Stéphane Place 09:24, February 16, 2023
An exhibition currently taking place at the Departmental Archives of Gironde allows visitors to discover the life and technical inventions of Alphonse Bertillon, father of the scientific police.
Between the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century, this criminologist invented many techniques to identify criminals.
He was the first to solve a murder case thanks to small fingerprints.
Alphonse Bertillon is the star of an exhibition in Bordeaux, called "Science in pursuit of crime".
The opportunity to discover many period documents, photos that came to feed the police records, but also the instruments used for Bertillonnage.
The inventor of forensic science
"I'm getting to know his work. I was already unaware of all this and I find it very interesting", comments Hélène, a visitor, who has followed in the footsteps of the father of forensic science, Alphonse Bertillon.
It was he who, between the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, invented techniques for identifying criminals.
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"He invented a method of identifying people and forensic anthropometry, face profile photography, the statement of particular marks... He also invests in something else very interesting: the crime scene", explains Pierre Piazza, academic, author of "Meurtres à la une" on the daily life of crime in 1900 and the curator of this exhibition.
The limits of Bertillonnage
A method and tools used everywhere in France and in the world, and which can be observed in this exhibition.
"Bertillon invents a briefcase, with measurement compasses, a whole system for taking fingerprints and a card to establish the color of the iris of individuals. And then we have measurement furniture", explains Pierre Piazza.
"We think for example of the members of the Bonnot gang who passed under this height gauge."
An exhibition, to be discovered until April 2, which also recounts all the controversies over the registration of the population that Bertillonnage very quickly aroused.