Henry Faulds

“ A large number of Japanese children, and also some thirty-five or more children of European parentage, in ages from five to ten, were minutely examined time after time during a period of two years—some of them again at longer intervals—without a single variation being detected. The lines and patterns in the fingers of growing children broaden out as the infant grows, but the ideal form—so to speak—of the pattern itself, retains full sway. To grasp this conception clearly is almost the whole science of finger-print identification. ”

“ The skin of a mummy is contracted, hard, and wrinkled, but one may trace the lineations through all their loops, joinings, ramifications and whorls, with great distinctness. So that it follows, did an Egyptian register of finger-prints exist, we might unearth the names and titles or deeds of some of those men who lived several thousands of years ago.
There is nothing, so far as has yet been observed, to mark their race out as essentially different from our own, nor do any ancient finger-prints look unlike those of present-day people’s. ”

“ But just as in some fields the ploughman 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 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. ”

“ With the exception of acromegaly and skin-peeling after acute fevers, I can conceive of no biological reason why changes might be anticipated in those patterns, and up to the present no evidence has reached me that even those conditions do effect pattern changes. In old age the ridges shrink somewhat, and wrinkles here and there betray the drying up of tissues, which facts are revealed in printed impressions by fine white lines, often cutting across the lineations, not unlike those which occur in box-wood engravings, where hair-like lines betray some cleavage of the wood. ”

“ 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, is a most interesting and novel point, and ought to receive close attention from parents and physicians. ”

“ 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 tool-maker finding it easy now to make bearers swifter or more powerful than they are. ”

“ Even the ordinary features and expression of a human being by no means can be said to remain uniform. One sees a friend during many short intervals, and is not finely observant of minute changes that in a decade or two amount collectively to an almost complete transformation of the man’s whole face and figure. The photographic system of identification, although serving a purpose now and then, was found, therefore, to be untrustworthy.
My revered teacher, Lord Lister, noted the slow migrations of the pigmentary particles that make the web-like patterns on a frog’s foot. ”

“ 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. ”

“ My own attention was first directed to the patterns in finger-prints, as they occurred impressed on sun-baked pottery which I found in the numerous shell-heaps dotted around the great Bay of Yedo. The subject was quite unknown 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—sun-baked or fire-burned—begin to be associated. ”

“ There are probably some two or three millions of those tiny sweat pores in a human body, which afford an evaporating surface, according to the anatomist Krause, of about eight square inches. The sweat is a watery, slightly saline fluid, with slight—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 openings with their associated glands, the sebaceous glands, which are associated with the hairy surfaces of the body. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In tracking a criminal by a single impression made by a finger, the lineations in so small a space would require to have been clearly imprinted, and to have what many finger-print patterns have not, some notable or significant characteristics about it. Then, when enlarged by photography into a picture of some thirty inches, the measurements from fixed points in the pattern should correspond with those of the person in custody, on suspicion, and the curves should be shown to concur in all their sinuosities. ”

“ 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.” ”

“ 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. ”

“ Another point of practical 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 transversely 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. ”

“ 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 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. ”

“ 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 civilized world for criminal cases, and bids fairly well to be soon adopted for other methods of identification than that of professional criminals or recidivists. After great earthquakes, floods, or battles, multitudes of people have to be hastily buried who have never been fully identified. ”

“ In certain circumstances, when a suspected person has been arrested abroad or at a distance, it may be desirable to compare his fresh finger-prints broadly with that of some well-known criminal whose register has been long in the hands of the police. This want led me to suggest, in 1905, that photo-telegraphy, in one of its forms, might be brought into use. Many improvements have been made since then, and it is now, I think, quite feasible to secure and transmit to a great distance outline lineations quite good enough for use at a preliminary enquiry, previous to a remand or committal. ”

“ Greater compression tends to flatten out the ridges and to narrow the intervening grooves, while it may also tend, especially when 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 physiological 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. ”

“ That the old Paleyan conception 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 interrelations, 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? ”

“ When the skin-pattern is impressed upon soft sealing-wax, clay, putty, and so on, the relievo image produced is different in this way from an ordinary ink-printed pattern. The convex ridges are now concave furrows, while the hollows are changed into heights.
In both kinds of impressions a reverse or mirror pattern is produced, a matter of some practical importance. This effect may, or may not again be reversed in the photographic process. It is not impossible, in such circumstances, that a suspect’s finger might be confused with a resembling “mirror” pattern, which was really not his own. ”

“ 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 Palæolithic 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.” ”

“ In translating fresh finger-prints into syllabic form, one has to catch the ideal design, so to speak, in the pattern. The consonantal skeleton, in one of its duplicate forms, is then examined for its containing vowel, and the syllable is complete. The work can be done with amazing rapidity after one is familiar with the patterns, which soon appeal direct to the eye as the type does in a printed book. ”