In Tristram Shandy (1765) we read of “the marks of a snuffy finger and thumb.”
Jack Shepherd, a novel of Ainsworth’s, was published in 1839. One Van Galgebrook, a Dutch conjuror, therein foretells Jack’s bad end: “From a black mole under the child’s right ear, shaped like a coffin ... and a deep line just above the middle of the left thumb, meeting round about in the form of a noose.” It would be interesting to know how Ainsworth happened upon the suggestion.
Single Finger-Print
Bewick sometimes jestingly left his sign-mark on his fine wood-engravings, and those thus attested by his thumb-print are now specially valued.
Many references occur in modern literature to fingerprints, and in David Copperfield, published in complete form in 1850, Charles Dickens tells how Dan’l Peggotty, in the old boat-house at Yarmouth, “printed off fishy impressions of his thumb on all the cards he found.”
Pater, in 1871, writing of the Poetry of Michelangelo, mentions “the little seal of red wax which the stranger entering Bologna must carry on the thumb of his right hand.”
Later references are very common after the eighties. Alix in 1867–8 wrote on the papillary lines of hand and foot in Zoologie, vols. viii. and ix., contributions which were first brought to my notice after the publication of my Guide.
Facsimile (reduced) of the Original Outline Forms for Both Hands.
Done in copperplate for the author in Japan at close of 1879 or in January, 1880. The lineations were filled in with pencil at the same period.