Personal Identification and Description 



195 



" The registration of finger-prints of criminals, as a means of future identification, has been 

 thought by some to be of questionable value on two grounds — first, that ordinary officials 

 would fail to take them with sufficient sharpness to be of use; secondly, that no jury would 

 convict on finger-print evidence. These objections deserve discussion, and would perhaps by 

 themselves have justified a supplementary chapter to my book. It happens, however, that 

 there are strong concurrent reasons for writing it. I have lately come into possession of the 

 impressions of the fore and middle fingers of the right hand of eight different persons made 

 by ordinary officials, in the first instance in the year 1878 and secondly in 1892. They not 

 only supply a text for discussing both of the above objections, but they also afford new 

 evidence of the persistence of the minutiae, that is of the forks, islands and enclosures, found 

 in the capillary ridges." (p. 1.) 



The reader will remember (see our p. 176) that Sir W. J. Herschel in 1877 

 had taken finger-prints for the registration of deeds at Hooghly. Galton in 

 his Finger Prints (p. 89) had suggested that it might be well worth while to 

 hunt up such of these Hindoos as were still alive and retake their finger-prints. 

 Through the mediation of Sir William it was possible to obtain from the 

 magistrate and sub-registrar of Hooghly not only fresh prints of the fore and 

 middle finger-prints of eight persons, who had impressed their finger-prints in 

 the Register of Deeds of 1878, but also these earlier prints themselves. In all 

 cases the range of interval was about 14 years, so that Galton got evidence of 

 persistence roughly between the following ages: I, 51 to 65; II, 50 to 64; 

 III, 38 to 52; IV, 28 to 42; V, 48 to 62; VI, 38 to 52; VII, 40 to 54; VIII, 

 32 to 46 (p. 4). But his task was not an easy one; not only were the paper* 

 and the inking on both earlier and later prints very defective, but the prints 

 were not rolled prints and in a number of cases only a portion of the bulb had 

 been impressed. Thus some of the minutiae were lost on each separate print 

 and this in itself caused a double loss on comparison. Galton contented himself 

 with a full discussion of eight out of the sixteen finger-prints and found 

 the following results : 



Galton discusses each finger in detail (pp. 11-15), commenting on various 

 peculiarities and difficulties. He remarks that his evidence for correspondence 



* They were on a common kind of native-made paper, worm eaten, with many holes 

 Several of the Hindoos were old for their race and showed signs of much manual labour 

 wearing down the sharpness of the ridges. 



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