Guide to Finger-Print Identification

Abstract

DR. FAULDS was for some years a medical officer in Japan, and a zealous and original investigator of finger-prints. He wrote an interesting letter about them in NATURE, October 28, 1880, dwelling upon the legal purposes to which they might be applied, and he appears to be the first person who published anything, in print, on this subject. However, his suggestions of introducing the use of fingerprints fell flat. The reason that they did not attract attention was presumably that he supported them by no convincing proofs of three elementary propositions on which the suitability of finger-prints for legal purposes depends. It was necessary to adduce strong evidence of the, long since vaguely alleged, permanence of those ridges on the bulbs of the fingers that print their distinctive lineations. It was necessary to adduce better evidence than opinions based on mere inspection, of the vast variety in the minute details of those markings, and finally, for purposes of criminal investigation, it was necessary to prove that a large collection could be classified with sufficient precision to enable the officials in charge of it to find out speedily whether a duplicate of any set of prints that might be submitted to them did or did not exist in the collection. Dr. Faulds had no part in establishing any one of these most important preliminaries.

Guide to Finger-Print Identification.

By Henry Faulds, late Surgeon Superintendent of Tsukiji Hospital, Tokyo, Japan. Pp. viii + 80. (Hanley: Wood, Mitchell and Co., Ltd., 1905.) Price 5s. net.