Prof. Anthony Writer, Jyotisha Bharati, Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, Mumbai 7. Ellipse 8. Circle 9. Double whorl
Dr. Purkinje recognized the classification element of friction ridge formations but did not associate friction ridges to a means of personal identification.
J.C.Mayers
In 1788, J.C. Mayers wrote in his illustrated textbook Anatomical Copper-plates with Appropriate Explanations that "the arrangement of skin ridges is never duplicated in two persons" Mayers was one of the first scientists to recognize that friction ridges are unique.
William Herschel (1833 - 1918)
Working as the Assistant Joint Magistrate and Collector in colonial India, Herschel is credited with being the first European to recognize the value of fingerprints for
identification purposes. In 1859 he began collecting, as keepsakes, the fingerprints of his friends and relatives and took note of how each impression was unique to the individual and observed that the patterns did not change over time.
His fingerprinting ideas were not implemented until 1877 when he as finally able to implement their official use under his own authority. From 1877 - 1878 "government pensioners in his region signed for their monthly payments with fingerprints. At the registry of deeds, land owners impressed fingerprints to authenticate their transactions. At the courthouse, convicts were forced to fingerprint their jail warrants so hired substitutes could not take their place in prison."
In response to Henry Faulds's fingerprint article in Nature October 28, 1880, he wrote "Skin Furrows of the Hand" that was published on November 25, 1880. In it Herschel "wrote that he had used fingerprints officially as "sign-manuals," or signatures, sanctioning the idea's practicality."(Copyright C 2001 Colin Beavan)
Dr. Henry Faulds (1843 - 1930)
Henry Faulds was a Scottish physician and medical missionary. While working as a missionary in Japan in 1878, Faulds discovered fingerprints on ancient pottery and soon after began extensive research - including many experiments to reveal permanence and uniqueness of fingerprints. Faulds is credited with being the first European to publish an article suggesting that fingerprints may assist crime investigations by the "scientific identification of criminals":
"When bloody finger marks or impressions on clay, glass, etc. exist, they may lead to the scientific identification of criminals. Already I have had experience in two such cases ... There can be no doubt as to the advance of having, besides their photographs, a nature- copy of the forever unchangeable finger furrows of important criminals. In 1886 he began
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Prof. Anthony Writer, Jyotisha Bharati, Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, Mumbai trying to convince Scotland Yard to adopt 'fingerprint' identification.
Sir Francis Galton (1822 - 1911)
Sir Francis Galton was considered to be one of the greatest scientist of the 19th century. He studied Bertillon's method as well as fingerprinting and believed fingerprinting to be the superior method. He reviewed research material prepared by Henry Faulds and William Herschel. Despite the fact that, "Herschel's letter [published in Nature] did not hold a candle to the rich and varied contents of Faulds's" (Copyright C 2001 Colin Beavan) Galton chose only to correspond with Herschel, being familiar with his family name and status. In 1892 he published the book "Finger Prints" and, in doing so, significantly advanced the science of fingerprint identification.
Sir Edward Henry (1850 - 1931)
As the Inspector General of Police for Bengal Province in India, he set out to solve the problem of fingerprint classification. He read Galton's book "Fingerprints" in 1893. He returned to England in 1894 and actually consulted with Galton. Galton provided Henry with much information including research completed by Herschel and Faulds. Henry went back to India and assigned two Bengali police officers to study the classification problem. Henry's team in India was successful in setting up a classification system which was officially adopted by British India in 1897.
The British Association for the Advancement of Science heard of Henry's success in India. Henry was invited to make a presentation in Dover. Again, Henry returned to England and presented a paper entitled "Fingerprints and the Detection of Crime in India". Henry gave much credit to Galton and for his work and assistance. Before he left for a new assignment in South Africa, Henry gave evidence before the Belper Committee which was created to examine the implementation of fingerprints as the primary means of
identification. Shortly after, Henry's book "The Classification and Uses of Finger Prints" was published. In December 1900, the Belper Committee recommended that the finger prints of criminals be taken and classified by the Indian System. In May 1901, Henry was called back to England and given the post of Assistant Commissioner of Police in charge of Criminal Identification at New Scotland Yard. In 1903, Henry became Commissioner of Police.
"The Henry Classification System started what is considered the modern era of finger print identification...The fact that the Henry System is the basis for most of the
classification systems presently used today speaks for itself." (Introduction to Basic Ridgeology, May 1999 by David Ashbaugh)
Alphonse Bertillon (1853 - 1913)
Prof. Anthony Writer, Jyotisha Bharati, Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, Mumbai Alphonse Bertillon began working as an assistant clerk in the records office at the
Prefecture of Police, Paris, France beginning in March 1879. Only 5 months later, Bertillon devised a very meticulous method of measuring body parts as a means of
identifying criminals. It was very easy at this time for criminals to give a false name to hide their criminal past. In October 1879, Bertillon prepared a report on the system that would eventually bear his name - "Bertillonage". It was initially rejected but approximately three years later the system of 'Anthropometry' was given a chance. In 1883 Bertillon identified his first habitual criminal using his newly installed anthropometric system of
measurements.
