The complete burglar’s outfit now includes well-fitting gloves as an essential element, quite as important as skeleton keys and regulation jemmies. This fact is curiously applied by the late John Davidson, who says, in Mammon and His Message: “The gloves of party, of culture, of creed, wherewith men hide their finger-prints lest they should be caught in the act of being themselves, I decline to wear.”
Early in 1904, an office in Bradford was broken into by smashing a glass panel in the door. Some cash and postage stamps were secured by the robber. On one piece of glass a single finger-mark had been imprinted accidentally, which was found by the police to be that of a suspected person whose impressions had been officially secured some time before. The offender was duly charged with the crime and convicted. The photographs in this case were reproduced in The Strand Magazine of May, 1905, one being the enlarged impression found on the piece of glass, and the other that of the supposed corresponding impression, which was that of the prisoner’s left thumb. Those finger-prints resemble, but their mutual likeness is by no means quite conclusive and convincing. Mr. Mallet, the author of the “Finger-Prints which have Convicted Criminals,” however, says: “The reader will see how precisely similar are the impressions, and he will be interested, with the aid of a microscope, in seeing how exactly the almost countless ridges and characteristics of the thumb are faithful doubles.” The patterns are both enlarged so greatly that not even a lens is required for their discernment, and the “countless ridges” do not run above forty. The two figures are not equalized in their enlargement and comparison is made unnecessarily difficult, but when made, the curves for some reason cannot be got to agree. The officially registered impression affords clear lineations, but that on the bit of glass panel is muddled and smudgy. On the whole I should not call it a good example of this kind of identification.
A second case given is that of an imprint on a small box which had been used for containing homœopathic remedies. Some cash had been stolen on a certain Saturday night, and on Friday the delinquent was captured and convicted by means of his finger-prints.
The reproduced photographs show the pattern to be somewhat simple, and, allowing for a certain inevitable faintness due to indirect reproduction, the evidence is good of its kind. A pattern of somewhat greater complexity would have afforded much stronger evidence. The chances of a single finger-print of very simple design, so to say, being repeated in the case of another person, is not to be ignored, and if the suspected smudge is obscure the evidence ceases to be of much value.
Of the third case mentioned, we are assured that “without the finger-print it would have been impossible to convict.” Now, the enlarged imprint of the suspect’s right middle finger has been printed quite clearly, and has good, unique characteristics, but just where these would be most useful for identification the lines in the suspected smudge are fatally blurred and useless for comparison.
A better case is that of a print on a drinking-glass, which was brought out in the way dealt with in a previous chapter of this work. The pattern was rather striking, and the resemblance convincing. The prisoner afterwards confessed his guilt and assisted the police to arrest another man and to recover some stolen property.
In an old French reading book I learned from in earlier days, there was a story of a country doctor who in visiting an upland farmer’s wife could find no paper or ink for his prescription. So he wrote his orders in chalk on the farm door and told them to take that to the chemist. They took the door. It seems that a chief detective of Bradford found a bath-room door imprinted in circumstances that aroused suspicion. Protected carefully by paper the door was conveyed on a cart to the Town Hall, as evidence in the case.
Identification does not merely ensure the conviction of the guilty. A very pleasing example was sent to me by an eminent American author and journalist, which shows how the legal use of finger-print evidence established the innocence of an accused negro. Briefly, the story was this. A murder had been committed in Kansas by a coloured man named William West. While looking for him it turned out that the police had just placed under arrest for some minor offence, a young negro named William West, who, however, stoutly maintained his innocence of the murder. The French method of bodily measurements was applied, and the person under arrest was found to correspond exactly in his dimensions in trunk and limbs with those of the sought-for murderer. It remained now only to take the imprints of his finger-tips, a method not long before introduced in that State. It was then clearly seen that, by their decided divergences in pattern, the man in custody could not be the guilty person, although name, colour, and measurements all agreed in the two men. A few days later the real murderer was arrested. The report sent by my friend concludes thus: “The coincidences of name and figure might have been fatal to the innocent man, if the impression of the finger-tips had not also been employed as a means of identification. The police say that this test is infallible. The impression of one man’s finger-tips never corresponds exactly with those of any other man.”
The system is now largely used in many of the States. Mr. W. A. Pinkerton, the well-known Sherlock Holmes of America, has a high opinion of the validity of the method, and wrote me on his recent visit to this country that he intended to study the subject more closely.
A curious incident happened many years ago to a doctor in the district where I live. Returning from a visit at a late hour, by a lonely road, he was suddenly assailed by a powerful ruffian who tried to garrot him. The doctor, a notably athletic man, objecting to the treatment, finally got one of his assailant’s fingers into his mouth and amputated it neatly with his teeth. Early in the morning the rogue came to the same doctor’s surgery unwittingly, seeking for surgical help, was seized, and ultimately convicted, getting heavy punishment. Now, on telling this true story (the finger is still kept in spirit) to Mr.—now Sir Charles E.—Troup, at the Home Office, that gentleman smilingly said such a case would never by any chance occur again. Well, in October, 1909, a constable patrolling St. John’s Street, Clerkenwell, found, sticking on a spike at the top of a gate, a bloody finger with a ring on it. This was promptly submitted to the police experts at Scotland Yard, who were convinced that it had belonged to a man known as “William Mitchell.” A man called “May,” with his hand bleeding and bandaged up had just been arrested. It was then found that he had just lost a finger, which he admitted had been done when he was hurriedly getting over the gate. He got twelve months’ hard labour, as consolation.