Bertillonage and Criminal Anthropology in Bucharest, 1893
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Rom J Leg Med [26] 209-211 [2018] DOI: 10.4323/rjlm.2018.209 © 2018 Romanian Society of Legal Medicine FORENSIC PSYCHIATRY Bertillonage and criminal anthropology in Bucharest, 1893 Octavian Buda1, Irinela-Nina Ceapă2,*, Andrei Kozma3 _________________________________________________________________________________________ Abstract: In 1893 Mina Minovici published an anthropometric atlas with criminal offenders, including a collection of mug shots taken in Bucharest. The photographs were not only one of the first mug shots taken in Romania, but among the first in Europe. This historical note provides an insight into the origins of modern forensic medicine advances in Romania, and to the contemporary personalities in European criminal anthropology and anthropometric research. Key Words: Mina Minovici, Bertillon’s system, mug shot, anthropometry, Romania. A professional shift in legal medicine in Romania medical and social concepts of his mentor, Brouardel, also starts with 1890, and it is linked to the influential personality called “Le Génie Sanitaire”. Not only legal medicine was of Professor Mina Minovici (1857-1933). Minovici stayed promoted by the French professor, but also hygienism: in Paris during 1885-1888, obtaining a doctoral degree in more precisely, the complex issue of urban development forensic traumatology in Paris with Paul Brouardel (1837- on the one hand and the quality of sanitary services on 1906) and in toxicology with Jules Ogier (1853-1913). the other. Shortly before Minovici came to Paris, starting In 1892, Minovici inaugurated in Bucharest a morgue, 1884, Brouardel led the Advisory Committee on Public equipped with tools for the operations that a forensic doctor Hygiene in France, linked to the authority of the Minister would perform but also for practical study and education of the Interior: Brouardel was a kind of unofficial Minister of legal medicine. The institute had storage rooms of of Health. Social hygiene as a profession grew alongside exposure for refrigerating and conserving the corpses social work and other public health movements of the brought for the expertise, autopsy rooms, photographic era. Social hygienists emphasized for example, sexual laboratory, microscopy laboratory, toxicology, pathology, continence and strict self-discipline as a solution to an installation for physiological experiences, an installation societal ills, marginalization, by tracing prostitution, drug for radiotelegraphy, an amphitheatre, a museum of forensic use, drug and alcohol deaths, and illegitimacy to rapid and criminal pathology and also a large library. All in one, urbanization [2, 3]. a state of the art modern Institute [1]. Bertillonage and criminal anthropology played During the 19th century, legal medicine became by end the 19th century a major role and Mina Minovici part of a larger medical agenda, which included the as the director of the Medico-Legal Institute in Bucharest, establishment of public institutions and asylums, public led the Anthropometry Service of the Romanian Police health reforms and social legislation, and ultimately law Prefecture, which he organized alongside the same system regulations regarding forensic practice. designed by Alphonse Bertillon, a vital aid in detecting Minovici would be influenced directly by the offenders. 1) “Carol Davila” University of Medicine and Pharmacy, “Mina Minovici” National Institute of Legal Medicine, Bucharest, Romania 2) “Carol Davila” University of Medicine Pharmacy, Bucharest, Romania * Corresponding author: E-mail: [email protected] 3) “Alessandrescu - Rusescu” National Institute of Mother and Child Health, Commission of Anthropology of Romanian Academy, Bucharest, Romania 209 Buda O. et al. Bertillonage and criminal anthropology in Bucharest, 1893 In 1893, Minovici published an anthropometric anthropometry, called “Bertillon system”, quickly adopted judiciary catalogue (with over 6,200 delinquents) in throughout Europe, then in the United States, and used in Bucharest, one of the first such scientific endeavours in France until 1970. Europe, thereby contributing to the creation of a modern The Bertillon method is based on the calculation criminal service that first allowed the identification of those that taking fourteen measurements - height, length of the recidivists they left the localities where they committed feet, hand, ear, forearm, bridge of the nose, eye distance, etc. crimes. Bertillonage, a system for the identification of on any individual, using a vernier calliper and, for cranial criminals making use of anthropometric measurements surveys, a cephalic forceps. There is only one chance out of - including head size, arm span, scars, distinguishing 300 million