CHAPTER XVII. Anthropometric Laboratories

ANTHROPOMETRIC LABORATORIES

Laboratory at the International Health Exhibition—That in the Science Gallery, South Kensington—New instruments—Finger-prints adopted by the Home Office—Letter from M. Alphonse Bertillon

My inquiries into hereditary genius, of which I shall speak in a later chapter, were sufficiently advanced before the year 1865 to show the pressing necessity of obtaining a multitude of exact measurements relating to every measurable faculty of body or mind, for two generations at least, on which to theorise. I therefore set myself to work in many directions towards achieving this object, in some cases for immediate use, in others to bear fruit hereafter.

The first attempt was to stimulate schools to weigh and measure, which was successful at Marlborough College, through the aid of the then Headmaster, Dr. Farrar, afterwards Archdeacon of Westminster, and later still Dean of Canterbury, who was enthusiastic about all improvements. Subsequently, I wrote an article in the Fortnightly Review, March 1882, beginning with, “When shall we have Anthropometric Laboratories, where a man may from time to time get himself and his children weighed, measured, and rightly photographed, and have each of their bodily faculties tested, by the best methods known to modern science?” I went on to describe what could be done in this way by existing methods, and what more it was desirable to have.

Francis Galton]

When the International Exhibition of 1884 was under consideration, I offered to equip and maintain a Laboratory there, if a suitable place were given, the woodwork set up, and the security of it taken off my hands. This was done, and I arranged a long narrow enclosure with trellis-work, in front and at its ends. A table ran alongside the trellis-work on which the instruments were placed and where the applicants were tested, and a passage was left between the table and the wall. This gave a quasi-privacy, while it enabled outsiders to see a little of what was going on inside. A doorkeeper stationed at one end admitted a single applicant at a time, who had to pay threepence. The superintendent took him through the tests in turn, and dismissed him at the other end with his schedule filled up. Sometimes I helped him; then two persons could be tested together, the one a little in advance of the other. The arrangement worked smoothly, and the Laboratory was seldom unemployed.

The measurements dealt with Keenness of Sight and of Hearing; Colour Sense, Judgment of Eye; Breathing Power; Reaction Time; Strength of Pull and of Squeeze; Force of Blow; Span of Arms; Height, both standing and sitting; and Weight. The ease of working the instruments that were used was so great that an applicant could be measured in all these respects, a card containing the results furnished him, and a duplicate made and kept for statistical purposes, at the total cost of the threepenny fee, already described, for admission. That just defrayed the working expenses.

It is by no means easy to select suitable instruments for such a purpose. They must be strong, easily legible, and very simple, the stupidity and wrong-headedness of many men and women being so great as to be scarcely credible. I used at first the instrument commonly employed for testing the force of a blow. It was a stout deal rod running freely in a tube, with a buffer at one end to be hit with the fist and pressing against a spring at the other. An index was pushed by the rod as far as it entered the tube in opposition to the spring. I found no difficulty whatever in testing myself with it, but before long a man had punched it so much on one side, instead of hitting straight out, that he broke the stout deal rod. It was replaced by an oaken one, but this too was broken, and some wrists were sprained.

I afterwards contrived, and used in a subsequent Laboratory, a pretty arrangement that gave the swiftness, though not the force of the blow, with absolute safety, and which could be used for other limbs than the arm. The hand held a thread, the other end of which was tied to an elastic band, capable of pulling it back faster than any human hand could follow; so the hand always retarded its movement. Its speed was shown by the height to which a bead, actuated by the string (it is needless to explain details), was tossed up in front of a scale. This never failed, and was perfectly easy to manipulate.

The observations made in this Laboratory were of great use to me later on. Four hundred complete sets are published in the Anthropometric Inst. Journal 1884, and afford good material for future use in many ways.

Among other instruments that I contrived then or subsequently, were small whistles with a screw plug, for determining the highest audible note, the limit of which varies much in different persons and at different ages. A parcel of schoolboys might interchange very shrill and loud whistles quite inaudibly to an elderly master. I found them to produce marked effects on cats, and made many experiments at a house where I often stayed, in which my bedroom window overlooked a garden much frequented by them. My plan was to watch near the open window, and when a cat appeared and had become quite unsuspicious and absorbed, to sound one of these notes inaudible to most elderly persons. The cat was round in a minute. I noticed the quickness and precision with which these animals direct their eyes to the source of sound. It is not so with dogs.

