FINGER-PRINT IDENTIFICATION.

Auckland Star, Volume XXXIV, Issue 60, 11 March 1903, Page 5

FINGER-PRINT IDENTIFICATION.

SYSTEM ESTABLISHED IN NEW. £ ZEALAND. (By Telegraph.—Own Correspondent.) WELLINGTON, this day. Your representative has been afforded an opportunity of investigating the system of finger-print identification, which has been formally adopted by the New. Zealand Government. A bureau for instructing warders, gaolers, etc., has been established at the 'terrace Gaol by Mr R. L. Ward, who has had considerable experience in the work in India* and else* where. Mr Ward is highly pleased at the good results so far attained, those who have been instructed into the new system having picked up its working in a very short time. Only the other day a gaoler and a warder from Lyttelton prison had an hour's lcs.son at the hands of Mr Ward, and by tViat time the pair were thoroughly conversant with the system. Mr Ward desires to introduce the system into the Customs Departments and life insurance offices,. If adopted by the Customs it would have a salutary effect in checking the dodges of artful Celestials, many of whom take advantage of their dead relatives' papers to make a descent on these, shores, and identification is almost next to impossible. Mr Ward claims tha.t the finger-print system is so reliable tiiat failure is practically, impossible, while the system of classification followed is at once so simple and so effective that in a collection of 200,000 prints, anyone of them may be found in a minute or two. Legislation will be necessary to give proper effect to the new system, for as the law now stands any unconvicted person would refuse to submit to finger imprints.