XXth CENTURY SCIENCE SERIES BERKELEY LIBRARY UNIVCRSITY Of CALIFORNIA J Dadylography Or, THE STUDY OF FINGER-PRINTS Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2007 with funding from IVIicrosoft Corporation http://www.archive.org/details/dactylographyorsOOfaulrich DACTYLOGRAPHY OR THE STUDY OF FINGER-PRINTS BY HENRY FAULDS L.R.F.P. & S. F.R. Anthrop. Inst., M.R. Arch/Eol. Inst. M. Sociol. Soc. 3^IIitj)trntt{r HAlvlFAX MIIvNER & COMPANY KAGI^AN WORKS MAIK LIBRARY f3 CONTENTS. CHAPTEJR PAGE I. Introduction : Eari.y Hints and Recent Progress 9 II. Sweat- Pores, Ridges, and Furrows ... 29 III. Finger-Print Patterns 39 IV, Some Biological Questions in Dacty- lography 49 V. Technique of Printing and Scrutinizing Finger- Patterns 61 VI. Persistence of Finger-Print Patterns 76 VII. Syllabic Classification of Finger-Prints 8^ VIII. Practical Results and Future Prospects ioi Glossary 120 Bibliography 123 Index 125 253 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS PAGE Greasy Smudge, Accidental Smudge, and a Negative Thumb-print frontis. Footprints in Ancient Mexican Remains lo Single Finger-Print 19 Facsimile of Original Outline Forms for both hands 20 Section of Skin showing Sweat-Glands, Ducts and Pores 29 Ripple Marks in Sand 32 Gre\^'s Zebra, showing lineations like Finger- print Patterns opposite 39 Section of Pine-wood Stem and a Human Thumb- print 43 Design-like Patterns in Finger-prints 47 Anthropoid lyineations 52 Reduced Copy of Police Register Form ... opp. 68 Flexible Curves and Curve Rules 69 Diagrammatic Analysis of Lineations in a Restricted Section ... ... ... ... ... ... 71 Kew Micrometer ... ... ... ... ... 72 Glass Disc centred 73 Vowels and Consonants in Syllabic Classification ... 100 Dactylography OR THE STUDY OF FINGER-PRINTS CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION : EARLY HINTS AND RECENT PROGRESS Dactyi,ography deals with what is of scientific interest and practical value in regard to the lineations in the skin on the fingers and toes, or rather on the hands and feet of men, monkeys, and alHed tribes, which lineations form patterns of great variety and persistence. The Greeks used the term SolktvXos tov ttoSo? (daktylos iou podos, finger of the foot) for a toe ; and the toes are of almost as much interest to the dactylographer as the fingers, and present similar patterns for study. In primitive times the savage hunter had to use all his wits sharply in the examination of foot and toe marks, whether of the game he pursued or the human foe he guarded against, and he learned to deduce many a curious lesson with Sherlock Holmes-like acuteness and precision. The recency, the rate of motion, the length of stride, the degree of fatigue, the number, and kinds and conditions of men or beasts that had impressed their traces on the soil, all could be read by him with ease and promptness. Such imprints have been preserved in early Mexican picture writings. TO DACTYLOGRAPHY ^' ^>\ •M- ^.^ r^' 1 n-ii 2=£ a n «^ Footprints in Ancient Mexican remains. Inset : Threshold with Foot-Marks (also Mexican). In a similar way the palaeontologist strives to interpret the impress made by organisms on primeval mud flats or sandy shores aeons ago. There are numbers, whole species indeed, of extinct jelly fishes the existence of which has never been known directly, but that there once were such beings in the world has been confidently deduced from the permanent impressions their soft and perishable bodies have left in the fine texture of certain rocks. The Chinese tell us that one of their sages first learned to write and to teach the use of written characters by observing the marks made by a bird's claws. When we approach the limits of written history we begin to hear faint inarticulate murmurs of a time when the lines on human fingers began to arrest notice and interest. Thus we sometimes find in later neolithic pottery, nail and finger marks, used to adorn the sun- dried pots in common use. The Babylonians used their finger nails as seal-marks on commercial tablets, and the Chinese have occasionally done the same. Not many years ago, as I myself have often witnessed, when sealing- wax or wafers were used more than they are now, servant girls were wont to impress their thumb-mark on the soft EARLY HINTS ii wafer or wax. There are several characters in the Chinese alphabet (of some 30,000 letters) which suggest such a use of finger-marks as seals, but after many years' enquiry, I have not yet seen any direct evidence of their use for such a purpose.* The term Sho-seki is used in Japanese to denote foot-prints, and also the tracking of anyone. I have not met any passage or expression in which finger-prints are mentioned in Japanese works, except in regard to fantastical images of footprints of Buddha and the like. It is claimed, however, that prisoners on conviction were required to adhibit their mark as a seal of confession. f There has been no evidence adduced that either in China or Japan was there ever a system of identification by that means, although it is conceivable that the form of making a sign-manual may have originated from some dim per- ception of their value for identification. In a similar way finger-marks were used, as I have been informed, in India, even before the mutiny, and were supposed to be used like the cross made by illiterate people in this country. The numerals up to five seem to have been obtained by marking off fingers. A dactylic origin of V as an open hand, complete with outstretched thumb, has been favoured. X (ten) might easily then be obtained by placing two V's apex to apex. There are certain folds or creases in palms and soles, which are formed very much as the creases in gloves or boots are formed, and with those the dactylographer is ♦In Professor Giles's Chinese-English Dictionary {igog) on page 223 some characters are given for "to make a finger- print," etc. fSee Nature (January 17th, 1895), " Finger - Print Method," Kimiagusa Minakata. 12 DACTYLOGRAPHY not much concerned. Such lines were supposed by many to mark the fateful influence of stars on the destiny of their owner, and are the basis of palmistry. Similar lines are foimd in apes. There are general patterns of lineations all over the palmar surface of the hands and the plantar surface of the feet which are of some interest, but the chief practical concern of most students in this new field is with certain points where patterns run into forms of great complexity, especially in the palmar skin covering the last joint of each finger. It is not common to find either in pots or pictures those patterns printed clearly, but the creases dear to the palmister are frequently enough shown. In Mr. C. Ainsworth Mitchell's Science and the Criminal, pubHshed in 191 1, a case is mentioned of a very early finger-print, if the evidence has not been fallacious : — " In the prehistoric flint-holes at Brandon, in Suffolk, there was found some years ago a pick made from the horn of an extinct elk. This had been used by some flint-digger of the Stone Age to hew out of the chalk the rough flints which were subsequently made into scrapers and arrow-heads. Upon the dark handle of this instrument were the finger-prints in chalk of the workman, who, thousands of years ago, flung it down for the last time." It is now in the British Museum. A foot-print also has been found of very early date. Such white marks on a dark groimd are often very clear, showing the detail of lineations well, and pre- suming, as is natural, that the ordinary precautions were taken to secure that they were not recent acci- dental additions to the remains, such a record is highly valuable. EARLY HINTS 13 It was apparently a common practice in ancient India to adorn buildings with crude finger-marks made with white or red sandal-wood. The red hand common on door-posts and the like in Arabia does not usually show any lineations, but in some few ancient and primitive carvings and in sun-baked pot-work, patterns occur which appear to me to have probably had finger-print lineations as a motif. Professor Sollas, in writing of Palaeolithic Races in Science Progress (April, 1909) — a subject of which he is a master — says : '* Impressions of the human hand are met with painted in red in Altamira, but in other caves also in black, and sometimes uncoloured on a coloured ground. These seem to be older than any of the other markings," Some cases are stencilled, as with Australians to-day. The same writer, in a foot-note, also states, in describ- ing caves and paintings of modern Bushmen : " Im- pressions of the human hand are also met with on the walls of these caves." A traveller, Mr. John Bradbury, who witnessed the return of a war-party of the Aricara Indians, says : — " Many of them had the mark which indicates that they had drank the blood of an enemy. This mark is made by rubbing the hand all over with vermilion, and by laying it on the mouth it leaves a complete impression on the face, which is designed to resemble and indicate a bloody hand." — [Travels in the Interior of America (1817).] The ancient bloody hand of Ulster is well known, and other examples occur which might be quoted. Some ** prehistoric pottery " was found last autumn at Avebury, North Wilts, of which I have not seen full particulars. In a press paragraph, however, it is stated 14 DACTYLOGRAPHY that its chief interest " centres in the fact that it is ornamented on both faces — the impressions of tmsted grass (or cord) and finger-nails being clearly defined." It is temporarily classified as a type of pottery associated with long barrows and neolithic pits. My own attention was first directed to the patterns in finger-prints, as they occurred impressed on stm- baked pottery which I found in the numerous shell- heaps dotted aroimd the great Bay of Yedo. The sub- ject was quite imknown to me till then, in the seventies. No pottery has yet been found which belongs to the early stone stage of man's culture. But with evidence of the use of fire, and of the manufacture of polished stone weapons, fragments of rude hand-moulded pottery — sim-baked or fire-burned — begin to be associated. Sometimes these are quite clearly seen to be moulded with the aid of human fingers, the nails only making a clear mark, but in other cases the finger furrows are prominently indented in regular patterns, which cannot, I think, be distinguished from those made by men of our own race and time. In the formal Japanese ceremony of social tea-drinking, or Cha-no-yu, pottery of this Archaic kind, with finger patterns indented in the clay, is highly esteemed. In an article on this kind of pottery by Mr. Charles Holme, in The Studio (February, 1909), one example is described thus : " It is modelled in a brown clay entirely by hand, without the aid of a potter's wheel. The impressions of the fingers made in shaping the bowl are carefully retained," etc. Not till Celtic times in Europe is there evidence of the use of the potter's wheel. I am surprised to find how very little attention has EARLY HINTS 15 yet been given to finger imprints on eariy pottery. My own opportunities for observation have in late years been severely limited, but I have seldom had a peep at ancient potsherds without discovering some few traces of the kind of impressions, accidental or designed, which I have described. I have not had early Teutonic pottery specially imder observation, but Professor G. Baldwin Brown, who is an accomplished authority in that depart- ment, wrote me thus : — " In the early Teutonic pottery, so far as I have examined it, the ornamental patterns are produced by drawing Hnes and furrows with some hard tool, such as a shaped point of wood or bone. It is very rarely that the furrows or circular depressions have the soft edges which would suggest the use of the finger, and I have never noticed the texture of the finger-tip impressed on the clay, though I have not looked spec- ially for this with a glass. Ornaments are also com- monly impressed with a wooden stamp on which some simple pattern has been cut. The only ornamental motive which seems to spring directly out of manipula- tion by the fingers is the projecting boss, character- istic of a certain class of Teutonic ware. The clay is forced out from within in the form of a knob or a flute, and the idea of such an ornamental treatment has probably arisen from the accidental projections produced in the exterior surface of the vase by the pressure of the fingers when the vase is being shaped from within. There is nothing in early Teutonic pottery like the coiled Pueblo pots, or other products where the pressure of the fingers on the exterior has generated the whole ornamental scheme." Antique references to finger-print patterns are not numerous. In the anatomical text-books of my student days, I cannot recall a single example of their having been noticed or figured, and no figure was printed in the i6 DACTYLOGRAPHY usual plates of anatomy of my time. Malpighi, writing in 1686, tersely alludes to the ridges which, he says, form different patterns {diver sas figuras descrihunt). Both Sir William Herschel and myself have publicly called for evidence of the alleged use in the Far East of finger-prints being used for identification. During my residence in Japan I was intimate with the leading antiquarians, and was repeatedly assured that nothing was known by them of any such legal process. Mr. T. W. Rhys Davids, Secretary of the Royal Asiatic Society, of which I was formerly a member, wrote me in answer to an inquiry as to this point, on the 17th May, 1905 : — " Dear Sir, — I have heard of thumb marks being used in the East as sign-manuals, but I know no single case of thumb or finger marks being used for identification, and, pending further information, I do not believe they ever were so used in ancient times in any part of the East." Every now and again I receive letters telling me of some one who thinks he remembers some one saying that he saw, etc., etc. Now, surely, it would not be difficult if anyone were to find such evidence, to send a copy or photograph duly authenticated, and a date attested subsequent to the date of publication by Nature, in 1880, of the correspondence on this subject. A good deal has been written about Professor J. E. Purkenje (or Purkinje) in this connection. One enthusi- astic fellow-countryman has mentioned with eulogy a purely imaginary course of lectures on Identification by Finger-Prints. Purkinje does not seem ever to have dreamed of putting them to such a use. In The Daily News of January 23rd, 191 1, an interview is reported with Sir Edward Henry, who is made to state that EARLY HINTS 17 Purkinje " wrote about the value of finger-prints for purposes of identification" ; but on enquiry Sir Edward assured me he had not said anything beyond what was stated in his work on Finger-Prints, and in that work, of course, no such statement is hinted at as that Pur- kinje proposed to secure identification by finger-prints. As a student I was fairly well acquainted with much of what that keen observer had written, and when I was lecturing to medical students in Japan on the Testimony of the Senses, I could not help noticing that while Purkinje had been busy with the fingers and with the special development in their sensitive tips of the organs of touch, no records had been preserved which mentioned his notice of the finger-furrows or the patterns made by them. I took much trouble in the matter, writing to eminent authorities and to librarians, and found no trace of any such work. Sir F. Galton, in his published writings, is quite in accord with me so far, but he has not explained how he came to think of Purkinje's work. Writing in 1892 on Finger-Prints, (p. 85) he says of the subsequent discovery of a thesis of 58 pages : " No copy of the pamphlet existed in any public medical library in England, nor in any private one, so far as I could learn ; neither could I get a sight of it at some important Continental libraries. One copy was known of it in America. ' ' The American copy was not known generally till I had made vigorous enquiries there. Sir F. Galton adds, " The very zealous librarian of the Royal College of Surgeons was so good as to take much pains at my instance to procure one : his zeal was happily