Finger Prints Part 10

"During a period of twenty-three years, eighteen of which have been pa.s.sed in the Political Department of the Bombay Government, the great need of an official system of identification has been constantly forced on my mind.

"The uniformity in the colour of hair, eyes, and complexion of the Indian races renders identification far from easy, and the difficulty of recording the description of an individual, so that he may be afterwards recognised, is very great. Again, their hand-writing, whether it be in Persian or Devanagri letters, is devoid of character and gives but little help towards identification.

"The tenacity with which a native of India cleaves to his ancestral land, his innate desire to acquire more and more, and the obligation that accrues to him at birth of safeguarding that which has already been acquired, amounts to a religion, and pa.s.ses the comprehension of the ordinary Western mind. This pa.s.sion, or religion, coupled with a natural taste for litigation, brings annually into the Civil Courts an enormous number of suits affecting land. In a native State at one time under my political charge, the percentage of suits for the possession of land in which the t.i.tle was disputed amounted to no less than 92, while in 83 per cent of these the writing by which the transfer of t.i.tle purported to have been made, was repudiated by the former t.i.tle-holder as fraudulent and not executed by him. When it is remembered that an enormous majority of the landholders whose t.i.tles come into court are absolutely illiterate, and that their execution of the doc.u.ments is attested by a mark made by a third party, frequently, though not always apparently, interested in the transfer, it will be seen that there is a wide door open to fraud, whether by false repudiation or by criminal attempt at dispossession.

"It has frequently happened in my experience that a transfer of t.i.tle or possession was repudiated; the person purporting to have executed the transfer a.s.serting that he had no knowledge of it, and never authorised any one to write, sign, or present it for registration.

This was met by a categorical statement on the part of the beneficiary and of the attesting witnesses, concerning the time, date, and circ.u.mstances of the execution and registration, that demolished the simple denial of the man whom it was sought to dispossess. Without going into the ethics of falsehood among Western and Eastern peoples, it would be impossible to explain how what is repugnant to the one as downright lying, is very frequently considered as no more than venial prevarication by the other. This, however, is too large a subject for present purposes, but the fact remains that perjury is perpetrated in Indian Courts to an extent unknown in the United Kingdom.

"The interests of landholders are partially safeguarded by the Act that requires all doc.u.ments effecting the transfer of immovable property to be registered, but it could be explained, though not in the short s.p.a.ce of this letter, how the provisions of the Act can be, and frequently are, fulfilled in the absence of the princ.i.p.al person, the executor.

"Enough has been said to show that if some simple but efficient means could be contrived to identify the person who has executed a bond, cases of fraud such as these would practically disappear from the judicial registers. Were the legislature to amend the Registration Act and require that the original doc.u.ment as well as the copy in the Registration Book should bear the imprint of one or more fingers of the parties to the deed, I have little hesitation in saying that not only would fraud be detected, but that in a short time the facility of that detection would act as a deterrent for the future. [This was precisely the experience of Sir W. Herschel.--F.G.] In the majority of cases, the mere question would be, Is the man A the same person as B, or is he not? and of that question the finger marks would give unerring proof. For example, to take the simplest case, A is sued for possession of some land, the t.i.tle of which he is stated to have parted with to another for a consideration. The doc.u.ment and the Registration Book both bear the imprint of the index finger of the right hand of A. A repudiates, and a comparison shows that whereas the finger pattern of A is a whorl, the imprint on the doc.u.ment is a loop; consequently A did not execute it.

"In the identification of Government pensioners the finger print method would be very valuable. At one period, I had the payment of many hundreds of military pensioners. Personation was most difficult to detect in persons coming from a distance, who had no local acquaintances, and more especially where the claimants were women. The marks of identification noted in the pension roll were usually variations of:--"Hair black--Eyes brown--Complexion wheat colour--Marks of tattooing on fore-arm"--terms which are equally appropriate to a large number of the pensioners. The description was supplemented in some instances, where the pensioner had some distinguis.h.i.+ng mark or scar, but such cases are considerably rarer than might be supposed, and in women the marks are not infrequently in such a position as to practically preclude comparison. Here also the imprint of one or more finger prints on the pension certificate, would be sufficient to settle any doubt as to ident.i.ty.

