FINGER PRINTS: A CHAPTER IN THE HISTORY OF 

 THEIR USE FOR PERSONAL IDENTIFICATION. 



Bv HENRY FAULDS. 



The famous Tichborne case gave a great impulse 

 to the studv of identification as a question in juris- 

 prudence. I ^\■as leaving this countr\- for Japan in 

 1873 and the vast crowd around the old Court at 

 Westminster impressed me greath" with the import- 

 ance of the subject. Craniologv seemed to man\" to 

 have had its da}', and the complexities of constantly 

 varying methods had 

 induced almost complete 

 scepticism. If a race 

 could not be distin- 

 guished on anatomical 

 grounds, how could we 

 ever hope to identify a 

 single member of the 

 human family on the 

 basis of anatomy with 

 confidence and precision .•' 

 It had been decreed. 

 II cm iiic contra dice ut c. 

 except \'ircho\\ — an 

 important exception — 

 that all the soft tissues, 

 hair, skin, and the like, 

 were now useless for 

 such a purpose. I had 

 studied photographs 

 most carefulh', but found 

 them to be traitorous, 

 the same people l>eing 

 made to look (]uite 

 different in a changed 

 light, by another mode of 

 developing, with the vary- 

 ing ps\chological moods 

 of the sitter. They 

 were useful but not 

 precise. .\fter certain 

 illnesses, too, the living face was fount 

 as in typhoid fever, and more temporarily m ague. 

 The tragic effects of small-pox are well known to 

 novel readers. Our police in England used not long 

 ago to keep an indexed record of tattoo-marked 

 persons who had once been convicted. I doubt it 

 the^• ever had a case like that of a Japanese once 

 employed by me in their collection. (See plate.) 

 This man's case was unique, I think, his whole skin 



win a tine estate, lUit no one can produce to order 

 the simplest finger-print pattern in living tissue. 

 It niav be destroyed, whereas, on the other hand 

 a complex tattoo pattern can be created but can 

 hardlv be destroved. It would be quite impossible 

 by an\- known means to destro}' one like that 

 now figured. Sir Ed\\ai<l Henry says of finger- 



jiatterns that they are 

 out of all proportion 

 more numerous than such 

 measurable features as 

 tattoo marks, but I think 

 he cannot have contem- 

 plated such cases as that 

 ist described. 

 Along the great popu- 

 ( lus beach of the Bay 

 Yedo, where the hos- 

 pital was which I had 

 lartre of, were man\- 



FiGU 



Enlarged Finger Print 



to change, 



surface being one finelv-w rought pattern, not 

 intricate but reall\- beautiful. Now such 



onh' 

 case 



might be copied, at 



trouble and expense, to 



others had an almost 

 unbroken historv coming 

 down to our own day. 

 Amid the oldest heaps I 

 often found fragments 

 of sun-baked pottery, 

 on which finger-marks 

 lad been impressed when 

 the cla\- was soft. These 

 seemed to have been 

 made b\' children, per- 

 haps 3'oung girls, whose 

 ancient fingers had 

 Sweat Pores. dinted the edges of 



the soft ware as pie- 

 moulded b\- the thumb of baker 

 L. Similar articles were then 

 (1878) made and sold as to\'S. and I purchased 

 main- of them in the bazaars of Tokyo. Ancient 

 ware, baked in the sun but ne\-er fired, and 

 marked with finger furrows is in high repute for the 

 ceremonial tea-drinking of Japan, but it is quite 

 incorrect to sa\', as has been said and written, that 

 no other is ever used in those depressing festivities. 

 Sometimes the furrows or ridges of those ancient 

 linger-marks came out sharp and clear, but much 

 oftener the\' were blurred or smudged by mo\ement 



RE 1. 

 shouin, 



crusts are still 

 or pastr\'-cook 



136 



