Left Middle Finger Measurement.
The description of heads range in 14 (head) classes, being reckoned from A to Z. The middle fingers have three classes; forearm, three classes; height, three classes, and the little finger, three classes. Only one millimetre or 1-25th of an inch is allowed as the difference between the measurements of any two operators of the Bertillon system in the “bony lengths” of the body. This is so infinitesimal that a measurement taken in France, England, the United States or in Russia by different operators will discover the prisoner, no matter where he may be, and there is no escape unless it be the grave.
The technical terms used in the description of scars or marks are strictly medical. For instance, if a man has a scar on his left breast it is described as recitilnal, vertical, horizontal, inal—such a distance from the median [pg 16] line, and to the right, left, above or below the nipple. Scars on the fingers are described in the same terms, indicating the flange and joint, and so on through all parts of the body,—every mark, cut or bruise being measured in front, from the median line, and in the rear, from the spinal column, as stated.
With reference to the ears, there are certain external features by which scientists assert criminals may be instantly detected. Have you a criminal ear? Dr. D. S. Lamb, at one time curator in charge of the Army Medical Museum, says there is such a thing as a “criminal ear.” Anthropologists have been giving a great deal of study to this matter of late, and their data points to the conclusion that the term “ear-mark” is something more than a mere figure of speech. No one has two ears just alike; all ears are faulty in one way or another, that is, as to size, shape or position, and these organs do not stop growing when the body pauses in its development. At [pg 17] all events, chronic malefactors are apt to be disfigured by certain malformations of that organ. It has been proven that abnormalities in the ear structure are characteristic features of degenerates. Such abnormalities are commonly found in idiots, imbeciles and epileptics, and the prisons contain quite a number of inmates with such ears. The sloping ear is bad; it shows a tendency to reversion to the primitive animal ear which slopes. The great Napoleon, Lord Byron, Henry Clay and Alexander Hamilton had sloping ears. Another objectionable type is the “wing ear,” which projects wing-like from the head. This type of ear is said to indicate a tendency towards degeneracy; are found in one individual out of every five among sane persons, in two out of five among the insane and in three out of every five in criminals, occurring twice as often among men as among women.
Criminal Ear.
Right Ear and Trunk Measurements.
Considering all available data, it appears that ape-like traits, monkey-ancestry being commonly exhibited, are found far less frequently in the ears of women than in men. This fact would seem to prove that our female race has progressed the farthest from the ancestral type. By carefully feeling with the thumb inside of the edge [pg 18] of the ear and a little behind the top a very small lump of cartilage will be found, as if a foreign body had become imbedded in the tissue. This is a remnant of what was originally the tip of the ear, when hundreds of thousands of years ago that organ in our remote ancestors had a point on it. Among men of note,—statesmen, scientists, politicians, etc., it occurs less frequently by about ten per cent. The so-called “Darwinian tubercle” appears, as stated, less frequently in women than in men, and is unmistakably a trait reverting to the ape. Certain it is that no part of the body can be identified with greater accuracy than by the ears. Your own, for example, are not matched exactly by any other pair in the world; there are differences which are shown beyond the possibility of mistake, by careful measurements, as applied in the Bertillon system. In nine out of every ten persons the ear-lobe runs into the flesh of the cheek without any perceptible division between. Experts term this the “confluent lobule,” and it also is found more often in women than in men. It is said to occur in 92 per cent of the sane and in 47 per cent of the insane. The most remarkable feature in regard to the criminal ear, if it can be so called, is the prominence of the raised area just inside the outer edge, the outer edge being termed the “helix” and the part referred to the “anti-helix.” It appears that the overdevelopment of this portion of the aural structure is particularly characteristic of criminals.