Part 2

All these processes were in full use when I left India, on the completion of twenty-five years' service, in 1878. I was by that time almost broken down in health, and more so in energy. Sir Ashley Eden, the Lieutenant-Governor, offered me a substantive Commissionership. I had already held such an appointment twice, and nothing but an honest sense of inability made me decline it now. I mention this in explanation of the slackness on my part, but for which the finger-print system would certainly have been put in force in the Registration Department, at least throughout Bengal, forty years ago. As it was, I only tried to induce the Inspector of Jails and the Registrar-General of the day to give the system a trial. Fortunately I kept an office copy of this letter, which, in reply to outside criticism, I published in 'Nature', Nov. 22, 1894, and repeat here to complete this narrative.

(TRUE COPY OF OFFICE COPY.)

HOOGHLY, _August 15, 1877_.

MY DEAR B----, --I enclose a paper which looks unusual, but which I hope has some value. It exhibits a method of identification of persons, which, with ordinary care in execution, and with judicial care in the scrutiny, is, I can now say, for all practical purposes far more infallible than photography. It consists in taking a seal-like impression, in common seal ink, of the markings on the skin of the two forefingers of the right hand (these two being taken for convenience only).

I am able to say that these marks do not (bar accidents) change in the course of ten or fifteen years so much as to affect the utility of the test.

The process of taking the impression is hardly more difficult than that of making a fair stamp of an office seal. I have been trying it in the Jail and in the Registering Office and among pensioners here for some months past. I have purposely taken no particular pains in explaining the process, beyond once showing how it is done, and once or twice visiting the office, inspecting the signatures,[5] and asking the _omlah_[6] to be a little more careful. The articles necessary are such as the _daftari_[7] can prepare on a mere verbal explanation.

Every person who now registers a document at Hooghly has to sign his 'sign-manual'. None has offered the smallest objection, and I believe that the practice, if generally adopted, will put an end to all attempts at personation.

The cogency of the evidence is admitted by every one who takes the trouble to compare a few signatures together, and to try making a few himself. I have taken thousands now in the course of the last twenty years, and (bar smudges and accidents, which are rarely bad enough to be fatal) I am prepared to answer for the identity of every person whose 'sign-manual' I can now produce if I am confronted with him.

As an instance of the value of the thing, I might suggest that if Roger Tichborne had given his 'sign-manual' on entering the Army on any register, the whole Orton case would have been knocked on the head in ten minutes by requiring Orton to make his sign-manual alongside it for comparison.

I send this specimen to you because I believe that identification is by no means the unnecessary thing in jails which one might presume it should be. I don't think I need dilate on that point. Here is the means of verifying the identity of every man in jail with the man sentenced by the court, at any moment, day or night. Call the number up and make him sign. If it is he, it is he; if not, he is exposed on the spot. Is No. 1302 really dead, and is that his corpse or a sham one? The corpse has two fingers that will answer the question at once. Is this man brought into jail the real Simon Pure sentenced by the magistrate? The sign-manual on the back of the magistrate's warrant is there to testify, &c.

For uses in other departments and transactions, especially among illiterate people, it is available with such ease that I quite think its general use would be a substantial contribution towards public morality. Now that it is pretty well known here, I do not believe the man lives who would dare to attempt personation before the Registrar here. The mukhtears[8] all know the potency of the evidence too well.

Will you kindly give the matter a little patient attention, and then let me ask whether you would let me try it in other jails?

The impressions will, I doubt not, explain themselves to you without more words. I will say that perhaps in a small proportion of the cases that might come to question the study of the seals by an expert might be advisable, but that in most cases any man of judgement giving his attention to it cannot fail to pronounce right. I have never seen any two signatures about which I remained in doubt after sufficient care.

Kindly keep the specimens carefully.

Yours sincerely, W. HERSCHEL.

[5] The words 'signature', 'sign-manual', 'seal', were used indifferently in this letter for 'finger-print'.

[6] Clerks.

[7] Man in charge of stationery.

[8] Solicitors.

I received one answer, but its tenor was not so encouraging as I had hoped. I was out of heart, and did not press my request.

