FINGER-PRINTS.
Once upon a time a wily burglar sat in his cell at Brixton awaiting
trial. He knew that conviction for his latest escapade was inevitable.
That troubled him little. As he would probably have said, he could do
the sentence he was likely to get for a first offence "on his head." But
it was by no means a first offence. Stored away at Scotland Yard was a
long list of little affairs in which he had been concerned which would
not incline the judge to leniency.
John Smith--that is not his real name, but it will serve--knew that
presently warders would ask him to press inky fingers on a white sheet
of paper, so that the resulting prints should be sent to Scotland Yard.
Inevitably then his previous ill-doings would be disclosed. They might
make all the difference between a nominal sentence as a first offender
and five years' penal servitude as an habitual criminal, to say nothing
of police supervision afterwards.
John Smith thought hard, and at last got an idea. He broke a tag from
his boot-lace and began to skin the tips of his fingers until, as he
thought, every trace of a pattern by which he could be identified had
been obliterated.
Notwithstanding his bleeding hands, he smiled cheerfully when he was
reported for prison hospital treatment. The sequel affords a saddening
reflection on misplaced ingenuity and endurance. He had only penetrated
the outer skin, and it began to grow again.
They nursed his bandaged hands with infinite care, for a conclusion as
to his record had become obvious. And then officers took his prints
after all--and discovered that he was none other than Bill Brown, with a
criminal history to which an Old Bailey judge listened with unaffected
interest. Bill--or John--got his five years after all.
I have told this little story because it affords an excellent
illustration of the work of the finger-print department at Scotland
Yard--a department which serves not only the Metropolitan Police, but
every police force in the kingdom.
There is a great deal of confusion in the public mind between
Bertillonage and the finger-print system. Even responsible London
newspapers fell into the error, when M. Bertillon died, of ascribing to
him the invention of the system--with which he had nothing to do.
To many people has been ascribed the discovery that finger-prints are an
infallible method of identification. The knowledge however was of little
use till the inventive genius of one man worked out a simple method of
classification for police purposes, so that prints could be compared
almost instantly with those on record. That man was Sir Edward Henry,
long before he came to Scotland Yard, when he was in the Indian police
service.
The Henry system has almost entirely superseded the Bertillon system
throughout the world, and there is little doubt that it will ultimately
become universal. Thousands of criminals who would otherwise have
escaped a full measure of punishment for their misdeeds curse its
author. It is in this department that police science has been brought to
its highest pitch of perfection--a perfection begot of organisation.
Every prisoner for a month or longer nowadays has his prints taken a
little before he is discharged. These prints, if they are not already in
the records of Scotland Yard, are added to them, and a number gives the
key to the man's record in the Habitual Criminals Registry.
In this manner there has accumulated since 1901, when the system was
first put in force, a collection of more than two hundred thousand
prints. It is all a matter of system, of scientific and literal
exactness, and there is no margin of error. A mistake in identification
by finger-prints is literally impossible.
As everyone knows, the ridges at the tips of the fingers maintain their
formation from birth to death, and even after. Nothing can change them.
It is a possibility, though I believe it has never been known to happen,
that there are two people in the world who have the markings on one
finger-tip exactly alike. But even that incredible chance is guarded
against, by taking the markings of the whole ten fingers. It will be
realised how great a miracle it would be for two persons to have exactly
the same lines, broken in exactly the same way, in exactly the same
order on their two hands. That fact is the root principle of the
finger-print work.
It is necessary to point out that the existence of the department is
not so much for the purpose of detecting crime as of detecting
criminals. In the administration of justice a judge takes the past
career of a prisoner into consideration when passing sentence. The main
work of the department is to furnish the clue to a past career by
scrutinising the finger-prints of persons on remand to discover whether
they are habitual criminals or not.
A thousand aliases will not help a man, no change of appearance, no
protestations of mistake, if his prints correspond with those in the
files. But it is all so simply done. There is nothing spectacular,
nothing imposing about the process. Practically all that is needed is a
piece of tin, some printer's ink, and a sheet of paper. Within a few
minutes afterwards his record can be known.
Compare this with the old Bertillon system of anthropometric
measurements. Bertillon's system depends on the fact that after a person
reaches maturity certain portions of the body are always the same in
measurement. The theory is sound, but the difficulties in the way of
applying it are immense.