and un- expectedly rewarded by success, and the copy is now securely lodged in the library of the college." i8 DACTYLOGRAPHY As Sir Francis began to give attention to this subject in 1888 (p. 2 of work j ust quoted) it is only j ustice to myself in the matter to state that in June, 1886, 1 called on the then librarian of the Royal College and impressed upon him my conviction that as nothing had then been known of any printed work by Purkinje on this topic, a search among his remaining papers should be made, as to me it seemed improbable that, working so closely in that field, Purkinje could fail to observe the patterns of the finger-furrows. It seemed as certain a deduction to me as was that of the existence of Neptune before that planet had been actually discovered. The pamphlet is in Latin, a work of 58 pages, printed at Vratislav, (i.e., Breslau) in 1823. In the article on " Finger- prints," in the Encyclopcedia Britannica (1911) it is stated that *' the permanent character of the finger- print was put forward scientifically in 1823 by J. B. Purkinje, an eminent professor of physiology, who read a paper before the university of Breslau," etc. But he was surely not a professor when graduating, and what passage in that thesis, may I ask, deals scientifically with the permanent character of the finger-print ? Purkinje had studied the lineations of monkeys as well as those of men. In Tristram Shandy (1765) we read of " the marks of a snuffy finger and thumb." Jack Shepherd, a novel of Ainsworth's, was published in 1839. One Van Galgebrook, a Dutch conjuror, therein foretells Jack's bad end : " From a black mole under the child's right ear, shaped like a coffin . . . and a deep line just above the middle of the left thumb, meeting round about in the form of a noose." It would EARLY HTNTS 19 be interesting to know how Ainsworth happened upon the suggestion. Bewick sometimes jestingly left his sign-mark on his fine wood-engravings, and those thus attested by his thumb-print are now specially valued. Many references occur in modern literature to finger- prints, and in David Copperfield, published in complete form in 1850, Charles Dickens tells how Dan'l Peggotty, in the old boat-house at Yarmouth, " printed off fishy impressions of his thumb on all the cards he found." Pater, in 1871, writing of the Poetry of Michelangelo, mentions " the little seal of red wax which the stranger entering Bologna must carry on the thumb of SrNGi.E Finger- Print his right hand." lyater references are very common after the eighties. Alix in 1867-8 wrote on the papillary lines of hand and foot in Zoologie, vols. viii. and ix., contributions which were first brought to my notice after the publication of my Guide. In 1879 I engaged a Japanese engraver in Tokyo to make for me copperplate forms in which to receive im- pressions of the fingers of both hands in their consecu- tive or serial order. There Vv'ere spaces for information to be recorded which might be useful in anthropology, and a place to which a lock of hair of the subject was to be attached. The original proof sheet, marked by me in red pencil where special points in the rugse were to be carefully printed, is now in the library of The Royal Faculty of Physicians and Surgeons in Glasgow, along with a letter to me from Charles Darwin on the subject RECENT PROGRESS 21 of finger-prints. The figures are from reduced photo- graphs of those two original copperplate forms, which have never before been published except as accompany- ing the circular mentioned below. Many of those forms were sent to travellers and residents in foreign coimtries, with a written circular, as follows : — " January, 1880. " Dear Sir, *' I am at present engaged in a comparative study of the rugcB, or skin-furrows, of the hands of different races, and would esteem it as a great favour if you should obtain for me nature-prints from the palmar surface of the fingers of any of the race in your vicinity, in accordance with the enclosed forms. The points of special interest are marked [with red crosses] and no others need specially be attended to. Bach point must be printed by itself separately. Printer's ink put on very thinly and evenly, so as not to obliterate the furrows of the skin, is best. It can easily be removed by benzine or turpentine. In place of that, burnt cork mixed with very little oil will do very well. One or two trials had better be made before printing on the forms. If printing should be foimd too difficult, sketches of leading lines — at the points indicated — would still be of very great value, taking care that the directions corresponded with the furrows, and not in reverse, as when a simple impression is taken. If any one finger, and so on, comes out badly, a piece of paper can be printed and pasted on at the proper place. I enclose as a specimen a filled-up form. [The fingers printed in the proper spaces and the important ' points ' each marked with a cross in red pencil.] "As novel and valuable ethnological results are ex- pected from this enquiry, I trust this may form a sufficient excuse for asking you to take so much trouble. Please return any forms which may be filled up to the above address. '* I am, etc., *' Henry Faulds." 22 DACTYLOGRAPHY Many of these circulars were posted with great care to recent addresses, but the response was quite disap- pointing. No useful prints were obtained, and most recipients took no notice whatever of the request. I have since thought the question may have been con- fused with palmistry. It was not easy to get impressions from the paws of monkeys, apes, and lemuroids in Japan. Some few that vveie obtained at once betrayed a very strong similarity to those of man, and it seemed that a wider study would yield some hints, perchance, as to the path of man's ascent. On the 15th February of the same year (1880), I wrote to the great pioneer in this field, Charles Darwin, sending specimens of prints and some outline of my first tentative results, and requesting him to aid me in obtain- ing access to imprints from lemurs, lemuroids, monkeys and anthropoid apes, as I had found them to show linea- tion patterns which I hoped might be serviceable to elucidate in some degree the lineage of man. I had failed to find any trace of references to these phenomena in any anatomical or biological work within reach. The few Oriental works I had seen were full of absurd phan- tasies and were allied to palmistr>% but contained Buddhist and Taouist figures nowhere to be found in nature. The great naturalist's reply, in his own handwriting, sent to me two years before his death, was as follows : — " Via Brindisi. Down, April yth, 1880. Beckenham, Kent, Railway Station, -DEAR Sir, Orpington, S.E.R. '* The subject to which you refer in your letter of February 15th seems to me a curious one, which may RECENT PROGRESS 23 turn out interesting ; but I am sorry to say that I am most unfortunately situated for offering you any assistance. I live in the coimtry, and from weak health seldom see anyone. I will, however, forward your letter to Mr. F. Galton, who is the most Ukely man that I can think of to take up the subject to make further enquiries. '• Wishing you success, " I remain, dear Sir, " Yours faithfully, '* (Signed) Chari.es Darwin." This letter, with the envelope addressed by Mr. Darwin himself, and showing its postmarks, is in the library of the Royal Faculty of Physicians and Surgeons. Mr. F. Galton, afterwards Sir Francis Galton, a cousin of Charles Darwin, wrote in Finger -Prints, which was pubHshed by him in 1892, that his " attention was first drawn to the ridges in 1888 when preparing a lecture on Personal Identification for the Royal Institution, which had for its principal object an account of the anthro- pometric method of Bertillon, then newly introduced into the prison administration of France." [p. 2.] In Nature, October 28th, 1880, appeared my article which was indexed shortty afterwards as the first con- tribution on the subject, in the Index Medicus of the United States, thus : '* Faulds, H. — On the skin-furrows of the hand. Nature, London, xxii, 605." Professor Otto Schlaginhaufen, while my Guide was going through the press in England, published in the August number of Gegenbaur's Jahrbuch for 1905 a copiously illustrated and well-informed article on the lineations in human beings, lemuroids, apes and anthro- poids. The writer does me the honour of stating (p. 584) that with my contribution to Nature in 1880, there begins 24 DACTYLOGRAPHY 2l new period in the investigation of the lineations of the skin, that, namely, in which they were brought into the service of criminal anthropology and medical juris- prudence. This publication, he says, is the forerunner of a copious literature which flowed over into the popular magazines and daily press, and promises to keep no boimds. He thinks that I pointed the right way to attain a knowledge of man's genetic descent by a study of the corresponding lineations of certain lower animals, such as lemuroids, and that I had suggested other direc- tions in which medical jurisprudence might profitably engage in the study of this subject. A claim was shortly afterwards made in Nature, by Sir William Herschel, that he had, prior to my efforts, taken finger-prints for identification in India. I have entered into this personal matter elsewhere. Sir William has more than once T-ubHcly conceded priority of publication to me, and that is not at all disputable. We quite independently reached similar conclusions. Schlaginhaufen sums up the matter at least impartially, thus : — " ZeitHch erschien die PubUkation Faui^ds' friiher ; aber Herschel wies durch die Veroffent- lichung eines halboffiziellen Brief es nach dass er sich schon 1877 mit dem Gegendstand beschaftigt habe. Jedenfalls sind beide Beobachter unabhangig vonein- ander auf die gleiche Idee gekommen, und wenn auch die Materialien, die Herschei. Heferte, fiir die krimin- elle Anthropologic speziell von grosserer Bedeutung waren, so hat Faui^ds' doch in seiner ersten Mitteilung die Erforschung der Hautleisten von einem hoheren Gesichtspunkt aus erfasst und ihr in einem umfass- enderen Plan den Weg vorgezeichnet." That is to say : — " Faulds's publication was earlier in time, but Herschel showed by the publication of a half-official RECENT PROGRESS 25 letter that he had been engaged with the method from 1877 onwards. In any case both observers had inde- pendently come to the same idea, and while the material which Herschel supplied was of greater service for crim^inal anthropology, Faulds had in his first communication grasped the investigation of the skin lineations from a higher standpoint, and had indicated the way to it through a more comprehensive plan." My own plan laid stress on the serial imprint of five or ten fingers according to the size of the registers antici- pated. Sir William Herschel used one, two, or three fingers only, and chiefly as sign-manuals. Sir William has since published a hand imprint used as a sign-manual and printed in 1858. On seeing the announcement I wrote to the publishers, who regretted they could not supply me with a copy as it was printed for private circulation only. Sir William Herschel has nowhere claimed to have had any methodic way of storing or indexing the records, and indeed, from his indications, they cannot have been at all numerous. In 1887 and 1888, after my final return to England, I brought the method under the notice of the Home Authorities, who merely dealt with it in the usual red- tape methods. Finally, I asked to have one of their most intelligent officers appointed to meet me, so that I might enter full}^ into practical details. In reply there came to me a gentleman who sent in his official /. B. TUN BRIDGE, Inspector C.I. Department, Great Scotland Yard 26 DACTYLOGRAPHY card, which I have in myj- possession now. This was the able officer so well known by his dramatic capture of Mr. Jabez Balfour. I showed him how printing was done, the method of classification adopted by me, and offered to form a model bureau from the hands of the London police. A few years ago Mr. Tunbridge wrote me : — " I have a most distinct and pleasant recollection of our interview, and since the ' F. P. ' system has been adopted as a means of identification of criminals with such marked success, have often wondered how it was that you have not been more actively connected with the carrying out of the system. When the Home Authorities recognized the value of the system, I was Commissioner of Police in New Zealand, and it was owing mainly to my recommendation that the system was introduced into the New Zealand prisons, although the Prison Authorities were somewhat opposed to it. . . Some of the Australian States also adopted the system, with the result that an inter- change of prints took place, which soon manifested its value. The system is now in full working order in Australia, and is carried on by the police, of course, with the assistance of the Prison Authorities." No report has been published of Mr. Tunbridge's impressions. At the close of our long interview he told me he was disposed to think the method would be rather delicate for practical application by the police, and that fresh legislation would be required before any beginning could be made. In 1897, the finger-print system associated with Monsieur Bertillon's anthropometric system was adopted in India ; but soon the bodily measurements were aban- doned, and the finger-print method alone was officially employed ; and in 1901 it was tentatively used in England and Wales, but did not come into much public RECENT PROGRESS 27 use till a year or two afterwards. The ten-finger method in serial order, as I had from the first recommended for a large register, and prepared forms to receive imprints (as shown in facsimile), was adopted and is that now in official use. The methods of Sir William Herschel, followed by that of Sir F. Galton, were much more restricted, and could never have been worked practically in anything but a very small and limited register. The finger-print system of identification is all but universally applied now throughout the civiHzed world for criminal cases, and bids fairly well to be soon adopted for other methods of identification than that of profes- sional criminals or recidivists. After great earthquakes, floods, or battles, multitudes of people have to be hastily buried who have never been fully identified. In such cases the existence of a civil or military Finger- print Register would be a very great means of security, and this it is my great wish to see recognized and established. I wish to make it clear that in 1880 no printed proposal existed to use finger-prints for identification. Sir F. Galton has referred to a United States expedition in which the method was used, but the date was 1882, and the example printed could not identify. He also refers to Mr. Tabor, of San Francisco, who had proposed the registration of Chinamen by this method, as their identity was difficult to establish. I believe this also was in 1882. In a criticism of Dr. Schlaginhaufen's Bibliography (" F.G. " is the signature) in Nature, the omission of Mr. Tabor's name is regretted, but why ? Did he write on the subject anything which has been preserved ? Why, before this period. Dr. Billings, 28 DACTYLOGRAPHY of the United States Army, said at the International Medical Congress : " Just as each individual is in some respects peculiar and unique, so that even the minute ridges and furrows at the end of his fore- fingers differ from that of all other forefingers, and is sufficient to identify," etc. So that in America the matter was widely known, and Dr. Billings' own work on the " Index " attributed its initiation to me. Again, in 1883, " Mark Twain " published his charm- ing Life on the Mississippi, a very valuable human document. It contains a well-thought-out story of an identification by means of a thumb-print on a system supposed by him to have been invented by a French prison doctor. His Ptidd'nhead Wilson, in which a still better study of the subject occurs, did not come out till 1894, the year in which the sitting of Mr. Asquith's Committee on Identification of Habitual Criminals had set journalists agoing again on the theme of " thumb- prints." Prior to that year a great deal had been written on the subject, the facts being chiefly taken from the correspondence in Nature, to which reference has been made. SWEAT-PORES 29 CHAPTER II SWEAT-PORES, RIDGES AND FURROWS The front or palmar surface of human hands, and the corresponding solar or plantar surface of the feet, are marked with alternate ridges and furrows, hdng for the most in nearly parallel rows, but often again at certain points on palm or sole, curving, splitting, twisting, or joining to form patterns of much intricacy. The ridges, called technically rugcB (sing, ruga), are punctuated at very frequent intervals with small openings, which are the mouths or pores of the sweat ducts connected with certain glands which lie deep in the lower strata of the skin. The furrows or sulci (sing, sulcus) are almost devoid of any such apertures. There are probably some two or three millions of those tiny sweat pores in a human body,which afford ^ ^ an evaporating surface, Section of Skin, ° SHOWING SwEAT-Gi,ANDs, DucTs accordmg to the anatom- AND PORES ist Krause, of about eight b. pore dosed. square inches. The d. sweat duct. sweat is a watery, slight- e. sweat gland. . . . _ . , . , . ? , ly salme fluid, with slight 30 DACTYLOGRAPHY — very slight — traces of grease, some small cell-like particles, and some carbonic acid and other gaseous matters, which exhale from the skin. The more oily secretion of the skin comes from a different set of open- ings with their associated glands, the sebaceous glands, which are associated with the hairy surfaces of the body. In Ludwig Hopf's work. The Human Species, the subject is discussed fully. When the palmar surface leaves a distinctly greasy impression, this greasiness must have been acquired from outside or from transmitted exuda- tion from the back or dorsal surfaces, or other parts of the body. Those skin ridges, apart from any relation they may have either to the sweat -pores or to the special nerves of touch and temperature which lie near them, serve a useful purpose in helping the horny hands of toil to grasp its tools firmly. They occur in a few other parts of animals somewhat near to us in the scale of being. A striking example is that on the palmar surface of the prehensile or grasping tail of the Spider Monkey {A teles ater), which it uses in climbing almost like a hand. When the ridges in human fingers are well softened with water, and are then rubbed along the surface of a tumbler or wine-glass, musical sounds may be elicited, which are caused by the alternate resistance and )n[eld- ing of the softened ridges. This was the principle of the ** musical glasses " of Goldsmith's time. The navvy often begins his labours by moistening his loof. After his efforts make him perspire, he has no further need in this way for his salivary resources. Hence Nature, too, has placed the openings of the sweat-pores on the crests of his ridges, and not, as Herbert Spencer on one occasion SWEAT-PORES 31 is said to have supposed she had done, in the troughs of the furrows, where they are very seldom to be found, and would not be nearly so useful. Curiously enough, our modern makers of indiarubber tyres work a trade- mark pattern or title in ridges on their wares, so as to secure a good grip on the road — and on the market. In a similar way the carriers of Manchuria adorn their clumsy wheels with studs to prevent their skidding. There are, as has been mentioned, two kinds of minute glands in the skin : one, to secrete that complex excre- tion, the sweat ; the other, to provide a certain greasiness to hair. The latter are found chiefly in other parts than the palms, and serve to secure that slight oiliness of the surface of our bodies which is very well seen in taking one's bath. However thoroughly that thin film of surface greasiness is removed with the use of soap and vigorous scrubbing, in a moment or two water is seen to act on the cutaneous surface as it would on a slightly greasy platter or a duck's back. The importance of this point will become apparent when we come to deal with some practical applications of dactylography in searching for invisible greasy finger-marks, which may be made visible. lyooking carefully at the visible texture of the fingers and palms, we see, then, that the cutaneous ridges lie, for the most part, closely and evenly, like furrows in a well-ploughed field. But j ust as in some fields the plough- man has perforce had to swerve and veer round some fast embedded boulder or old tree stump, varying his intended pattern, so, too, in our fingers curious divergent lineations are found to occur, and we cannot very well tell the reason why. Coloured patches may be designed 32 DACTYLOGRAPHY like so many pretty wall-paper designs, to enclose these patterns in books on finger-prints, but I, for one, cannot see that they throw any light on their genuine nature and origin. We fnid, under purely mechanical condi- tions, similar patterns produced in the ripples of a sub- aerial sand-drift and on a tidal shore. While writing this chapter, I saw to-day similar deltas, jimctions, forks, and the like, on a lake whose frozen surface was R1PP1.E Marks in Sand {After Lyell). thinly sprinkled with fine dry snow. The lines were mostly parallel, but where certain gusts or eddies had occurred the}^ had been broken up into patterns not unlike those of finger-tips. In human skin, and in the anthropoid apes, those scroll-like patterns present almost infinite varieties of detail, and they often resemble a condensed railway plan, showing junctions, blind sidings, loops, triangles, and curves. There is one important distinction to be SWEAT-PORES ^^ observed. The lineations of skin ridges are not always quite uniform in breadth, but broaden out sometimes or dwindle away. Again, they are dotted with sweat- pores and do not always, when printed from, show those pores in the same degree of patency or openness. Hence a little variation is inevitable when the same finger is several times impressed under varying conditions. It is not to be forgotten that, to a limited extent, this is true of a rigid box-wood engraving or steel plate, or lithographic stone, which give somewhat divergent results with varying degrees of pressure in printing, moisture of atmosphere or paper, and other conditions. In this country the feet do not aiford a favourable field of study to the dactylographer. So far as identifica- tion is concerned, little use could be made of them practically. In the East, however, it is different, and many years' residence there gave me opportunities to observe that the toes, unrestrained by the use of stifi leather boots, are mobile and powerful, grasping as fingers do. The carpenter in Japan, for example, uses his toes to grip and steady the board he is sawing or hewing, while many of my readers must be f amiUar with the extraordinary agility of Japanese acrobats in the use of their feet and toes. In those cases the ridges are often varied in grouping, and well defined in develop- ment. A European baby generally begins life with similar simian-like powers. But so far as my own observations go, the patterns in the hands usually show a somewhat higher degree of evolution, a more complex and intricate network of lines, than those exhibited by the feet of the same person. Hence, apart from the greater convenience of inspecting them, the finger-prints 34 DACTYLOGRAPHY have greater value for the purpose of identification. Cases, however, of crime, might readily occur even in this coimtry, where the imprints of naked feet might yield important and irrefutable evidence of one's presence at a scene of evil-doing. But there are other important points of scientific interest besides their evidential value for identification. An important problem in evolutionary development, on which a considerable amount of literature begins to accumulate, is the serial relation of the limbs. Professor Bowditch, the distinguished biologist, of Harvard University, U.S., wrote me, of date November i8th, 1880, thus : — " Dear Sir, — I have just read in Nature of October 28th, your article on the skin-furrows of the hand. The subject interested me because it so happened that fourteen years ago, at the suggestion of the late Professor Jeffries Wyman, I made some prints of the finger and toe tips with the hope of throwing some light on the question of the antero-posterior sym- metry of the body. Since reading your article I have made some new impressions from the same individual, and it is interesting to notice the unchanged character of the cutaneous furrows." Some additional particulars are added in the letter, and a fine finger imprint was enclosed. It is well to remember that the comparison of the ridges to those of a ploughed field does not always, and in every way, hold good. As I have elsewhere said : * " The lines are not of uniform width. Of ttimes they may be likened rather to the mountains and valleys in a good survey. The ridges sometimes split or send little spurs down into the neighbouring valleys ; at other times a ridge seems to cleave, giving rise to a form ♦ Guide to Finger-Print Identification {1^. 11). RIDGES AND FURROWS 35 like a tarn or lake in a limestone range : here and there solitary islands rise in the valleys, and sometimes quite an archipelago takes the place of some of the commoner patterns. Indeed, the ordinary nomencla- ture of an ordinary physical geography map may be found quite helpful in la3dng a case clearly before a magistrate or a jury. And just as we find in the case of mountains and valleys in a map, every variety of shape may occur in a finger-pattern." Here it may be as well to state, as we shall see more precisely further on, that an English jury is well enabled to judge of the conformity of two patterns, one of which is suspect only, and the other officially printed from the fingers of some one in custody — by great photographic enlargement of the exhibits in the case, used as evidence. The ridges, as may be seen by an enlarged photograph (as on frontispiece), do not always continue to be of quite uniform width throughout. Sometimes they taper away sharply like a railway point, or trickle off in diminishing dots ; or again, especially where something like triangles occur, called deltas (after the Greek letter, A delta), they flatten out in breadth considerably. In old age they are found usually to have partaken of the general drying up and shrivelling of the tissues. In the cold or shivering stage of ague and fevers, and in the affection called Reynaud's disease, in which the fingers may tend to become pale and bloodless, some slight shrinking of the ridges also takes place, a point which might be of importance in the measurement cf enlarged exhibits in the trial, for example, of an old Indian soldier or traveller who had been subject to fits of ague. I have heard Sir A. Moseley Channel, who has 36 DACTYLOGRAPHY informed himself well about finger-print matters, in a charge to a jury in a murder case, refer to the doubtful and unsatisfactory nature of evidence from a print done by a sweaty finger. The fact that sweaty finger-marks have been adduced in evidence of crime makes it important for lawyers, police officials, judges and jurymen, to imderstand what is meant by such natural records. A mark from pure sweat would necessarily be excessively transient, as it consists chiefly of water and salines, and should properly contain no greasy matter whatever. Dr. Reginald Alcock, of the North Staiford Infirmary, in a recent paper read at Stoke-on-Trent, and since re- published in The British Medical Journal, described his researches into the relation of the sweat-pores to practical surgery, and to the recognized difficulty in sterilising the skin for subsequent operation. Dr. Alcock shows that there may often be found remaining, after the best efforts to cleanse the surface, a stubborn residue of live and obnoxious matter in those tiny invisible ducts, matter which had insidiously gained entrance from without. Now such decaying or dead particles of foreign protoplasm would, I think, readily enough account for the very faint traces of oily matter sometimes observed, which oiliness makes sweat from a skin, fair and clean in the ordinary sense, leave slight but somewhat persistent traces on such substances as glass and the Hke. In a case reported some time ago, in The Birmingham Post, Detective-Sergeant Charles Munro, on cross- examination as to a sweaty smudge left on glass, said : " The impressions on the window-pane were sweat- marks. They had conducted experiments in Scotland RIDGES AND FURROWS 37 Yard, and ascertained that sweat-marks lasted on glass for a week if not exposed to the wind." Here, I suppose, the distinction between a sweat-mark proper and a some- what greasy sweat-mark was not discerned. Even a deliberately designed greasy mark is volatile to a certain extent just as the oil of new paint dries in a day or two according to the weather. In the Guide (p. 65) I have alluded to the fact of coloured sweat or Chromidrosis, thus : — " A blackish ooze takes place in some hysterical cases. More striking is the class of cases in which the colouring matter is derived, like the bright colours in the plumage of parrots, from copper, and in some cases from iron. Workers in copper have been found sub- ject to it. The sweat is generally of a bluish colour in those cases. Red sweat has been observed in lock- jaw. A kind of saffron colour I have found to be not very uncommon in some classes of malarious cases. One lady I attended had an extraordinary tempera- ture during some of the attacks, the thermometer recording 110° Fahrenheit. With a temperature of about 104° Fahr. she did not seem to be really unwell. I took good impressions at one of those times, with the yellow-coloured sweat. Ordinarily, however, sweat does not help, but hinder, impressions from being made, A case of blue sweat came under my treatment quite recently. There was no history of copper poisoning." Since writing the above, I have met with other cases of coloured sweat. My teacher, the late Sir Thomas McCall Anderson, in his work. Contributions to Clinical Medicine, mentions some very interesting facts in this connection in the chapter on " Hemidrosis." Herbert Spencer, in the May number of the Nineteenth Century (1886), discussing the Factors of Organic Evolution, explains the origin of the ridges in a passage which I must quote in full : — 3S DACTYLOGRAPHY " Continuous pressure on any portion of the surface causes absorption, while intermittent pressure causes growth : the one impeding circulation and the passage of plasma from the capillaries into the tissues, and the other aiding both. There are yet further mechanically produced effects. That the general character of the ribbed skin on the under-surfaces of the feet and in- side of the hands, is directly due to friction and intermitten pressure, we have the proofs : first, that the tracks most exposed to rough usage are the most ribbed ; second, that the insides of hands subject to unusual amounts of rough usage, as those of sailors, are strongly ribbed all over ; and third, that in hands which are very little used, the parts commonly ribbed become quite smooth." fe FINGER-PRINT PATTERNS 39 CHAPTER III FINGER-PRINT PATTERNS Before reading this chapter, let the reader carefully examine the clear lineations shown so well in the photo- graphic picture of the Zebra's stripes, opposite. They will be found to resemble very closely the lineations on the skin of human fingers, as printed when enlarged by photography, forming very similar patterns. Similar linings occur in the hide of the tiger. Where two lines, beginning as parallels, curve to divide, a fresh line begins to appear between. Sometimes a single line forks into two or three. Again, triangular arrangements of lineations are seen on the zebra, and one can trace some of these back into lines running as a parallel series. Surely the causes which produce the ridges on a human or anthropoid finger cannot be quite the same biologically as lead to the formation of similar patterns in the skin of the zebra. There are mechanical or physical conditions, however, which con- dition the formation of ridges in a sandy shore, of pow- dery snow