Dactylography

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.

But, besides occasional false identifications of innocent persons, the old system, now happily superseded, was admittedly very ineffective in detecting old offenders passing under different disguises and with false names.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, 1911, I had printed in colours a wonderful reproduction of a painting made for 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 defaced. 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 suggested by Englishmen. Another system, very excellent in its way, had the immense advantage of being of foreign origin. As the result, however, of several years’ experience, some inherent defects in Mons. Bertillon’s anthropometric system – adopted in a modified form by our authorities in 1894 – were 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 afterwards, 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 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 Collins, 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 different fingers to agree.” [The Daily Mail, February 25th, 1911.]

In The Daily Mail of August 10th, 1910, Inspector Munro, 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 10th, 1910] “That when, before the magistrates 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 invention 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.

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 infallible.” 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 accomplishment in those merry old times. In 1487 this benefit was restricted, 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 as skeleton keys and regulation jemmies. This fact is curiously applied by the late John Davidson, who says, 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 officially 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 run above forty. The two figures are not equalized in their enlargement and comparison is made unnecessarily difficult, but when made, the curves for some reason cannot be got to agree. The officially registered impression 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 identification.

A second case given is that of an imprint on a small box which had been used for containing homœopathic remedies. Some cash had been stolen on a certain Saturday night, and on Friday the delinquent was captured 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 afterwards 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 established 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 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 impression of the finger-tips had not also been employed as a means of identification. The police say that this test is infallible. 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 wrote 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 neatly with his teeth. Early in the morning the rogue came to the same doctor’s surgery unwittingly, 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 E. – Troup, at the Home Office, 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, Clerkenwell, found, 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 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. Superintendent 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.

The Chief Constable of Halifax, in his annual report (1909) deplores the absence of any means of discriminating 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 “Finger-prints and Foot-marks.”

In Stoke-on-Trent, the method of finger-prints is reported to have saved the borough both time and money, 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 unknown, 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 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 fingers, the one which happens to have most individuality 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 countries 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 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 suspected 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 London 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 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 frequently 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 Lyell struck them with the rod of science and made living springs gush out in great abundance.

GLOSSARY

OF SOME TERMS USED BY DACTYLOGRAPHERS

Accidentals. Nondescript patterns in the class composites.

Anthropoid. Of the great man-like apes (gorilla, orangutan, and chimpanzee).

Anthropometric. Bodily measurements.

Anthropometry. Science of accurate bodily measurements.

Arch. A curved set of lineations, without backward turn; a bow.

Bertillonage. Alphonse Bertillon’s anthropometric methods.

Bifurcation. Fork-like splitting into two branches.

Blur. A dull, smudgy imprint.

Bow. A curved lineation like a bow.

Bulb. The pad of a finger-tip.

Characteristic. Any striking feature in a pattern which gives distinctiveness.

Chirality. 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.

Dactylograph. A finger-impression taken by any process.

Dactylolite. An indented finger-print as on wax.

Dactyloscopy (Daktyloskopie). The practical study of Finger-prints.

Delta. A somewhat triangular figure formed by skin lineations.

Derma, Dermal. The deep true skin, the “quick.”

Digit, Digital. 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.

“Flexible Curves.” An instrument for measuring enlarged curving lineations.

Fork. A Y-like figure.

Formula (pl. Formulæ). 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.

Lineation. 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.