Classification and uses of finger prints / by Sir E.R. Henry.

  • Edward Henry
Date:
1913
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Classification and uses of finger prints / by Sir E.R. Henry. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    28/168 (page 18)
    the edge of a steel pen, while the first is creaseless. An unskilful person missing the crease in one im- pression might be misled and fail to realise that the two impressions before him are identical. It cannot be too often reiterated that in comparing impressions the examiner must rely upon similarity or dissimi- larity in the type and in the details of the ridges of the patterns : if his conclusions deduced therefrom are further corroborated by coinciding creases, so much the easier his task. Creases will be found in Illustrations 28, 40, 71, 72, and others. They must not be confused with cicatrised cuts (Figs. 11 and 13, and Illustrations 24 and 77) ; in the latter there is, it will be noticed, some displacement and puckering of the divided ridges. Persistence throughout period of human life of pattern and ridge characteristics.— Impressions being required for permanent record, their utility must, in great measure, be contingent upon the persistence through long periods of time of the general form of the pattern and of the details of the ridges constituting it. The late Sir Francis Galton has investigated this point, and in the following words records the results of his examination of many sets of prints taken at different times, and covering the interval from child- hood to boyhood, from boyhood to early manhood, from early manhood to middle age, and from middle to extreme old age : “ As there is no sign, except in one case, of change during any of these four intervals which together almost wholly cover the ordinary life