blown by the wind and tossed on a smooth frozen lake, as has already been noticed, and these con- ditions are being carefully elucidated by scientific observers. But why living tissues should produce patterns like those, just in those positions, and then reproduce them in living descendants with shght but important variations, is a totally different question, the answer to which must be reached in a different way. 40 DACTYLOGRAPHY While the ridges and furrows lie in parallels or curve in the same direction over some considerable surface of the sole and palm, they also gather up into more or less intricate, scroll-like patterns at various points besides those of the last joints of the fingers, which have chiefly engrossed popular attention hitherto. In man, the lemurs, lemuroids, and apes, these pattern points are numerous. In my own hands, there are on the left hand, besides the five finger-tip patterns, other five like them, and the right hand contains six. There are thus twenty-one complex patterns which might be used for identification. On the other hand, when one reads of a mathe- matical attempt to compute the probabilities of two finger-prints being aUke, it is not a question simply of comparing an unknown finger smudge with collections containing ten finger-prints each, for the unknown smudge may have been made, not from one of a possible set of ten finger-tip prints, but from one of those other local patterns not on the finger-tips at all. There is a saying often attributed to Huxley, who certainly used it wisely, that the value of grist from the mathematical mill depends on the quality of the corn put into the hopper. But official amateur mathematicians have made many much worse mistakes than the above in regard to probabiHties in the realm of finger-print evidence. In a few cases, especially in the feet patterns, often a very plain character, parallel or slightly wavy lines of no precise design, so to speak, may be found. A short time ago, when applying mustard to the feet of a lady in some kind of fit, I observed this almost featureless FINGER-PRINT PATTERNS 41 pattern in her toes. If such cases were as common in the hands as they are rare, the finger-print method would hardly be of any avail for identification. A teleologist of the old school of Paley might argue with some plaus- ibility that the possible usefulness of those intricate patterns was the true meaning of their existence, other- wise not yet explainable. That the old Paleyan con- ception of nature having an end or purpose in view, the teleological explanation of things as useful to the being possessing them, had its own usefulness in giving a broader view of natural history facts in their inter- relations, is borne out even by so great an authority as Charles Darwin himself. Are the markings in a bird's eggs recognized by the sitting bird in those cases where the markings are peculiar — and some are like written characters — or are they purely accidental and useless ? A correspondent in The Coimtry-Side wrote a short time ago, describing a test case he observed of a thrush in his possession. This bird built a nest and laid therein five eggs, " varying in size from a good-sized pea to the normal size. The smaller ones I took away and sub- stituted one from a wild bird's nest ; this the following day I found laid at the bottom of the aviary smashed. I again repeated the addition with the same result. I had carefully marked the eggs, so that there could be no mistake." The writer signed himself " W. A., Wimbledon." Dr. Wallace's view, as I understand it, is that varia- tions in wild animals were due chiefly to immunity from enemies, allowing free play to the natural tendency to variation, kept only in check by its dangers, such as leading to betrayal by conspicuous colouring, and so on. 42 DACTYLOGRAPHY Professor Poulton in The Colours of Animals, 2nd ed. p. 212, says : — " It is very probable that the great variation in the colours and markings of birds' eggs, which are laid close together in immense numbers, may possess this significance, enabling each bird to know its own eggs. I owe this suggestive interpretation to my friend, Mr. Francis Gotch : it is greatly to be hoped that experimental confirmation may be forthcoming. The suggestion could be easily tested by altering the position of the eggs and modif3dng their appearance by painting. Mr. Gotch's hypothesis was formed after seeing a large number of eggs of the guillemot in their natural surroundings." Australian ewes know the bleat of their own lambs, however immense the flock, and all through nature we find this useful note of recognition. One of the most philosophic interpreters of living phenomena, viewing things from a very recent standpoint — Professor J. Arthur Thomson, in his fascinating Biology of the Seasons (p. 174), writing of the colour and texture of birds' eggs, says : — " In some cases, it is said, the shell registers hybrid- ism — a very remarkable fact. It is another illustra- tion of the great, though still vague, truth that the living creature is a unity through and through, specific even in the structure of the egg-shell within which it is developed. For although the shell is secreted by the walls of the oviduct, it seems to be in some measure controlled by the life of the giant-cell — the ovum — within." Such pattern-forming qualities are found in many fields of nature, very beautifully, for example, as we have seen, in the skin of the zebra ; on the back of a mackerel ; in the grain of various kinds of wood ; in the veining of leaves and petals ; and in the covering or substance FINGER-PRINT PATTERNS 43 of seeds such as the nutmeg and scarlet runner bean. Sir Charles Lyell, in his Elements of Geology, figures the ribbing of sand on the sea-shore in a wood-cut which might be an enlarged diagram of human skin. (See fig. on page 32). In his Principles of Geology (5th ed., vol. i., p. 323) there is, again, a figure described as a section of " spheroidal concretionary Travertine," which contains many linings strikingly like those with which we have to deal in this little work. It follows from these analogies that a method of analysing and classif3dng such patterns might have very wide utilities beyond its relation to finger- prints. It is easy, for example, to recognize the same zebra in quite different pictures. Another point of prac- tical importance is this, that a smudgy or blotchy impression , supposed to be that of a criminal present at some seat of crime, might be the impressed copy merely of some object or texture other than human skin, but containing lineations of similar arrangement. An outworn trans- versely cut branch of a tree might readily produce a print like that of a human finger. An expert would probably notice that in the lineations there were no real junctions, each woody ring remaining apart from the others; but, again, there are some human fingers of such patterns. I think the bloody smear officially reproduced as impressed on a post-card in facsimile, a. section of pine wood stem. b. a human thumb-print. 44 DACTYLOGRAPHY and purporting to have come from "Jack the Ripper," at the time of the Whitechapel horrors in the eighties, may have been produced by the sleeve of a twilled coat smeared with blood. It contained no characters specially characteristic of skin lineations, which it was presumed to be an example of, as impressed. Apart from all that, lemurs, lemuroids, apes, anthro- poids, and monkeys, all show on hands and feet, skin lineations in patterns similar to those of man. In the anthropoid apes it would not be easy to discriminate them from those of human beings. Some of these were figured in my Guide, and Dr. Otto Schlaginhaufen has supplied numerous good prints. If Edgar A. Poe, in his famous mystery of evil deeds done by a gigantic ape, had been acquainted with finger- print methods, he might have pictured the police as still more mystified by the imprints of seemingly human hands. There are two methods of observing systematically the lineation patterns. I. — The Direct Mode. — This might be done simply by many people by looking at the lineations with the un- aided vision. Till quite recently the author found no difficulty in doing this, with myopic eyes that could see something of the texture of a house-fly's eyes in a good light. My earliest observations of the finger-patterns were made in this way, while the patterns were repro- duced in pencilled outlines. The condition of the actual ridges and furrows themselves, with their open and act- ing or closed and dormant sweat-pores, ought to be familiar to the student of dactylography, who is apt to narrow his vision by the contemplation only of dead FINGER-PRINT PATTERNS 45 impressions made in ink or otherwise. A lens such as botanists use for field work is very useful, and a high power is neither necessary nor very helpful. Drawings of the patterns ought to be made from time to time with coloured or " lead " pencils, and those drawings should be accurately adjusted by the use of rubber and compasses. 2. — The Indirect Method. — This is done by the medium of casts and printed impressions. Casts may be made of clay, putty, sealing-wax, beeswax, gutta-percha, hard paraffin, varnish, half-dry paint, and the like. Printed impressions or dactylographs may be obtained from greasy or sweaty fingers, blood, printer's ink, or various substitutes for it. Within this method, again, two very distinct and complementary kinds of results may be obtained, which I have elsewhere described as Positive and Negative. The first or Positive is that, for example, which is used officially for the record of convicted prisoners by printing with ordinary printer's ink, just as a veined leaf or fern, or a box-wood engraving is printed from. Here the ridges or raised lines appear black on a white ground, while the intervening furrows appear white, as do also the minute pores dotted along the crest of each ridge. (See frontispiece.) In the other method, as when the fingers are impressed on a carefully smoked surface of glass, the projecting ridges lift up the carbon of the soot, leaving a white pattern behind, with the sweat-pores forming black punctuations, while the receding furrows leave the black surface imtouched. When such impressions have to be used again, as for evidence, they should 46 DACTYLOGRAPHY be carefully varnished, as they are exceedingly liable to be destroyed by the slightest contact. In a case under judicial investigation where an official imprint had to be compared with one done by accident negatively on smoked glass or the like, the black linea- tions would not closely correspond — would, in fact, considerably diverge in pattern. This might tend to confuse judge and jury if the distinction of negative and positive dactylograph were not made clear by the expert witness. Then the apparent divergences could easily be demonstrated to be very significant coincidences. Five years of my early life were spent in learning a trade in Glasgow — that of the soon-to-be-obsolete Paisley shawl manufacture. It seemed to me to have been an utter waste of time, but part of my duty was to deal with the arrangement, classifying, and numbering immense varieties of patterns, printed with every con- ceivable variation of combined colours. It was impos- sible to carry these on memory, and one had to resort to mnemonic means of classification. Now, the immense significance of the variety in human finger-patterns dawned upon me very early, when I had once begun to interest myself in them. There are many patterns, which, when analysed into their composing elements, present analogies to artistic designs, a view which is no mere personal fad, but has been affirmed with enthusiasm by many artists in designs to whom I have pointed out those figures. Here are a few, by way of illustrating this point (space will not permit of more). Those figures are from real human finger-prints rendered diagrammatically. This is the first step, then, to catch with the eye the pattern or FINGER-PRINT PATTERNS 47 DESIGN-I.IKB Patterns in Finger-Prints No. i. (Diagrammatic) Design-];ike Patterns No. 2. design; give it a class name, and you have at once established some practical basis of classification in finger-prints. Then it is possible to frame some kind of catalogue for reference arranged like a dictionary with its sub- alphabetic order, in an almost infinite series. The initial difficulty is generally that which arises from want of skill in printing, which technical points will be considered subsequently. A soft and flexible substance like the ridges in human fingers does not alwa3^s yield an exactly similar impression in two successive moments. 48 DACTYLOGRAPHY under varying conditions of temperature, fatigue, and the like. Nor does the analogy of mathematical dia- grams always fitly apply in such a case. Even in steel engravings and fine etchings, as the connoisseur well knows, the degree of intensity of the pressure and other conditions will modify to some slight extent the resulting imprint, but what I wish to emphasize is, that if the original pattern had any value at all resulting from its complexity as a pattern, the variation in printing as now done officially by experienced police officials will not impair much its value as evidence of personal identity in a court of law. Even the amateur will soon, after a little practice with good materials, attain a very fair amount of clearness and uniformity in his imprints. SOME BIOLOGICAL QUESTIONS 49 CHAPTER IV SOME BIOI.OGICAI. QUESTIONS IN DACTYI^OGRAPHY. In this chapter I propose to bring together a few important points of a biological character, which are so vital that even in so curtailed a discussion they cannot be ignored. We shall also glance — it must literally be the merest glance — at the problem of man's genetic descent, in so far as it begins now to be illumined, however faintly, by a comparative study of finger-prints. Com- paratively little of a final character has as yet been achieved, but there are now not a few active and intelli- gent observers in many lands, and the scientific results often attained under the greatest difficulties are so far greatly encouraging. Fortunately the day has long passed away when it can be considered irreverent to enquire modestly as to who were one's ancestors. In a very true biological sense every human individual is known to have run through a scale of existence, begin- ning from the lowest mono-cellular organism, through something like a tadpole or salamander, into a verte- brate and mammal type, not easily to be discriminated from the undeveloped young of rat, or pig, or monkey. Now, if he is not in any way individually degraded by this actually demonstrable course of development, why should he be thought racially degraded by an honest scientific effort to trace the origin of his species from lowly animal ancestry ? The process may be slower, 50 DACTYLOGRAPHY but is no less determined by divinely established law. Our grandfathers believed that the Creator breathed into the organized and shapely form of Adam ( ='' a man ") a portion of the divine spirit, by which he became a living soul, and forthwith took his dignified place in nature. To me the old story, when retold in more modern and exact phrase, leads us to an entirely hopeful and inspiring conception of the origin and evolutionary destiny of our race. When we approach the threshold of man's first ap- pearance on the globe, we have reached a geologic epoch when our sober earth seems to have sown most of its wild oats. Its " crust " is pretty stable, and at least in its broad distribution of sea and land, it does not seem to differ very greatly from what its appearance presents on a modern physiographical map. Minor differences there must have been, as even our modern KngHsh coast-line shows, and there may have been other con- ditions than now exist to account for many of man's early migrations, but those differences are still matters of discussion. There were, possibly, enough certain bridge-Hke links between lands now apart and separated by wide stretches of sea, but, as a rule, such conclusions have been deductively reached, and are not definitely estabHshed on scientific evidence. After rising above one-celled to more