"As a large number of persons pa.s.s through the Indian gaols not only while undergoing terms of imprisonment, but in default of payment of a fine, it could not but prove of value were the finger prints of one and all secured. They might a.s.sist in identifying persons who have formerly been convicted, of whom the local police have no knowledge, and who bear a name that may be the common property of half a hundred in any small town."

Whatever difficulty may be felt in the identification of Hindoos, is experienced in at least an equal degree in that of the Chinese residents in our Colonies and Settlements, who to European eyes are still more alike than the Hindoos, and in whose names there is still less variety. I have already referred (p. 26) to Mr. Tabor, of San Francisco, and his proposal in respect to the registration of the Chinese. Remarks showing the need of some satisfactory method of identifying them, have reached me from various sources. The _British North Borneo Herald_, August 1, 1888, that lies before me as I write, alludes to the difficulty of identifying coolies, either by photographs or measurements, as likely to become important in the early future of that country.

For purposes of registration, the method of printing to be employed, must be one that gives little trouble on the one hand, and yields the maximum of efficiency for that amount of trouble on the other. Sir W. Herschel impressed simultaneously the fore and middle fingers of the right hand. To impress simultaneously the fore, middle, and ring-fingers of the right hand ought, however, to be better, the trouble being no greater, while three prints are obviously more effective than two, especially for an off-hand comparison. Moreover, the patterns on the ring-finger are much more variable than those on the middle finger. Much as rolled impressions are to be preferred for minute and exhaustive comparisons, they would probably be inconvenient for purposes of registration or attestation. Each finger has to be rolled separately, and each separate rolling takes more time than a dab of all the fingers of one hand simultaneously. Now a dabbed impression of even two fingers is more useful for registration purposes than the rolled impression of one; much more is a dabbed impression of three, especially when the third is the variable ring-finger. Again, in a simultaneous impression, there is no doubt as to the sequence of the finger prints being correct, but there may be some occasional bungling when the fingers are printed separately.

For most criminal investigations, and for some other purposes also, the question is not the simple one just considered, namely, "Is A the same person, or a different person from B?" but the much more difficult problem of "Who is this unknown person X? Is his name contained in such and such a register?" We will now consider how this question may be answered.

Registers of criminals are kept in all civilised countries, but in France they are indexed according to the method of M. Alphonse Bertillon, which admits of an effective search being made through a large collection. We shall see how much the differentiating power of the French or of any other system of indexing might be increased by including finger prints in the register.

M. Bertillon has described his system in three pamphlets:--

(1) _Une application pratique de l'anthropometrie_, Extrait des Annales de Demographie Interne. Paris 1881. (2) _Les signalements anthropometriques_, Conference faite au Congres Penitentiare International de Rome, Nov. 22, 1885. (3) _Sur le fonctionnement du service des signalements_. All the above are published by Ma.s.son, 120 Boulevard St. Germain, Paris. To these must be added a very interesting but anonymous pamphlet, based on official doc.u.ments, and which I have reason to know is authorised by M. Bertillon, namely, (4) _L'anthropometrie Judiciare en Paris, en 1889_: G. Stenheil, 2 Rue Casimir-Delavigne, Paris.

Besides these a substantial volume is forthcoming, which may give a satisfactory solution to some present uncertainties.

