The hidden hand : a contribution to the history of finger prints / [Henry Faulds].
- Faulds, Henry, 1843-1930.
- Date:
- [1920]
Licence: In copyright
Credit: The hidden hand : a contribution to the history of finger prints / [Henry Faulds]. Source: Wellcome Collection.
6/20 page 4
![sioner of Police in New Zealand, where he induced the authorities to adopt the finger-print system. It soon extended to Australia. In Science and the Criminal, 1911 (Pitman) Mr. C. Ainsworth Mitchell, B.A., F.I.C. (p. 66), we read:—51 Dr. Faulds, who, while at a hospital in Japan, made an exhaustive study of the finger impressions of the Japanese, appears to have been the first to suggest the possibility of tracing a criminal by the imprints of his fingers upon external objects.” The Lancet of October 5th, 1912, says “ The proposal to use dactylography as a means of identification in such cases [medico¬ legal] “ was first communicated to the public by Mr. Faulds, who is a member of the medical profession, in a contribution to Nature, October 28th, 1880.” The Law Times, again, under the heading of “ Proof by Fingers ” said, in October 28th, 1905 :—“Credit where credit is due. Mr. Henry Faulds claims to honourable mention in connection with the system of identification by finger-prints have been strangely over¬ looked. He was unquestionably the first to propose this method in an article in Nature, of the 28th October, 1880. Mr. Faulds deals carefully with points of importance raised in recent newspaper contro¬ versies, and in these discussions he has elicited a number of practical hints likely to prove valuable in the development of a system which is still, of course, in its infancy. This treatment of the ‘ mask murders ’ case, for instance, is admirable, and a sample of the caution he would enforce upon all investigators when the question is one of life or death.” Professor Otto Schlaginhaufen of Zurich, in the August number of Gagenbauer’s Jahrbuch for 1905, states that with my contribution to Nature in 1880, there began a new period in the investigation of the lineations by which they were brought into the service of criminal anthropology and medical jurisprudence. After a summary of the chief points in my contribution, he concludes that I had shown a method of gaining knowledge of man’s genetic descent by a study of the corresponding lineations of certain animals, such as apes, monkeys, lemurs, etc., and that I had indicated other ways too, in which medical jurisprudence might profit besides that of identi¬ fication.](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b30622451_0006.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