complicated organisms, we reach a class of creatures in which a radiate or wheel-like form obtains, that is, radial symmetry, as in jelly-fish, star-fish, urchins, and sea- anemones. Fishes occupy, perhaps, about the lowest level among the back-boned or vertebrate animals, and we may SOME BIOLOGICAL QUESTIONS 51 readily notice that some of their fins occur in symmetri- cally arranged pairs, while others, again, occur singly. Now with this arrangement of such appendages in pairs symmetrically arranged there begins the appearance of something definitely like what we mean by limbs. Some present-day fishes use some of their fins as legs to clamber and crawl on rocks or ashore. I remember seeing, in a Japanese tea-house by the solitary sea- shore, not far from where the great arsenal of Yokoska now hums busily, a very beautiful gurnard, blue as to its outspread wings like the sapphire gurnard. Those fins were painted like the wings of a butterfly, and it crawled about in the limited sea-water, on rocks, under cliffs, and among sea-Vv-eed, with butterfly-like legs or processes from the roots of those wing-like fins. With such a special adaptation of their fins, fishes began to conquer the land. Seals and whales, as is well known, are mammals which have been driven back again to the sea. Thesing, in his suggestive Lectures on Biology (English translation, p. 13), says : — " All extremities of the higher vertebrates, however widely they may differ in construction, may be traced back biogenetically to the so-called Ichthyopterygium, as we see it in the lower shark-like fishes. Unequal growth of the single skeleton parts and a considerable reduction in their numbers transformed the Ichthyop- terygium into the five-fingered extremity character- istic of all vertebrates from the amphibians upwards." Of course the great end of an animal is at first to fill its own belly, and in order to do this, if fixed as some molluscs are, it must contrive to bring nutriment within its reach, and if mobile limbs come to be developed to 52 DACTYLOGRAPHY achieve locomotion, by fin in water, limb on land, and wing in air. After the vertebrate and mammal stage was achieved, the five-fingered limb takes various forms, as the paddle of the whale or wing of the bat. There are three great periods in geological development of animals — the Primary, which is, roughly speaking, the typical period of fishes ; the Secondary, when reptiles prevail ; and the Tertiary, the great age of mammals. Many geologists recognize a fourth period, the Post-Tertiary, Anthropoid I^ineations. a, from hand of orang, left index ; b, from foot of chimpanzee, left index ; c, from foot of orang, left index. Quaternary, or Diluvian, when existing species have been established. It is not till this latest period has arrived that we can detect unmistakable evidences of man. There are, however, many reasons which lead to the conclusion that his racial roots go still further back in time. Did he arise as a " mutation," one of those rare sudden changes observed to take place even at the present time, by which a species suddenly departs from its ancestral type and is transformed ? Let us briefly look at the main facts of mammalian ascent. The great herbivorous reptiles — some do not seem to have been SOME BIOLOGICAL QUESTIONS 53 strictly herbivorous — do not seem to lead us far on our path. Widely spread throughout the world, the Theriomorphs or beast-shaped reptiles seem to approach the mammal type, but they were too helpless and un- wieldy, and had little brain-power wherewith to direct their energies. The earliest genuine mammals were small, not only relatively to those great creatures, but really little, rat-like rodents. Then we find arboreal creatures, driven to the trees for refuge and for food, squirrel-like animals, agile to escape from their monstrous but clumsy and stupid foes on the ground, and using their paws nimbly as hands to grasp and tear, or to break nuts and other food. Lemur-like animals (lemuroids) then come on the stage, and among them — among the earliest of them — we begin to detect traces, on feet and hands, of those patterned ridges, the beginnings of which we have been seeking. Hand and brain and voice are the trinity of social construction. The spider and the mantis (or praying insect) have nimble, hand-like organs — very striking and conspicuous in the mantis; the chameleon among reptiles, the parrot among birds, the squirrel among lower mammals, all have somewhat hand-like organs used in hand-like ways ; but when we reach the higher mammals, the sense of touch is finely intertwined with the power of varied and discriminative grasping, pressing, or rubbing. The elephant, which appears at first in the strata as about the size of a dog, grows in size and brain power as the ages roll along. But his path seems now to be closing. With his sagacious brain, and prehensile, sensitive trunk, he can do wonders, but, like the horse, he is likely to be passed by ; the great 54 DACTYLOGRAPHY tool-maker finding it easy now to make bearers swifter or more powerful than they are. It is in man and the anthropoid apes that we first find the correspondence between hand and brain that pro- mises mastery. The ugly, painted mandrill, even, has beautiful lady-like hands and takes care of them like a lady. All the higher apes show complicated finger- patterns like those of man. The rugGe in apes and men seem clearly to have served a most useful purpose in aiding the firm grasp of hands or feet, a very vital point in creatures living an arboreal life, as they and their racial predecessors are now pre- sumed to have done. In that case, however, would not one pattern, a simple one, have done as well as any other ? Here, then, the great balancing principles of variation and heredity come into operation. The variety of patterns is immense, and for aught we know new ones may be being evolved at the present time. Here again, heredity comes in, for there is certainly some tendency to repeat in a quite general way the pattern of sire in the hands and feet of son. I have as yet found no quite close correspondence of detail in any case brought under my own notice. The question of identi- fying a person on one or two lineations involves so many practical problems of obscurity in printing and the like, that it is more appropriate for discussion in another chapter. In a work published last year on Science and the Criminal, by Mr. C. Ainsworth Mitchell, after quoting a reference I made on one occasion to the influence of heredity in sometimes dominating finger-patterns, the author goes on to say : " While there is questionably a SOME BIOLOGICAL QUESTIONS 55 general tendency for a particular type of finger-prints to be inherited just as any other bodily peculiarities are liable to be passed on from the parents to the children, there is by no means that definite relationship that Dr. Faulds hoped to establish." The full passage in my paper in Nature referred to, was this : — ** The dominancy of heredity through these infinite varieties is sometimes very striking. I have found unique patterns in a parent repeated with marvellous accuracy in his child. Negative results, however, might prove nothing in regard to parentage, a caution which it is important to make." The truth is, I have very frequently emphasized the fact that in such similar patterns in sire and son there is no real danger of false identification where several fingers are compared in their proper serial order. It is not even likely that two such fingers would agree exactly in lineations, number, curvature, etc., if carefuUy measured in the way set forth in this work. A more remarkable criticism is to be foimd in p. 63, thus : " The existence of racial peculiarities in finger- prints, which Dr. Faulds believed that he had discovered in the case of the Japanese, has not been borne out by the experience of others." The author then mentions some observations on this point by Galton, who thought that " the width of the ridges appeared to be more uniform and their direction more parallel in the finger-prints of negroes than in those of other races." The word " negroes " here is deHghtfully vague in an ethnological discussion. I have written nothing to justify the above remark. My behef has long been that there is no racial difference of yellow, white, red, or black, to use the good old Egyptian classification, but that the human family 56 DACTYLOGRAPHY is one, and that view (right or wrong) was enunciated often by me in Japan, both by speech and pen. Mr. Mitchell's strange misconception must surely be based on my words in the article by me quoted above, where, after enumerating some elements in patterns from differ- ent races, I go on distinctly to say : " These instances are not intended to stand for typical patterns of the two peoples, but simply as illustrations of the kind of facts to be observed." I had pleasure in giving my subscription and support to the recent First Universal Races Congress, which has done much, I believe, to consolidate scientific opinion as to the essential unity of our kind, a belief not so old or universal as many think, dating, indeed, not much more than a century back, if so far, as a scientific opinion, not biassed by the slave interest. Of much more importance now is the relation to human beings to the great anthropoid stocks. It is usual to separate the lemurs, which have strong affinities to monkeys and to men, from the anthropoids, or man-like apes, forming two great orders of Lemuroidea, and Anthropoidea. In 1909, however, a paper was published by the Zoo- logical Society of London, in which this separation is considered to be no longer justifiable, so that the lemurs and big man-like apes (orang, chimpanzee, and gorilla) would no longer be held as separate orders or sub-orders. There were some who hoped to show that the races of men corresponded to three primitive anthropoid stocks, linked to the three kinds of anthropoid apes. Whether the new view be correct or not, and there is something SOME BIOLOGICAL QUESTIONS 57 to be said in its favour, there can be no reasonable doubt now as to the close affinity which those creatures have to ourselves and to one another. When we first encounter remains of man or his close predecessor in the records of the rocks, he was a dweller in holes and caves of the earth. He certainly did not make pots of any kind, or at least he has left no such remains. Probably he had no such companions even as the domestic dog or cat, no cattle, not at first any kind of grain crop. He lived on roots and fruits, hunted, and fished. Those early people have often been called Troglodytes, from the Greek rpioyXrj, a cave. Professor Keith, the learned curator of the museum of the Royal College of vSurgeons, has advanced the theory that about the middle of the Miocene Age a group of creatures existed, having affinities to man as he now is, which group the professor names Proto-troglodytes. From these sprung three classes of Troglodytes, namely : The Gorilla; The Chimpanzee; Man. Some eighty-seven anatomical features are said to be possessed by the gorilla in common with man only, while the chimpanzee has ninety-eight such features as belong to man. The gorilla has the best and biggest teeth, and in this respect progressive deterioration went on through the orang-utan and the chimpanzee to man. According to the estimate of Professor Keith, there are not in the whole world, at present, more than 100,000 chimpanzee, and some 10,000 gorillas. The subject of twins is likely in future to be very interesting in relation to the resemblance of their finger- 58 DACTYLOGRAPHY patterns. The distinction is now made of twins pro- ceeding from one zygote or fertilized ovum, and twins proceeding each from different fertilized ova. In the first case, it is supposed that the twins are necessarily of the same sex, while in the other, each twin child may be of the sex determined by the fertilized ovum from which it sprung. Clearly, in the latter case it might often happen that both twins might be male, or both female. Dr. Berry Hart quotes from the records of another observer (Wilder) in which there was a pair of " identical" twins, in whom the similarity was complete even to the finger-prints. [Brit. Med. Jour., July 29th, 1911, p. 215.] I have found in the same family male and female with resembling finger-prints, but none which could be called identical, but opportunities of comparing twins of the same sex do not often occur. While writing this chapter I examined twins of the same sex (female). Their finger-prints are very similar, but details diverge in many directions. The matter merits close attention. But how are we to determine that twins of the same sex are from one ovum, seeing that there might be a coincidence of twins of the same sex proceeding from separate ova ? If their finger-prints are " identical," is that the main evidence ? or do identity of features, colour of hair, voice, manners, and character, come up independently ? If one questions the theory, the "identity" must be very complete indeed, to give it vraisemblance, for how often do we not find that children of the same parents, not twins, but born with many years intervening, show most striking resemblance ? The alleged complete identity of finger-patterns, however, SOME BIOLOGICAL QUESTIONS 59 is a most interesting and novel point, and ought to receive close attention from parents and physicians. A curious fact about hereditary resemblance is this, which I have frequently observed. A child resembles, say, a mother as a rule, but at some emotional, angry, or vexed moment, lines are marked in the face by muscular movements which bring out like a mask a striking likeness, say, of the father, or of some other progenitor. Besides this, a child at different stages may resemble in succession different near relatives, and in a very strik- ing degree resemble them. But with regard to finger- patterns there is no such variability. Even a month or two before a child is bom its little heraldic crest begins to be firmly fixed for each finger, as it is to be throughout life. The disease called Acromegaly, or giant growth, in- volves great expansion of the ridges and furrows, but no case of actual change of patterns has been observed as yet. The attention of medical men should be given to this affection in regard to modification of linear arrangement. The likeness or divergence of finger-patterns in neigh- bouring supernumerary fingers and toes might yield interesting results if carefully recorded. Extra fingers are commoner than extra toes. The webbing of fingers, as in the chimpanzee, might also be noticed, and any association with retrograde patterns, in the fingers concerned. The rapid growth of a literature of Criminology is partly the result of better methods of identification. It is imscientific to reason about the personal pecularities of all the Toms, Dicks, and Harrys, when Tom may be 6o DACTYLOGRAPHY Dick, or Dick Harry under a different alias. The criminologist can now use his prison statistics as to age, habits, and the like, with much greater confidence and precision. In an interesting, but somewhat reckless work on " Criminal Man," which summarizes the teach- ing of the eminent Italian authority on the anatomy and psychology of the criminal — of the Italian criminal at least — Cesare lyombroso, we are told (p. 20) : " lyong fingers are common to swindlers, thieves, sexual offenders, and pickpockets. The lines on the palmar surfaces of the finger-tips are often of a simple nature, as in the anthropoids." But they are not, necessarily, of a simple nature in the anthropoids, but often highly ornate and complex in their ramifications. In the lower monkeys they are much simpler, and Sir F. Galton thought it was so sometimes in the negro peoples. Indeed, one is not surprised to meet such simple lineation patterns now and again in cultivated people, without any criminal taint, or negro blood, or any anti-socialistic tendencies that can be easily detected. A cautious prison doctor in Glasgow, Dr. Devon, has written a clever book which gives much food for sober reflection. He seems to say that the criminal is not a kind of species by himself : " If those who come to prison for the first time