DETECTION OF CRIME

Dominion, Volume 31, Issue 124, 19 February 1938, Page 2 (Supplement)

DETECTION OF CRIME

History Of Use Of Finger-Prints SCOTLAND YARD SYSTEM As far back as 200 B.C. the Chinese had a system of finger-printing, but it was not until the nineteenth century that any serious attempts appear to have been made to classify the impressions, writes Alfred J. Angel in the “News Chronicle.”

Early in the century, Purkenje, a young and struggling practitioner, produced a learned treaties on the “marvellous groupings and curvings of the minute furrows associated with the organ of touch.” His audience listened—bored. Later Purkenje became professor of physiology at Breslau. Bertillon, the French scientist, is often wrongly given the credit for originating the modern system of fin-ger-printing, though what he actually did was to use finger impressions—crude and uncertain—to strengthen the anthropometrical system of identification of which he was the father. By Bertillon’s system measurements and records of different parts of the bony structure of the body were recorded in such order as to form a permanent word picture of the particular individual, and the finger-print was an adjunct to these measurements. Came from India. Finger-prints came to England from India. The British police authorities, impressed with news from that country, where the scheme of finger-print-ing had been developed among the illiterate and ignorant natives (to their disadvantage), adopted a tentative scheme in 1895, only to discover that lack of authoritative data, money and experienced operators militated against success. The world was not kind to these early pioneers. Sir Francis Galton and Sir Edward Henry, who later became Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, were in the main responsible for fostering the science in England, and it was the latter who made the first serious attempt to classify the prints. To denote the different types he separated his prints under four main headings, loops, arches, whorls and composites, and then subdivided the groups into some thousands of types. To this day his main headings persist. From these small beginnings has grown the amazing and efficient system of Scotland Yard to-day, which is the envy of the world.

During the last 40 years Scotland Yard officers have developed the scheme which to-day enables a colonial police force to arrest a man in the morning and by transmitting bis finger-prints iu Yard code to London, receive the man’s criminal record (if any) within a few hours.

For provincial forces replies are dispatched within half an hour of receipt of impressions—and this from a collection of 600,000 prints. No fewer than 24.000 criminals are caught each year by the system.

Generally speaking, registration and classification are based on formulae respecting patterns and characteristics shown by all the ten digits in combination, but of recent years experts at the Yard have produced, and proved effective, a perfect system of identification by single finger-prints only (and not ten). “True to His Trade.” This modern method enables police officers who secure a solitary impression of one finger—or only’ a smudge—at the scene of a crime, to refer im-. mediately to the criminal records of house-breakers, burglars and men engaged on similar crime, because the single finger-print system was designed for the especial benefit of men of those classes. It has been proved time and again that a burglar always remains true to his “trade” of burglary, and seldom breaks away imfl becomes a bandit. Superintendent Harry’ Battley, Scot land Yard’s finger-print chief, is the originator of this advanced scheme and began his “Single Finger-print Collection” by taking from the Yard’s comprehensive collection of crooks the impressions of all the 10 digits of all men recorded in the “breaking and entering” and kindred classes. With these impressions he started a series of 10 distinct collections, one for each digit. Under each of these he classified the prints into sections in the following order:—Arches, tented arches, radial loops, ulnar loops, whorls, twinned loops, lateral pocket loops, composites, accidentals and scarred prints. Further grouping'followed, till it is possible under his present scheme to

have as many as 16,000.000 sub groups —any one of which can be turned up within a few minutes by the card judex system.

To the finger-print expert it is an easy matter. He receives, say. from the detective chief at Whipplewell an impression of a finger found on a scene of a heavy burglary.

Identification

The Yard man. from his training and experience, decides it belongs to a left forefinger.

On a specially-printed card he notes down in proper sequence the characteristics of the print—type, core, etc., placing the necessary symbols in the margin to guide him in his search. He is able to "read” the print in the same way ars a Morse operator reduces bis combinations of dots and dashes to a legible message. Next, to the card index with his written formulae. A few only are necessary to tell him whether the Whipplewell print belongs to a man with a.criminal record.

Never in the course of finger-print history has it been proved that two persons have the same finger-prints: even twins have different combinations of the grainings on the fingers. Experts declare that the odds against finding an exact duplicate anywhere in the world are 64.000,0(10,0(10 to one! Clumsy attempts to destroy the patterns on finger-tops have always failed Crooks, knowing the danger to them selves of the system, have, immediate ly after arrest, multilated their fingertips to destroy the graining, but in every case when the wounds have healed the papillary ridges have remained unimpaired. A Japanese doctor experimented on himself to the extent of pumice-stoning the tips of his lingers till he had obliterated the pattern, bur his wounds did not destroy the characteristic ridges and the pattern returned exactly as before. Finger-prints form an infallible, unmistakeirble and permanent record of identity—and such each one has its i own particular tale to tell.