Edmund Robert Spearman, CMG

1854-80 - Assistant Secretary, Public Works Loan Office & West Indian islands Relief Board

1880-85 - Secretary, Public Works Loan Board

1863 - Appointed Justice of the Peace (JP) for Middlesex

1870 Oct - commissioned as Cornet, Uxbridge Yeomanry Cavalry; Dec - promoted Lieutenant

1873 Feb - Captain Middlesex Yeomanry Cavalry

1879 Nov - resigned commission

1880s-90s - After translating a French text by Alphonse Bertillon, Spearman developed a strong interest in Criminal Policy and in particular the French method of anthropometric criminal identification, the Bertillon system. He corresponded extensively with the Home Secretary on the subject after his retirement from the Civil Service, and later mounted an extensive press campaign for its adoption in Britain. This was initially unsuccessful, but a limited form was finally adopted in Britain in 1894 - some 10 years after its value was recognised in France. Spearman is generally credited as having been very influential in this, though the delay in its use in Britain meant that it was soon superseded by the technique of fingerprinting.

1886 Feb - High Court of Justice in Bankruptcy ordered £400 a year to be set aside from Spearman's pension until his creditors were paid in full. He had debts, apparently, of around £12,000. Final (24th) payment to his creditors was made in Feb 1901.

At around this time Spearman and his wife Lady Maria separated; he moved to France (where he had in part been educated).

Late 1880s/90s - Though living in France, Spearman then embarked on a second career as a writer, contributing numerous pieces over the next decade and a half for English and American periodicals such as the Westminster Review, The Nineteenth Century, The Fortnightly Review, The Forum, The New Review, Nature and Scribner's. Subjects included Paris history, Women's Rights, and social issues in France. But the majority of his writing was a relentless, well-argued and eventually successful (at least in part) battle for a more effective system of criminal identification in his homeland - France had been using such a system, Bertillonage, since the 1880s.

1900 Jan - Appointed Acting First Secretary of Legation, HM Diplomatic Service

1900 April-Nov - Appointed joint Assistant Secretary to the (British) Royal Commission for the Paris Exposition Universelle.

1901 - Received the CMG (Companion of the Order of St Michael & St George)

British Vice-Consul at Chantilly 1901-18