The Stratford Evening Post. WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED THE EGMONT SETTLER. SATURDAY, APRIL 20, 1912. FINGER-PRINT EVIDENCE.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXII, Issue 94, 20 April 1912, Page 4

The Stratford Evening Post. WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED THE EGMONT SETTLER. SATURDAY, APRIL 20, 1912. FINGER-PRINT EVIDENCE.

The Chief Justice of Victoria, Sir John Madden, does not agree with many other learned Judges who have from time to time referred to the infallibility of finger-print evidence. Sir John Madden considers' that the system has not been scientifically proved, and that it is in “absolute opposition to the whole theory of anthropology.” This doctrine will he vigonrously assailed in all countries where the system has been used, the Wellington “Post” says, and goes on to point out that it has seen no record of. any case in which a miscarriage of justice has been traced to a wrong

•■ending of finger-prints. Two or three cases were alleged in England last year, but time and fact disproved these charges. The main purpose of the system is to furnish corroborative evidence rather than the main evidence in a trial, and it also assists the detectives if they have a print from the scene of a crime. The possibility of error in the comparison of prints by trained experts can be fined down to a degree which the imagination can scarcely grip. Any uneasiness about the operation of the system does not so much lie in the almost inconceivable chance that the complications of arches, whorls, and loops of one person’s finger can be duplicated in those on another person’s corresponding finger. The difficulty is rather in impressing the non-export vith the convincing character of -evilence about which the expert who has ' - orked out all the factors, has no iouht. Enlarged photographs, of ’nurse, help the lay observer to note he points of similarity, but the full force of an alleged identity or alleged affereuco can be appreciated only by xport eyes. However, the proof of i system is in the testing, and Sir John Madden seems to have advanced only theory in opposition to a pracicc which experience has proved satisfactory, so far as the known records ■an show.