How much all this was regretted afterwards by others I must in simple justice record. It came about so quietly and so honourably that it is only now that I feel myself free to say publicly how deeply I was touched. My first substantive Commissionership had been given me by Sir George Campbell, to whose house I was not long after brought back in a dying condition from malarial fever. Sir George and his private secretary, Mr. Luttman Johnson, took us, my wife and myself, into the tenderest care. Years afterwards, in 1906, the latter befriended me in the kindliest manner at the annual I.C.S. garden-party, which I but rarely attended, and invited me to dine with him that evening. It was a party of seven or eight, and the next to arrive were Sir James and Lady Bourdillon. His name, when our host introduced us, I only recognized as lately Acting Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal. To my great surprise, before our hands parted, he told me how often he had wished to meet me, to express his constant regret at having let my suggestion slip through his hands when he was Registrar-General. He remembered my letter well, and had indeed taken action by inquiry concerning my doings in his department, but for some reason he had lost sight of the matter. Needless to say, we became the firmest of friends on the spot, and I had the pleasure of a visit from him afterwards at Oxford. It is some years now since he and Mr. Luttman Johnson died. None of us, as far as I know, has ever spoken of this fine act of Sir James's except in strict privacy.

The Inspector of Jails of 1877, Mr. Beverley, afterwards a judge in the High Court of Bengal, is still alive. Writing in 1906, he says, regretfully, 'I have no recollection of writing the letter you refer to, but I know that, both as Registrar-General and as Inspector of Jails, I took great interest in the Finger-print system of identification, of which I always regarded you as the Apostle in India'. He too came to see me at Oxford after that, with one of his successors in the High Court.

I shall say more farther on in regard to my statement in this 1877 letter that 'these marks do not change in the course of ten or fifteen years'.

During my stay at Hooghly, so near Calcutta, I saw more society in my own house than in other stations, and interested my friends with the novelty of finger-printing. I give a few of their names to which special interest attaches.

Among Indian gentlemen, whose prints were taken at Hooghly in 1877, I do not know who are still living; I can only give the names of

(1) Bābu Dinonāth Pāl, of Hooghly; (2) Bābu Lalit Mohun Singh, of Sibpur; (3) Bābu Upendra Nārāyan Nandi, of Shāhāganj.

Of English friends still living I am allowed to reproduce the print of 1877, and its repeat in 1913, of Mr. Frank Courthope, well known in Sussex and in banking circles in London, (next page).

The next is remarkable. Captain V. H. Haggard, R.N., was a child of 2¾ years old at Hooghly, 1877. By much ingratiation I succeeded in getting a print of his whole hand, and another of three fingers. In 1913, when on special duty in H.M.S. 'President', he kindly gave me (not for the first time) a repeat, this time at the age of 38. The baby print bears enlargement beautifully, and I am sure my readers will be delighted with the comparison I am thus able to lay before them.

One of the prints I value most, on personal grounds, is that of Sir Theodore Hope, at that time in the Legislative Council of India for Bombay. I grieve to say he has died since these words were written. He was one of my most honoured college friends in the old Haileybury days of 1853.

Among the last prints that I took in India were two at Mussoorie, in the Punjab Himālayas, in Sept. 1877; one of my brother Colonel J. Herschel, R.E., and one of Dr. J. F. Duthie, of the Forest Department. They are both living still, and their repeats to-day are quite good.

To return now to my letter of 1877. I was 'able to say that these marks do not change in the course of ten or fifteen years'. I might have said eighteen years, for my own marks reached back to 1859; but I was steering for safety.

The conviction of the unchanging character of finger-patterns had, of course, grown on me only by degrees, as the evidence of time accumulated. Among my friends, from Nuddea days onwards, I often took second impressions, invariably drawing attention to their identity with the former ones. I never came upon any sign of change, bar accident. But such comparisons were generally limited to intervals of no more than two or three years, owing to the frequent changes of residence incidental to Indian service. As time went on it was chiefly the incessant evidence of my own ten fingers, and of my whole hand, which wrought in me the overwhelming conviction that the lines on the skin persisted indefinitely.

But besides my own evidence of eighteen years, I had that of my oldest college friend, William Waterfield, of almost as long. On March 31, 1877, he and Mr. (afterwards Sir Theodore) Hope and Mrs. Hope were my guests at Hooghly. I took all their impressions and my own on that day, noting on Waterfield's that we compared it with his earliest print of 1860, in Nuddea, seventeen years earlier. We found the agreement, of course, complete. Here are the facsimiles.

If more evidence were required, I was prepared, without hesitation, to call on any person whose mark I had taken since I began. It was in fact from among those very persons, Natives as well as English, that thirteen years later, at Mr. Galton's request, I obtained the repeats which, by their much longer persistence then, went so far to prove his case to universal conviction.

I close this record with a comparison between three of my own prints, taken, one in 1859, one in 1877, and the last to-day, after fifty-seven years. For length of persistence they cannot at present be matched.

