Henry Faulds
Encyclopedia
Fingerprint
A fingerprint in its narrow sense is an impression left by the friction ridges of a human finger. In a wider use of the term, fingerprints are the traces of an impression from the friction ridges of any part of a human hand. A print from the foot can also leave an impression of friction ridges...
ing.
Early life
Faulds was born in the Scottish town of BeithBeith
Beith is a small town situated in the Garnock Valley in North Ayrshire, Scotland approximately 20-miles south-west of Glasgow. The town is situated on the crest of a hill and was known originally as the "Hill o' Beith" after its Court Hill.-History:-Name:Beith's name is thought to emanate from...
, North Ayrshire
North Ayrshire
North Ayrshire is one of 32 council areas in Scotland with a population of roughly 136,000 people. It is located in the south-west region of Scotland, and borders the areas of Inverclyde to the north, Renfrewshire to the north-east and East Ayrshire and South Ayrshire to the East and South...
into a family of modest means. Aged 13, he was forced to leave school, and went to Glasgow
Glasgow
Glasgow is the largest city in Scotland and third most populous in the United Kingdom. The city is situated on the River Clyde in the country's west central lowlands...
to work as a clerk to help support his family; at 21 he decided to enroll at the Facility of Arts at Glasgow University, where he studied mathematics
Mathematics
Mathematics is the study of quantity, space, structure, and change. Mathematicians seek out patterns and formulate new conjectures. Mathematicians resolve the truth or falsity of conjectures by mathematical proofs, which are arguments sufficient to convince other mathematicians of their validity...
, logic
Logic
In philosophy, Logic is the formal systematic study of the principles of valid inference and correct reasoning. Logic is used in most intellectual activities, but is studied primarily in the disciplines of philosophy, mathematics, semantics, and computer science...
and the classics. He later studied medicine
Medicine
Medicine is the science and art of healing. It encompasses a variety of health care practices evolved to maintain and restore health by the prevention and treatment of illness....
at Anderson's College, and graduated with a physician’s licence.
Following graduation, Faulds then became a medical missionary
Missionary
A missionary is a member of a religious group sent into an area to do evangelism or ministries of service, such as education, literacy, social justice, health care and economic development. The word "mission" originates from 1598 when the Jesuits sent members abroad, derived from the Latin...
for the Church of Scotland
Church of Scotland
The Church of Scotland, known informally by its Scots language name, the Kirk, is a Presbyterian church, decisively shaped by the Scottish Reformation....
. In 1871, he was sent to British India, where he worked for two years in Darjeeling at a hospital for the poor.
On 23 July 1873, he received a letter of appointment from the United Presbyterian Church
United Presbyterian Church
United Presbyterian Church was the name of multiple Christian denominations in the world, among which are the following:*The United Presbyterian Church of Scotland , a union of the United Secession Church and the Relief Church which joined the Free Church of Scotland to form the United Free Church...
of Scotland to establish a medical mission in Japan. He married Isabella Wilson that September, and the newlyweds departed for Japan in December.
Life in Japan
Faulds established the first Scottish mission in Japan in 1874, with a hospital and a teaching facility for Japanese medical students. He helped introduce Dr. Joseph ListerJoseph Lister, 1st Baron Lister
Joseph Lister, 1st Baron Lister OM, FRS, PC , known as Sir Joseph Lister, Bt., between 1883 and 1897, was a British surgeon and a pioneer of antiseptic surgery, who promoted the idea of sterile surgery while working at the Glasgow Royal Infirmary...
's antiseptic
Antiseptic
Antiseptics are antimicrobial substances that are applied to living tissue/skin to reduce the possibility of infection, sepsis, or putrefaction...
methods to Japanese surgeons. In 1875, he helped found the Rakuzenkai, Japan’s first society for the blind, and set up lifeguard
Lifeguard
A lifeguard supervises the safety and rescue of swimmers, surfers, and other water sports participants such as in a swimming pool, water park, or beach. Lifeguards are strong swimmers and trained in first aid, certified in water rescue using a variety of aids and equipment depending on...
stations to prevent drowning in nearby canals. He halted a rabies
Rabies
Rabies is a viral disease that causes acute encephalitis in warm-blooded animals. It is zoonotic , most commonly by a bite from an infected animal. For a human, rabies is almost invariably fatal if post-exposure prophylaxis is not administered prior to the onset of severe symptoms...
epidemic that killed small children who played with infected mice
MICE
-Fiction:*Mice , alien species in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy*The Mice -Acronyms:* "Meetings, Incentives, Conferencing, Exhibitions", facilities terminology for events...
, and he helped stop the spread of cholera
Cholera
Cholera is an infection of the small intestine that is caused by the bacterium Vibrio cholerae. The main symptoms are profuse watery diarrhea and vomiting. Transmission occurs primarily by drinking or eating water or food that has been contaminated by the diarrhea of an infected person or the feces...
in Japan. He even cured a plague infecting the local fishmonger's stock of carp
Carp
Carp are various species of oily freshwater fish of the family Cyprinidae, a very large group of fish native to Europe and Asia. The cypriniformes are traditionally grouped with the Characiformes, Siluriformes and Gymnotiformes to create the superorder Ostariophysi, since these groups have certain...
