You’d Better Wear Gloves

By Suzanne Norquist

Dusting for fingerprints is a common occurrence in modern crime dramas. What about movies set in the late 1800s or early 1900s? Did detectives use fingerprinting back then? How could this technology be useful without a massive database to match them to a person?

Ancient peoples sometimes used fingerprints and handprints for the authentication of documents. Differences in sizes and patterns could be identified. The earliest example of handprints being used as evidence comes from ancient China—the Quin Dynasty (221 to 206 B.C.). A document entitled “The Volume of Crime Scene Investigation—Burglary” describes their use.

Various researchers in Europe and America studied the biology of fingerprints in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In 1788, German doctor Johann Christoph Andreas Mayer wrote a book explaining that no two fingerprints were alike. It was the first time anyone recognized this fact.

Fingerprints could only be useful if they were organized and cataloged. Early researchers looked for things like circular patterns versus straight ones. In 1823, German professor Dr. Johannes E. Purkinje identified nine basic categories. They were, (1) transverse curve, (2) central longitudinal stria, (3) oblique stripe, (4) oblique loop, (5) almond whorl, (6) spiral whorl, (7) ellipse, (8) circle, and (9) double whorl. Over the years, several researchers collected and categorized fingerprints, building on Purkinje’s work.

The first recorded homicide solved by fingerprint evidence was in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in 1892. Different suspects’ prints were compared to a bloody print left at the scene. The guilty party confessed upon seeing the evidence.

Detectives couldn’t merely hope the criminal would leave visible prints for them to find. So, fingerprint powders were developed around this time. They came in various colors for different surfaces. Early powders were mercury or graphite-based.

Before fingerprinting to solve crimes became common practice, novelists included it in their stories. Science fiction of the 1890s? Mark Twain published The Tragedy of Pudd’nhead Wilson in 1894. In it, a lawyer collected prints from townsfolk to solve a murder.

In the late 1890s, detectives worldwide began convicting criminals based on fingerprint evidence.

The year 1902 brought two breakthroughs. French scientist Paul-Jean Coulier developed a method to transfer fingerprints from surfaces to paper. And Sir Edward Henry created a detailed classification system.

The 1904 World’s Fair in Saint Louis featured this new technology. Fingerprint classes for law enforcement were offered. By 1911, U.S. courts accepted fingerprints as a reliable means of identification. One case went all the way to the Supreme Court. At the same time, smart criminals started wearing gloves.

Matching prints from crime scenes to existing paper records remained a laborious process. (I knew someone who did this job as late as 1990!)

The idea of fingerprinting interested the average person so much that some of the New York elite decided to use it on their calling cards instead of their names. It could enhance their social standing and make people think they were smart. Seriously?!

In 1924, the FBI added an Identity Division. And in 1980, the first computer database was developed. Today, the United States keeps records for millions of people.

So, if I’m reading an 1860s crime drama, no one had better be dusting for fingerprints. However, it is reasonable in the 1890s. And, if I’m going to rob someone, I’d better wear gloves. Just kidding.

***

”Mending Sarah’s Heart” in the Thimbles and Threads Collection

Four historical romances celebrating the arts of sewing and quilting.

Mending Sarah’s Heart by Suzanne Norquist

Rockledge, Colorado, 1884

Sarah seeks a quiet life as a seamstress. She doesn’t need anyone, especially her dead husband’s partner. If only the Emporium of Fashion would stop stealing her customers, and the local hoodlums would leave her sons alone. When she rejects her husband’s share of the mine, his partner Jack seeks to serve her through other means. But will his efforts only push her further away? 

Suzanne Norquist is the author of two novellas, “A Song for Rose” in A Bouquet of Brides Collection and “Mending Sarah’s Heart” in the Thimbles and Threads Collection. Everything fascinates her. She has worked as a chemist, professor, financial analyst, and even earned a doctorate in economics. Research feeds her curiosity, and she shares the adventure with her readers. She lives in New Mexico with her mining engineer husband and has two grown children. When not writing, she explores the mountains, hikes, and attends kickboxing class.

 

The Common Law’s View of Burglary

By Sherri Stewart

American courts, in their infancy, adopted the Common Law of England as the standard for deciding criminal and tort cases. Over the years, however, most states instituted their own model penal codes, which replaced the Common Law. However, many of our oldest cases stem from those early principles derived from the Mother Country. Let’s home in on one crime in particular—burglary, which contrary to most people’s thinking, is not theft.

