The advent of fingerprinting

The race to identify criminals

In The Sign of Four, published in 1890, when Sherlock Holmes whipped out his magnifying glass to examine some marks as he climbed the stairs of Pondicherry Lodge, Dr Watson dismissed them as, ‘mere shapeless smudges of dust’. However, as usual, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was ahead of the game, and it would be another decade before the practice was adopted by real-life detectives in Britain.

Interest in fingerprints began in the middle decades of the 19th century, when it was accepted that everyone’s finger prints are unique and don’t change with age. Following this discovery, several individuals began a race to be the first person to use fingerprinting in criminal investigations, until one man finally brought the new technology to Scotland Yard at the turn of the century.