were made the subject of examination, it would be found that they are principally remarkable for the absence of what the books call criminal character- istics." (p. II.) PRINTING AND SCRUTINIZING 6i CHAPTER V TECHNIQUE OF PRINTING AND SCRUTINIZING FINGER-PATTERNS There are important points connected with the printing of finger-patterns, especially for legal investigation, which come now to be considered. A human finger, as we have seen, is not, for printing purposes, just like a lithographic stone, a box-wood engraving, or a plate of zinc, steel, or copper. In ordinary printing, especially of high-class and delicate engravings, the quality and fluency of ink, the smoothness of surface and hygro- metric conditions of paper — due sometimes to local atmosphere, and sometimes to climate generally — the skill of workmen, all the conditions co-operate in pro- ducing variations, slight it may be, but noticeable in the results obtained. In the case of finger-prints we might also have to consider the willingness or un- willingness of the subject having his finger-prints officially taken. A finger — even that of a dead person — is compressible, while retaining on the whole the pattern of its furrows and ridges, and hence imder fairly similar conditions, the printed products may be some- what different in appearance. The same fact would apply, no doubt, also to impressions taken from an indiarubber stamp, made, we shall suppose, for stamping purposes in regard to documents, in imitation of a particular finger-print pattern. Greater compression tends to flatten out the ridges and to narrow the inter- vening grooves, while it may also tend, especially when 62 DACTYLOGRAPHY associated with over-inking, to obliterate some of the characteristic ramifications of the pattern. But, again, the finger of a living person is usually in a state of physio- logical activity. It swells or shrinks, drying up or exuding moisture from its many pores, which facts, however minute and insignificant they may appear to the uninstructed, to the trained dactylographer they leave a most interesting and significant record behind. Examine carefully a ridge which has been printed — and, if possible, photographically enlarged — at various periods not long apart, and the pores with which it is dotted will be found, while retaining their relative positions, to vary somewhat in their degree of patency. A single ridge might be compared to a naval cruiser, the numerous funnels of which are not all belching forth smoke at the same time, but one is almost smokeless while its neighbour is quite active. Those pores which have been copiously emitting sweat are seen, when im- printed, to be larger than those that were inactive. An imaginary case was once suggested to me as a final blow to finger-print identification. A certain Mr. WilUam Sykes is officially known to be recruiting his valuable health at one of His Majesty's sanatoriums for people of his profession. That celebrated artist's " thumb "-print, however, has been found liberally spotted all over the scene of some tragic area of crime. What is to be said ? Well, the prodigality of display of the well-known sign- manual, in circumstances when gloves are almost invariably now worn by experts, might well arouse suspicion in itself, but it would easily be foimd in such a case that the pattern had been prodigally repeated with too great fideHty in the matter of sweat-pores, PRINTING AND SCRUTINIZING 63 which, in the case of an active burglar, who is a sober, hard-working fellow in spite of his faults, would vary with each successive imprint, in a way that no manu- facturer of bogus " thumb "-prints could easily follow. The fact that a finger — a clean finger — is naturally, to some slight extent, greasy, partly from sebaceous secretion, enables the expert dactylographer by various chemical and mechanical means to obtain a pretty clear vision, even in minute detail, of what before had been quite invisible. A mere accidental smudge from a slightly oily palm or finger, if imprinted on glass, japanned tin, varnished or polished wood, etc., may have its invisible lineations brought out by dusting gently upon it some light powder of appropriate colour. Dr. Rene Forgeot, in 1891, first called attention to this method of bringing out latent imprints, and my friend. Dr. Garson, of this country, gave it further developments. In my Guide I have mentioned some of my own results with modifications of these methods. On a pane of glass which a malign finger is suspected to have touched, a fine black powder gives vivid and beautiful results, the sooty matter clinging to and re- vealing the oily surface of the lineations in very full detail. In my article in Nature of 1880 a sooty imprint is shown to have helped an innocent man to establish his innocence, but in this case the imprint was quite direct. The powder should be gently blown over, or dusted lightly on to the greasy impression, with a soft camel hair brush which is perfectly clean and dry. Care should be taken not to breathe on the glass, or a damp, smeary effect may result. I have not found 64 DACTYLOGRAPHY sable brushes act so well as those made of camel hair, a fact which their structure under the microscope helps to explain. (See frontispiece.) The best treatment of a greasy smudge on a dark ground, say the surface of a japanned cash-box, marble slab, school slate, or enamelled door panel, is carefully to dust over the object with a fine white powder, such as the ordinary tooth-powder of the chemists, or still better, as I find, with the light carbonate of magnesia. In one sense this may be said to yield a negative print, but an important qualification arises. The patterns now in white are the ridges which before were black, while the furrows remain dark as at first. In a smoked glass print the white ridges have not imparted something to the glass, but have simply removed the carbonaceous deposit previously there. Practically, however, the whitened ridges have the quality of a negative imprint, as previously described.* Greasy finger-marks may also be acted on chemically, so as to bring out details by the application of osmic acid. If there is any olein or oleic acid in the mark, as there generally is in human finger-marks, the acid deepens the tone of the almost invisible lines into a brownish hue, revealing all their richness of detail. I have succeeded in etching finger-marks of this kind on glass by means of hydro-fluoric acid. They remain quite indelible in all their details so long as the glass itself endures. The patterns thus etched can be very well brought into view by painting a dark background on the reverse, or pasting dark paper behind. There is a clear layer of the skin in both palms and soles, the ♦ See Guide to Finger-Print Identification (fig. 12) PRINTING AND SCRUTINIZING 65 fat of which is eleidin. That particular kind of fat does not stain with osmic acid in the usual way. The sweat of palms and soles is not supposed to contain any fat at all, but there would seem to be some faint trace of it in sweat. The greasy surface of the skin as a rule comes from the sebaceous glands, as previously described. When clean palms leave a greasy smear, as they often do, I think the greasiness must generally come by transmission from other parts of the body, or from con- tact with foreign greasy substances, which are common enough. For those who wish to study dactylography, the apparatus is neither complicated nor expensive. A good pair of compasses, a botanical lens, a school slate or tin plate or porcelain tile, a small pot of fine printer's ink, and an ink-roller or photographer's " squeegee " will suffice for most purposes. For the expert who must make fine measurements of enlarged photographs, and perhaps defend them under keen forensic criticism, one or two instruments are required, presently to be described. The ink may be daubed evenly and thinly on the slate, tile or plate, but it is better to use a small printer's roller for the purpose. Avoid all fluff, hairs, or grit, which thoroughly spoil any print. The roller should always be scrupulously cleaned before laying aside, and it is well to provide a tin case for its reception. The remaining stock of ink should be carefully levelled a- top, and covered with a drop or two of linseed or other oil, which will preserve it in good and workable condition for a long time. Reeve's Artists' Depots, lytd., 53 Moorgate Street, London, supply an excellent quality 66 DACTYLOGRAPHY of ink for this purpose, in flexible tubes, at sixpence each, and the same firm can generally provide the rollers or squeegees used by photographers, which serve very well. In an emergency I have made serviceable ink with burnt cork, lamp soot, even shoe-blacking, using a good smooth and even cork as a roller. Wax casts, which should occasionally be made for stud^^, can be made with the sheets of wax used greatly, at one time, for the making of artificial flowers. Excellent casts can also be made with putty, gutta-percha, sealing-wax, or hard paraffin, such as is used to encase the modem candle. Very excellent imprints of this kind have been left by burglars on candles they have used. Some useful practical liints as to how finger-prints may be photographed and enlarged for police purposes are supplied by Inspectors Stedman and Collins, in an official work by Sir E. R. Henry, Classification and Uses of Finger - Prints ; and others occur in Daktyloskopie, published in Vienna. Finger-marks on plated articles, when placed squarely with the camera in a strong side light, will appear light on a dark ground. The instruc- tions in such a case are : " Focus sharply. Should, however, the mark be too faint to be clearly seen on the focussing screen, a piece of printed paper can be placed around the mark to focus by, but this should be removed before exposing the plate, otherwise halation will set in and obscure some of the lines in the finger-mark." The plate done in this way gives a negative result, so that a transparency must be made and used so as to convert that into a positive print. The fingers and thumbs may each be printed separately. For identification the serial order of fingers must be PRINTING AND SCRUTINIZING 67 retained on the record. The official method in Eng- land is to print four fingers of each hand simultaneously, adding the right and left thumb to each respective section of the register. In addition, each thumb and finger is imprinted by rolling it slightly, which gives an enlarged area for the display of the more important linear elements in each finger pattern. The prisoner signs this sheet, and also adhibits an imprint from his right forefinger under the signature. The highly-glazed papers now so much used for half- tone photographic reproductions are not, in my ex- perience, particularly good for ordinary impressions. The surface of any paper used should be fairly smooth, the texture firm, tough (not brittle), durable, and the colour white, as photographs for enlargement as judicial exliibits may be required. Great care is now taken officially to secure the correct order of fingers, as on that the validity of the method depends, and the whole utility of the classification. Inspectors Stedman and Collins, in the work just quoted, state that when finger-prints are required to be produced as evidence in a court of justice, " they are first enlarged 5 diameters direct with an enlarging camera. The negatives are afterwards placed in an electric light enlarging lantern, with which it is possible to obtain a photographic enlargement of a finger-print 36 inches square, such a photograph being as large as is ever likely to be required." In my Guide to Finger-Print Identification (p. 62) I have advocated uniform enlargement of all such exhibits on the decimal or metric system, and hope that inter- national agreement on this point may be secured. Apart 68 DACTYLOGRAPHY from criminal services its scientific utility would ulti- mately be very great. The objection that an English jury would dislike being confronted with the technical- ities of a foreign and " mathematical " system is very easily met. An English jury — and no jury in the world is fairer or clearer-headed — ^would only, in any case, have to compare two figures similarly enlarged, one being that of the accused person's fingers, taken while in custody, and the other, either a similar official record of another date, or a smudgy mark from some blotting-pad, window-pane, drinking-glass, bottle, or the like. The two exhibits, paired for comparison, would have been enlarged exactly on the same scale, whatever that scale might have been. For purposes of judicial comparison, therefore, English terms and English instruments might be used throughout, and no inconvenience could be felt by the most insularly prejudiced jury that could possibly be got together. When a photographic enlargement has been made, it is necessary to be able readily to test its conformity with the enlargement to be compared with it, or if there be not strict agreement, to allow for and calculate the admitted discrepancy. This may easily be done by an application of the " rule of three." It may be necessary to test the concurrence of curved lines in two exhibits similarly enlarged. At one time I used strips of plumber's lead, placed edgeways on the curved lines to be compared. They could be flexed so as to show the various sinuosities, however complex, but leaden tapes cannot readily be made to retain the form imparted to them. Copper wire I found to be stiffer, but it readily warps off the plane. An excellent way is Prison Pr.son Reg. No. Classiflcation No. 26 OO RIGHT HAND. // 2.— U. Korr Kincct 3 K Middir Kii 5.— R Litili Finger. >-"%?**^^- C.P. - ?\ X Fold.) Impressions to be so taken thai the Hp«urr of (lie lasi |oiiii ^li.ill l>c immrdi.^lely above ihe black line marked (Fold) If (he impression of any digit be deleclivr a second print may bo taken tn Ihe vacant space above it When a linger is missing or so injured that the impression cannot be obtained, or is deformed and yields a bad print, the fact should br noted uii d t T e '*' **'. ■x (l^% f AtxbuJ, J 5 -v-l f f A t f I 4u. til^J- U >\ S^ l ■h % V ^ printer's ink. With all the precautions then available, it was fomid that mistakes in identification involved unj ust suffering. A man named Coyle was sentenced for larceny in 1889, a Millbank warder swearing to his previous conviction, ten years before, as one Hart. The jury having exam- ined Hart's photograph gave a hostile verdict, the distinctive marks of the two men were found to be different, and Coyle moreover showed that he had been doing a short term when Hart was in prison. As is wisely stated in p. 23 of the Report : ** The true test of the efficiency of a system of identification is not the number of identifications made, but the number of mis- identifications, or of failure to identify." io6 DACTYLOGRAPHY A woman lacking her left breast was identified with another who had suffered in the same way, and who had been previously convicted. It became clear that the women were different, and poor Eliza had her punishment accordingly reduced from seven years' penal servitude to six months' imprisonment. A case in 1908 was that of two men charged with burglary, both of whom were short of a fore-finger, and were about the same age and of similar appearance. A man named Blake was found under circumstances that suggested an attempt at burglary, and was identified by a constable and several others, including a prison warder, as a convict called Steed, under supervision. It was found, however, that Blake had clearly been at liberty when Steed was in prison, and the former was promptly acquitted. One Callan was convicted as an incorrigible rogue, but had been identified wrongly with another man, he himself at the time of the alleged offence certainly having been in St. George's Workhouse. He was, however, afterwards rightly convicted for a similar offence. It would appear from these and numerous other cases not referred to in this Report, that those mistakes affect only the criminal class. Probably there is a little too much readiness to identify a known rogue with the offender wanted, and those unfortunate victims often of disease and early training