Then one day a detective arrested a man for picking pockets near the Elephant and Castle. One hand was bandaged, but the prisoner was unwilling to say what was the matter with it. Soon the reason of his reluctance was disclosed.
The Finger-print Department held his missing finger.
But if the Finger-print Department makes it hard for the guilty, it often helps the innocent. Such a case as that of Adolph Beck would now be impossible. There are two criminals alive to-day who are said to be so much alike that the difference can only be told by their finger-prints.
One hears often that the police will bolster each other up when a mistake is made. That is, of course, preposterously false throughout the service. There have been cases where police officers have been prepared, quite honestly, to swear to a man as an old offender, and the department has stepped in in time to prevent the error.
It should be understood that the fact of finger-prints being found at or near the scene of a crime does not mean that they are of any use in solving a mystery, unless facsimiles are in the records—that is to say, a criminal has been convicted before. This rarely happens in the case of murder, for the reason that a murderer is unlikely, in an official sense, to be an habitual criminal. Of course, if a person is suspected and arrested it is easy to compare his finger-prints with those found where the crime was committed.
In the system the human liability to err is almost completely eliminated. A prisoner's prints are registered automatically, and, to prevent any chance of mistake, are examined and checked by a series of officials, each of whom signs the record.
Nor do those engaged in this business have an idle time. Between 70,000 and 80,000 sets of prints are dealt with every year. The following list shows the number of recognitions effected since the system came into being at Scotland Yard. It must, of course, be remembered that they have increased as the number of records has grown:—
| 1902 | 1,722 |
| 1903 | 3,642 |
| 1904 | 5,155 |
| 1905 | 6,186 |
| 1906 | 6,776 |
| 1907 | 7,701 |
| 1908 | 9,446 |
| 1909 | 9,960 |
| 1910 | 10,848 |
| 1911 | 10,400 |
| 1912 | 10,677 |
| 1913 | 10,607 |
That, in itself, is a record which justifies the faith now placed in the system.