to find the same measures in another individual. features and the like, has been extended to encompass Before bertillonage, only detainee spies - and the so-called a means of prevention of criminality and antisocial “physiognomers” could identify particular recidivists. behaviour. French criminologist Alphonse Bertillon Mina Minovici received special acknowledgments for his (1853-1914) is the founder, in 1882, of the first criminal work on anthropometry from Rudolph Archibald Reiss identification police laboratory and the creator of judicial (1875-1929) founder of the Institute of Forensic Science (“Institut de police scientifique”) at the University of Lausanne in 1909 [4]. The anthropometric atlas published by Minovici in 1893, contains photographic plates. These are original photos, not typographical reprints. The photos are attached directly to the paper. This suggests that it was a very limited edition, just very few are known in Bucharest. Each photo depicts a specific mug shot, a photographic portrait of a person from the waist up, typically taken after a person is The Bertillon Laboratory at the Bucharest Forensic Institute, 1920s. Mug Shot of Alphonse Bertillon (1912). The Anthropometry Service of the Romanian Police Prefecture. Mug Shot of Mina Minovici (1899). 210 Romanian Journal of Legal Medicine Vol. XXVI, No 2(2018) arrested. Presumably, Minovici used the collodion process, Mina Minovici had on the theme of the origin introduced a half-century before in 1851; a negative- of crime, a series of conceptual disputes with the creator positive process using silver salt impregnated collodion on of criminal anthropology, Cesare Lombroso (1835- a glass surface. This was an enhanced method compared 1909) from Torino. Minovici was one of his first social with the early calotype, introduced in 1841 by William H. theorists opponents. The Italian scholar, who made the Fox Talbot. Photographing of criminals began in the 1840s idea of biological typology an intrinsic cause of the crime, only a few years after the invention of photography, but argued that essentially the physical characteristics of the it was not until 1888 that French police officer Alphonse criminal individual are the basic indicators of biological Bertillon standardized the process. The Romanian degeneration and antisocial behavior. Minovici argued atlas from 1893, is similar, in printing technique to an that the very convenient practical and functional aspect early ‘Photographic Atlas of the Main Types of Mental of the Lombrosian positivist school theory appealed to Alienation’, published by Nicholas Chernbach in 1870. politicians and jurists: the visibility of the crime and the From 1869 to 1870, Chernbach had been assistant doctor knowledge of its causes constitute a considerable asset, both at the Marcutza Lunatic Asylum in Bucharest and had in judging and adapting to each type of criminal a crime collected 12 plates depicting mentally ill patients [5]. to an “adequate” punishment. Like his contemporaries The anthropometric atlas opens with a one-page in Lyon, Alexandre Lacassagne, Minovici focused on his foreword by Minovici. He writes that modernization at forensic assessment to the study of personality disorders social level requires such an identification work: “the lack and criminogenic social environment. He opposed of a Judiciary Criminal Record in our country makes the criminal anthropology to social prevention based on the criminal procedure applied in a slow and often defective science of law and forensic psychiatry [7, 8]. way. Every day we have individuals with fleeting residence Lombroso initiated a series of international before our courts, over which we have no antecedents, apart congresses of criminal anthropology by the end of the 19th from what they themselves are willing to tell us […]. How century, with massive attendance, and animated by heated can a trained judge, when he is burdened with a sum of controversy. Two of these congresses that of Brussels in works, learn about the criminal past of an offender? This is 1892 and Geneva in 1896, were “recorded” by Minovici a problem that must be solved by the Judiciary Records in with painstaking accuracy. The presentations of all our country, as it exists in all civilized states”. Minovici is participants were published by the Romanian professor in aware about the fact that changing a name of a criminal Bucharest [9, 10]. As a matter of fact, criminal anthropology is a judicial challenge; however anthropometry does offer became a science that eventually was “disassembled” in precise identification. The atlas is actually a sort of a mug the 20th century in several disciplines: forensic psychiatry, book, a collection of photographs of criminals, typically criminology, forensics, sociology of crime, etc. [11]. in shots taken at the