forward, but behind us Lussac and his officers with clubs get out of their carriage to join the mêlée . The political controversy remains with us as two prostitutes arguing opposite sides turn to hair pulling.
I sit quietly in my corner as the other girls pull the combatants apart, but words of the revolutionaries stay with me. My days as a factory girl were marked by strikes, injuries to workers, and layoffs. I don’t like to think about what happens to families when factories close. Losing one’s job—whether it be in Paris, New York, or London—ultimately has one consequence: desperation. Often times, starvation sets in. *
While my heart goes out to the workers, I don’t condone violence.
The anarchists are particularly violent in their approach to changing the social system, advocating the extermination of all political leaders in the hope their deaths will cause governments to fall. Yet, when the government falls and the new leadership takes over an interesting phenomena happens—they become what they revolted against.
I still wonder why my man in black wears the red of anarchy. It’s a disguise? Or is he an active anarchist?
I ask one of the girls why we’re being unloaded at a precinct house and not taken directly to police headquarters.
“We’ll be processed here. Only those who can’t set bond or who are wanted for other crimes will be taken to the central jail.”
It seems only fitting that rain starts falling just before we make it up a set of worn stone steps. A policeman leads us into an austere high-ceilinged room and has us line up to be physically measured by the Bertillon method. I’m familiar with the criminal identification method invented by Alphonse Bertillon when he was a young clerk in the Sûreté. Called “anthropometry,” it’s a system of body measurements. A surer method would be to photograph suspects, but photography is expensive and time consuming.
As soon as a girl is measured, she goes to another line where an officer at a desk questions her about her charges.
When my turn comes, measurements are taken of my head, feet, two fingers, arm span, forearm, and torso. With fourteen different measurements taken, the odds of any two people having the same exact measurements are nearly three hundred million to one. It’s a much more improved system of identification than having criminals line up in front of detectives to see if any of the officers recognize them as past offenders.
Another new criminal identification system, favored by Scotland Yard, is based upon claims that each person’s fingerprints are unique. In 1880, Henry Faulds, a Scottish physician, proposed the idea of using fingerprints for identification. Faulds fortuitously became the first person to catch a criminal with fingerprint identification. Working in Tokyo, he identified a thief by fingerprints the man left on a cup. Truly amazing. But it’s the anthropometry system that’s in use throughout Europe.
As my measurements are taken with a tailor’s tape, I make a quick assessment of my predicament. Mr. Pulitzer’s heart beats with the same rhythm as the circulation numbers for his newspaper. His heart will turn stone cold when circulation drops because his girl reporter is humiliated and ridiculed by other newspapers. Especially when they’ll have fun satirizing about “mi’lord” and his burned Long Tom. This bogus arrest will not only severely damage my career, but it will get the biggest laugh from those in newspaper circles who want to see a woman reporter fail. I’ve got to get out of this mess.
My first concern is how to deal with Chief Inspector Morant. Perhaps I should disarm him with my knowledge of the Sûreté. Its history is a romantic one involving a notorious thief, the Emperor Napoléon, and the first detective agency. It began early in the century when Empress Josephine’s necklace, given to her by Napoléon, was stolen.
A thief, Eugène-François Vidocq, was in prison. He
I sit quietly in my corner as the other girls pull the combatants apart, but words of the revolutionaries stay with me. My days as a factory girl were marked by strikes, injuries to workers, and layoffs. I don’t like to think about what happens to families when factories close. Losing one’s job—whether it be in Paris, New York, or London—ultimately has one consequence: desperation. Often times, starvation sets in. *
While my heart goes out to the workers, I don’t condone violence.
The anarchists are particularly violent in their approach to changing the social system, advocating the extermination of all political leaders in the hope their deaths will cause governments to fall. Yet, when the government falls and the new leadership takes over an interesting phenomena happens—they become what they revolted against.
I still wonder why my man in black wears the red of anarchy. It’s a disguise? Or is he an active anarchist?
I ask one of the girls why we’re being unloaded at a precinct house and not taken directly to police headquarters.
“We’ll be processed here. Only those who can’t set bond or who are wanted for other crimes will be taken to the central jail.”
It seems only fitting that rain starts falling just before we make it up a set of worn stone steps. A policeman leads us into an austere high-ceilinged room and has us line up to be physically measured by the Bertillon method. I’m familiar with the criminal identification method invented by Alphonse Bertillon when he was a young clerk in the Sûreté. Called “anthropometry,” it’s a system of body measurements. A surer method would be to photograph suspects, but photography is expensive and time consuming.
As soon as a girl is measured, she goes to another line where an officer at a desk questions her about her charges.
When my turn comes, measurements are taken of my head, feet, two fingers, arm span, forearm, and torso. With fourteen different measurements taken, the odds of any two people having the same exact measurements are nearly three hundred million to one. It’s a much more improved system of identification than having criminals line up in front of detectives to see if any of the officers recognize them as past offenders.
Another new criminal identification system, favored by Scotland Yard, is based upon claims that each person’s fingerprints are unique. In 1880, Henry Faulds, a Scottish physician, proposed the idea of using fingerprints for identification. Faulds fortuitously became the first person to catch a criminal with fingerprint identification. Working in Tokyo, he identified a thief by fingerprints the man left on a cup. Truly amazing. But it’s the anthropometry system that’s in use throughout Europe.
As my measurements are taken with a tailor’s tape, I make a quick assessment of my predicament. Mr. Pulitzer’s heart beats with the same rhythm as the circulation numbers for his newspaper. His heart will turn stone cold when circulation drops because his girl reporter is humiliated and ridiculed by other newspapers. Especially when they’ll have fun satirizing about “mi’lord” and his burned Long Tom. This bogus arrest will not only severely damage my career, but it will get the biggest laugh from those in newspaper circles who want to see a woman reporter fail. I’ve got to get out of this mess.
My first concern is how to deal with Chief Inspector Morant. Perhaps I should disarm him with my knowledge of the Sûreté. Its history is a romantic one involving a notorious thief, the Emperor Napoléon, and the first detective agency. It began early in the century when Empress Josephine’s necklace, given to her by Napoléon, was stolen.
A thief, Eugène-François Vidocq, was in prison. He
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