J. B. TUNBRIDGE,
Inspector
C.I. Department,
Great Scotland Yard
In 1887 and 1888, after my final return to England, I brought the method under the notice of the Home Authorities, who merely dealt with it in the usual red-tape methods. Finally, I asked to have one of their most intelligent officers appointed to meet me, so that I might enter fully into practical details. In reply there came to me a gentleman who sent in his official card, which I have in my possession now. This was the able officer so well known by his dramatic capture of Mr. Jabez Balfour. I showed him how printing was done, the method of classification adopted by me, and offered to form a model bureau from the hands of the London police. A few years ago Mr. Tunbridge wrote me:—
“I have a most distinct and pleasant recollection of our interview, and since the ‘F. P.’ system has been adopted as a means of identification of criminals with such marked success, have often wondered how it was that you have not been more actively connected with the carrying out of the system. When the Home Authorities recognized the value of the system, I was Commissioner of Police in New Zealand, and it was owing mainly to my recommendation that the system was introduced into the New Zealand prisons, although the Prison Authorities were somewhat opposed to it.... Some of the Australian States also adopted the system, with the result that an interchange of prints took place, which soon manifested its value. The system is now in full working order in Australia, and is carried on by the police, of course, with the assistance of the Prison Authorities.”
No report has been published of Mr. Tunbridge’s impressions. At the close of our long interview he told me he was disposed to think the method would be rather delicate for practical application by the police, and that fresh legislation would be required before any beginning could be made.
In 1897, the finger-print system associated with Monsieur Bertillon’s anthropometric system was adopted in India; but soon the bodily measurements were abandoned, and the finger-print method alone was officially employed; and in 1901 it was tentatively used in England and Wales, but did not come into much public use till a year or two afterwards. The ten-finger method in serial order, as I had from the first recommended for a large register, and prepared forms to receive imprints (as shown in facsimile), was adopted and is that now in official use. The methods of Sir William Herschel, followed by that of Sir F. Galton, were much more restricted, and could never have been worked practically in anything but a very small and limited register.
The finger-print system of identification is all but universally applied now throughout the civilized world for criminal cases, and bids fairly well to be soon adopted for other methods of identification than that of professional criminals or recidivists. After great earthquakes, floods, or battles, multitudes of people have to be hastily buried who have never been fully identified. In such cases the existence of a civil or military Finger-print Register would be a very great means of security, and this it is my great wish to see recognized and established.
I wish to make it clear that in 1880 no printed proposal existed to use finger-prints for identification. Sir F. Galton has referred to a United States expedition in which the method was used, but the date was 1882, and the example printed could not identify. He also refers to Mr. Tabor, of San Francisco, who had proposed the registration of Chinamen by this method, as their identity was difficult to establish. I believe this also was in 1882. In a criticism of Dr. Schlaginhaufen’s Bibliography (“F.G.” is the signature) in Nature, the omission of Mr. Tabor’s name is regretted, but why? Did he write on the subject anything which has been preserved? Why, before this period, Dr. Billings, of the United States Army, said at the International Medical Congress: “Just as each individual is in some respects peculiar and unique, so that even the minute ridges and furrows at the end of his forefingers differ from that of all other forefingers, and is sufficient to identify,” etc. So that in America the matter was widely known, and Dr. Billings’ own work on the “Index” attributed its initiation to me.
Again, in 1883, “Mark Twain” published his charming Life on the Mississippi, a very valuable human document. It contains a well-thought-out story of an identification by means of a thumb-print on a system supposed by him to have been invented by a French prison doctor. His Pudd’nhead Wilson, in which a still better study of the subject occurs, did not come out till 1894, the year in which the sitting of Mr. Asquith’s Committee on Identification of Habitual Criminals had set journalists agoing again on the theme of “thumb-prints.” Prior to that year a great deal had been written on the subject, the facts being chiefly taken from the correspondence in Nature, to which reference has been made.