It goes beyond the proper scope of this narrative, but I cannot refrain from offering my readers here a striking instance of the almost incredible persistency of atomic renovation that takes place in the pads of our fingers, in spite of their being more subject to wear than any other part of the body. The first was taken at the age of 7¾; the next, for Mr. Galton, nine years later. In 1913 my son was in Canada when I asked him to send me several repeats. Every print showed the minute tell-tale dot which Mr. Galton's sharp eye had noticed twenty-two years before. No doubt it was a natal mark. It has anyhow already persisted for thirty-two years.

APPENDIX

When I speak of the 'discovery' of finger-prints nigh sixty years ago, I should wish to be understood correctly. I cannot say that I thought of it as such until Mr. Galton examined old records in search of earlier notices of the subject. What he found had been beyond my ken, and I never inquired for myself. The fascination of experiments and the impelling object of them were all I cared about. Had it been otherwise I should have had an open field for egoism to any extent, for no one questioned the novelty of the thing.

The time that has elapsed since Galton's inquiries, without any material addition to his ascertained facts, justifies me, I venture to think, in speaking of my work as the 'discovery' of the value of finger-prints.

I proceed to show what has been brought to light from other sources.

Bewick.

Of modern cases the first known is that of Thomas Bewick. He was a wood-engraver, as well as an author, and had a fancy for engraving his finger-mark. He printed, as far as I can ascertain, only three specimens, by way of ornament to his books.

1. 1809. 'British Birds', p. 190. The impression of the finger appears as if obliterating a small scene of a cottage, trees, and a rider, but the paper between the lines of the finger is almost all clean.

2. 1818. The 'Receipt'; of which, by Mr. Quaritch's favour, I possess one. This is, beyond all possibility of doubt, quite free from any tooling. How it was transferred to paper in those days (of which there is an indication) I am unable to say, but for his purposes it was an original 'finger-print' of Thomas Bewick. Even the fine half-tone process of this facsimile cannot reproduce its delicacy.

3. 1826. Memorial Edition of Bewick's Works, 1885, on the last page of the last volume, under a letter dated 1826, in which he rates some one for copying his woodcuts. When I saw it at the British Museum some years ago I thought it showed toolwork.

These three seem to be all the specimens now available, and they are from three different fingers, of which two are certified to be his own.

Gathering that Mr. Quaritch was exceptionally familiar with Bewick's life, I told him that I wished to leave no stone unturned to do ample justice to him, if he was known to have done anything more than appears above. Mr. Quaritch took the matter up very kindly, and finally informed me that he had been unable to trace any writing of Bewick's concerning these prints. There seems, therefore, no evidence that he ever took impressions of any finger but his own. Now it is true that no one of observant habits, and least of all an engraver, could fail to perceive the peculiarities of his own finger. The brick-makers of Babylon and Egypt, and every printer since fingers were dirtied by printer's ink, must have noticed them. But it is a long step from that to a study of other men's marks, with a view to identification. What Bewick certainly did do might easily have led him to such a study, but it looks as if he was satisfied with recognizing his own mark.

Remembering, as I have already said, how one of his marks had struck my fancy as a boy, I am disposed to believe that, all unwittingly, I was guided to seize upon a thread which Bewick had let fall.

Purkinje.

Five years after Bewick, Johannes Purkinje, of Breslau, in 1823, read an essay which has been found and examined by Mr. Galton, and partly translated on p. 85 of his 1892 work. Purkinje carried his study of the patterns on fingers beyond all comparison with Bewick's use of them, of whose existence indeed he could hardly have been aware. He worked hard on them for a scientific (medical) purpose. It seemed to me strange that, going so far as he did, he had not hit upon our idea. To satisfy myself I read his work through in 1909. The very last sentence in it seemed to strike a light. Referring to 'the varieties of the tonsils, and especially of the papillae of the tongue, in different individuals' (no mention of fingers), he finishes the sentence and his essay by saying: 'from all which [varieties] sound materials will be furnished for that individual knowledge of the man which is of no less importance than a general knowledge of him is, especially in the practice of medicine.' A fine conclusion indeed, and a stimulating; but no part of his essay conveys an inkling of identification by means of any of the individual varieties on which he always lays stress, not even his pioneer work in the classification of the markings on fingers.

Bengal.

