Sherlock Holmes: Pioneer in Forensic Science

Holmes may have admired Bertillon’s work, but that did not prevent him from being resentful about it in The Hound of the Baskervilles (HOUN). When Dr. James Mortimer told Holmes that Bertillon was the highest expert in Europe, Holmes admitted that he was off ended by the ranking. So who was this man held in such high regard? Alphonse Bertillon was a French anthropologist born in 1853. His poor academic performance was followed by difficulty holding a job. In 1879, his influential father Louis, a famous physician and anthropologist, obtained a job for him as a clerk with the Parisian police (Wagner 2006, 97–98). He started work in March 1879, and became interested in the problem of identifying recidivists, that is, repeat off enders. It was French policy to exile recidivists to their colonies (Cole 2001, 33). But there was no procedure for identifying them. Fingerprinting did not exist, and even mug shots were not yet used. Upon a second arrest, recidivists would merely use a pseudonym. Bertillon wanted to develop a system of identification based on ideas mentioned in 1840 by a Belgian statistician named Quetelet (Wagner 2006, 98). Bertillon found his job with the police to be very boring, as he collected and filed much information, most of it never used again and worthless. So, on October 1, 1879 (Cole 2001, 49), he submitted a report proposing a method of identification using body measurements. The report was ignored (Wagner 2006, 98). Louis Bertillon liked his son’s suggestion. Louis had in fact attempted to classify people, not identify them, by measuring the lengths of their bones. So he was naturally attracted to Alphonse’s idea to use such measurements to identify criminals (Cole 2001, 34). In 1882, with help from his influential father, Alphonse Bertillon was given two assistants and some funding. He was given three months to identify a repeat offender. He succeeded with one week remaining.