- The Chinese were the first culture known to have used friction ridge impressions as a means of identification. The earliest example comes from a Chinese document en-titled “The Volume of Crime Scene Investigation-Burglary“, from the Qin Dynasty (221 to 206 В.С.). The document contains a description of how handprints were used as a type of evidence.
- Additionally, in India, there are references to the nobility using friction ridge skin as signatures. However it was only reserved for royalty.
- 1686 – At the University of Bologna in Italy, a professor of anatomy named Marcello Malpighi notes the common characteristics of spirals, loops and ridges in fingerprints, using the newly invented microscope for his studies. In time, a 1.88mm thick layer of skin, the “Malpighi layer,” was named after him. Although Malpighi was likely the first to document types of fingerprints, the value of fingerprints as identification tools was never mentioned in his writings.
- Dr. Purkinje went no further than naming the patterns, his contribution is significant because his nine pattern types were the precursor to the Henry classification system.
- 1858– The Chief Magistrate of the Hooghly district in Jungipoor, India, Sir William Herschel, first used fingerprints to “sign” contracts with native Indians.
- 1892 – Galton’s book “Fingerprints” is published, the first of its kind. In the book, Galton detailed the first classification system for fingerprints; he identified three types (loop, whorl, and arch) of characteristics for fingerprints (also known as minutia). These characteristics are to an extent still in use today, often referred to as Galton’s Details. Francis Galton is called the “Father of fingerprints“
- In 1892, in Buenos Aires, Argentina, a murder was solved using thumbprint evidence found at the crime scene. The two children of Francisca Rojas were found murdered. Rojas herself had a throat wound. She accused a man named Velasquez of the murder, stating that he was jealous be-cause she refused to marry him since she was in love with another man. The local authorities brutally beat Velasquez hoping for a confession. When Velasquez did not confess, Inspector Eduardo Alvarez was brought in from La Plata to conduct a thorough investigation. Inspector Alvarez began by examining the scene of the crime and found a bloody thumbprint on the door. Having been trained by Juan Vucetich to compare fingerprints, Alvarez removed the section of the door with the print and compared the bloody thumbprint with the thumbprints of Francisca Rojas. When confronted and shown that her own thumbprint matched the thumb-print on the door, she confessed to the murders. The Rojas murder case is considered to be the first homicide solved by fingerprint evidence, and Argentina became the first country to rely solely on fingerprints as a method of individualization.
- 1896 – British official Sir Edward Richard Henry had been living in Bengal, and was looking to use a system similar to that of Herschel’s to eliminate problems within his jurisdiction. After visiting Sir Francis Galton in England, Henry returned to Bengal and instituted a fingerprinting program for all prisoners. By July of 1896, Henry wrote in a report that the classification limitations had not yet been addressed. A short time later, Henry developed a system of his own, which included 1,024 primary classifications.
- 1902 – Alphonse Bertillon, director of the Bureau of Identification of the Paris Police, is responsible for the first criminal identification of a fingerprint without a known suspect.
- Within fingerprint history, there is a famous story about an incident that signaled the downfall of the use of anthropo-metric measurements in favor of fingerprinting. A man was arrested in 1903 and brought to the Leavenworth prison in Kansas. The man claimed that his name was Will West and that he had never been previously arrested. Prison personnel took the man’s Bertillon measurements and his photograph to facilitate a prison records check. The records showed that a man named William West, with very similar anthropometric measurements and a striking resemblance to the new inmate, was already incarcerated in Leavenworth prison. Guards sent to check William West’s cell may have suspect-ed they were dealing with an escapee; instead, they found William West asleep in his bed. After comparing records of both men, prison personnel seemed unable to tell the men apart. Upon taking and comparing the fingerprints of both prisoners, it was clear that the fingerprint method of identification could distinguish between the two men.
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