Date Added
NOV 2002

Italian anatomist and microscopist who described the patterns on the tips of the fingers as part of an overall study of the skin, his contributions is immortalized by the lower epidermis being named the 'Malpighian Layer'.

British contemporary to Malpighi, Fellow of the Royal Society and of the College of Physicians, described ' innumerable little ridges' in Philosophical Transactions for 1684:


... "For if anyone will take the pains, with an indifferent glass to survey the palm of his hand, he may perceive... innumerable little ridges, of equal bigness and distance, and everywhere running parallel one with another. And especially, upon the hands and the first joints of the fingers and thumb. They are very regularly disposed and spherical triangles and elliptics." ...

Czechoslovakian physiologist who, in 1823, recognised and described the basic patterns of fingerprints - 'whorls', 'ellipses', 'triangles', etc. in his Commentatio de examine physiologico organi visus et systematis cutanei:

After innumerable observations, I have found nine important variations of patterns of rugae and sulci, though the lines of demarcation between the types are often obscure:


1. Transverse curve


2. Central longitudinal stria


3. Oblique stripe


4. Oblique loop


5. Almond whirl


6. Spiral whorl


7. Ellipse


8. Circle


9. Double whorl

This Scottish physiologist and medical missionary attached to the Tsuki Hospital. Tokyo, observed that in certain underdeveloped areas handprints served as signatures, which, he discovered were totally different from the others. Faulds is credited with the first documented crime solved by the use of what he designated 'dactylography' or finger writing. In the summer of 1879. a Tokyo sneak thief had made an escape over a whitewashed garden wall leaving behind a dirty handprint. Inspecting this print and comparing it with that of a suspect Faulds was able to say with confidence that the luckless man under arrest was not the thief. The mirth with which this new tool of criminal detection was greeted by the Japanese police was silence and whose handprint exactly matched that left on the wall. This convinced Faulds that he was on to a new breakthrough, and he communicated his news to that venerable London organ of gentlemen scientists, Nature:


... "When bloody finger marks or impressions on clay, glass, etc. exist, they may lead to the scientific identification of criminals. Already I have had experience in two such cases... There can be no doubt as to the advance of having, besides their photographs, a nature copy of the forever unchangeable finger furrows of the important criminals." ... (October 1880)


This coincidence with the arrival back in England of William Herschel - to find that his discovery was pre-empted. Herschel was understandably chagrined and there followed an acrimonious exchange of letters through Nature's correspondence columns before the controversy fizzled out and everybody forgot about finger-writing.

The one man on whom the possibilities hinted at by Herschel and Faulds were not wasted, Galton was one of the most gifted and eclectic 'gentleman scientists' of his day, and was to make several important contributions in the field of meteorology. One of his more eccentric and least successful experiments was an attempt to estimate scientifically the efficacy of prayer. 


It was the late 1800's, during his collaboration with Alphose Bertillon into the possibility of an accurate system for the identification of criminals, that Galton recollected the 'dactylography' controversy, and sort the acquaintance of William Herschel. To Galton must go the full credit for molding the process of fingerprint identification into a manageable science. From the ostensibly bewildering millions of different patterns Galton began to see basic reoccurring shapes and configurations of lines and that almost every print featured a 'triangle' where the ridges ran together. These triangles, or 'deltas' fell into four basic patterns:


1. No triangle


2. Triangle on left


3. Triangle on right


4. More than one triangle

An article by Galton published in the Revie Scientifique was read by a young officer in the Buenos Aires police department, Juan Vucetich. Vucetich had already began researching methods of 'anthropomorphic measurement', and had discovered Galton's triangles independently. He had developed, over a period of many years and without official finance, a remarkable ten finger classification system of his own. As an 'unrecognized' fingerprint expert, Juan Vucetich was to play a leading role in the very first murder case in which fingerprint evidence was decisive. However, his recommendation for a national fingerprint record proved so violently unpopular that Vucetich became disillusioned to the point of abandoning all further scientific research.

An inspector general of the Bengal Police, Henry read with professional interest Galton's book Finger Prints (1892). Fascinated by the potential of the system, Henry met and consulted with Galton and with his enthusiastic cooperation began work on developing the as yet incomplete classification system. Edward Henry was soon able to lay down the five discernible patterns which formed the basis of the system : Arches, Tented Arches, Radial Loops, Ulna Loops and Whorls. These were subsequently divided further in sub-patterns. In 1989 Henry published The Classification and Uses of Finger Prints, which remained the definitive police text book on the subject of practical fingerprinting for many decades.