The Common Law definition of burglary is “The breaking and entry of the dwelling of another in the night with the intent of committing a felony therein.” Each of the terms—breaking, entry, dwelling of another, night, intent to commit a felony—must be proven. Breaking, by definition, means a slight opening of a door or a window. So if the door is wide open and someone enters to commit a crime, it’s not burglary because the defendant didn’t open the door further. Entry means the accused’s body or implement must cross through what was opened. Dwelling is a place where someone returns regularly to sleep. Night means the time between one hour after sunset and one hour before sunrise. Intent means at the point of entry, the defendant must intend to commit a felony, which can be rape, murder, arson, larceny, etc.

In People v. Dupree (98 Mich.26,57 N.W. 1047) in the year 1893, the defendant broke into a shoe shop by climbing through a window at night and stole three pairs of shoes. He argued that because it was a shoe shop, it wasn’t a dwelling, and that at the time of the crime, the window was already partially opened. The prosecutor maintained that the shoe shop only occupied the front room of the home of the proprietor who lived behind and above it. He also said that any act of opening even if it is only a few more inches constitutes a breaking.

In Walker v. State (63 Ala. 49.), the defendant took corn from a corn crib by using an augur to drill a hole in the floor under the crib of a neighbor, so that the corn flowed through the hole into a sack underneath. He maintained he wasn’t guilty of burglary because his body didn’t enter the room. The court found that the augur was, in essence, an extension of his body, and he was convicted of burglary.

So, you be the judge.

  

Simon comes to Adam’s house one night to say hello. After ringing the bell and not getting an answer, Simon decides to try the door, which he finds unlocked. He pushes the door open and enters Adam’s house only to discover that Adam is not home. Simon turns around and is about to leave when he sees a diamond ring sitting on Adam’s dining room table. Simon decides to take the ring. Did Simon commit burglary? Think like a lawyer.

Sherri Stewart loves a clean novel, sprinkled with romance and a strong message that challenges her faith. She spends her working hours with books—either editing others’ manuscripts or writing her own. Her passions are traveling to the settings of her books and sampling the food. She traveled to Paris for this book, and she still works daily on her French, although she doesn’t need to since everyone speaks English. A recent widow, Sherri lives in Orlando with her lazy dog, Lily. She shares recipes, tidbits of the book’s locations, and other authors' books in her newsletter.

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What Hides behind the Walls

If the Nazis stole your house, wouldn’t you be justified in stealing it back now that the war is over?

When Tamar Feldman admits to her husband, Daniel, and mentor, Neelie Visser, that she broke into her former home, they scold her for taking such a risk. Tamar is tired of being careful. She’s tired of living in the present, as if the past doesn’t matter. But the painting of the violin girl in her former bedroom draws her back again and again. She finally steals the painting to return it to its former owner. Now maybe this small act of justice will help her start to heal. What Tamar doesn’t realize is the past isn’t finished with her yet; in fact, it’s as close as the walls in her house and even follows her to Paris.

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Identifying Criminals Before Fingerprinting Was Used

Susan Page Davis here. Last month I told you about the history of fingerprinting for identification. But what did law enforcement officers use before fingerprinting became widespread?

Alphonse Bertillon

The Bertillon method of identification was devised in 1892 by French anthropologist Alphonse Bertillon. It involved using body measurements by which to classify individuals and thus identify them.

The formula uses measurements of people’s body parts and paved the way for the modern, computerized methods of facial and body recognition. These measurements were recorded on a card with the person’s photographs, and it became known as the Bertillon System.

Bertillon was born in Paris in 1853 and became a police officer. He studied biometrics, or body measurements and applied anthropology to crime investigation. The discipline became known as anthropometry. Up to this time, only a person’s name and photographs identified him.


Bertillon is also the inventor of the “mug shot,” where criminals are photographed from both the front and the side. He standardized this process about 1888. He advanced many other forensics techniques as well, including the method of comparing fingerprints, method of photographing a crime scene, and a new way to preserve footprints.

In his method of measurements, the five primary ones used were: head length, head breadth, length of the middle finger, length of the left foot, and length of the forearm. Other measurements were taken in each of these categories, and results were recorded on standardized cards with the photographs. Also recorded were eye color and length of the little finger. He also created a cross-referenced method of filing the cards so that the information was comparatively easy to retrieve.

Examples of the facial measurements Bertillon used.

The Bertillon System of indemnifying crime suspects was widely used before fingerprinting became standard. Its accuracy was questioned when, in 1903, a now-famous case emerged: the case of William West and Will West.

At the Leavenworth, Kansas federal prison, a man named Will West was incarcerated. After he entered, he taken to be photographed for mug shots, and his Bertillon measurements were taken. The clerk asked if he had been there before, but West said he had not.

These photos are used by the FBI in training. From the National Law Enforcement Museum.