Juan Vucetich (1858 - 1925) Juan Vucetich was employed by the LaPlata Office of
Identification and Statistics. He had read an article from Revue Scientifique that reported on Galton's experiments with fingerprints and their potential use in identification. He immediately started to collect impressions of all ten fingers to include with the
anthropometric measurements he took from arrested men. He also devised his own fingerprint classification method. It wasn't until 1894, however, that his superiors were convinced that anthropometry measurements were not necessary in addition to full sets of fingerprint records. By this time he had refined his classification system and was able to categorize fingerprint cards into small groups that were easily searched.
Charlotte Wolff - Chirological Scientist Charlotte Wolff (1897-1986) is the one chirological researcher who has conducted complete studies on the hands of the mentally retarded and the mentally diseased. As a qualified physician and a psycho-analyst, she stands as one of the very few scientifically trained people ever to have seriously investigated the diagnostic significance of the hand. Moreover, she stands as one of the very few people to have conducted substantial empirical research into the patterns of the hands which, as a result, have given chirological diagnosis a sure and certain scientific basis.
Fingerprints, Palms and Soles: From the mid 1930's onwards, the hand was coming to be recognised as an important diagnostic aid in the diagnosis of congenital syndromes such as mongolism. LS Penrose had studied the hands of people with Down's Syndrome and other conditions of congenital mental defect for many years and had discovered that the hand revealed particular malformations peculiar to these conditions. In 1931, he penned an article for The Lancet correlating the absence of the medial digital crease on the little finger with congenital mental retardation, research that proved to be but the start of a long and detailed investigation into the relevance of the hand in the clinical diagnosis of congenital conditions. However, the main breakthrough in establishing the significance of the dermatoglyphic analysis of the hand came with the publication of the results of the
research of Harold Cummins and Charles Midlo in their seminal work 'Fingerprints Palms
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Prof. Anthony Writer, Jyotisha Bharati, Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, Mumbai Cummins and Midlo were professors of
Microscopic Anatomy at Tulane University in the United States, and it was they who in fact coined the term 'dermatoglyphics' in 1926 (derma = skin, glyph = carving). The main thrust of their research was into Down's Syndrome and the characteristic hand
formations it produces. They showed that the hand contained significant dermatoglyphic configurations that would assist the
identification of mongolism in the new-born child and thus they set the stage for much of the later dermatoglyphic research work. They also researched the embryo-genesis of skin ridge patterns and established that the fingerprint patterns actually develop in the womb and are fully formed by the fourth fetal month.
When it was later discovered that Down's Syndrome was in fact caused by chromosomal abnormality, research was begun to see how far the hand could be used as a guide to diagnosing other chromosomal defects and dermatoglyphic analysis soon became referred to as 'the poor man's karyotype'. The researches of Cummins and Midlo had proved that the hand could be of particular significance in the study of diseases with a genetic origin and, given the expense involved in conducting analyses of the chromosomes themselves, dermatoglyphic analysis was now beginning to prove itself as an extremely useful tool for preliminary investigations into conditions with a suspected genetic basis.
Genetic and Chromosomal Research: It was reading Cummins and Midlo's work that inspired LS Penrose to conduct his own dermatoglyphic investigations as a further aspect of his research into Down's Syndrome and other congenital medical disorders. In 1945, he was appointed to the Galton Chair of Eugenics at London University. Although the post had existed for some fifty years up to this point, very little research had actually been done into the genetic significance of fingerprints. Penrose was about to change all of that. Whilst he held the post, he conducted extensive investigations into chromosomal disorders and their dermatoglyphic manifestations, considering not only the more common trisomies such as Down's Syndrome, Edwards Syndrome and Patau's Syndrome, but also initiating
investigations into other more rare chromosomal disorders such as 'Cri du Chat' Syndrome, and the sex chromosome disorders, Turner's Syndrome and Kleinefelter's Syndrome.
Prof. Anthony Writer, Jyotisha Bharati, Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, Mumbai 1) The Kennedy-Galton Centre
In 1965, the Galton Laboratory became the Kennedy-Galton Centre for Clinical Genetics and Mental Deficiency Research under the chairmanship of Penrose. A new centre was set up in Hertfordshire as a research facility especially dedicated to chromosomal and
dermatoglyphic research as well as a facility for offering genetic counseling for prospective parents. Penrose also contributed to the development of dermatoglyphics in that he
established several important methodological procedures and practices. It was he that formulated the measurement to establish the position of the displaced axial triradius in terms of the ATD angle, as well as establishing the inheritance of its position in the palm. In 1967, he chaired an International Symposium convened to standardise dermatoglyphic nomenclature and terminology.
One of Penrose's assistants at the Kennedy-Galton centre was Sarah Holt, whose own work
'The Genetics of Dermal Ridges' published in 1968, summarises much of both her findings
and the research of the centre itself. Much research was done on establishing the statistical distributions of dermatoglyphic patterns of both the fingers and the palm in various
peoples, both normal and congenitally afflicted. In addition to giving further confirmation of the genetic and chromosomal basis of dermatoglyphic patterns and investigating the manifestations of these in Down's Syndrome and other chromosomal disorders, other investigations focused on which dermatoglyphic features are in fact inherited and how inheritance might be detected. This research focused particularly on the identification of those features of the palm which would indicate the genetic likelihood of a mother giving birth to a Down's Syndrome child, but also concentrated on the study of twins and
especially identical twins, given their genetic identity. Through these researches it has now been established that it is possible to ascertain whether a pair of same-sex twins are
monozygotic or dizygotic (ie fraternal or identical twins) from an examination of their fingerprints alone!