The genius who left his dabs all over history
Experts hail forgotten missionary as TV show puts his breakthrough in spotlight
His chance discovery of fingerprint marks on ancient clay pottery would change the course of criminal justice forever.
Dr Henry Faulds had already made his name as a doctor and missionary by the late 1800s.
But his idea to identify criminals through their prints would make him the world’s first forensic detective.
His breakthrough is being celebrated in Netflix’s new hit show The Alienist, set in early 19th- century New York, about the US cops who used the technique to solve crimes.
Experts believe any recognition of Faulds is long overdue – hailing a man whose commitment to his craft once saw him use chemicals to burn off his own prints to see if there was any change when they grew back.
Despite being the first to suggest finger printing as a means of identifying criminals, the doctor – who was born in Beith, Ayrshire – has never been given his true place in history.
His“finger marking” discovery is one of the first techniques The Alienist team use to try to catch a serial killer who is slaughtering and mutilating male child prostitutes in the Big Apple.
Forensic experts said the show, which stars Luke Evans, Daniel Bruhl and Dakota Fanning, will put the forgotten doctor and his discovery back in the spotlight. American author Col in Beavan, who championed Faulds as the fingerprint pioneer, said: “It’s important for people to know about t he origins of forensic science and shows like The Alienist are a great way of getting the work of scientists l ike Henry Faulds out there. “Although fingerprints were being used as signatures, he was the first to suggest the unique nature of finger marks could be used as a way of identifying criminals – a science, which up until the discovery of DNA, was the main forensic tool used by investigators to catch thieves and murderers.
“It must have been so frustrating for Dr Faulds when Scotland Yard dismissed his ideas as being too eccentric, especially when the use of fingerprints as evidence was being used in other countries.”
Although several police forces round the world started using his method, British detectives had ignored his repeated attempts to get them interested in his work. To add insult to injury, when fingerprinting was f inal ly accepted as a forensic breakthrough, two other scientists were given the credit.
Faulds had discovered the unique pattern of individual human prints while working as a medical missionary in Japan during the 19th century, where he founded Tokyo’s Institute for the Blind.
His breakthrough came during the 1870s when studying ancient pottery. He launched a scientific study after finding fingerprints in clay.
After removing his own prints with chemicals, he discovered that they grew back in the same pattern.
The Glasgow University graduate amassed a collection of fingerprints but his breakthrough came when Tokyo police arrested a man for burglary and Faulds proved that the suspect could not have been the thief.
When the pol ice subsequently arrested another man, Faulds established that it was the second suspect’s fingerprints that had been left at the scene of the crime.
In 1880, he published his research in Nature Magazine, an article in which he predicted the forensic application
of fingerprints and even forecasted that fingerprints would one day be transmitted by photo-telegraphy.
He wrote: “When bloody finger marks or impressions on clay are found, they may lead to the scientific identification of criminals.”
But as New York-based writer Colin,
54, claimed in his book Fingerprints – Murder and the Race to Uncover the Science of Identity, Faulds was never given credit. Instead, that went to Charles Darwin’s cousin.
Colin said: “Faulds was a great fan of the naturalist and in 1880 wrote to him about his research asking for his help. Darwin, by then too old to help himself, passed the information on to his cousin, Francis Galton, who in turn promised to do what he could to help but Faulds never heard from him.
“Instead, Galton latched on to the work of William Herschel, who had a year earlier introduced fingerprints’ official use in Hooghly, India, as a form of signature to authenticate documents. At the t ime , it never occurred to him that they could be used for anything else.
“So it was Faulds – and Faulds alone – who took the concept much further, yet it was Herschel who went down in history as the system’s inventor and Galton as its developer.
“When it came to the crunch, in 19th- century Britain’s notoriously class- conscious society, it was Galton and Herschel who earned the kudos and gained the fame. Faulds, barely a footnote in history, was all but forgotten.”
A memorial to Faulds, who returned to Britain and became a police surgeon in Staffordshire before his death in 1930, was not erected in Scotland until 2004.
Donald Reid, a former pol ice superintendent, decided it was about time the doctor was recognised in his home town.
He said: “I thought it was awful that Faulds had never been honoured in Scotland.
“A memorial to him was erected in 1951 at the hospital he founded in Tsukiji, Tokyo, yet there was nothing in his home e town.
“As an ex-cop, I know only too o well the value of what this man an did. It’d be dreadful to let his is memory or achievements slip lip out of our consciousness.”
Another former police officer, cer, Iain McKie, believes Faulds lds deserves to be remembered red alongside Scotland’s other great reat inventors Alexander Grahamm Bell and John Logie Baird.
He said: “Faulds’s discovery was invaluable. He is one of our country’s many great inventors and should be honoured as such, not just by memorials but in history books.
“Before DNA, fingerprinting was the jewel in the crown of forensic science and it still remains one of the most important tools in a detective’s arsenal of forensics.
“It ’s fantastic Netf l ix have chosen to do a series like The Alienist, which shows the origins of techniques like fingerprinting and criminal profiling and puts scientists like Faulds back in the limelight.”