FINGER-PRINTS. The use of finger-prints as a system of identification is of very ancient origin, and was known from the earliest days in the East when the impression of his thumb was the monarch's sign-manual. A relic of this practice is still pre served in the formal confirmation of a legal document by "deliv ering" it as one's "act and deed." The permanent character of the finger-print was first put forward scientifically in 1823 by J. E. Purkinje, an eminent professor of physiology, who read a paper before the University of Breslau, adducing nine standard types of impressions and advocating a system of classification which attracted no great attention. Bewick, the English draughts man, struck with the delicate qualities of the lineation, made en gravings of the impression of two of his finger-tips and used them as signatures for his work. Sir Francis Calton, who laboured to introduce identification by fingerprints, was the founder of our present system of fingerprint identification. Sir William Herschel, who, in India, employed a simple form of fingerprint identification, is regarded as the first who devised a feasible method for the regular use of fingerprint identification. The Bengal Police, under the administration of Sir E. R. Henry, afterwards chief commissioner of the London Metropolitan Police, usefully adopted fingerprints for the detection of crime.
The prints depend upon the ridge formations in the bulbs of the end-joints of the fingers. The skin is traversed in various direc tions by the depressions and friction ridges, thus forming the fingerprint patterns which continue unchanged from birth to death. The constancy of the markings of the fingerprints has been proved beyond question and this universally accepted fact has permitted the predication of the present system of identification. The fingerprint patterns lend themselves to convenient classifica tion according to the types and patterns and the number of ridges appearing between designated points in the patterns. The patterns are catalogued according to four main types, "arches, loops, whorls and composites." There are subclasses of these types, all of which are identifiable by symbol or number according to the system, which permit the expert to read each print as a distinct classification.
One of the first methods of scientific identification was the adoption of the Bertillon System which was devised by the French savant A. Bertillon. Based upon the anthropometry measurements of the body the system is obsolete in all countries with the excep tion of France. The first authentic record of the use of finger prints in the United States reveals that Mr. Gilbert Thompson of the United States Geological Survey utilized his thumb impression to prevent the forgery of commissary orders during his super vision of a survey in New Mexico in 1882.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation, United States Department of Justice, maintains the world's largest collection of fingerprint records of current value. This continuously increasing file of fingerprints numbers approximately five and one-half million records.
In 1924 the fingerprint cards in the possession of the National Bureau of Criminal Investigation, and at the Leavenworth Penitentiary, Leavenworth, Kansas, numbering 810,188 rec ords, were given into the charge of the Federal Bureau of Investi gation, which has since been the chief repository for the mutual interchange of criminal fingerprint data for the nation's law enforcement agencies.
In the operation of its system the Federal Bureau of Investiga tion employs the Henry method, with current extensions, which utilizes all ten fingers as a unit for the classification and filing of fingerprints. By its system the Federal Bureau of Investi gation determines that more than forty-eight per cent. of the fingerprint cards it receives bear the fingerprint impressions of persons who are the possessors of previous criminal histories. More than 45o fugitives from justice are identified each month through the Identification Division of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation co-operates with seventy foreign countries in the international exchange of criminal identi fying data. It has created a classification method which permits the separation of the impressions of the ten fingers into a single fingerprint system.
Separate from the criminal records the Federal Bureau of Inves tigation keeps the fingerprint cards of those law-abiding citizens who for precautionary or other reasons have volunteered their fin gerprints to the custody of the Federal Bureau of Investigation for inclusion in its civil identification files. (J. E. H.)