deserve fair and just dealing. Alas, however, the really innocent have sometimes suffered dreadfully from judicial blunders. The famous Beck case is too recent and tragic to require recall. PRACTICAL RESULTS 107 But, besides occasional false identifications of inno- cent persons, the old system, now happily superseded, was admittedly very ineffective in detecting old offenders passing under different disguises and with false names. The time spent on each identification of old offenders was very great, an average of eight hours being required for one identification. A few minutes is now found to be sufficient. Tattoo marks are not always so small or so restricted in character as they are found to be by the English police. In Knowledge of April, 191 1, I had printed in colours a wonderful reproduction of a painting made fo.c me in Japan, of a servant of mine, whose body was finely tattooed over its whole surface, barring face, hands, and feet, in different colours. It had cost him many years' suffering and a small fortune in money to achieve, but he was rather proud of it. I have seen many such examples, though few so fine as a work of art. Extensive tattooing is also common among Italian criminals, the whole body being adorned. Simple tattoo marks cannot be entirely effaced, but may be defaced ; a simple design being made more complicated or altered so as to mislead entirely. A Leeds warder said in evidence before Mr. Asquith's Committee, that : " Tattoo marks are sometimes de- faced. I know one case where a person had a letter D on left breast ; it is now made into * Mermaid.' This is sometimes done to prevent recognition in prison. Sometimes the tattoo is removed, but a flesh mark of same shape left." Our Home Office was indisposed to move hastily in such a matter as finger-print evidence of identity lo8 DACTYLOGRAPHY suggested by Englishmen. Another system, very ex- cellent in its way, had the immense advantage of being of foreign origin. As the result, however, of several years* experience, some inherent defects in ^lons. Bertillon's anthropometric system — adopted in a modi- fied form by our authorities in 1894 — ^vv^ere brought into notice. It was found to be rather delicate for every- day practice, and the fine measurements taken officially often varied. In 1901 therefore, a fresh Committee, with Lord Belper as chairman, was appointed, but no report seems ever to have been published. Soon after- wards, in July, 1902, the Home Secretary directed the introduction of a system of identification based upon finger-prints only, in supersession of the French method of identifying by bodily measurements in a certain order. The results soon showed that the tardy decision had been immediately justified. There was greater certainty assured of valid identifications, the labour was much less, the expense was diminished, and a great danger of false identification was effectively removed. That the system had taken root was soon evidenced by many newspaper paragraphs of subsequent date. Here is a bit of every-day evidence from a criminal case which resulted in conviction. It appeared in the columns of the Daily Chronicle, as far back as December 2nd, 1903. Many such cases were never reported at all. The witness, we are told, had " not the slightest shadow of a doubt that the finger-prints of Elliott were identical with those in the records of Scotland Yard. He might be considered an expert in the matter of finger- prints. Altogether he had dealt with about 500,000 cases of finger-prints." To this report may be added a PRACTICAL RESULTS 109 sentence from that of The Times, of the same date : " He had never known the finger-prints of different persons to agree." The witness is significantly described as Detective-Sergeant ColUns, of the Finger-Print Office, Scotland Yard. At a later date the same witness (now Inspector Collins), bearing evidence as to the Houndsditch murders, stated that they had now 170,000 different sets of prints recorded. He added that, " During the last ten years, since the introduction of the system in 1901, they had made upwards of 62,000 identifications and recognitions, and, so far as he knew, without error. They dealt, therefore, with pretty large numbers, and he was justified in saying that he had never found two impressions of difl^erent fingers to agree." [The Daily Mail, February 25th, 1911.] In The Daily Mail of August loth, 19 10, Inspector Mimro, of the Finger-print Department of Scotland Yard, in giving evidence that an imprint on a broken window was that of the accused's right middle finger, added : '' There had never been any mistake yet in finger-print identification." One Cris Keegan, who received five years' penal servitude at Dublin in June, 1910, had left a finger- print on a broken church window at Rathmichael. His counsel, pleading guilty for him, said : [The Daily Mail, June loth, 1910] " That when, before the magis- trates the accused supplied the best testimony to the finger-print system which it had yet received, by saying ' The taking of these finger-prints is the greatest inven- tion for the detection of criminals. I throw myself on the mercy of the court. I did visit the church .' " This poor man had been convicted forty times before. no DACTYLOGRAPHY Mr. William Henry, a witness in the case, who was in charge of the register for criminals in Dublin castle, said, " he had put through his hands about 150,000 finger- prints, and no two had ever been found alike. This system of identification had now superseded all other methods, and he regarded it as infaUible." Witness, having examined the prisoner's fingers in the dock, then said, " the finger-print on the glass had been made by the prisoner's right fore-finger." Criminals, dreading this kind of evidence, have of late taken sometimes to destroying their ridge-patterns on the fingers. They sometimes also remove and clean a window-pane which they have touched. In the early part of the fourteenth century, clerks in holy orders claimed what was called " benefit of clergy," that is, the privilege of being tried for certain crimes by ecclesiastical courts only, a privilege which was afterwards extended to all persons who could read — ^for reading was a somewhat rare accompHshment in those merry old times. In 1487 this benefit was re- stricted, so that a mere layman who was able to read could secure it only once, and then he was to be branded on the thumb, to show that he had already enjoyed his one opportunity, thus carefully obliterating by legal methods the best means of proving the fact. A Leeds man, charged with burglary, was stated in The Daily Mail of April 14th, 1908, to have destroyed every one of his finger-ends so that his prints could not be taken. He had been convicted several times before, and had been sentenced to three months' imprisonment. The complete burglar's outfit now includes well- fitting gloves as an essential element, quite as important FUTURE PROSPECTS iii as skeleton keys and regulation jemmies. This fact is curiously applied by the late John Davidson, who saj^s, in Mammon and His Message : '' The gloves of party, of culture, of creed, wherewith men hide their finger- prints lest they should be caught in the act of being themselves, I decline to wear." Early in 1904, an office in Bradford was broken into by smashing a glass panel in the door. Some cash and postage stamps were secured by the robber. On one piece of glass a single finger-mark had been imprinted accidentally, which was found by the police to be that of a suspected person whose impressions had been official^ secured some time before. The offender was duly charged with the crime and convicted. The photographs in this case were reproduced in The Strand Magazine of May, 1905, one being the enlarged impression found on the piece of glass, and the other that of the supposed corresponding impression, which was that of the prisoner's left thumb. Those finger-prints resemble, but their mutual likeness is by no means quite conclusive and convincing. Mr. Mallet, the author of the " Finger-Prints which have Convicted Criminals," however, says : " The reader will see how precisely similar are the impressions, and he will be interested, with the aid of a microscope, in seeing how exactly the almost countless ridges and characteristics of the thumb are faithful doubles." The patterns are both enlarged so greatly that not even a lens is required for their discernment, and the ** countless ridges " do not rim above forty. The two figures are not equalized in their enlargement and comparison is made imnecess- arily difficult, but when made, the curves for some reason 112 DACTYLOGRAPHY cannot be got to agree. The officially registered im- pression affords clear lineations, but that on the bit of glass panel is muddled and smudgy. On the whole I should not call it a good example of this kind of identifi- cation. A second case given is that of an imprint on a small box which had been used for containing homoeopathic remedies. Some cash had been stolen on a certain Saturday night, and on Friday the delinquent was cap- tured and convicted by means of his finger-prints. The reproduced photographs show the pattern to be somewhat simple, and, allowing for a certain inevitable faintness due to indirect reproduction, the evidence is good of its kind. A pattern of somewhat greater complexity would have afforded much stronger evidence. The chances of a single finger-print of very simple design, so to say, being repeated in the case of another person, is not to be ignored, and if the suspected smudge is obscure the evidence ceases to be of much value. Of the third case mentioned, we are assured that " without the finger-print it would have been impossible to convict." Now, the enlarged imprint of the suspect's right middle finger has been printed quite clearly, and has good, unique characteristics, but just where these would be most useful for identification the lines in the suspected smudge are fatally blurred and useless for comparison. A better case is that of a print on a drinking-glass, which was brought out in the way dealt with in a previous chapter of this work. The pattern was rather striking, and the resemblance convincing. The prisoner after- FUTURE PROSPECTS 113 wards confessed his guilt and assisted the police to arrest another man and to recover some stolen property. In an old French reading book I learned from in earlier days, there was a story of a country doctor who in visiting an upland farmer's wife could find no paper or ink for his prescription. So he wrote his orders in chalk on the farm door and told them to take that to the chemist. They took the door. It seems that a chief detective of Bradford found a bath-room door imprinted in circumstances that aroused suspicion. Protected carefully by paper the door was conveyed on a cart to the Town Hall, as evidence in the case. Identification does not merely ensure the conviction of the guilty. A very pleasing example was sent to me by an eminent American author and journalist, which shows how the legal use of finger-print evidence estab- lished the innocence of an accused negro. Briefly, the story was this. A murder had been committed in Kansas by a coloured man named William West. While looking for him it turned out that the police had just placed under arrest for some minor offence, a young negro named William West, who, however, stoutly maintained his innocence of the murder. The French method of bodily measurements was applied, and the person under arrest was found to correspond exactly in his dimensions in trunk and limbs with those of the sought-for murderer. It remained now only to take the imprints of his finger- tips, a method not long before introduced in that State. It was then clearly seen that, by their decided divergences in pattern, the man in custody could not be the guilty person, although name, colour, and measurements all agreed in the two men. A few days later the real H 114 DACTYLOGRAPHY murderer was arrested. The report sent by my friend concludes thus : " The coincidences of name and figure might have been fatal to the innocent man, if the im- pression of the finger-tips had not also been employed as a means of identification. The police say that this test is infalUble. The impression of one man's finger-tips never corresponds exactly with those of any other man." The system is now largely used in many of the States. Mr. W. A. Pinkerton, the well-known Sherlock Holmes of America, has a high opinion of the validity of the method, and w^rote me on his recent visit to this country that he intended to study the subject more closely. A curious incident happened many years ago to a doctor in the district where I live. Returning from a visit at a late hour, by a lonely road, he was suddenly assailed by a powerful ruffian who tried to garrot him. The doctor, a notably athletic man, objecting to the treatment, finally got one of his assailant's fingers into his mouth and amputated it neatlj^ with his teeth. Early in the morning the rogue came to the same doctor's surgery imwittingly, seeking for surgical help, was seized, and ultimately convicted, getting heavy punishment. Now, on telling this true story (the finger is still kept in spirit) to Mr. — now Sir Charles B. — ^Troup, at the Home OiBice, that gentleman smilingly said such a case would never by any chance occur again. Well, in October, 1909, a constable patrolling St. John's Street, Clerken- well, foimd, sticking on a spike at the top of a gate, a bloody finger with a ring on it. This was promptly submitted to the police experts at Scotland Yard, who were convinced that it had belonged to a man known FUTURE PROSPECTS 115 as " William Mitchell." A man called ** May," with his hand bleeding and bandaged up had just been arrested. It was then found that he had just lost a finger, which he admitted had been done when he was hurriedly getting over the gate. He got twelve months' hard labour, as consolation. Many years ago I endeavoured to show the value of this method in the recognition of the dead, where records existed. The importance it might acquire is illustrated by the case of a man killed on the Great Western Railway at Slough. His body had been badly shattered and mutilated, and nothing was found in the poor man's pockets but a match-box and a tobacco pipe. Superin- tendent Pearman sent the finger-prints of the dead man to Scotland Yard, where it was established beyond any doubt that the deceased was one Walter James Downes, a farrier, of Deal. How he came to be known at Scotland Yard is not stated in the newspaper report. The record of a blameless life would have permitted him to rest in a nameless grave. In some parts of the Continent means are used systematically to identify, by their finger-prints, all vagrants and tramps. It would seem to be clear that in this country a large proportion of those poor waifs are not really criminals in disposition, being often merely failures from physical or mental incapacity, persons hopelessly inefficient in performing the simplest tasks of an industrial life. Among those there is ever a floating population of professional criminals, and others again who are not chronic evildoers, but have, perhaps, once been guilty of some grave offence which has separated them from home and friends. ii6 DACTYLOGRAPHY The Chief Constable of Halifax, in his annual report (1909) deplores the absence of any means of discriminat- ing between the " honest hard -up " and the habitual tramps, who are often rogues and vagabonds. He advocates a central registry for the United Kingdom, based on the finger-print method. This, he thought, would reduce the number of beggars, and would give the genuine but unfortunate worker indisputable evidence as to the purity of his record, and entitle him to more generous treatment in his search of work. Amongst other evidences that the English method has come to stay, one might quote the prospectus of the Birmingham University Medical Course (1911). There we are informed that the course of Forensic Medicine (Professor Morrison) now includes " P'inger-prints and Foot-marks." In Stoke-on-Trent, the method of finger-prints is reported to have saved the borough both time and monej^ as compared with the old photographic method. The