In translating fresh finger-prints into syllabic form, one has to catch the ideal design, so to speak, in the pattern. The consonantal skeleton, in one of its duplicate forms, is then examined for its containing vowel, and the syllable is complete. The work can be done with amazing rapidity after one is familiar with the patterns, which soon appeal direct to the eye as the type does in a printed book.
Let us now look at a few examples tabulated to show how the system works in detail.
Vowels and Consonants in Syllabic Classification
with typical specimens of figure elements.
CHAPTER VIII
PRACTICAL RESULTS AND FUTURE PROSPECTS OF DACTYLOGRAPHY
Till quite recently the method of identifying prisoners was that of personal recognition, often very admirably carried out. One may readily conceive that a criminal officer, a Bow Street runner of the old school, or a modern detective, might acquire great acuteness in perceiving points of individual character in face, form, gait, speech, and manner; and during the period of arrest, trial, and imprisonment there were many opportunities of observing notable offenders. Nor is such a power to be despised at the present time. How helpful a little point might even be under skilful disguise occurred to my own mind in this way. When I saw the great Henry Irving in the part of Mephistopheles in “Faust,” a certain slight stiffness in the calves was assumed, by me, to be a very clever and subtle suggestion of the cloven hoofs which were supposed to aid the movements of that mediaeval personage. But the great actor walked other totally different parts in the same way, so that on the street, in any disguise, the notice of an acute detective might have been arrested. I am shortsighted, but can often recognize people at a distance too great to distinguish features, by some peculiarity of gait or gesture. In Taylor’s Manual of Medical Jurisprudence [ed. of 1891, pp. 317, 318], there is a curious and interesting example of how recognition sometimes failed. The story is thus told:—