THE FINGER-PRINT SYSTEM.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLVI, Issue 14223, 20 November 1909, Page 5 (Supplement)

THE FINGER-PRINT SYSTEM.

As a means of personal identification among criminals, the finger-print has proved that it is the simplest," cheapest, and surest method ever devised. It is riot only more effective than the photograph, but it is easier to make, and, what is of considerable importance, the subject raises no objection to it.. ' S >; To the average criminal the camera is a thing of horror, and he submits most ungracefully to the mugging" process; but the dabbing of the s fingers on a piece of paper appears to him simple, even futile, and he is inclined-to regard it as a species of official red , tape. The. overpowering effectiveness of the scheme probably never will be realised by the average subject. "

A printing and, classifying plant takes but little room. Two square feet of table top will hold all the materials necessary for printing, while a cabinet six feet high, eighteen inches wide, and ten feet long will hold the records of a hundred thousand cases. The extensive use of the system has shown that the print of - the finger is a document complete in itself, which nothing can ever invalidate. The making of the print requires no special skill. A warder in an English prison who had never handled the materials took, for a committee, in the course of an hour, 35 sets of impressions of three fingers, each in duplicate, everyone of which was legible. The average policeman, with 15 minutes' 'coaching, would soon become an adept printer. The classification of the sheets, after the print formulas have been taken, however,, requires trained knowledge. Among the members of an ordinary American police force possibly 10 per cent, of the men would be found capable of mastering the subject in a few weeks. A

The system of classification now in use by Scotland Yard and the Police Departments of the principal American cities is such that in a collection of 500,000 prints, only five would need close examination in comparison with a definite case, and these five would be found in two;'. minutes. It has been estimated that not once in 10,000 years, among the entire population of the world, .would the finger-tip patterns of one person be duplicated. It is apparent that evidence of this character is almost as perfect as evidence can be.

Although scars from wounds and ulcers frequently destroy the .pattern folds, such disfigurements are more often than otherwise aids to identification. When the system was first introduced at police headquarters in New York, a lieutenant in one of the administrative Departments tried to discredit it. He had an experimental print made of the tip of a finger, and a short time afterwards asked to have the same finger reprinted. He had meantime, ground down the skin of his finger on a grindstone until the blood almost flowed. Nevertheless, the pattern form was more accurately disclosed in the second printing than in the first." Once the record has been made nothing has yet been discovered to invalidate it.