In his book Sir Edward Henry has pointed out the defects of the system.
The instruments are costly, measurers have to be specially trained, and
even so may make a mistake--an error of two twenty-fifths of an inch
will prevent identification--the search among the records may take an
hour or more, and, moreover, through carelessness or inattention, the
whole data may be wrong. For six years--from 1895 to 1901--this system
was in force at Scotland Yard. The maximum number of identifications in
any one year was 500. In 1913, by the aid of finger-prints, 10,607
persons were identified.
Roughly, it is all a matter of classification into "arches," "loops,"
"whorls," and "composites." It is intricate to describe, but simple to
carry out. To the uninitiated it inevitably suggests the old problem
"think of a number, double it--."
What happens is this: Every print for primary classification purposes is
considered as a loop or a whorl. The fingers are taken in pairs and put
down something like this:
L. L. W. L. L.
--------------------
L. W. W. W. W.
Now a whorl occurring in the first pair would count sixteen, in the
second, eight, and so on. The loops are ignored. Consequently, the
number in the above formula is:
0. 0. 4. 0. 0.
----------------
0. 8. 4. 2. 1.
These are added together and become 4-15. The figure 1 is added above
and below, and the searcher knows that he has to look for the record he
wants in the sixteenth file of Number 5 horizontal row in a cabinet
specially arranged.
Of course, sub-classification is carried much farther than this, but it
is scarcely necessary to elaborate the point.
Day by day, the prison governors from all parts of the country are
sending in records to be added to the files, and police authorities,
also from all parts of the country, are asking for prisoners to be
identified.
An interesting story concerns two men whom we will call Robinson and
Jones, who were tried for different offences the same day. Robinson was
rich; Jones was not. Robinson received a long sentence, Jones a light
one.
Probably they arranged it all in the prison van, but anyhow, when they
reached the gaol they had changed identities--and sentences. All went
well until a short time before the _soi-disant_ Jones was due to be
released. Then his finger-prints were taken, compared with those of
Jones in the files, and found not to correspond.
Half an hour later wires were being exchanged between Scotland Yard and
the prison, and, to the mutual consternation of the two men, the little
scheme was revealed. Finger-prints had outwitted them.
Save for a few filing cabinets stretching from floor to ceiling in a
well-lighted room, there is little apparent difference between the
Finger-print Department at Scotland Yard and the interior of an ordinary
City office. Men pore over foolscap sheets of paper with magnifying
glasses, comparing, classifying, and checking, day in, day out.
They are all detectives, but their work is specialist work, totally
different to that of the bulk of the men of the C.I.D. It may be that
sometimes they realise that a man's life or liberty depends on their
scrutiny, but for the most part they do their work with cold
deliberation and machine-like precision. Is one set of finger-marks
identical with another? That is all they have to answer. It is the pride
of the department that since it has been established it has never made a
mistake.
At its head is Chief Detective Inspector Charles Collins, an enthusiast
in identification work, who has seen the system change from the old days
when detectives paid periodical visits to Holloway Prison to see if they
could recognise prisoners on remand, and when profile and full-face
photographs were used for the records, to that now in use which he has
had no small share in bringing to its high state of efficiency.
He can read a finger-print as other men can read a letter, and has even,
for the purposes of study, taken prints of the fingers of monkeys at the
Zoo. Many times has he given evidence as an expert in cases where
finger-prints have formed part of the evidence. His cold, scientific
analysis has always convinced the most sceptical, and always a
conviction has followed.
He wrote the chapter dealing with the photographing and enlarging of
finger-prints in Sir Edward Henry's standard work on the subject, and is
something of a magician in the way he can detect a mark when none is
obvious to the naked eye.
I have seen a man press his fingers on a clean sheet of paper,
apparently without leaving the faintest trace. But Mr. Collins is not
baffled so. A pinch of black powder--graphite is commonly
used--scattered over the paper, and behold the prints standing out in
high relief. A grey powder will act in the same way on a dark surface,
and a candle which has been pressed by the fingers may have the print
rendered clear by a judicious use of ordinary printer's ink.