The scale on which the service is carried on, is very large. It was begun in 1883, and by the end of 1887 no less than 60,000 sets of measures were in hand, but thus far only about one half of the persons arrested in Paris were measured, owing to the insufficiency of the staff. Arrangements were then made for its further extension. There are from 100 to 150 prisoners sentenced each day by the Courts of Law in Paris to more than a few days'

imprisonment, and every one of these is sent to the Depot for twenty-four hours. While there, they are now submitted to _Bertillonage_, a newly coined word that has already come into use. This is done in the forenoon, by three operators and three clerks; six officials in all. About half of the prisoners are old offenders, of whom a considerable proportion give their names correctly, as is rapidly verified by an alphabetically arranged catalogue of cards, each of which contains front and profile photographs, and measurements. The remainder are examined strictly; their bodily marks are recorded according to a terse system of a few letters, and they are variously measured. Each person occupies seven or eight minutes. They are then photographed. From sixty to seventy-five prisoners go through this complete process every forenoon. In the afternoon the officials are engaged in making numerous copies of each set of records, one of which is sent to Lyon, and another to Ma.r.s.eille, where there are similar establishments. They also cla.s.sify the copies of records that are received from those towns and elsewhere in France, of which from seventy to one hundred arrive daily. Lastly, they search the Registers for duplicate sets of measures of those, whether in Paris or in the provinces, who were suspected of having given false names. The entire staff consists of ten persons. It is difficult to rightly interpret the figures given in the pamphlet (4) at pp. 22-24, as they appear to disagree, but as I understand them, 562 prisoners who gave false names in the year 1890 were recognised by _Bertillonage_, and only four other persons were otherwise discovered to have been convicted previously, who had escaped recognition by its means.

I had the pleasure of seeing the system in operation in Paris a few years ago, and was greatly impressed by the deftness of the measuring, and with the swiftness and success with which the a.s.sistants searched for the cards containing entries similar to the measures of the prisoner then under examination.

It is stated in the _Signalements_ (p. 12) that the basis of the cla.s.sification are the four measurements (1) Head-length, (2) Head-breadth, (3) Middle-finger-length, (4) Foot-length, their constancy during adult life nearly always [as stated] holding good. Each of these four elements severally is considered as belonging to one or other of three equally numerous cla.s.ses--small, medium, and large; consequently there are 3{4} or 81 princ.i.p.al headings, under some one of which the card of each prisoner is in the first instance sorted. Each of these primary headings is successively subdivided, on the same general principle of a three-fold cla.s.sification, according to other measures that are more or less subject to uncertainties, namely, the height, the span, the cubit, the length and breadth of the ear, and the height of the bust. The eye-colour alone is subjected to seven divisions. The general result is (pp. 19, 22) that a total of twelve measures are employed, of which eleven are cla.s.sed on the three-fold principle, and one on the seven-fold, giving a final result of 3{11} 7, or more than a million possible combinations.

M. Bertillon considers it by no means necessary to stop here, but in his chapter (p. 22) on the "Infinite Extension of the Cla.s.sification," claims that the method may be indefinitely extended.

The success of the system is considered by many experts to be fully proved, notwithstanding many apparent objections, one of which is the difficulty due to transitional cases: a belief in its success has certainly obtained a firm hold upon the popular imagination in France. Its general acceptance elsewhere seems to have been delayed in part by a theoretical error in the published calculations of its efficiency: the measures of the limbs which are undoubtedly correlated being treated as independent, and in part by the absence of a sufficiently detailed account of the practical difficulties experienced in its employment. Thus in the _Application pratique_, p. 9: "We are embarra.s.sed what to choose, the number of human measures which vary independently of each other being considerable." In the _Signalements_, p. 19: "It has been shown" (by a.s.suming this independent variability) "that by seven measurements, 60,000 photographs can be separated into batches of less than ten in each." (By the way, even on that a.s.sumption, the result is somewhat exaggerated, the figures having been arrived at by successively taking the higher of the two nearest round values.) In short, the general tone of these two memoirs is one of enthusiastic belief in the method, based almost wholly, so far as is there shown, on questionable _theoretic_ grounds of efficiency.

