Henry Faulds

Henry Faulds (1843–1930) was a Scottish physician and missionary who advocated using fingerprints to identify people and preserve crime-scene evidence.

Connect

Fingerprint: A pattern of ridges on the skin of a finger, used in identification because ridge details vary between people. Faulds argued that these distinctive ridge patterns could identify individuals.
Fingerprints in ancient civilizations: The use of fingerprints or fingertip impressions in ancient objects and documents, often for purposes other than modern identification. Ancient impressions show that fingerprints were noticed long before Faulds proposed forensic use.
William Herschel–Henry Faulds priority dispute: A historical disagreement over the relative priority of William Herschel and Henry Faulds in proposing fingerprint identification. Faulds and Herschel made overlapping claims about who first recognized fingerprints' value for identification.
Bertillon system: A criminal identification method based on standardized body measurements, photographs, and descriptive records. It was the leading rival to fingerprint identification in late nineteenth-century policing.
Fingerprint recognition: The identification of a person by comparing the friction-ridge patterns on their fingers. Faulds proposed fingerprint-based identification before it became routine policing.
William James Herschel: A British colonial administrator in India who used handprints and fingerprints on documents to help verify identity. Herschel's earlier identification practice formed part of the context for Faulds's proposal.
Mark Twain: The pen name of Samuel Clemens, an American writer whose novel Pudd'nhead Wilson featured fingerprint identification. Twain's fiction made fingerprint-based identification visible to a broad public during Faulds's era.
Anthropometry: The measurement of the human body, historically used in attempts to classify and identify individuals. Faulds's fingerprint proposal offered an alternative to identifying people through bodily measurements.
Forensic science: The application of scientific methods to investigate crimes and interpret evidence. His proposal to use fingerprints at crime scenes anticipated a major forensic method.
Francis Galton: An English polymath who analyzed fingerprint patterns and argued for their permanence and individuality. Galton later supplied influential statistical and classificatory arguments for fingerprint identification.