I contrived a hollow cane made like a walking stick, having a removable whistle at its lower end, with an exposed indiarubber tube under its curved handle. Whenever I squeezed the tube against the handle, air was pushed through the whistle. I tried it at nearly all the cages in the Zoological Gardens, but with little result of interest, except that it certainly annoyed some of the lions. I have often met with persons who perceived no purely audible sound when very high notes were sounded, but who experienced a peculiar feeling of discomfort which I have occasionally felt myself. This, I think, was the case with some of the lions, who turned away and angrily rubbed their ears with their paws, just as the persons of whom I have spoken often did with their hands.

It was difficult to find a simple machine that would register the length of Reaction Time—that is, the interval between a Stimulus and the Response to it, say between a sharp sound and the pressure of a responding finger on a key. I first used one of Exner’s earlier instruments, but it took too much time, so I subsequently made one with a pendulum. The tap that released the pendulum from a raised position made the required sound,—otherwise it made a quiet sight-signal, whichever was wished,—and the responding finger caused an elastic thread parallel to the pendulum and swinging with it to be clutched and held fast, in front of a scale, graduated to ⅟₁₀₀ths of a second. This acted well; there was no jar from seizing the elastic thread, and the adjustments gave no trouble.

For testing the Muscular Sense, I used cartridges packed evenly with cotton wool and with shot, so as to be exactly alike on the outsides but of different weights. The weights ran in a regular geometric series, and were broken up into sets of three. Each set lay in a grooved square of wood, in any order; the test was to arrange them by the sense of their heaviness, in their proper order, as shown by the inscriptions at one end of each. This method acted quickly, because it was easy to judge by the sometimes hesitating, sometimes decided manner in which a particular set was handled, whether or no the differences were clearly perceived, and to substitute others in turn more appropriate to the acuteness of sense of the person tested.

One hears so much about the extraordinary sensitivity of the blind, that I was glad of an opportunity of testing a large number of children in an asylum. The nature of the test was fully explained to them, and that the most successful ones were to receive a sweetmeat. It was evident that all did their best, but their performances fell distinctly short of those of ordinary persons. I found afterwards a marked correlation between at least this form of sensitiveness and general ability.

After the Health Exhibition was closed in 1885, it seemed a pity that the Laboratory should also come to an end, so I asked for and was given a room in the Science Galleries of the South Kensington Museum. I maintained a Laboratory there during about six years, and found an excellent man, Sergeant Randal, for its Superintendent. Useful data were obtained from this Laboratory, but I found that it ought to be either in the hands of a trained scientific superintendent, who would be competent to undertake much more refined measurements than mine were intended for, or else that a great many more persons than I could tempt to attend should be roughly measured.

Some few notabilities came, among whom I would especially mention Mr. Gladstone, whose measurements proved very acceptable to Mr. Brock the sculptor, in making a posthumous statue of him for Liverpool. Mr. Gladstone was amusingly insistent about the size of his head, saying that hatters often told him that he had an Aberdeenshire head—“a fact which you may be sure I do not forget to tell my Scotch constituents.” It was a beautifully shaped head, though low, but after all it was not so very large in circumference. Of those persons whom I have mentioned in the foregoing chapters, the heads of William Spottiswoode and Mr. Gassiott were larger round; Professor Sharpey’s was the largest of all. A slight want of symmetry on which Mr. Gladstone laid stress was no peculiarity at all, for the heads of normal persons are rarely quite symmetrical.

The “Measurement of Resemblance” between portraits is a subject on which I have been engaged off and on during late years, and which I hope to take up again. The best of my ideas at present is to prepare a strip of card one inch broad and printed with numerals of various standard sizes from 1 to 9. Then to mount the portraits on slides actuated by strings, and to station them at such distances that the interval between the pupils of the eyes and the mouth in each portrait shall be apparently the same as the breadth of the strip. Then to interpose a wedge of tinted glass in front of an eye-hole, and to slide it until the portraits become indistinguishable. In that position to read off the smallest of the standard numbers that is simultaneously legible. I have made many experiments, differing in particulars, and described one of them in Nature, October 4, 1906, which seems to me not so good as the one briefly outlined above.

