Demography.

  • International Congress of Hygiene and Demography
Date:
1892
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Demography. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service. The original may be consulted at London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service.

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    formed. The patterns grow in size with the individual, and in their proportions they somewhat vary at different periods of life according to the fatness or leanness, &c. of the finger, but their general character, on the one hand, and their structure in all its minuteness on the other, remain unchanged. The method of identification proposed by him was described in a second memoir read more recently before the Royal Society, and about to be published in its proceedings. The method consists of two stages ; the first is classification accord- ing to the general character of the pattern, the second is the scrutiny of all the specimens that are- contained in the same class by attending to one or more of the minutiae. For classification, the method is adopted of regarding only the most obvious dilfei’euces of character in each of the ten fingers ; these are whether the pattern in each of them ranks as a “ Primary,” a “ Whorl,” or as a “ Looj).” No other heads are recognised ; the few doubtful cases being classed under one or other of these three heads according to a collection of standard specimens. Every one of these classes is, however, liable to a two-fold sub-division ; being numbered with an even number* whenever the pattern is not symmetrical, and its slope lies from the finger tip downwards towards the radial, and not the cubital side of the hand. Thus a primary may be numbered 1 or 2, a whorl 3 or 4, or loop 5 or 6. These are the only numbers used. The numerical token of any hand is registered in a form like this; 153, 263, 35, 55, in which the first triplet of numerals refer to the first, second and third fingers successively of the left hand, the second triplet to the first, second, and third of the right hand, the first couplet of numerals to the thumb and little finger of the left hand, the second couplet to the thumb and little finger of the right hand. The different sequences occur with widely different frequency. An analysis of the prints from 100 persons taken at random, showed that there were 7l cases of the same sequence occurring only once, 10 cases of the same sequence occurring twice, one case of a sequence occuring three times, and one case (that of all being plain loops) of a .sequence occurring six times Consequently— [71 X 1-1-10x2-1-1 X 3-1-1 X6 = 100.] A pattern is rapidly read off into numbers, whether it be read in a print or on the hand itself, and the case is quickly allotted to its appro- priate pigeon hole. The number-token of a pair of hands suffices by itself for a large amount of negative identifications on the one hand, and of positive suspicion on the other. The scrutiny of the individual prints that may be contained in any particular pigeon hole is conducted rapidly by fixing on some one well marked minute characteristic in any one finger in the specimen submitted * During the year that has elapsed since these remarks were written, I have made considerable progress in the art of classification, and now use letters instead of numerals, as explained in my just published book on Finger-Prints (Macmillan & Co.)—F. G., October 1892.