Fingerprint History

Probably the earliest scientist to include mention of finger prints in their scientific writing was Marcello Malpighi (1628-1694) and Dr. Nehemiah Grew (1641-1712).  Marcello Malpighi, was an Italian anatomist and microscopist who described the patterns on the tips of fingers as part of an overall study of human skin.   He is regarded by some to be the first histologist, a term for one who studies tissue.  One of the lower layers of skin is named for him, the "Malpighian layer."  Dr. Nehemiah Grew wrote a work entitled Philosophical Transactions for 1684 where he described the "innumerable little ridges."

In science unless something is studied and variations have been identified, separated out, and named, we have not made progress.  Therefore, the next progressive scientist to contribute to the history and study of fingerprinting is Jan Purkinje (1787 - 1869), a Czechoslovakian physiologist who, in 1823 what he described as 9 different patterns of finger prints.   

Dr. Purkinje was just cataloging what he saw, and he had not made the leap from what he was seeing and how that information could be used as a means of identification.

The only way a fingerprint could be of value for identification purposes would be if each one was unique and shared with no one else.  The first person to notice the uniqueness of fingerprints was William Herschel (1833 – 1918) who had been working as the Assistant Joint Magistrate and Collector in colonial India.  Herschel began collecting, as keepsakes, the fingerprints of his friends and relatives and took note of how each impression was unique to the individual and he also noticed that even after the passing of several years, an individual's finger print stayed unchanged.  Herschel made the leap that finger prints were unique to an individual that no two finger prints were alike, and therefore, finger prints could be used to differentiate one person from another.  From 1877 - 1878 Herschel ordered that government pensioners use a finger print to sign for their monthly payments.  He also had finger prints used to register deeds, to authenticate their transactions such as deeds of sale, and even had the courthouse forced convicts to fingerprint their jail warrants to keep them from hiring someone to pay someone to serve in their place in prison.

In 1892, Sir Francis Galton (1822 - 1911),  he published the book Fingerprints and, in doing so, significantly advanced the science of fingerprint identification. 

As Inspector General of the Bengal Province Police in India, Sir Edward Henry (1850 - 1931), set out to solve the problem of fingerprint classification.  Sir Henry had read Sir Galton's book Fingerprints and upon his return to England in 1894 Sir Henry had the opportunity to consult with Sir Galton.  Upon his return to India Sir Henry had his team set up a classification system which was officially adopted by British India in 1897.  This was the first known use of fingerprinting as a method of crime solving, and not only as identification.  Eventually Sir Henry wrote a book entitled The Classification and Uses of Finger Prints, and was influential in getting his India method of fingerprint identification adapted in South Africa, and eventually in England as well.  Sir Henry returned to England and was made the Assistant Commissioner of Police in charge of Criminal Identification at New Scotland Yard.  In 1903, Henry became Commissioner of Police.  Amazingly, Sir Henry's Classification System is considered to be start of the modern era of finger print identification, and this Henry System, with few modifications is the classification systems presently used today.

In the United States, Gilbert Thompson, a geologist in New Mexico started using fingerprints on documents in 1882 to prevent forgery.  Mr. Thompson, aware of Herschel's work, may be the first person in the United States to start using fingerprinting as a means of identification. 

Being ahead of his times, and just a brilliant as one we have heard, author Mark Twain also used fingerprints, in his book Life on the Mississippi (1883) and in Pudd'n Head Wilson (1894).   Mr. Twain depicts fingerprinting as the proof of guilt in a fictional criminal case, and may have done more than any nonfiction work in promoting the use of fingerprinting as a tool in solving crime and determining guilt.

The International Association for Chiefs of Police started gathering an extensive collection of fingerprint files and in 1924 this Association of Chiefs of Police turned their collection over to the newly created FBI.

Once fingerprinting began to be accepted it quickly became the strongest method of identification and crime solving available.  In 1903 the New York State Prison system begins fingerprinting criminals in Sing Sing.  In 1904 the federal prison at Leavenworth begins using fingerprinting to identify prisoners.  The US Army begins using fingerprint identification  in 1905, the Navy in 1906, and the Marines in 1907.

Soon the volume of fingerprint samples became a major problem.  By 1933 the FBI had 5 million fingerprint cards on file.  By 1946, the files contained 10 million. fingerprint cards.

Eventually technology managed to get a handle on this vast collection of fingerprint cards.  The FBI developed a computerized Criminal Fingerprint File in 1980. Then in 1983 the FBI created the National Crime Information Center, a site designed to dissemination information about criminals between the FBI and local law enforcement agencies.  By 1989, when comparing a fingerprint from a crime scene against the millions of fingerprints on file was speed up because of the computer system, going from obtaining a match in 14 days to getting a match in 1 day. 

While DNA is the fancy new method of identification, it is unlikely that fingerprinting will ever become obsolete.  Today, when a DNA match is found at a crime scene the main defense is to claim some sort of contamination.  These contamination and cross contamination claims are sometimes weak, and sometimes persuasive, but they will seldom be stronger than a suspects fingerprint in the blood of a victim.