By now disquiet was already being felt at the prevailing method of keeping criminal records by a combination of Bertillon's 'anthropometry' and the infant science of 'dactylography'. A committee of inquiry under the chairmanship of Lord Belper was established to look into 'the workings of the method of Identification of Criminals by Measurement and Fingerprints'.


One of the experts to give evidence was Edward Henry, and in December 1900 the Belper Committee recommended that the current method be superseded by 'Mr Henry's system'.

On 1st July, Edward Henry was put in charge of Scotland Yard's new Fingerprint Branch. The previous requirement to take prints only of habitual criminals (that is, re-offenders) widened to include all prisoners whose sentence was more than one month.

June saw the first felon convicted through fingerprints found at the scene of the crime. A burglar named Harry Jackson left his thumbprint on the paintwork of the house he entered in South London, and despite the intimidating task of comparing thousands of prints Detective-sergeant Charles Stockley Collins and his colleagues at the Branch identified it with Jackson's record card. In September the burglar was sentenced to seven years and fingerprinting as a means of identification had been vindicated in the English Courts.

In May the World's Fair was hosted by the town of St Louis, Missouri, and while the British sent six representatives of the Metropolitan police force to guard the Royal Pavilion, the American International Association of Chiefs of Police moved it bureau from Washing DC, to St Louis for the duration of the exhibition. Here John Ferrier of Scotland Yard's Fingerprint Branch was able to lecture the International Association on the advantages of fingerprinting over 'Bertillonage'. In the same year Detective Sergeant Joseph A Faurot of the New York Police visited London to study fingerprinting under Charles Collins at Scotland Yard, and encouraged by British successes it was not long before fingerprinting became established in America as the main system of criminal identification.

The Stratton brothers appear before Mr Justice Channell at the Old Bailey, the first murder trial in which the prosecution relied on fingerprint evidence.

Edward Richard Henry was knighted.

The People vs. Jennings. In the same year, the case of the burglar Caesar Cella who was convicted on the fingerprint evidence of Faurot becomes national news.

Foundation, in California, of the International Association for Criminal Identification (IAI), an organization which continues to flourish to this day.

State vs Kuhl, heard in the American Appeal Court, a crucial case challenging the admissibility of palm print evidence.

Now a Detective Superintendent, Charles Collins publishes his research on sending fingerprints by wireless telegraph, A Telegraphic Code for Fingerprint Formulae. Collins saw in his 'code' the basis for a single fingerprint identification system, this important work was continued by Detective Chief Inspector Harry Battley when he took charge of the department on Collins' retirement in 1926. Battley, in collaboration with another great pioneer, Frederick Cherrill, published Single Fingerprints (1930).

Foundation of the FBI Identification Division. Records of the national Bureau of Criminal Investigation housed at Leavenworth Penitentiary removed from Washington - among them the core collection of 810,000 fingerprint cards.

Fingerprinting of all criminals introduced in New York State.

First palm print case to be brought before an English court. Due to the prisoners plea of guilty, however, Detective Inspector Cherrill was not required to present his evidence.

Mr Rupert de la Bere asked the Home Secretary in a Commons question whether he would consider a scheme for a national registration of fingerprints to assist the identification of people 'suffering loss of memory'. The idea was rejected.

The first case of a palm print found at the scene of a crime being matched to one of Scotland Yard's small but growing collection. Sam Dashwood was consequently hanged by the print that he had left on a safe door when he committed robbery and murder.

Mass fingerprinting for the first time in Britain in an attempt to identify the brutal killer of three year old June Anne Devaney.

A meeting between the Home Office and experts from five of the major fingerprint bureau reached agreement on a national standard for fingerprint identification evidence in court.

First mass palm printing takes place around Potters Bar, London, in an attempt to identify the killer of Mrs Elizabeth Currell.

Gerald Lambourne, as head of Scotland Yard's Fingerprinting Bureau, begins work on the computerization of the nation's almost two million sets of fingerprints.

The technique of 'lifting' prints becomes acceptable practice in the British police for the first time.

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