Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police. I am offering you this old story of the beginnings of Finger-printing, by way of expressing my warm and continuous admiration of those masterly developments of its original applications, whereby, first in Bengal and the Transvaal, and then in England, you have fashioned a weapon of penetrating certainty for the sterner needs of Justice. W. J. HERSCHEL.     June, 1916....

The following pages have two objects: first, to place on record the genesis of the Finger-print method of personal identification, from its discovery in Bengal in 1858, till its public demonstration there in 1877-8; secondly, to examine the scanty suggestions of evidence that this use of our fingers had been foreshadowed in Europe more than a hundred years ago, and had indeed been general in ancient times, especially in China. In later years, and in energetic hands, the method has been developed

Hooghly , August 15, 1877 . My dear B—— , —I enclose a paper which looks unusual, but which I hope has some value. It exhibits a method of identification of persons, which, with ordinary care in execution, and with judicial care in the scrutiny, is, I can now say, for all practical purposes far more infallible than photography. It consists in taking a seal-like impression, in common seal ink, of the markings on the skin of the two forefingers of the right hand (these two being taken for convenie

Of modern cases the first known is that of Thomas Bewick. He was a wood-engraver, as well as an author, and had a fancy for engraving his finger-mark. He printed, as far as I can ascertain, only three specimens, by way of ornament to his books. 1. 1809. 'British Birds', p. 190. The impression of the finger appears as if obliterating a small scene of a cottage, trees, and a rider, but the paper between the lines of the finger is almost all clean. 2. 1818. The 'Receipt'; of which, by Mr. Quaritch'

Five years after Bewick, Johannes Purkinje, of Breslau, in 1823, read an essay which has been found and examined by Mr. Galton, and partly translated on p. 85 of his 1892 work. Purkinje carried his study of the patterns on fingers beyond all comparison with Bewick's use of them, of whose existence indeed he could hardly have been aware. He worked hard on them for a scientific (medical) purpose. It seemed to me strange that, going so far as he did, he had not hit upon our idea. To satisfy myself

The common way for illiterates to sign is to wet the tip of one finger with ink from a pen, and then touch the document (leaving a small black blot) where we touch a wafer. The mark so made is called ' tep-sai ', 'tep' meaning 'pressure' by touch or grip, and 'sai' meaning 'token' (I do not know the etymology). I ask my readers now to compare the ' tep-sai ' with the 'finger-print' alongside it, and to say whether the tep-sai could afford any means of identification by comparison with another bl

The nearest approach to our use of finger-prints that I have found in China came to hand thus: An Oxford friend, Mr. Bullock, subsequently elected Professor of Chinese, had been interpreter to the Legation in Peking. Talking with him about the methods of signing deeds in China, he told me that the finger-tip (not finger-print) method was in ordinary use, but he was careful to point out also that to his knowledge ever since he went to Peking, about 1868, Chinese bankers had been in the habit of i