Personal Identification awl Description 157 



thirty minor officials of average intelligence. It would include the taking of 

 clear (non-blurred) prints, and the rapid identification of prints. A signature 

 can be forged, and it changes with age and illness, or even with the nature 

 of the pen with which it is made. The finger-print remains with all its 

 minutiae throughout life incapable of being forged. Unless a man be a 

 criminal there is no central office in existence even at the present day, 

 where his finger-prints could be registered, and he could be certain of identi- 

 fication for legal purposes at any time during his life, and for some time after 

 his death. For many legal purposes such a registration might be as valuable 

 as a land-registration office, and ownership of many personal effects, securities, 

 bonds, passports, etc. might be testified by simply finger-printing them, if 

 the finger-prints like a trade-mark had been duly registered. It is almost a 

 catastrophe that the process of finger-printing should have become tainted 

 in the popular mind by a criminal atmosphere. 



In 1900 Galton wrote another paper in the Nineteenth Century (Vol .xlviii, 

 pp. 118-126) under the title of "Identification Offices in India and Egypt": 



"There are many Identification Offices, supported by Governments and known by various 

 titles, in different parts of the world. Their number increases, and so does that of the purposes 

 to which they are applied ; a knowledge of them is, however, confined to a few persons. This 

 is especially unfortunate, because a fair amount of popular interest would ensure their adequate 

 support, and would check the common tendency of all Government institutions to slackness of 

 management, which is particularly fatal to the efficiency of Identification Offices." (p. 118.) 



He then refers to the work of Henry in India and Harvey in Egypt, 

 where Galton had seen the working of the central office in Cairo. Speaking 

 of Egypt he writes : 



"The difficulty of identification is increased by the roaming habits of the natives, many of 

 whom travel great distances for pilgrimages, petty commerce, or change of employment, so that 

 witnesses may not easily be found to identify them. Again, while the natives of India and of 

 Egypt have beautiful traits of character and some virtues in an exceptional degree, their warmest 

 admirers would not rank veracity among them. It is not insinuated that false testimony is 

 unknown in English courts of justice, or in England generally; indeed I find, on a rough attempt 

 at a vocabulary (made for quite another purpose), that more than fifty English words exist 

 which express different shades and varieties of fraud*; but if a map of the world were tinted 

 with gradations of colour to show the percentage of false testimony in courts of law, whether 

 in different nations or communities, England would be tinted rather lightly and both Bengal and 

 Egypt very darkly. So, whether it be from the impossibility of identifying the mass of natives 

 by their signatures, or from the difficulty of distinguishing them by name, or from their roving 

 habits, or from the extraordinary prevalence of personation and false testimony among them, 

 the need for an Identification Office has been strongly felt both in India and in Egypt." 



Galton gives a list of eight ways in which finger-prints were already 

 in use in India, namely: (l) Pensioners, civil or military; (2) Transfer of 



* It may be worth while to give these words. The list is imperfect but will do: cant, cheat, 

 chicanery, circumventing, counterfeit, chouse, connivance, cozen, crafty, cunning, deceit, defraud, 

 delude, dishonest, dissemble, dissimulate, dodge, duplicity, fallacious, feign, flattery, fraud, 

 furtive, hoax, humbug, hypocrisy, insinuation, intrigue, Jesuitical, jobbery, knavery, lying, 

 mendacious, peculating, perfidious, perjury, personation, rascality, roguery, scheming, scoundrel, 

 sharper, shuffler, slanderer, slimness (a new word due to the Boers), slyness, sneaking, spying, 

 stratagem, subterfuge, traducing, treachery, trickery, wiles [the last two added by Galton in a 

 corrected copy of the article, which I follow. The reader will find it quite easy to add to the list, 

 e.g. guile, imposture, fake, mislead, gerrymander, graft, etc., etc.]. 