After the process was finished, the clerk took the new card with his measurements and went to the files. He returned with another card. The man pictured on it looked remarkably like Will West and had nearly the same name (William West). They also had almost identical Bertillon measurements.
Will West insisted that the card the clerk showed him was not him. The clerk turned it over and read that the man on the front, William West, had been convicted of murder in 1901 and was then in the prison serving a life sentence.

It has never been determined whether these two men, Will West and William West, were related, but from then on, their fingerprints were used to conclusively identify them. Law enforcement officials and courts agreed that fingerprinting was more reliable than the Bertillon System. This case has long been used in training investigators.

If you would like to be entered in a drawing for your choice of one of Susan’s books, leave a comment below, including your contact information.






Susan Page Davis is the author of more than seventy novels and novellas in the mystery, romantic suspense, and historical romance genres. A Maine native, she now lives in western Kentucky. She is a winner of the Carol Award, Inspirational Readers’ Choice Award, Will Rogers Medallion, and more. Visit her website at www.susanpagedavis.com, where you can see all her books, sign up for her occasional newsletter, enter a month book drawing, and read a short story on her Romance page.

Fingerprints and a giveaway

Susan Page Davis here. A lot of my books involve fingerprinting, and I had the exciting opportunity to experience it myself a few days ago. Because it involved a travel permit, it was done through a branch of Homeland Security, and they have the latest technology. No ink, no paper cards to be filed. It’s all electronic nowadays. But how did the collection and comparison of fingerprints start?

Herschel

Way back, earlier than 1000 B.C., fingerprints were used on clay tablets to seal business transactions in ancient Babylon.

The Chinese began using thumbprints on clay seals to “sign” documents in the third century B.C. During the T’ang Dynasty, 610 to 907 A.D., fingerprints were used on official documents.

In the 14th Century A.D., in Persia, many government documents had fingerprint impressions, and a government physician noted that no two fingerprints were exactly the same.

In 1686, an Italian professor of anatomy, Marcello Malpighi, used new technology—a microscope—to study fingerprints. He noted the common details of spirals, loops, and ridges. 

In 1823, a Prussian professor of anatomy, Johannes Purkinje, described nine fingerprint patterns. Still no mention was made of using fingerprints as a method of identification.

Herschel

In 1858, Sir William Herschel, who was the chief magistrate of the British District of Jungipoor, India, began requiring a fingerprint and signature on civil contracts completed there with native Indians. He used this to make the people involved feel more bound to the contract, but over time he made the observation that no two were alike, and he said that fingerprints could be used for personal identification purposes. Herschel collected his own fingerprints over more than fifty years and noted that they did not change.

In 1877, The American Journal of Microscopy and Popular Science reported that microscopist Thomas Taylor, with the U.S. Department of Agriculture, proposed that finger and palm prints left on any object might be used to solve crimes.

Dr. Henry Faulds, a British surgeon supervising a hospital in Tokyo, published an article in a scientific journal in 1880. He discussed using printer’s ink as a method of collecting fingerprints for the purpose of personal identification. He developed a system of classifying them and sent his observations to Charles Darwin. Darwin, who was aging and ill, forwarded Dr. Faulds’s data to his cousin, Sir Francis Galton.

In 1882 fingerprints were first known to be used for identification in America by Gilbert Thompson. An employee of the U.S. Geological Survey in New Mexico, he used his own fingerprints on a document to guard against forgery.

Sir Francis Galton

Author Mark Twain was interested in fingerprinting, and he used it in two of his novel plots. In Life on the Mississippi (1883), a murderer was identified by the use of fingerprints. In his 1884 book, Pudd’nhead Wilson, Twain made it a major part of the plot, and fingerprint evidence was included in a courtroom scene.

Darwin’s cousin, Galton, published the first book on fingerprints in 1892. He was a British anthropologist, and he discussed in his book the uniqueness of fingerprints and the individual details they contain.

The first known collection of criminals’ fingerprints began in 1891 in Argentina, initiated by Juan Vucetich, a police official. The first known case in which a fingerprint was used in the solution took place in 1892.

In 1896, the International Association of Chiefs of Police established the National Bureau of Criminal Identification. Its purpose was exchanging arrest information between agencies.

In 1901, back to India: Sir Edward Henry, an inspector general of police in Bengal, developed the first system of classifying fingerprints. It was adopted as the official system in England and eventually spread over the world. He was later the Home Office Secretary and published “The Classification and Use of Fingerprints.” The Fingerprint Branch of New Scotland Yard was established, using Henry’s system.

In 1902, a Paris murder case was solved when police took a fingerprint from the crime scene and matched it to one already on file, belonging to a criminal previously arrested. In America at this time, the systematic use of fingerprints was beginning. In 1905, the U.S. Army began taking members’ fingerprints, and the Navy and Marine Corps began doing so within three years.