To learn how far correlation interferes with the regularity of distribution, causing more entries to be made under some index-heads than others, as was the case with finger prints, I have cla.s.sified on the Bertillon system, 500 sets of measures taken at my laboratory. It was not practicable to take more than three of the four primary measures, namely, the head-length, its breadth, and the middle-finger-length. The other measure, that of foot-length, is not made at my laboratory, as it would require the shoes to be taken off, which is inconvenient since persons of all ranks and both s.e.xes are measured there; but this matters little for the purpose immediately in view. It should, however, be noted that the head-length and head-breadth have especial importance, being only slightly correlated, either together or with any other dimension of the body. Many a small man has a head that is large in one or both directions, while a small man rarely has a large foot, finger, or cubit, and conversely with respect to large men.

The following set of five measures of each of the 500 persons were then tabulated: (1) head-length; (2) head-breadth; (3) span; (4) body-height, that is the height of the top of the head from the seat on which the person sits; (5) middle-finger-length. The measurements were to the nearest tenth of an inch, but in cases of doubt, half-tenths were recorded in (1), (2), and (5). With this moderate minuteness of measurement, it was impossible so to divide the measures as to give better results than the following, which show that the numbers in the three cla.s.ses are not as equal as desirable. But they nevertheless enable us to arrive at an approximate idea of the irregular character of the distribution.

TABLE XVI.

+-----------------------------------------------------------------------+ Medium Nos. in the three cla.s.ses respectively. Dimensions measures in --------------------------------------- measured. inches and - 0 + Total. tenths. below. medium. above. ---------------- -------------- -------- --------- --------- ---------- 1. Head-length 75 to 77 101 191 208 500 2. Head-breadth 60 " 61 173 201 126 500 3. Span 680 " 705 137 165 198 500 4. Body-height 350 " 360 139 168 193 500 5. Middle-finger 45 " 46 180 176 144 500 +-----------------------------------------------------------------------+

The distribution of the measures is shown in Table XVII.

TABLE XVII.

_Distribution of 500 sets of measures into cla.s.ses. Each set consists of five elements; each element is cla.s.sed as + or above medium cla.s.s; M, or mediocre; -, or below medium cla.s.s._

(Total number of cla.s.ses is 3{5} = 243.)

+----------------------------------------------------------------+ +---- 3 Span. +--4 Body- 1 Head-length, 2 Head-breadth. height. 5 Middle- ----------------------------------------------- finger. 1 2 1 2 1 2 1 2 1 2 1 2 1 2 1 2 1 2 --------------- --------------- --------------- - - - M - + M - M M M + + - + M + + ---------------- --------------- --------------- --------------- - - - 14 7 4 14 11 5 3 3 2 M - 2 - 2 4 1 - 2 4 + - - - 1 - - - - - - M - 5 2 2 7 4 2 1 4 3 M - 2 - 3 1 3 2 3 - + - - - - - - - - 2 - + - 2 - - 1 1 1 - - 1 M - 2 - - - - - 1 1 + - - - 1 - - - 1 - ---------------- --------------- --------------- --------------- M - - 4 - 1 3 4 3 1 2 2 M 3 2 - 3 2 3 2 4 - + - - - - 1 2 - 1 - M M - 1 3 1 4 3 2 4 4 3 M 5 3 - 7 5 2 2 6 5 + 2 1 1 1 1 - 1 4 2 M + - 2 1 1 5 2 - - 2 2 M 2 2 - 3 3 1 1 6 7 + - - 1 2 - - 3 2 2 ---------------- --------------- --------------- --------------- + - - - - 1 - 1 - - - - M 1 - - 1 2 - 1 3 - + 1 2 - 1 1 - - - 2 + M - 1 - 1 3 2 - - - 2 M 2 - 1 1 4 - 3 2 4 + 2 1 - 2 4 1 4 6 3 + + - 1 2 - 1 - 1 1 2 2 M - 1 - 5 10 3 3 8 9 + 2 2 2 11 10 3 9 24 19 +----------------------------------------------------------------+

The frequency with which 1, 2, 3, 4, etc., sets were found to fall under the same index-heading, is shown in Table XVIII.

