HISTORY OF THE FINGER-PRINT SYSTEM. 



By Berthold Laufer. 



[With 7 plates.] 



On May 2, 1906, the Evening Post of New York announced in an 

 article headed ''PoHce Lesson from India" the first successful appli- 

 cation in this country of the thumb-print test. A notorious crim- 

 inal had robbed the wife of a prominent novelist in London of £800, 

 had made his escape to New York, and was captured after com- 

 mitting a robbery in one of the large hotels in that city. The Ber- 

 tillon Bureau of the PoHce Department took a print of one of his 

 thumbs, which was mailed without any other particulars to the 

 Convict Supervision Office, New Scotland Yard, London, where he 

 was promptly identified. He was convicted and sentenced to seven 

 years in prison. The system of finger prints is now successfully 

 utilized by the police departments of all large cities of this country, 

 central bureaus of identification having been established in the 

 capitals of the States. The admissibility of finger-print evidence as 

 valid proof of guilt in murder trials was upheld in the case of a 

 colored man executed in Cook County, 111., on February 16, 1912, 

 lie was convicted of murder largely on a showing by the prosecu- 

 tion that the imprint of a finger on the woodwork in the slain man's 

 house corresponded with that in the records of Joliet prison, where 

 an imprint of the accused's fingers had been taken when he was dis- 

 charged from the penitentiary a short time before the murder. 

 Likewise, in our relations with illiterate people the system has come 

 to the fore. On the approval of the Secretary of the Interior Depart- 

 ment, the Commissioner of Indian Affairs instructed officials through- 

 out Oklahoma in 1912 that hereafter every Indian who can not 

 write his name will be required to sign all checks and ofiicial 

 papers, and indorse checks and warrants covering Indian money, 

 by making an impression of the ball of his right thumb, such imprint 

 to l)e witnessed by an employee of the Indian agency or by one of 

 the leading men of the tribe who can write. If an Indian is not 

 living with his tribe, his thumb-mark signature must be witnessed 

 })y the postmaster of the place where he resides. Prominent banks 



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