galton's suggesting that he should try the system, has luckily been preserved. The essential paragraph runs as follows


"Je vous remercie de votre nouvel envoi relativement aux impressions digitales. Je suis fort dispose a ajouter votre procede au signalement anthropometrique surtout pour les enfants. Mais je redoute quelques difficultes pratiques pour le nettoyage des doigts apres l'impression faite, etc. Puis mes agents si peu instruits mettront-ils le zele necessaire pour apprendre votre methode? Je crois que vous traversez souvent Paris, pourriez-vous, a votre prochain voyage, me consacrer une matinee au Depot, pour un essayage sur la vile multitude?"


The words "votre procede" and "votre m4thode" clearly indicate that Bertillon was fully aware, of the originator of this process of criminal investigation. Notwithstanding, even as late as 1896, in the English translation of Bertillon's Instructions signaletiques, the date of the introduction of the prints of the thumb and three fingers of the right hand into the French schedule for the criminal is given as 1884, instead of 1894, and "conveys the idea that the use of finger-prints in Paris is much older than it really is, and previous instead of subsequent, to its use in England*." The 1893 edition of Bertillon's Identification Anthropometrique, Instructions signaletiques has no reference to finger-prints. It is still over-confident as to the infallibility of bertillonage f . Galton claimed neither finality nor infallibility for his methods ; as to finger-print identification he found_ it a suggestion and he left it an art.

In 1905 M. Bertillon wrote in reply to a question of Dr Faulds:


"Les impressions digitales a Paris sont adjointes au signalement anthropometrique depuis l'annee 1894. J'ajoute que noun nous en trouvons fort bien. Quoique nous n'ayons jamais fait d'identification erronee antierement nous sommes encore mieux garantis, si possible, en cc qui regarde l'avenir." (Guide to Finger-Print Identification, pp. 4-5.)

See Nature, Vol. LIV, p. 569, where there is a review by Galton of the Signaletic Instructions, emphasising the superiority of the English finger-print system and direct indexing of the prints to the French anthropometric system or "bertillonage." Galton therein prophesies what has since come to pass, that the former would ultimately supplant the latter completely.

j- "L'absolu de nos affirmations dans les questions d'identite, et notamment dans les cas plus difficiles d'identification entre deux photographies, etonne encore les fonctionnaires de la police on de l'ordre judiciaire auxquels une longue pratique n'a pas deja enseigne cc qu'on appelle au Palais notre infaillibilite. Nous nous devions a nous-meme de demontrer que le peremptoire habituel de nos reponses ne resultait pas d'un temperament risque-tout, mais etait la consequence raisonnee de la combinaison de divers procedes dont 1'application, quand elle en a ete correctement faite, ne laisse pas la moindre place a l'indecision.

"Puisse le present volume satisfaire a cc programme et contribuer ainsi a assurer la survi vance de la methode dont nous sommes a la fois et L'IN VENTEUR EXCLUSIF ET PARTOUT UN PEU L'ORGANISATEUR " (pp. x-xi). Capitals in original. Galton's view was that bertillonage could not be infallible owing to. the high correlations of many of its measurements which its creator neglected,


Previous Index Next