Faulds

Dr Henry Faulds

R Henry Faulds ~a forgotten Scottish pioneer

By Robert E. Stewart

Whole libraries could be filled today with the world's literature on fingerprints. It is known that the chances of two being alike are at least 64,000,000,000 to one against Every member of the human race develops a set of unique fingerprints before birth. They remain unchanged - except in size - until after death. A little more than 100 years ago fingerprints were unknown in police work, Today the task of the police would be immeasurably more difficult without the aid of fingerprint identification both to prove guilt and innocence. We are greatly indebted to Dr Robert E. Stewart for kindly agreeing to write this article on Dr Henry Faulds of Beith.

Dr Stewart gave a lecture on this subject to Beith Historical Society in September 1995 and thereafter corresponded with Supt. Donald Reid of Strathclyde Police on this fascinating subject. Many more Beithites will now be more aware of a man who revolutionised worldwide criminological practice through the use of fingerprints and will be proud of the fact that he was born in Beith, Ayrshire.

Henry Faulds was one of Beith's most illustrious sons and, incidentally, was my great uncle. Sadly his name is not well known even in the lands of his birth. But his fame is widely; recognised abroad. Born in New Street. Beith on June 1st 1843 his parents were initially quite prosperous and owned a warehouse where market produce was collected and dispatched to Glasgow. In 1855 his parents lost most of their money in the Western Bank collapse the precursor of many similar bank collapses culminating in the famous City of Glasgow bank collapse in 1855. Henry's father obtained a humble post in commerce in Glasgow and Henry, now aged12, was withdrawn from school and employed in the office of his uncle, Thomas Corbett, whose son later became the first Lord Rowallan. In 1858 Henry became apprenticed to R. T. & I. Rowatt, shawl manufacturers. There, one of his duties was to classify varied Paisley shawl patterns and this task was to stand him in good stead later in life.

At the age of 21, Henry became conscious of his deficient education and undertook classes at Glasgow University in mathematics, logic and classics. Then aged 25,he decided that his true vocation was medicine, so he enrolled at Anderson's College, Glasgow and became a licentiate with commendation in 1871. During his time as a medical student Lister was Professor of Surgery at Glasgow Royal Infirmary and Henry became familiar with his teaching on the importance of antisepsis. By this time, Henry had developed a strong religious faith and, as a student, had taught in the Sunday School at the Barony Church.

Following hospital posts at St. Thomas London and Glasgow Royal Infirmary he took up a post with the Church of Scotland as medical missionary at Darjeeling, India. Unfortunately he had a disagreement with the superintendent: and resigned a year later. He then joined the United Presbyterian Church and in1874 went out to Tokyo as their first medical missionary. By 1875 he had established a small hospital at Tsukjii in the foreign concession area in Tokyo. His reputation grew rapidly and he was offered a post as personal physician to the Imperial House on condition that he gave up his work as a missionary. This he refused to do and instead set up a medical school and taught his students physiology, Darwinism and Lister's principles of antisepsis. He became the first foreign doctor to be allowed to carry out post mortems, and was consulted by the authorities on the control of typhoid and cholera epidemics. Provision for the blind was limited and Henry Faulds devised a bible for them to read using raised letters - a forerunner of Braille.

Finding fingerprints on the ancient clay fragments of Japanese pottery led Faulds to study fingerprints in a scientific way. After removing his own fingerprints and those of his students with emery paper and chemicals he found that the pattern always grew back in exactly the same manner. He amassed a collection of prints from neighbours and students and found each had a unique fingerprint.

Two incidents followed which were to be of profound significance. A thief climbed a wall near the house of Dr Faulds and left sooty fingerprints on its whitewashed surface. When the police arrested a suspect, Faulds asked them if he could take fingerprints from their prisoner He found that they did not match those on the wall and advised the police that they had detained the wrong man. Another suspect was taken into custody and this time his prints matched and he confessed to the crime. This was the first recorded occasion when both innocence and guilt were proven by the use of fingerprints.

