The Origin of Finger-Printing Part 1

The Origin of Finger-Printing.

by William J. Herschel.

DEDICATION

_TO SIR EDWARD HENRY, G.C.V.O., K.C.B., C.S.I._

_Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police._

_I am offering you this old story of the beginnings of Finger-printing, by way of expressing my warm and continuous admiration of those masterly developments of its original applications, whereby, first in Bengal and the Transvaal, and then in England, you have fashioned a weapon of penetrating certainty for the sterner needs of Justice._

_W. J. HERSCHEL._ _June, 1916._

PREFACE

The following pages have two objects: first, to place on record the genesis of the Finger-print method of personal identification, from its discovery in Bengal in 1858, till its public demonstration there in 1877-8; secondly, to examine the scanty suggestions of evidence that this use of our fingers had been foreshadowed in Europe more than a hundred years ago, and had indeed been general in ancient times, especially in China.

In later years, and in energetic hands, the method has been developed into a system far more effective than anything I contemplated, and I do not go into that part of the story; but I believe these pages will suffice to show the originality of my study of its two essential features, the strict individuality and the stubborn persistence of the patterns on our fingers.

The gift granted to me of lighting upon a discovery which promised escape from one great difficulty of administration in India is more than ever appreciated by me since I have lived to see the promise wonderfully fulfilled there, and in other lands as well.

For the sake of interest I give, among the ill.u.s.trations, several examples of late 'repeats' taken many years after I left India; but these do not belong to my story.

THE ORIGIN OF FINGER-PRINTING

In 1858, after five years' service, as an a.s.sistant under the old East India Company, in the interior of Bengal, I was in charge of my first subdivision, the head-quarters of which were then at Jungipoor, on the upper reaches of the Hooghly river. My executive and magisterial experience had by that time forced on me that distrust of all evidence tendered in Court which did so much to cloud our faith in the people around us. We cannot be too thankful that things have greatly improved in India in the last sixty years, but the time of which I am speaking was the very worst time of my life in this respect. I remember only too well writing in great despondency to one of the best and soberest-minded of my senior companions at Haileybury[1] about my despair of any good coming from orders and decisions based on such slippery facts, and the comfort I found in his sensible reply.

[1] Till 1857 the East India Company's College.

It happened, in July of that year, that I was starting the first bit of road metalling at Jungipoor, and invited tenders for a supply of 'ghooting' (a good binding material for light roads). A native named Rajyadhar Konai, of the village of Nista, came to terms with me, and at my desire drew up our agreement in his own hand, in true commercial style. He was about to sign it in the usual way, at the upper right-hand corner, when I stopped him in order to read it myself; and it then occurred to me to try an experiment by taking the stamp of his hand, by way of signature instead of writing. There was nothing very original about that, as an idea. Many must have heard of some such use of a man's hand; and the correspondence that has taken place has brought to light old instances of the hand, or the nail of a finger, or the teeth in one's mouth, being used to certify a man's act, or a woman's. But these have all been isolated instances. Sir Francis Galton, however, has pointed out[2] that in our own times the engraver Bewick had a fancy for engraving his thumb-mark, with his name attached, as vignettes, or as colophons, in books which he published.[3] As a boy I had loved Bewick on Birds: I regret that it is not now to be found in our library.

Galton's remark has reminded me that I used to see the thumb-mark there, as well as I recollect, in an ornamental t.i.tle-page. I mention this because I dare say it had something to do with my fascination over Konai's hand-markings. If so, the influence was unknown to me. The absorbing interests of manhood had blotted out, not Bewick, but his thumb-mark, from my memory. However that may be, I was only wishing to frighten Konai out of all thought of repudiating his signature hereafter. He, of course, had never dreamt of such an attestation, but fell in readily enough. I dabbed his palm and fingers over with the home-made oil-ink used for my official seal, and pressed the whole hand on the back of the contract, and we studied it together, with a good deal of chaff about palmistry, comparing his palm with mine on another impression. Here is a facsimile of the whole doc.u.ment, made by the Clarendon Press. I was so pleased with the experiment that, having to make a second contract with Konai, I made him attest it in the same way. One of these contracts I gave to Sir Francis (then Mr.) Galton for his celebrated paper read before the Royal Society, November 1890, to which body he presented it; the other lies before me now. Trials with my own fingers soon showed the advantage of using them instead of the whole hand for the purpose then in view, i.e. for securing a signature which the writer would obviously hesitate to disown. That he might be infallibly convicted of perjury, if he did, is a very different matter.

That was not settled, and could not have been settled, to the satisfaction of Courts of Justice, till, after many years, abundant agreement had been reached among ordinary people. The very possibility of such a 'sanction' (to use a technical expression) to the use of a finger-print did not dawn upon me till after long experience, and even then it became no more than a personal conviction for many years more.

The decisiveness of a finger-print is now one of the most powerful aids to Justice. Our possession of it derives from the impression of Konai's hand in 1858.

[2] 'Finger-prints' (Macmillan, 1892), p. 26.

[3] See Appendix.

Of trials with my own fingers the oldest impression I possess was taken in June 1859, when I first began to keep records. I had been transferred to be Magistrate of Arrah, the most north-westerly district of Bengal, where the Mutiny still left work to do which allowed little time for private hobbies; but I took so many prints among the society of the Station, as well as among Indians of all cla.s.ses, that my 'fad' about them was well known. The Medical Officer of Arrah was Dr. R. F.

Hutchinson, who naturally took great interest in the subject. Twenty-one years later, in 1880, he was still there, and sent me a 'repeat' print of his fingers. Here is a facsimile of his first Arrah impression. In 1890, being in England, he visited Galton's Laboratory, and gave a second repeat (after thirty-one years) which was used in 'Finger-prints'

(1892), p. 93, to support Mr. Galton's evidence of 'Persistency'. In the facsimile 'Collection 1858-1913', which I am attaching to some of the copies of this narrative, will be found other prints which I took at Arrah of my whole hand and of my right foot. They agree irresistibly with prints taken now after an interval of fifty-seven years.