The common way for illiterates to sign is to wet the tip of one finger with ink from a pen, and then touch the document (leaving a small black blot) where we touch a wafer. The mark so made is called '_tep-sai_', 'tep' meaning 'pressure' by touch or grip, and 'sai' meaning 'token' (I do not know the etymology). I ask my readers now to compare the '_tep-sai_' with the 'finger-print' alongside it, and to say whether the _tep-sai_ could afford any means of identification by comparison with another blot from the same finger. Illiterates who can hold a pen make a cross, as we do, called '_dhera-sai_'; others, more ambitious, indicate their caste by symbols. For the interest of the thing I give some tracings from a collection of such caste-marks which I had made for this purpose when I was Magistrate of Midnapore in 1865.

When I was introducing actual registration I asked the principal member of my Bar to give me his opinion about the new marks. His answer was as follows (the English is of course his own):

Hooghly, The 21st Aug./77.

DEAR SIR,

I have examined the impressions made in these papers, and I think each can be distinguished from the others. There are also so many peculiarities in each impression that it cannot be forged, and I think it would be a preventive to forgery if all documents, specially by females, or males who do not know to read or write, would contain impressions by fingers.

Yours faithfully, ESHAN CHUNDRA MITRA.

I value this letter highly, for Eshan Chundra was Government Pleader at Hooghly, and in frequent request in Calcutta. No native lawyer of his large practice could have written thus if he had ever known of this method of signature before.

Trustworthy information in my hands is to the effect that attestations by the finger in China are like Bengali _tep-sais_, and nothing more.

China.

The nearest approach to our use of finger-prints that I have found in China came to hand thus:

An Oxford friend, Mr. Bullock, subsequently elected Professor of Chinese, had been interpreter to the Legation in Peking. Talking with him about the methods of signing deeds in China, he told me that the finger-tip (not finger-print) method was in ordinary use, but he was careful to point out also that to his knowledge ever since he went to Peking, about 1868, Chinese bankers had been in the habit of impressing their thumbs on the notes they issued; and he had no doubt the custom was much older than that. This was startling, but he kindly procured for me the bank-note which I here show in facsimile; with it came this explanation of such thumb-marks, given by his friend in China:

'They are imprinted partly on the counterfoil and partly on the note itself, so that when presented its genuineness can be tested at once.'

That is, they play the part of what is technically called the 'scroll' in our cheques.

My readers may accept it that the ink used was the same Indian ink with which the Chinese characters on the note were written. That is the unhesitating judgement of such an expert as Mr. Galton, who examined it. The difference between a water ink and printer's ink for identification is enormous. Blood on the fingers has occasionally left impressions that fortunately sufficed to reveal the murderer; but, as a rule, wet fingers leave only smudges as useless as this one. It is quite certain, therefore, that no one in the habit of impressing his thumb-mark as this banker did, would use water ink, if he depended on recognizing it as his own. In short, the smudge on the bank-note was placed there in order to identify the two parts of a piece of paper after severance, not to prove who placed it so. My readers may see what exquisite delicacy of detail can be obtained by printer's ink, when so desired, if they will examine a fine skin impression with a magnifying-glass; even the pores along the ridges can be seen as white dots. For practical purposes, however, such extreme delicacy as this is not needed.

This difference of ink suggests a further remark. The Chinese have used printer's ink for ages. If they aimed at identification they would surely have discovered its great value for clear impressions, and its use could never have died out. On the other hand, a method of identification depending on water ink could never have survived for such strict work as our finger-prints. On the palm of the hand it can give a fairly good impression for such simple identification as is wanted (say) for passports, because the large creases will obviously be those of the bearer of the passport, or as obviously not. These lines of the palm, so well known in palmistry, are as clear to a man as the shape of his hand, while those on the pads of his own fingers are scarcely noticed even now by one man in a million. The science of identification by means of the pads cannot, in my opinion, date farther back than 1858, when I happened to use oil-ink, which was not used for _tep-sais_.

The ablest defence of the claims of antiquity that I have seen is by a Japanese writer, Kumagusu Minakata, whose letter to 'Nature', Dec. 27, 1894, appears to be as exhaustive as it is able; but I hope that this paper will satisfy him that the finger-print system of our day has no connexion with the methods he describes. The 'nail-marks' of which he speaks must be utterly useless for identification; yet he treats all manner of impressions alike, and tells us indeed that they are all known by the one name of 'hand-mark'. I fear that he has failed, like some other writers,[9] to see the definite force of the word 'identification' in the finger-print system. It means that if a man can be indicated whose finger-print agrees with that on a document, he is identified with the man who put that one there. That is all we want. But it will be seen that there must be two impressions at least, that will bear comparison, to constitute 'identification'.

[9] I include a too brief notice of the subject by Professor Giles of Cambridge, in his recent work 'Civilization of China', p. 118, and an article in the 'Nineteenth Century' of December 1904.