TABLE XVIII.

+----------------------------------------------------+ No. of sets under same Frequency of its No. of entries. index-heading. occurrence. --------------- ------------------ ----------------- 0 83 0 1 47 47 2 47 94 3 25 75 4 16 64 5 7 35 6 3 18 7 4 28 8 1 8 9 2 18 10 2 20 11 2 22 14 2 28 19 1 19 24 1 24 ---------------------------------------------------- Total entries 500 +----------------------------------------------------+

No example was found of 83, say of one-third, of the 243 possible combinations. In one case no less than 24 sets fell under the same head; in another case 19 did so, and there were two cases in which 14, 11, and 10 severally did the same. Thus, out of 500 sets (see the five bottom lines in the last column of the above table) no less than 113 sets fell into four cla.s.ses, each of which included from 10 to 24 entries.

The 24 sets whose Index-number is + M, + + + admit of being easily subdivided and rapidly sorted by an expert, into smaller groups, paying regard to considerable differences only, in the head-length and head-breadth. After doing this, two comparatively large groups remain, with five cases in each, which require further a.n.a.lysis. They are as follow, the height and eye-colour being added in each case, and brackets being so placed as to indicate measures that do not differ to a sufficient amount to be surely distinguished. No two sets are alike throughout, some difference of considerable magnitude always occurring to distinguish them.

Nos. 2 and 3 come closest together, and are distinguished by eye-colour alone.

TABLE XIX.

Five cases of Head-length 80, and Head-breadth 61.

Span. Body. Finger. Height. Eye-colour.

1. { 724 380 48 { 712 { br. grey 2. { 726 { 370 { 47 { 714 { br. grey 3. { 727 { 367 { 47 { 714 blue 4. 739 364 50 707 brown 5. 753 379 48 734 blue

Five cases of Head-length 78, and Head-breadth 60.

6. 708 378 { 47 { 700 brown 7. { 719 362 { 47 { 693 blue 8. { 724 { 372 { 47 { 684 brown 9. 748 { 378 50 731 blue 10. 799 { 373 53 756 blue grey

This is satisfactory. It shows that each one of the 500 sets may be distinguished from all the others by means of only seven elements; for if it is possible so to subdivide twenty-four entries that come under one index-heading, we may a.s.sume that we could do so in the other cases where the entries were fewer. The other measures that I possess--strength of grasp and breathing capacity--are closely correlated with stature and bulk, while eyesight and reaction-time are uncorrelated, but the latter are hardly suited to test the further application of the Bertillon method.

It would appear, from these and other data, that a purely anthropometric cla.s.sification, irrespective of bodily marks and photographs, would enable an expert to deal with registers of considerable size.

Bearing in mind that mediocrities differ less from one another than members of either of the extreme cla.s.ses, and would therefore be more difficult to distinguish, it seems probable that with comparatively few exceptions, _at least_ two thousand adults of the same s.e.x might be individualised, merely by means of twelve careful measures, on the Bertillon system, making reasonable allowances for that small change of proportions that occurs after the lapse of a few years, and for inaccuracies of measurement. This estimate may be far below the truth, but more cannot, I think, be safely inferred from the above very limited experiment.

The system of registration adopted in the American army for tracing suspected deserters, was described in a memoir contributed to the "International Congress of Demography," held in London in 1891. The memoir has so far been only published in the _Abstracts of Papers_, p. 233 (Eyre and Spottiswoode). Its phraseology is unfortunately so curt as sometimes to be difficult to understand; it runs as follows:--

Personal ident.i.ty as determined by scars and other body marks by Colonel Charles R. Greenleaf and Major Charles Smart, Medical Department, U.S. Army.

Desertions from United States army believed to greatly exceed deserters, owing to repeaters.

Detection of repeaters possible if all body marks of all recruits recorded, all deserters noted, and all recruits compared with previous deserters.

In like manner men discharged for cause excluded from re-entry.