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.

 

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.