Chief Constable reported that in Hanley, in 1908 (now incorporated with Stoke) : '* The finger impressions of seven prisoners, whose antecedents were miknown, were taken by the police, and forwarded to the Registrar of Habitual Criminals, and in six of the cases the impressions were identified as those of persons previously convicted of crime." As had been done in a previous report, it is also stated, that '' a considerable amount is annually saved to the department by the discontinuance of the photographing of prisoners, excepting where special circumstances make it desirable or necessary." According to the Evening Post, the leading financial journal of New York, the new system of finger-prints is FUTURE PROSPECTS ny rapidly growing in favour with bankers who have been recently victimised by swindlers and forgers. The Williamsburg Savings Bank was the first institution to adopt the system. Other banks, finding it entailed much delay, appointed a special clerk, whose duty it is to persuade ladies to remove their gloves and submit to the inking operation. A New York lawyer, Mr. F. R. Fast, advocated some years ago a finger-print method of attesting legal documents, as by the old-fashioned seal now disused, except in a few high official cases. His suggestion was that a man should choose one of his ten fmgers, the one which happens to have most individuahty about it, perhaps, as his "Ego" finger, with which to adhibit his impression after his usual written signature, in law- papers, cheques, and the like. He also advocated storing past (in regard to wills, etc.) impressions of all the ten fingers. This has always been my contention, that the ten fingers should be used in cases requiring great security. One or more should also be adhibited in the case of illiterate persons who now sign with a cross. With passports, this is now actually done in several coimtries on the European continent. It ought at once, I think, to be adopted by bankers, for circular notes — a great convenience to travellers having to use different currencies, but who may sometimes find it difficult to get a friend to identify them. The case of pensioners, old age and others, would seem to be urgent now, and, as a medical man, I cannot help thinking that present official methods are rather loose and may lead to frequent abuses. A general practitioner is asked to sign a certificate of identity in circumstances where ii8 DACTYLOGRAPHY it is not easy to be certain. A good-natured, busy doctor may aid roguery by simply echoing what an applicant, or his friends, may have suggested. In criminal trials, an English jury ought to be afforded some safeguard as to identity. A supposed old convict who had become a constable fell again into evil ways, but was soon found out by a comparison of fresh finger- prints, with records which he had not at first been sus- pected of having left behind. He had had a good character in the army. The jury in this case very properly insisted on being thoroughly satisfied by their own examination of the finger-print evidence submitted to the court. Not all juries are quite complaisant on this point. I was present at a case in which very pertinent and intelligent questions were asked by one or two sceptical jurymen, and a demonstration of the printing process done before them was insisted upon. In one Old Bailey case the jury finally rejected evidence of this kind. The comment of a lyondon newspaper was this : — " In finger-print cases the police expert is generally trusted implicitly, and the jury is apt to be forgetful of the fact that, although the theory of finger-prints has been reduced almost to an exact science, mistakes may be made in applying it, and the policeman has frequently an over-anxiety to prove his case that may distort his view." The true cure for this evil, which has often been pointed out, would seem to be the systematic instruction of the police force — or some select numbers of them — in all such matters as come within their official duties. With eight years' experience as a police surgeon, I must say FUTURE PROSPECTS 119 that a great deal of the valuable kind of evidence that recent fiction has made popular is spoiled by the methods of the average constable. Professor Glaister, the eminent medical jurist of Glasgow, was, I think, the first to give a place to finger-print evidence in a work on Forensic Medicine. The second edition of his work is fully illustrated with specimens. We have seen that the study of finger- and foot-prints now forms a regular subject in the medical course of Birmingham University. It would be easy to arrange, at local centres, such instruction in this method as is now fre- quently given to constables in ambulance work. To some extent this, I believe, has already been done, but the teachers themselves evidently need to be taught some elemental principles to instruct effectively. The huge records left in Scotland Yard and other police centres of administration have not as yet done any service to the biological aspects of Dactylography. They are silent and still as the rocks were before Hutton and Ivyell struck them with the rod of science and made living springs gush out in great abundance. 120 DACTYLOGRAPHY GLOSSARY OF SOME TERMS USED BY DACTYI.OGRAPHERS. AcciDENTAi^s. Nondescript patterns in the class com- posites. Anthropoid. Of the great man-like apes (gorilla, orang- utan, and chimpanzee). Anthropometric. Bodily measurements. Anthropometry. Science of accurate bodily measure- ments. Arch. A curved set of lineations, without backward turn ; a bow. Bertillonage. Alphonse Bertillon's anthropometric methods. Bifurcation. Fork-like splitting into two branches. Bi,UR. A dull, smudg3^ imprint. Bow. a curved lineation like a bow. Bui^B. The pad of a finger-tip. Characteristic. Any striking feature in a pattern which gives distinctiveness. Chirauty. The principle involved in " Mirror Patterns." Composite. Patterns composed of various elements, such as arch, loop, or whorl. Core. The heart or central portion of a finger-print. Crease (palmar). The lines which indicate folding of the hand surface. DACTYI.OGRAPH. A finger-impression taken by any process. Dactyi,oi.ite. An indented finger-print as on wax. GLOSSARY 121 DACTYI.OSCOPY (Daktyloskopie). The practical study of Finger-prints. DEiyTA. A somewhat triangular figure formed by skin lineations. Derma, Dermai,. The deep true skin, the " quick." Digit, Digitai,. A finger, of fingers. Epidermis. The upper skin which readily peels off. Epithelium. The scaly surface of skin. Exhibit. An article to be shown in court as evidence. " Fi^EXiBLE Curves." An instrument for measuring enlarged curving lineations. Fork. A Y-like figure. FoRMUi^A (pi. FoRMUi^iE). The arrangement of syllables or signs to denote a set of finger-prints. Furrow. The hollow line between ridges, a sulcus. Hook. A J -like figure in any position. Index Finger. The finger used in pointing. Junction. Where two lineations meet or break off. I^iNEATiON. A line as printed, whether ridge or furrow. Loop. A curved line which returns on itself. Micrometer. An instrument like a pair of compasses, used for fine measurements. Mirror Pattern. The reverse (exact) image of a given figure. Negative. A print in which the ridges are white and furrows black, as when smoked glass is used. Pai^mar. Of front surface of the hand. PAPII.I.A (pi. Papiix^). Elements in a ridge where touch organs are. " Photograph." Used sometimes legally for finger- prints. Pocket IvOOP. A variety of imperfect loop. 122 DACTYLOGRAPHY Positive. A finger-print where ridges appear black (or other colour of pigment used) and furrows are white. Primates. An order of animals, including lemurs, monkeys, apes, and man. Radiai.. The thumb side of the hand (opposed to Ulnar. ) Recognition. An identification. Recidivist. A relapsing or incorrigible criminal. Ridge. A line of skin tissue, elevated, with sweat-pores. Rod. a figure like a rod. R01.1.ED Print. A finger-print not taken by direct or plain impress, but by a revolution of the inked sur- face on flat paper. Ruga (pi. Rug^). A ridge. Searcher. One who seeks for a former registration. Sebaceous. Of the greasy excretion of the skin. Smudge. A blurred or dull imprint. Stapi^e. a figure like a U inverted ; thus, fl- Sudor. Sweat. Sudoriparous. Of sweat, sweat-yielding. Sui^cus (pi. SUI.C1). A skin groove or furrow. Twinned I^oop. Two adjoining loops in a core, com- plementary in position. Tented Arch. An arch shaped like a tent or volcanic mountain. Terminus. A term used for distinctive points within and without a core. UI.NAR. The little finger side of the hand. (Opposed to Radial). Verso. May be used for an imprint as the converse of the fleshy pattern. Whori.. a flat spiral figure. WiDDERSHiNS. The reverse of a clock-hand's move- ment. BIBLIOGRAPHY 123 SHORT BIBLIOGRAPHY. Asquith's Committee. — [Blue Book.] " Identification of Habitual Criminals," 1894. Clemens, S. L. (Mark Twain.).—" Pudd'nhead Wilson" A story illustrating the principles of Finger- Print Identification. Darwin, Chari.es. — " Origin of Species," 1859 ; " De- scent of Man," 1871. Devon, James. — " The Criminal and the Community," 1912. " ENCYCi^oPiEDiA Britannica." — " Finger Prints," etc., 1911. FAUI.DS, Henry. — " On the Skin-furrows of the hands," (Nature, chap, xxii., p. 605), 1880 ; *' Dactyloscopy" (St. Thomas's Hospital Gazette), January, 1904 ; •* Guide to Finger-Print Identification," 1905 ; " Finger Prints : a chapter in the History of their use for Personal Identification," (Knowledge), April, 1911. Ferrero, G. ly. — " Criminal Man " (lyombroso's), 1911. FoRGEOT, Rene. — " l/cs empreintes latentes " (Thesis), 1891. Gai^ton, Francis. — " Identification by Finger-Tips " (The Nineteenth Century), August, 1891 ; " Finger Prints, 1892 ; " Finger-Print Directories, 1895. Garson, J. G. — " Finger-Prints Classification " (Jour. Anthrop. Inst., chap, xxx. p. loi), 1900. 124 DACTYLOGRAPHY G1.AISTER, J. — ''Textbook of Medical Jurisprudence," 1902 (and 2nd edition). Gray, H. — "Anatomy, Descriptive and Surgical" (T6th ed.) 1905. Haddon, a. C. — "Races of Man, and their Distribu- tion," 1909; "History of Anthropology" 191G. Henry, E. R. — " Classification and Uses of Finger- prints," 1905. Hepburn, D. — " The Papillary ridges on monkeys' hands and feet " {Nature, vol. liii., 36), 1895. Herschei,, W. J. — " Skin Furrows of the Hand, " Nature, vol. xxii., 76), 1880. Hope, I/UDWIG. " The Human Species " (Eng. trans.) 1909. lyiNDSAY, B. — " Animal Life." Marett, R. — " Anthropology." MiTCHEiyi.. " Science and the Crimi^ al," 191 1. PuRKiNjE, J. E. " Commentatio de examine physio- logico organi visus et systematis cutanei," 1823. ScHi^AGiNHAUFEN, Otto. " Der Hautleistensystem der Primatenplanta " (with a valuable bibliography), Gegenbaur's Jahrbuch, 1905. ScHOFiEivD, A. T. " Elementary Physiology for Stu- dents," 1892. Stewart, G. N. " Manual of Physiology," 1910. Thomson, J. A., and P. Geddes. " Evolution," 1911. TYI.OR. " Primitive Culture," 1903. WAI.KER, N. " Introduction to Dermatology," 1904. WAI.1.ACE, A. R. " The World of Life," 1910. WiNDT and KoDidEK. " Daktyloskopie," 1904. INDEX 125 NDEX. PAGE Accidental Splashes . . 74 Acromegaly, ridges in 59, 78 Ainsworth's Jack Shepherd 1 8 Alcock, Dr. Reginald . . 36 Alix, Recherches, etc. .. 19 Ambiguous prints . . . . 74 Analysis of lineations ,. 71 Anderson, Sir Thos. M'Call 27 Anthropoid lineations .. 52 Asquith's Committee, Mr. 102 Avebury, finger-marked pottery at . . -.13 Babylonian nail-marks . . 10 Baldwin, Prof. G 15 Belper's Committee, Lord 108 Bertillon, Alphonse 26, 89 Bewick's sign mark . . 19 Billing's Dr. (U.S.).. .. 27 Birmingham Post . . . . 36 Bowditch, Prof. (U.S.) . . 34 Bradbury, John (American traveller . . , . 13 British Medical Journal 36, 58 Casts of Ridges . . . . 45 Cha-no-yu pottery, finger- marked 14 Channel, Sir A. M 35 Chinese Ideographs . . 86 Chinese Characters, Origin of 10 Chromidrosis 37 Classification of finger- prints 83 Collins, Inspector . . 66, 109 Coloured Sweat . . . . 37 Comparing Prints . . . . 68 Copperfield, David . . Consonantal patterns Criminology aided . . Curve Rules . . Curves, Flexible PAGE 19 94 59 69 69 Dactylic origin of numerals 1 1 Dactylograph 45 Dactylography, its nature 9 Dactylolite 72 Darwin, Charles . . 22, 41 David Copperfield, fishy thumb-marks..- .. 19 Davids, T. W. Rhys . . 16 Davidson, John {Mammon and his Message).. 11 1 " Designs " in finger-print patterns . . . . 46 Devon, Dr 60 Dickens, Charles .. 19,102 Direct Observation of Finger-patterns . . 44 Eggs, markings on birds' 42 Enlarged Photographs 66 Evaporation of Sweat- marks 37 Evolutionary development 50 Feet, ridges & furrows on ;22 Finger and Foot-prints studied in Birmingham University .. .. 116 Finger-print of Stone Age 1 2 Finger-print System, ap- plied to Banking . . 117 Forgeot, Dr. Rene, on latent imprints . . . . 63 126 DACTYLOGRAPHY PAGE Galton, Sir Francis 17, 23, 27, 55, 79, 89 Garson, Dr. J. G. . .63, 80 Gegenbaur's Jahrbuch (1905) 23 Giles, Prof 11 Glaister, Prof 119 Glass Disc, centred . . 73 Greasy Marks, visible and latent 63 Gotch, Francis . . . . 42 Halation in Photographs 66 Halifax, Chief Constable of 116 Hart, Dr. Berry . . . . 58 Henry, Sir Ed. R. 16, 80, 88 Herschel, Sir William J. 16, 24, 27, 79 Hooker, Sir Joseph . . 72 Holme, Chas.(rAe5^Mrfto) 14 Hopf , lyudwig . . . . 30 Huxley, Prof 40 Identification of Habitual Criminals . . . . 102 Index Medicus of U.S. . . 23 India, early use of finger- prints in . . . . II Indirect Observation of patterns . . . . 45 Ink used in printing . . 65 Innocence established by finger-print evidence 113 Irving, Henry 10 1 Japan, use of finger-prints in II Japanese hand-like use of feet 33 Keith, Prof 57 Kew Micrometer . . . . 72 Knowledge 107 PAGE Lineations like finger-pat- terns 43 Ivister, Ivord 81 lyombroso. Prof. Cesare . . 60 I^yell, Sir Chas 43 Mallet, Mr. {The Strand) 1 1 1 Malpighi, on ridges . . . . 16 " Mark Twain " . . . . 28 Mexican foot-prints 9, 10 Minakata Kumagusa {Nature) .. .. 11 Mirror-patterns .. ..71 Mitchell, C. Ainsworth 12, 54 Monkey, Tail of Spider. . 30 Morrison, Prof i lO Mummy Patterns pre- served 76 Munro, Detective-Sergeant Charles 36 Munro, Inspector . . . . 109 Musical glasses . . . • 30 Nature . . 11, 16, 23 Neame, Chief-Inspector 104 " Negative " Prints . . 45 Nineteenth Century . . 37 Official Register Form . . 69 Osmic acid for greasy marks 65 Paleyan conception, The 41 Palmar Creases . . . . 11 Pater, Walter . . . . 19 Patterns, viewed teleo- logically 54 Pearman, Supt 115 Persistence of patterns 76, 79 " Photographs " in official usage 105 Photo- telegraphy . . . . 75 Physiographical analogies 35 Poe, Edgar A 44 Pore Marks, variability of 62 INDEX 127 " Positive " prints. . Poulton, Prof. Pro to -troglodytes Printing, technique of Purkinje, Prof. J. E. PAGE .. 45 . 42 • 57 . 61 16, 18 Racial peculiarities . . 55 Reeve's requisites for print- ing 65 Register of Distinctive Marks 103 Register of Habitual Crim- inals 116 Registers, different pur- poses of 91 Ridges of skin .. .. 31 Ripple Marks in sand . . 32 Rules for Classification 92 Schlaginhaufen, Prof.O. 23,44 Search, problems of . . 84 SoUas, Prof. (Science Pro- gress) 13 Spencer, Herbert . . 30, 37 Stedman, Inspector . . 66 Stoke-on-Trent, Chief Con- stable of 116 Studio, The, finger-marked pottery 14 Sweat, coloured . . . . S7 ,, glands, ducts, and pores 29 Syllabic system of class— fication 88 Tabor,Mr. (U.S.) .. .. 27 Tattoo marks . . . . 107 PAGE Taylor's Manual of Med. Juris 10 1 Thesing's Lectures on Biology 51 Thomson, Prof. Arthur 42 Tristram Shandy, mention of thumb-prints . . 18 Troglodytes 57 Troup, Sir Chas. Ed. 105,114 Tunbridge, Inspector 25, 103 Twins, finger-patterns of 58 Ulster, ''Bloody Hand of Variableness in printed results 48 " Verso " 72 Verworn's General Physi- ology 83 " Vowel " elements in pat- terns 98 Wallace, Dr.AlfredRussell 41 Wrong Identifications. . 105 Wyman, Prof. Jeffries (U.S.) 34 Yedo, Bay of, ancient finger-marked pottery 14 Zebra, Grevy's, patterns in stripes of . . . . 39 MII m 1 ' 6^ 10 AM HB-^J98^ „ECOTC FEB 23 1986 INTERLIBRARY ,}Atf^^^^ UOAN xmN ^-Qjr-CTSnri-eERK LD 2lA-40w-ll,'63 (E1602slO)476B General Library University of California Berkeley GENERAL LIBRARY - U.C. BERKELEY BDDmsafl37