Personal Identification

“Law of Multiplicity of Evidence”

The greater the number of similarities and dissimilarities, the greater is the probability for the conclusion to be correct.

Early Method of identification

Tatooing Maiming

Alphonse Bertillion

 Father of Personal Identification  1882, became head of the identification service in the office of the Prefect of Police  Spread a new system of identification called

anthropometry

 Combined

portrait parle

with anthropometry

Anthropometry

 Anthropometry is a very old science which relates to the measurement of

body dimensions

. These may be: 

lengths

(e.g. the length of the thigh bone or femur), 

breadths

(e.g. the width across the shoulders, the biacromial breadth), 

girths

(e.g. waist circumference) 

common measurements

( e.g. stature or height and mass or weight)  measurement of

skinfold thickness

at various sites on the body (e.g. at the back of the upper arm, tricep skinfold).

Portrait Parle

 Literally means 'word picture'  Method of describing people verbally  Included in Bertillion's identification system  Foundation of present-day description of criminals and non-criminals

Will West and William West

 1903  US Penitentiary at Leavenworth, Kansas  Almost exact Bertillion measurements

History of Fingerprint

 Picture writing of a hand with ridge patterns was discovered in

Nova Scotia

.

 In ancient

Babylon

, fingerprints were used on clay tablets for

business transactions

.

 In ancient

China

, thumb prints were found on

clay seals

. They referred to it as Hua Chi (Ki and Io)  In 14th century

Persia

, various

official government papers

had fingerprints (impressions), and one government official, a doctor, observed that no two fingerprints were exactly alike.

Nehemiah Grew

 1684  Philosophical Transaction presented in Royal Society of London, England  Described the ridges and pores of the hands and feet

Govard Bidloo

 Studied sweat pores and ridges

Marcelo Malpighi

 Father of Dactyloscopy  1686  Professor at University of Bolognia, Italy  Written “De Externo Tactus Organo”  Discovery of Epidermis and Dermis layer  Malphigi layer

JCA Mayer

 1788  Anatomiche Kuphertafeln  First to state that fingerprints are never duplicated in two persons

Johannes Purkinje

 1823  Professor at University of Breslau, Germany  Established a classification system of fingerprints  Identified 9 type of patterns  Did not associate fingerprints with identification

Herman Welcker

 Took his own fingerprint twice with a lapse of 41 years and showed the ridge formation remains the same

William Herschel

 1858  Chief Magistrate of the Hooghly district in Jungipoor, India  First to advocate the use of fingerprints as substitute for signature among Indian natives to avoid impersonation  Based on superstition rather than personal identification  Rajyadhar Konai – local businessman, first person that Herschel took the palm print of

Henry Faulds

 1870's  British Surgeon-Superintendent of Tsukiji Hospital in Tokyo, Japan  Credited with first fingerprint identification of a greasy fingerprint left on an alcohol bottle  Took up the study of "skin-furrows" after noticing finger marks on specimens of "prehistoric" pottery  Published an article in the Scientific Journal, "Nature" 

Fingerprint as means of personal identification

 Use of printer's ink

Gilbert Thomson

 1882  U.S. Geological Survey in New Mexico  Used his own thumb print on a document to prevent forgery  First known use of fingerprints in the United States

Mark Twain

 1883  Samuel L. Clemens  Life of the Mississippi  a murderer was identified by the use of fingerprint identification  Pudd'n Head Wilson  there was a dramatic court trial on fingerprint identification

Francis Galton

 1888  First classification system  Developed the Arch, Loop and Whorl patterns as general classification  Identified 9 types of patterns  First to establish a Civil Bureau of Personal Identification  Minutia or Galton details  Stated that the possibility of having two fingerprints alike is 1:64,000,000,000

Juan Vucetich

 1891  Argentine Police Official, began the first fingerprint files based on Galton pattern types  System was accepted in most Spanish Speaking countries  At first, included fingerprint with the Bertillon System files  1892  First criminal fingerprint identification  Francis Rojas-murdered her two sons and cut her own throat (left a bloody mark at the post)

Haque and Bose

 June 12, 1897  Council of the Governor General of India approved a committee report that fingerprints should be used for classification of criminal records 

Calcutta Anthropometric Bureau

became the world's first

Fingerprint Bureau

 Khan Bahadur Azizul Haque and Rai Hem Chandra Bose  Indian fingerprint experts credited with primary development of the Henry System of fingerprint classification

Edward Richard Henry

 Father of fingerprint  Developed the Henry System of Classification at Scotland Yard  Accepted by almost all English-speaking countries  Published book "The Classification and Use of Fingerprints"

Edmond Locard

 12 point system  Wrote that if 12 points (Galton's Details) were the same between two fingerprints, it would suffice as a positive identification