A short time later another burglary took place at a neighbouring house. The police approached Faulds for his help and at the locus of the crime he found a ten-finger impression of prints left on a mug by the sweaty fingers of the thief. Returning home, he compared these prints with those in the collection he had built up and found an exact match with those of a servant in a nearby house in the foreign concession area. Confronted with this evidence, the servant confessed to me crime and thus for the first time fingerprints left at the scene of a crime proved to be damning evidence of guilt. Excited by his fingerprint studies. Faulds wrote to Charles Darwin in 1550 giving him a brief account of his findings. Darwin was in poor health and passed the letter to his cousin Francis Galton a distinguished scientist of that day. In addition, Faulds published details of his research in the scientific journal, Nature, on October 28th 1880. This included a remarkable forecast that fingerprints from mutilated or dismembered corpses might be of forensic importance. (This was to prove true in the famous Ruxton case in 1936.) Furthermore Faulds anticipated the transmission of fingerprints by photo-telegraphy. Recently - the use of the Livescan technique makes it possible to introduce a suspect's finger into a sensor and immediately his fingerprint will be transmitted to the Scottish Criminal Records Office at Strathclyde Police headquarters in Glasgow. There it is compared with known Criminals' prints using the French AFR scanning computer and the credentials of the Criminal can be checked and any other known and recorded crimes can be correctly attributed. These modern developments in fingerprint technology may be directly ~ back to the unique finding of Faulds reported in Nature in 1880. In the next issue of Nature, there was published an indignant claim by William Herschel grandson of the famous astronomer, that since 1857 he had used fingerprints as a means of identification while working as a civil servant in India. He made no mention however of the forensic uses of fingerprints discovered by Faulds. Later, to his credit Herschel published in a letter to Nature a statement giving full credit to Faulds for his original discovery. This disclaimer was largely unnoticed and others had by this time usurped Faulds place in history Due to his wife's illness. Faulds had to return to Britain in 1885. Before this he had been in contact with officials at Scotland Yard and now interviewed them personally with a view to setting up a fingerprint bureau there at his own expense. He received short shrift and was regarded as a crank. Rather ominously, no reference to, or record of these interviews has been retained in the archives of Scotland Yard. In 1892 Francis Galton published a book on the use of fingerprints. But no mention is made of Faulds' contribution. A former colleague of Galton, William Henry, who had worked with him in India but was now Commissioner of Police at Scotland yard set up a fingerprint bureau there in 1901. It is to these three men - Galton, Herschel and Henry - that credit is frequently given for the discovery of the use of fingerprints in criminology. Faulds became embittered that no one appeared to give him the credit he was due. He laboured as a general practitioner and police surgeon in the Potteries until shortly before his death at 87 in 1930. In 1938,a distinguished member of the Scottish Bar. Sheriff George Wilton published a book entitled Fingerprints: History Law and Romance in which he attempted to correct the injustice that had been done to the memory of Dr Faulds. For him it became a cause celebre and until his death at the age of 101 he gave lectures, wrote letters, and produced many monographs on the subject. Recognition of Faulds discovery came at last in 1901 at Keio University, Tokyo, where centenary celebrations were being organised. A memorial tablet was erected at the site of Dr Faulds hospital in Tsukiji. At a public ceremony, at which the British Ambassador was represented tribute was made to the unique discoveries of Henry Faulds. In I987 the British Fingerprint Society, aided by generous financial help from some of their American members, refurbished the grave and headstone where Dr Faulds is buried at Wolstantin, Stoke on Trent. It would seem fitting that his birthplace in Beith should be marked in some way and it was suggested recently that a street might be named in his memory.

(As a footnote, it may be of interest to note that Henry Faulds published in 1887 a book entitled Nine Years in Nippon: Sketches of Japanese Life and Manners. This is a fascinating account of Japanese life and culture at he end of the last century and although long out of print a copy may he obtained from any local library using the British Library Lending Division. With the many and varied tasks which Dr. Faulds became involved in during his stay in Japan, It is incredible that he found time to do the meticulous research for his valuable piece of Social history.)