Science and the Criminal

by C. Ainsworth Mitchell

The discovery of photography was welcomed by the police authorities of civilised countries as affording a certain means of registering criminals for subsequent identification. But the promise that the photographic method held out was not fulfilled; for with the accumulation of photographs there was a corresponding increase in the difficulties and uncertainties attending the identification of the originals.

Apart from difficulties due to the effects of the changes produced by time or by intentional disguise, it was no light task to search through many thousands of prints to see whether a particular individual had been photographed ten years previously, and physical weariness of the searchers must frequently have set an obstacle in the way of the identification.

On the other hand, it is a matter of common knowledge, that two photographs of the same person, taken under different conditions of lighting or with different lenses may readily be thought to be the portraits of two distinct individuals, or that a photograph of one person may unduly emphasise a momentary expression differing from the normal one, with the result that the portrait may be mistaken for a likeness of someone else. These considerations fully explain the numerous instances of mistaken identification, some of which are cited below, where the police based their recognition upon old photographs.

Prior to the introduction of the anthropometric and finger-print systems, the insufficiency of the photographic records kept by the police in this country for the identification of criminals was repeatedly proved. The advisability of introducing the French anthropometric system into England was raised in Parliament on several occasions in 1887 and 1888, but each time the Home Secretary defended the system of photographic registration as being sufficiently satisfactory, while he considered it doubtful whether the French system would be any better.

A sufficient answer to this official defence was afforded by the number of cases of mistaken recognition from photographs, that shortly afterwards were brought before both Houses of Parliament.

In 1888, the Lord Chief Justice (Coleridge) mentioned an instance that had come under his notice at the Gloucester Assizes. After a man had been convicted of some small offence police evidence was given that the prisoner was a man who had been convicted before. This was subsequently proved to be a mistake.

Again, in July, 1889, after the conviction of a prisoner, evidence was given by a warder that the man was one who had been sentenced to seven years’ penal servitude and seven years’ police supervision.

It was found afterwards, however, that this man had been previously convicted in 1882 and therefore could not possibly have been the person alleged. The remarkable feature about this mistake was that both men had been under the police control at the same time.

The failure to identify a criminal from the photographic records had a tragic result in 1888, when a man named Jackson was given a light sentence as a first offender. Although he had been previously convicted of numerous crimes, and was at the time “wanted” by the police for housebreaking and other offences he escaped recognition, and was able to take advantage of the lenient treatment he received by murdering a warder in the prison at Manchester.

In 1894 a Special Committee was appointed to examine and report upon the different systems of identifying criminals, and they recommended that the anthropometric system was the most satisfactory for preliminary classification, but that for further grouping the finger-print method gave the best results. Accordingly a system including both methods was adopted in this country and was in use until 1901, when, as is mentioned below, the present system of finger-print identification was introduced.