Once upon a time a wily burglar sat in his cell at Brixton awaiting trial. He knew that conviction for his latest escapade was inevitable.
That troubled him little. As he would probably have said, he could do the sentence he was likely to get for a first offence "on his head." But it was by no means a first offence. Stored away at Scotland Yard was a long list of little affairs in which he had been concerned which would not incline the judge to leniency.
John Smith—that is not his real name, but it will serve—knew that presently warders would ask him to press inky fingers on a white sheet of paper, so that the resulting prints should be sent to Scotland Yard. Inevitably then his previous ill-doings would be disclosed. They might make all the difference between a nominal sentence as a first offender and five years' penal servitude as an habitual criminal, to say nothing of police supervision afterwards.
John Smith thought hard, and at last got an idea. He broke a tag from his boot-lace and began to skin the tips of his fingers until, as he thought, every trace of a pattern by which he could be identified had been obliterated.
Notwithstanding his bleeding hands, he smiled cheerfully when he was reported for prison hospital treatment. The sequel affords a saddening reflection on misplaced ingenuity and endurance. He had only penetrated the outer skin, and it began to grow again.
They nursed his bandaged hands with infinite care, for a conclusion as to his record had become obvious. And then officers took his prints after all—and discovered that he was none other than Bill Brown, with a criminal history to which an Old Bailey judge listened with unaffected interest. Bill—or John—got his five years after all.
I have told this little story because it affords an excellent illustration of the work of the finger-print department at Scotland Yard—a department which serves not only the Metropolitan Police, but every police force in the kingdom.
There is a great deal of confusion in the public mind between Bertillonage and the finger-print system. Even responsible London newspapers fell into the error, when M. Bertillon died, of ascribing to him the invention of the system—with which he had nothing to do.
To many people has been ascribed the discovery that finger-prints are an infallible method of identification. The knowledge however was of little use till the inventive genius of one man worked out a simple method of classification for police purposes, so that prints could be compared almost instantly with those on record. That man was Sir Edward Henry, long before he came to Scotland Yard, when he was in the Indian police service.
The Henry system has almost entirely superseded the Bertillon system throughout the world, and there is little doubt that it will ultimately become universal. Thousands of criminals who would otherwise have escaped a full measure of punishment for their misdeeds curse its author. It is in this department that police science has been brought to its highest pitch of perfection—a perfection begot of organisation.