The chief value to me of the Laboratory during the latter part of the time of its existence, and the reason why I continued it so long, lay in the convenience it afforded for obtaining and testing the value of finger-prints. My interest in them arose through a request to give a Friday evening lecture at the Royal Institution (which was delivered May 25, 1888) on what is briefly called “Bertillonage”; that is, on the system devised by M. Alphonse Bertillon for identifying persons by the measurements of their bodily dimensions. The subject was attracting much interest at the time, and had received a great deal of off-hand newspaper praise. There was, however, a want of fulness in the published accounts of it, while the principle upon which extraordinarily large statistical claims to its quasi-certainty had been founded was manifestly incorrect, so further information was desirable. The incorrectness lay in treating the measures of different dimensions of the same person as if they were independent variables, which they are not. For example, a tall man is much more likely to have a long arm, foot, or finger than a short one. The chances against mistake had been overrated enormously owing to this error; still, the system was most ingenious and very interesting.

I made the acquaintance of M. Bertillon during a short visit to Paris, and had the opportunity of seeing his system at work. Nothing could exceed the deftness of his assistants in measuring the criminals; their methods were prompt and accurate, and all the accompanying arrangements excellently organised. But I had not means of testing its efficiency with closeness, which would have required more time and interference with current work than was permissible. I was nevertheless prepared to give an account at the Royal Institution of what I had seen, but, being desirous of introducing original work of my own, I gave to my lecture the more general title of “Personal Identification and Description”, on which larger subject there was much new to be said.

When thinking over the matter, the fact occurred to my recollection that thumb-marks had not infrequently been spoken and written about, so I inquired into their alleged use, especially by the Chinese. I also wrote a letter to Nature asking for information, which had the important effect of drawing a response from Sir William Herschel, who, as a Commissioner in India, had actually used them in his district, for many years, as a means of preventing personation. But the system fell into disuse after his departure. Sir William gave me every assistance, by forwarding to me both old and modern finger-prints of himself and of others of his family, and in showing his way of making the impressions.

I took up the study very seriously, thinking that finger-prints might prove to be of high anthropological significance, but I may say at once that they are not. I have examined large numbers of persons of different races to our own, as Jews, Basques, Red Indians, East Indians of various origins, Negroes, and a fair number of Chinese. Also persons of very different characters and temperaments, as students of science, students of art, Quakers, notabilities of various kinds, and a considerable number of idiots at Earlswood Asylum, without finding any pattern that was characteristic of any of them. But as I continued working at finger-prints, their importance as a means of identification became more and more obvious, and since my theoretical work on Heredity, Correlation, etc., of which I shall speak further, had not yet “taken on,” there was spare time for inquiry into finger-prints.

I described the results in the above-mentioned lecture so far as they had then been obtained, and subsequently in a more advanced shape in a memoir read before the Royal Society in 1891. It was argued in it that these patterns had a theoretical significance, which has not, I think, even yet been adequately appreciated, which bears on discontinuity in evolution. I showed that the different classes of patterns in finger-prints might be justly compared to different genera. As, however, they had been formed without any aid from natural selection, I concluded that natural selection had no monopoly in moulding genera, but that internal conditions must be quite as important.

I have always believed that the number of positions of stability in every genus must be limited, from which moderate deviations, but not great ones, are possible without causing destruction. There are limits which, if they can be overpassed without disaster, would require a new position of stability in the organisation. Comparatively few intermediate finger-patterns are found between a “loop” and a “whorl,” these representing two different and well-marked genera or positions of stability.

The modern division of views concerning the immediate causes of evolution, whether it be due to the slow accumulation of small factors or else by the sudden mutations of de Vries, are paralleled by those held by the physicists of the fifties on the method by which a glacier adapts itself to its bed, just as if it were a viscous body, which it certainly is not in the ordinary sense of the word. Professor Tyndall ascribed its adaptation of form to a succession of internal crunches and re-freezings; in other words, to successive conditions of stability.

It became gradually clear that three facts had to be established before it would be possible to advocate the use of finger-prints for criminal or other investigations. First, it must be proved, not assumed, that the pattern of a finger-print is constant throughout life. Secondly, that the variety of patterns is really very great. Thirdly, that they admit of being so classified, or “lexiconised,” that when a set of them is submitted to an expert, it would be possible for him to tell, by reference to a suitable dictionary, or its equivalent, whether a similar set had been already registered. These things I did, but they required much labour.

