Definition
The systematic measurement of the human body — its dimensions, proportions, facial angles, skeletal structure, and physical features — for purposes of identification, classification, or comparison. In legal and forensic contexts, anthropometry refers specifically to the use of bodily measurements to identify individuals, most prominently through the Bertillon system, which was adopted by law enforcement agencies in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries as a scientific method of criminal identification. Under this system, a standardized set of measurements — including height, arm span, head length and width, and limb dimensions — were recorded and filed, allowing investigators to match an arrested person against prior records.
Anthropometry in law is primarily a historical term. It was superseded as a primary identification tool by fingerprinting in the early twentieth century after high-profile failures demonstrated that independent individuals could share nearly identical Bertillon measurements.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): The science of measuring the human body to ascertain ranges and averages of dimensions for purposes including physical anthropology, epidemiology, and industrial ergonomics.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): Measurement of the height and other dimensions of human beings, especially at different ages or in different races or occupations.
Editorial note: The common meaning is broad and scientific — a tool of population study and design. The legal meaning is narrower and forensic: the application of body measurement specifically to individual identification in criminal proceedings. A researcher encountering the term in a legal source should not assume the population-level or ergonomic sense. The legal usage is almost always about the identification of a specific accused person, not aggregate human variation.
Common Confusion
Anthropometry is frequently confused with anthropology in older legal texts, where the two terms sometimes appear interchangeably or in close proximity. They are distinct: anthropology is the broader study of human beings and societies; anthropometry is the specific practice of measurement. In forensic and criminal law sources, anthropometry should also be distinguished from phrenology (the discredited study of skull shape as a predictor of character or intelligence), with which it was sometimes associated in the popular press of the same era. Anthropometry aimed at identification, not character assessment, though the two practices shared cultural assumptions about the legibility of the body.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers working in late nineteenth or early twentieth century criminal law materials will encounter anthropometry as a live, contested technology — not a historical curiosity. Case records, prison intake forms, police procedural manuals, and legislative debates from roughly 1880 to 1915 may include Bertillon measurement data or references to anthropometric bureaus as authoritative sources of identity evidence.
The transition from anthropometry to fingerprinting happened unevenly across jurisdictions. Some American states and municipalities adopted fingerprinting as early as 1902; others retained Bertillon systems well into the 1910s. Sources from this transitional period may use anthropometry and identification interchangeably, or may debate the relative reliability of the two systems — a debate that carries real evidentiary implications for the cases being researched.
Researchers should also be alert to the racial and eugenic frameworks that surrounded anthropometry in legal and scientific literature of the period. Measurements were frequently recorded alongside racial classifications, and the system was applied in immigration law and colonial administration as well as domestic criminal justice. Legal materials from this era may reflect those frameworks without flagging them as contested, which affects how evidence and expert testimony in historical records should be read and contextualized.
For Law Mind corpus researchers: anthropometry connects the criminal law and medical jurisprudence traditions. Bouvier's truncated entry (which appears to reference a standard dictionary supplement) and Black's more developed entry both place the term within criminal law and medical jurisprudence — a pairing that signals the term will appear in treatises bridging those fields rather than in purely doctrinal legal sources.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's second edition provides the most complete legal definition available in the shelf sources, correctly situating anthropometry within criminal law and medical jurisprudence and specifying its purpose as identification through comparative measurement. The entry references skull shape, facial angles, and dimensional proportions — the core Bertillon variables. Bouvier's entry is fragmentary, apparently cross-referencing a standard dictionary rather than offering independent legal analysis, which itself reflects how recently the term had entered legal usage at the time of compilation.
Neither source discusses the Bertillon system by name, the transition to fingerprinting, or the evidentiary standards applied to anthropometric evidence in court. Researchers should not expect these dictionary entries to address admissibility questions or the reliability debates that surrounded the system — those require period treatises and case records.
Jurisdictional Note
Anthropometry as a formal identification system was adopted at the federal level (including by the Bureau of Investigation and federal prisons) and by numerous state and municipal police departments, but implementation was never nationally uniform. Researchers tracing the use of anthropometric evidence in a specific jurisdiction should consult local police and prison records, as adoption and abandonment dates varied considerably.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
See Law Mind Encyclopedia: Bertillon System; Criminal Identification; Medical Jurisprudence