In 1910, Frederick Brayley published the first American textbook on fingerprints, "Arrangement of Finger Prints, Identification, and Their Uses."

Fingerprints were first accepted by United States courts as a reliable means of identification in 1911. Thomas Jennings was the first person to be convicted of murder in the U.S. based on fingerprint evidence.

Also in 1911, the first central storage place for fingerprints in North America was established in Ottawa, Canada, maintained by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.

In 1924, Congress established the Identification Division of the F.B.I. By 1946, the F.B.I.’s fingerprint repository had more than 100 million fingerprint cards.

Fingerprint card of Rosa Parks. Courtesy of National Archives and Records Administration.

The first computer database of fingerprints was developed in 1980. It came to be known as the Automated Fingerprint Identification System (AFIS). Today there are nearly 70 million records (about 700 million individual fingerprints) entered in the AFIS system. Computers can search millions of records in this system in minutes.

In 1996, fingerprinting of children became common in America as a guard against abduction. Parents were given the record card or a home fingerprint kit, maintaining their privacy unless the record was needed. More than 5 million Child ID Fingerprinting Kits had been distributed around the world by 2001.

In 1999, the F.B.I. phased out the use of cards and now uses the integrated AFIS system, based in Clarksburg, W.V., which contains computerized records for approximately 33 million criminals. Older paper cards are still maintained at another facility.

These are just a few of the significant events in the history of fingerprinting. The detectives in my Maine Justice series use fingerprints as one of many tools in solving their cases. If you would like to be entered in a drawing for your choice of books in this series, leave a comment below, including your contact information.

Susan Page Davis is the author of more than seventy novels and novellas in the mystery, romantic suspense, and historical romance genres. A Maine native, she now lives in western Kentucky. She is a winner of the Carol Award, Inspirational Readers’ Choice Award, Will Rogers Medallion, and more. Visit her website at www.susanpagedavis.com, where you can see all her books, sign up for her occasional newsletter, enter a month book drawing, and read a short story on her Romance page.

Accidental Detective

A friend to honesty and 

a foe to crime

--Allan Pinkerton

Born in Glasgow, Scotland in 1819, Allan Pinkerton might never have followed in his policemen father’s footsteps had it not been for a chance encounter.

A cooper by trade, he ran afoul of the law because of his political affiliations and he and his wife fled Scotland and ended up in America. After settling in Illinois, he dreamed of monopolizing the cooper manufacturing company in the region and called his company Pinkerton’s One and Original Cooperage of Dundee.

FATE INTERVENES

While cutting down poles for his barrels, he came across a counterfeiting ring. He reported his discovery to the sheriff, who immediately deputized him to help find the leader.  Allan set up a sting and caught him.  The Cook County sheriff was so impressed he offered Allan a job. 

Allan eventually decided to start his own detective agency, the only one of its kind, and the Pinkerton National Detective Agency became reality. The agency’s “seeing-eye” logo  inspired the phrase private eye.

The Pinkerton name became a household word when he prevented an assassination plot on President-elect Lincoln.  Lincoln then hired Allan to organize the Secret Service to stop counterfeiting.

MANY THINGS TO MANY PEOPLE

Allan was accused of being both a traitor and a patriot. He was also innovative and many of his methods are still used to today. The first to use photography as a crime-fighting tool, he collected what he called mug shots and newspaper articles, and organized files on every known criminal in the country.

PETTICOAT DETECTIVES

He was also ahead of his time in other areas as well and hired his first female detective Kate Warne in 1852. He thought she was applying for a secretary job but she soon relieved him of that notion. Oh, to have been at that meeting!

Quick to see the advantage of female detectives, he put her in charge of the Pinkerton Female Detective Bureau formed in 1860 to ‘worm out secrets’ by means unavailable to male detectives. Unfortunately, most of the information pertaining to this bureau was destroyed in the Great Chicago Fire, so we'll never know exactly how those lady detectives wormed out secrets.

FROM FAME TO SHAME

What we do know is that at the height of its existence, the Pinkerton Detective Agency employed more agents than the United States army.
Can you imagine having to track down criminals without benefit of DNA, fingerprints, security cameras, Facebook, cell phones or computers? But that’s exactly what those early gumshoes had to do and yet, they almost always got their man and, in some case, their woman. 

Their heavy-handed and sometimes ruthless pursuit of criminals like Jesse James (which resulted in the death of a child) earned the agency a bad reputation and tarnished the Pinkerton name. Several states passed anti-Pinkerton laws, which prohibited the hiring of private detectives. Allan fought back by publishing more than a dozen books in an effort to set the record straight.

Who is your favorite literary, movie or TV detective?

"Many things are worth dying for but modesty's
not one of them -Petticoat Detective

 

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