[Ill.u.s.tration: KONAI'S HAND Bengal 1858]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Contract for 2,000 maunds of road-metalling, between W. J. Herschel and Rajyadhar Konai, in Konai's handwriting]

In 1860 I was sent as Magistrate to Nuddea, nearer to Calcutta. The Indigo disturbances in the district had given rise to a great deal of violence, litigation, and fraud; forgery and perjury were rampant. The rent-rolls of the ryots put into Court by the Zemindars; the pottahs (agreements for rent) purporting to be issued by them to each ryot, put in by the latter; the kabooliyats (acceptances) purporting to be signed by the ryot, and tendered in evidence against him; all these doc.u.ments were frequently worth no more than the paper on which they were written.

In my own jail a notorious convict was found making clay seals of well-known landlords, and forging their signatures on pottahs smuggled into his hands. He was detected by the colour of the floor of his cell, where he kept his stock-in-trade buried. Things were so bad in this and other ways that the administration of Civil Justice had unusual difficulty in preserving its dignity. I was driven to take up finger-prints now with a definite object before me, and for three years continued taking a very large number from all sorts and conditions of men. I give here some selected impressions of friends taken in Nuddea during the years 1860, 1861, and 1862, in order of date, and names of some others.

[Ill.u.s.tration: R. F. Hutchinson, June 1859, Medical Officer at Arrah Station.]

1860, July. Claude Brown, a prominent merchant of Calcutta, who was making a tour in the Indigo districts, and was at the time my guest.

1860, July 29. Captain H. Raban, Head of the Bengal Police, sent to Nuddea on account of its disturbed state; also my guest. He took extreme interest in the evidence of his own imprint. It was my habit, of course, to give duplicates of his 'mark' to every one of importance.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Captain H. Raban, Head of the Police in Lower Bengal, July 29, 1860.]

1860, July 31. W. Waterfield, B.C.S., a college friend, afterwards Comptroller-General of the Treasuries of India. I have several 'repeats'

of his; see especially p. 29.

1861, June 24. Ogilvie Temple, Judge of the Court of Small Causes, Kooshtea.

1862, April 13. At a gathering at my house at Kishnagar I had the good fortune to secure the prints of many other notables of the district.

The Maharaja of Nuddea. He was the highest of the old n.o.bility of Bengal. He was much struck, as I was, by the remarkable symmetry of the 'pattern' on one of his fingers at the core.

[Ill.u.s.tration: April 13, 1862. Maharaja of Nuddea.

Enlarged for the remarkable pattern]

[Ill.u.s.tration: April 13, 1862. A. C. Howard.

July 20, 1908. Sir Charles Howard.]

Same day. E. Grey, B.C.S. A college friend, on my staff, afterwards Civil and Sessions Judge. He, I am happy to say, is still alive (1916), and his 'repeat' is quite good now.

Same day. A. C. Howard, District Superintendent of Police, Nuddea, afterwards a.s.sistant Commissioner at Scotland Yard, and knighted for his services there, as Sir Charles Howard. He gladly gave me a 'repeat' in London after forty-six years. It will be seen how good the persistence has been.

Same day. Three other a.s.sistant Magistrates on the unusually large staff of the district. Among these was F. K. Hewitt, B.C.S., afterwards Commissioner of Chota Nagpur. Twenty-six years later, at my request, he furnished Sir Francis Galton with the 'repeat' printed on p. 93 of his famous work 'Finger-prints' (Macmillan, 1892). I have much later repeats taken at Oxford.

Same day. Ninian H. Thomson, Judge of the Court of Small Causes. He kindly sent me a repeat twenty-eight years later from Florence, and this also appears in the same work, p. 93.

Very early in my experiments I entertained misgivings about the possibility of the impressions being forged by the professional criminals whom we had so much reason to fear. I therefore submitted some specimens to the best artists in Calcutta to imitate. Their failure sufficed to dispel all anxiety on that point. None of them come near Bewick's engravings in accuracy.

Before I left Kishnagar (Nuddea) the violence of the Indigo disturbances had been subdued, but the Courts became choked with suits for enhancement of rent upon the recalcitrant cultivators, and the sore point about the genuineness of leases, &c., became aggravated. I took courage from despair, and in my judicial capacity (if I remember right) addressed an official letter to the Government of Bengal, definitely advocating administrative action to enforce the use of 'finger-prints'

by both parties as necessary to the validity of these doc.u.ments.

Unfortunately I kept no private draft of this letter, and have lost the date, probably 1862 or 1863. It must, however, be on record, both in Nuddea and in the Calcutta Secretariat. Nothing came of it, and I took no more pains about it. But a few years ago I was pleasantly reminded by Mr. Horace c.o.c.kerell, for some time Secretary to the Government, who gave me the history of its reception, viz. that it had been deemed inadvisable, when things were quieting down, to raise a new controversy of the sort. He added that it was a matter of regret now, that no action whatever had been taken, but he pointed out that legislation would have been necessary to make the new marks admissible in evidence, and to get such a law on the spur of the moment would have been hopeless. That difficulty had certainly never occurred to me when I made the suggestion. But how weighty an objection it was is shown by the fact that it was long, even after the value of finger-prints had been established in practice, before the High Court of Calcutta, in a leading case, declared that the evidence could not be excluded, nay more, that it was cogent. This was many years before such a case in England. At the time I wrote it is quite certain that no Court in India, no pleader, no solicitor had ever recognized such signatures as these.