Crimes of Paris_ A True Story of Murder, Theft, and Detection - Dorothy Hoobler [72]
Finally, a new prefect of police took Andrieux’s place, and Bertillon’s father once more used his connections to introduce his son’s plan. The prefect, a man named Jean Camecasse, listened to Alphonse’s explanation. Unfortunately, Bertillon could not refrain from explaining the relationship between demography and etymological classifications and its importance in identifying recidivists. In his customary fashion, the discourse grew long and complex.
Camecasse shrugged. The young man’s father had connections, so it would be best to humor him. “We must be practical here,” Camecasse reminded Alphonse. “We are not scientists, who can afford the luxury of experimenting without result.” 11 Bertillon must have bitten his tongue. Still, Camecasse gave Bertillon three months to prove that his system could in fact identify a prisoner who had previously been arrested. Camecasse did not want to appear unreasonable; he assigned two clerks to assist Bertillon in taking the measurements and recording them on the new cards. (Apparently, he also looked the other way when Bertillon added an irregular volunteer to his small force: Amélie.)
Three months was not a long time. To prove the value of his system, Bertillon had to hope that some malefactor would be arrested not only once but twice during that ninety-day span. Amélie urged him not to lose heart; she was confident he would succeed.
Still, his mood was gloomy late one afternoon in February 1883. Two months had passed, more than a thousand men and women had been measured after having been taken into custody, but as far as Bertillon could determine, no one had appeared on his cards twice. As if to mock him, seven of the men arrested that day had given their name as Dupont — for some reason an alias that was in vogue in Paris at that time. After measuring the seventh man, however, Bertillon’s memory clicked: the prisoner seemed familiar. Of course, he might have seen the man anywhere, but even his measurements rang a bell in Bertillon’s mind. Length of head 187 millimeters, width 156 millimeters.… He went to the card file and began to trace his way through the system, finally reaching a drawer with some fifty cards in it, all with the same approximate measurements as Dupont no. 7. Bertillon began to flip through them until he reached one with exactly the same measurements. On the original card the prisoner had given his name as Martin, but he was undeniably the same as the Dupont now in custody.
Confronted, Dupont at first denied that he had been arrested before. (The reason that Dupont was now on the street again was that his previous offense was so trivial that he had received no jail time: he had been caught stealing empty bottles.) He hoped to evade jail once again, as first-time offenders often did. Bertillon pointed out that his measurements were identical to those of the man arrested for stealing bottles. Dupont said it was a coincidence, so Bertillon showed him the photograph on the earlier card. There was no denying that similarity, and Dupont/Martin confessed.
It was the success Bertillon had hoped for. He could hardly wait to tell those few who had believed in him: Amélie and his father, who was now living in the countryside at Neuilly. When Bertillon visited him, he found that his father’s health was rapidly failing. Louis-Adolphe rallied a bit on hearing that his wayward son had at last accomplished something, but a full recovery was beyond him, and Bertillon and his brother, Jacques, were at the old man’s bedside when he died. Before passing, Louis-Adolphe told his sons, “I have always been in search of truth. You, my dear boys, must do the same.” 12
At the prefecture in Paris, skeptics still argued that the success Bertillon had proclaimed might have been merely a fluke. When Camecasse extended the time of the system