Finger Prints

by Francis Galton

PLATE 1.

Fig. 1.

Chinese Coin, Tang Dynasty, about 618 A.D.,
with nail mark of the Empress Wen-teh, figured in relief.

Fig. 2.

Order on a Camp Sutler, by the officer of a surveying party in New Mexico. 1882.

Many impressions of fingers are found on ancient pottery, as on Roman tiles; indeed the Latin word palmatus is said to mean an impression in soft clay, such as a mark upon a wall, stamped by a blow with the palm. Nail-marks are used ornamentally by potters of various nations. They exist on Assyrian bricks as signatures; for instance, in the Assyrian room of the British Museum, on the west side of the case C 43, one of these bricks contains a notice of sale and is prefaced by words that were translated for me thus: “Nail-mark of Nabu-sum-usur, the seller of the field, (used) like his seal.” A somewhat amusing incident affected the design of the Chinese money during the great Tang dynasty, about 618 A.D. A new and important issue of coinage was to be introduced, and the Secretary of the Censors himself moulded the design in wax, and humbly submitted it to the Empress Wen-teh for approval. She, through maladroitness, dug the end of her enormously long finger-nail into its face, marking it deeply as with a carpenter’s gouge. The poor Secretary of the Censors, Ngeu-yang-siun, who deserves honour from professional courtiers, suppressing such sentiments as he must have felt when his work was mauled, accepted the nail-mark of the Empress as an interesting supplement to the design; he changed it into a crescent in relief, and the new coins were stamped accordingly. (See Coins and Medals, edited by Stanley Lane Poole, 1885, p. 221.) A drawing of one of these is given in [Plate 1], Fig. 1.

The European practitioners of palmistry and cheiromancy do not seem to have paid particular attention to the ridges with which we are concerned. A correspondent of the American Journal Science, viii. 166, states, however, that the Chinese class the striæ at the ends of the fingers into “pots” when arranged in a coil, and into “hooks.” They are also regarded by the cheiromantists in Japan. A curious account has reached me of negroes in the United States who, laying great stress on the possession of finger prints in wax or dough for witchcraft purposes, are also said to examine their striæ.

Leaving Purkenje to be spoken of in a later chapter, because he deals chiefly with classification, the first well-known person who appears to have studied the lineations of the ridges as a means of identification, was Bewick, who made an impression of his own thumb on a block of wood and engraved it, as well as an impression of a finger. They were used as fanciful designs for his illustrated books. Occasional instances of careful study may also be noted, such as that of Mr. Fauld (Nature, xxii. p. 605, Oct. 28, 1880), who seems to have taken much pains, and that of Mr. Tabor, the eminent photographer of San Francisco, who, noticing the lineations of a print that he had accidentally made with his own inked finger upon a blotting-paper, experimented further, and finally proposed the method of finger prints for the registration of Chinese, whose identification has always been a difficulty, and was giving a great deal of trouble at that particular time; but his proposal dropped through. Again Mr. Gilbert Thompson, an American geologist, when on Government duty in 1882 in the wild parts of New Mexico, paid the members of his party by order of the camp sutler. To guard against forgery he signed his name across the impression made by his finger upon the order, after first pressing it on his office pad. He was good enough to send me the duplicate of one of these cheques made out in favour of a man who bore the ominous name of “Lying Bob” ([Plate 1], Fig. 2). The impression took the place of the scroll work on an ordinary cheque; it was in violet aniline ink, and looked decidedly pretty. From time to time sporadic instances like these are met with, but none are comparable in importance to the regular and official employment made of finger prints by Sir William Herschel, during more than a quarter of a century in Bengal. I was exceedingly obliged to him for much valuable information when first commencing this study, and have been almost wholly indebted to his kindness for the materials used in this book for proving the persistence of the lineations throughout life.