A Committee was appointed by the Home Office to inquire into the different systems of identification that had been adopted or proposed for use with criminals. They visited my Laboratory, and thoroughly inspected what I had to show. It was a great pleasure to work with and for such sympathetic and keen inquirers, but I regretted all the time that my methods were hardly ripe for inspection; still, they were fairly adequate. The result was a Report strongly in favour of their adoption, of which the part that bears on finger-prints is reprinted in my Finger Print Directory.

I had communicated with M. Alphonse Bertillon, suggesting that he should consider the introduction of finger-prints into his own system, but the idea did not commend itself to him. Afterwards I sent him further information on what had been more recently done, to which he answered, on June 15, 1891, that he was much disposed to add my method to his own, especially for persons under age, but he feared practical difficulties, such as in cleaning the fingers after printing from them. Also it was a question whether his assistants, who were but little educated, would be zealous enough to learn a new method. He ended by asking me, on the next occasion when I happened to pass through Paris, to give a morning to his Dépot to experimentalise on the criminals there. It has been stated more than once that the finger-print system was initiated by M. Bertillon, so I have mentioned these historical details, and give his untranslated letter in a footnote. The omitted portion refers to quite another matter, in which he was then assisting me.

I have said that my method was not so fully elaborated as I should have wished when the Committee examined it, so I worked hard at it afterwards, and published the results in 1895 in the book already mentioned, bearing the title of Finger Print Directory, using the term “Directory” in the same sense as in the familiar phrase of “Post Office Directory.” It was an unlucky choice of a word, for its equivalent in French means a Board of Directors, so its title may have misled. This book contained a method of classification far in advance of what I had published before, and is in most essential points the same as that in present use in Scotland Yard.

Sir Edward, then Mr. Henry, when in office in India, came to my Laboratory to learn the finger-print process, and he introduced it first into Bengal, and afterwards throughout India. The Bertillon system did not work at all well there, because measurements had to be taken at many different local centres where accuracy could not be guaranteed. Then Mr. Henry was dispatched to the Cape, where great difficulty had arisen about identification, and he introduced finger-prints there also. After this he was called to England, and soon selected to hold his present important post. From what I have seen during the few visits I have paid to Scotland Yard, the finger-print system answers excellently, and can deal easily with many thousands of sets—certainly with twenty thousand.

I hardly know over how large a part of the world this system is now in use to the exclusion of other methods. It is so in England, India, and Argentina. It is used in connection with measurements in Brazil, Egypt, and many other countries.

It is necessary for its successful employment that the clerks at the central Bureau should be thoroughly acquainted with their work. There is much for them to learn as to the uniform classification of many small groups of often recurring patterns, and in realising what is and what is not essential to identification. Certain changes in the print may wholly depend on the greater or less pressure of the finger. The impression is usually made by what may be described as the crests of the mountain ridges of the pattern; a strong pressure will show the connecting cols as well, so the latter are unimportant. Decipherment is a peculiar art. Gross differences are conspicuous enough to an untrained eye, but even in these a novice may sometimes contrive to make mistakes when an imperfect impression is submitted to him. On the other hand, the art of taking good prints is very easy, and may be learnt in a single lesson by any intelligent and handy man.

Much has been written, but the last word has not been said, on the rationale of these curious papillary ridges; why in one man and in one finger they form whorls and in another loops. I may mention a characteristic anecdote of Herbert Spencer in connection with this. He asked me to show him my Laboratory and to take his prints, which I did. Then I spoke of the failure to discover the origin of these patterns, and how the fingers of unborn children had been dissected to ascertain their earliest stages, and so forth. Spencer remarked that this was beginning in the wrong way; that I ought to consider the purpose the ridges had to fulfil, and to work backwards. Here, he said, it was obvious that the delicate mouths of the sudorific glands required the protection given to them by the ridges on either side of them, and therefrom he elaborated a consistent and ingenious hypothesis at great length.

I replied that his arguments were beautiful and deserved to be true, but it happened that the mouths of the ducts did not run in the valleys between the crests, but along the crests of the ridges themselves. He burst into a good-humoured and uproarious laugh, and told me the famous story which I have heard from each of the other two who were present on the occurrence. Huxley was one of them. Spencer, during a pause in conversation at dinner at the Athenæum, said, “You would little think it, but I once wrote a tragedy.” Huxley answered promptly, “I know the catastrophe.” Spencer declared it was impossible, for he had never spoken about it before then. Huxley insisted. Spencer asked what it was. Huxley replied, “A beautiful theory, killed by a nasty, ugly little fact.”