A corps of expert photographers, equipped with the latest appliances, is
attached to the department, and their services are in constant
requisition by the C.I.D. for many purposes other than those of
finger-prints. One room is entirely devoted to a powerful lantern
apparatus by which every photograph may be thrown up to a hundred times
its normal size for the purpose of minute study. This has often proved
useful in detecting forgeries as well as aiding the work of the
Finger-print Department.
I have said that the primary purpose of the department is not the
detection of crime. Nevertheless, it has played no small part in the
solution of mysteries where other clues have failed. There was the case
of the Stratton brothers, for instance, where the print on a cash-box
led to arrest, although other evidence aided the conviction.
Perhaps the most interesting case is that which first focussed the
public attention on the value of the system. It occurred in 1898,
shortly after the present Commissioner initiated the system in India. He
himself tells the story.
The manager of a tea-garden was found murdered, and a safe and
despatch-box robbed of several hundred rupees. Suspicion was at first
divided among the coolies and cook, the relatives of a woman with whom
the dead man had carried on an intrigue, a wandering gang of Kabulis,
and an ex-servant whom he had prosecuted for theft--a wide enough field,
in all conscience.
But the police were unexpectedly helped in their investigation by the
discovery in the despatch-box of a small light-blue book, a calendar in
Bengali characters. On the cover were two indistinct smudges. Under a
magnifying-glass these proved to be the impressions of a blood-stained
finger.
Search was made in the records of the Bengal police, and it was found
that the finger-print was that of the right thumb of the ex-servant.
He was arrested some hundreds of miles away, and charged with murder and
robbery. On the ground that it would be unsafe to convict him of murder,
as no one saw him do it, he was acquitted on that charge, but was
convicted of theft.
It would be possible to write largely on cases where finger-prints have
afforded culminating proof of a person's guilt. One that has a grim
touch of humour may be recalled.
A constable pacing his beat in Clerkenwell noticed a human finger on one
of the spikes of the gate of a warehouse. Closer investigation showed
that the place had been broken into, and that the marauder had been
disturbed and taken to flight in panic. In scaling the gates he had
caught the little finger of his right hand on the spikes, and it had
been torn away.
It was sent to the Finger-print Department and identified as that of a
man well-known to the police, and the word was passed round the C.I.D.
to keep a bright look-out for him. Time went on. The finger, carefully
kept in spirits, remained at Scotland Yard.
Then one day a detective arrested a man for picking pockets near the
Elephant and Castle. One hand was bandaged, but the prisoner was
unwilling to say what was the matter with it. Soon the reason of his
reluctance was disclosed.
The Finger-print Department held his missing finger.
But if the Finger-print Department makes it hard for the guilty, it
often helps the innocent. Such a case as that of Adolph Beck would now
be impossible. There are two criminals alive to-day who are said to be
so much alike that the difference can only be told by their
finger-prints.
One hears often that the police will bolster each other up when a
mistake is made. That is, of course, preposterously false throughout the
service. There have been cases where police officers have been prepared,
quite honestly, to swear to a man as an old offender, and the department
has stepped in in time to prevent the error.
It should be understood that the fact of finger-prints being found at or
near the scene of a crime does not mean that they are of any use in
solving a mystery, unless facsimiles are in the records--that is to say,
a criminal has been convicted before. This rarely happens in the case of
murder, for the reason that a murderer is unlikely, in an official
sense, to be an habitual criminal. Of course, if a person is suspected
and arrested it is easy to compare his finger-prints with those found
where the crime was committed.
In the system the human liability to err is almost completely
eliminated. A prisoner's prints are registered automatically, and, to
prevent any chance of mistake, are examined and checked by a series of
officials, each of whom signs the record.
Nor do those engaged in this business have an idle time. Between 70,000
and 80,000 sets of prints are dealt with every year. The following list
shows the number of recognitions effected since the system came into
being at Scotland Yard. It must, of course, be remembered that they
have increased as the number of records has grown:--
1902 1,722
1903 3,642
1904 5,155
1905 6,186
1906 6,776
1907 7,701
1908 9,446
1909 9,960
1910 10,848
1911 10,400
1912 10,677
1913 10,607
That, in itself, is a record which justifies the faith now placed in the
system.