. In 1880 he helped found a school for the blind. By 1882, his Tsukiji
Tsukiji
Tsukiji is a district of Chūō, Tokyo, Japan, the site of the Tsukiji fish market. Literally meaning "reclaimed land," it lies near the Sumida River on land reclaimed from Tokyo Bay in the 18th century, during the Edo period....
Hospital in Tokyo treated 15,000 patients annually. Faulds became fluent in Japanese, and in addition to his full-time work as a doctor, he wrote two books on travel in the Far East, many academic articles, and started three magazines.
Whilst accompanying a friend (American archeologist, Edward S. Morse
Edward S. Morse
Edward Sylvester Morse was an American zoologist and orientalist.-Early life:Morse was born in Portland, Maine as the son of a Congregationalist preacher. His mother, who did not share her husband's religious beliefs, encouraged her son's interest in the sciences...
) to an archaeological
Archaeology
Archaeology, or archeology , is the study of human society, primarily through the recovery and analysis of the material culture and environmental data that they have left behind, which includes artifacts, architecture, biofacts and cultural landscapes...
dig he noticed how the delicate impressions left by craftsmen could be discerned in ancient clay fragments. Examining his own fingertips and those of friends, he became convinced that the pattern of ridges was unique to each individual.
Shortly after these observations his hospital was broken into. The local police arrested a member of staff whom Faulds believed to be innocent. Determined to exonerate the man, he compared the fingerprint
Fingerprint
A fingerprint in its narrow sense is an impression left by the friction ridges of a human finger. In a wider use of the term, fingerprints are the traces of an impression from the friction ridges of any part of a human hand. A print from the foot can also leave an impression of friction ridges...
s left behind at the crime scene to those of the suspect and found them to be different. On the strength of this evidence the police agreed to release the suspect.
In an attempt to promote the idea of fingerprint identification he sought the help of the noted naturalist
Natural history
Natural history is the scientific research of plants or animals, leaning more towards observational rather than experimental methods of study, and encompasses more research published in magazines than in academic journals. Grouped among the natural sciences, natural history is the systematic study...
Charles Darwin
Charles Darwin
Charles Robert Darwin FRS was an English naturalist. He established that all species of life have descended over time from common ancestry, and proposed the scientific theory that this branching pattern of evolution resulted from a process that he called natural selection.He published his theory...
. Darwin declined to work on the idea, but passed it on to his relative Francis Galton
Francis Galton
Sir Francis Galton /ˈfrɑːnsɪs ˈgɔːltn̩/ FRS , cousin of Douglas Strutt Galton, half-cousin of Charles Darwin, was an English Victorian polymath: anthropologist, eugenicist, tropical explorer, geographer, inventor, meteorologist, proto-geneticist, psychometrician, and statistician...
, who forwarded it to the Anthropological Society of London
Anthropological Society of London
The Anthropological Society of London was founded in 1863 by Richard Francis Burton and Dr. James Hunt. It broke away from the existing Ethnological Society of London, founded in 1843, and defined itself in opposition to the older society...
. When Galton returned to the topic some eight years later, he paid little attention to Faulds' letter. As a result of this interchange some controversy has arisen about the inventor of modern forensic fingerprinting. However, there can be no doubt that Faulds' first paper on the subject was published in the scientific journal Nature
Nature (journal)
Nature, first published on 4 November 1869, is ranked the world's most cited interdisciplinary scientific journal by the Science Edition of the 2010 Journal Citation Reports...
in 1880; all parties conceded this.
The following month Sir William Herschel
William James Herschel
Sir William James Herschel, 2nd Baronet was a British officer in India who used fingerprints for identification on contracts. He was born in Slough in Buckinghamshire , a son of the astronomer, John Herschel...
, a British
United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland was the formal name of the United Kingdom during the period when what is now the Republic of Ireland formed a part of it....
civil servant based in India, wrote to Nature saying that he had been using fingerprints (as a form of bar code) to identify criminals since 1860. However, Herschel did not mention their potential for forensic use. Over the years, Faulds conducted a bitter controversy with Herschel over the use of fingerprints, demanding proof in 1894 that Herschel had ever used fingerprints officially, which Herschel duly provided, and then writing a series of books and pamphlets many years later containing variations of the argument that he had been cheated his due credit (see for complete facsimiles of these and other fundamental works on fingerprinting, and the Herschel/Faulds letters). These books were published from 1905 onward, long after fingerprinting had come into widespread use.
Return to Britain
Returning to Britain in 1886, after a quarrel with the missionary society which ran his hospital in Japan, Faulds offered the concept of fingerprint identification to Scotland YardScotland Yard
Scotland Yard is a metonym for the headquarters of the Metropolitan Police Service of London, UK. It derives from the location of the original Metropolitan Police headquarters at 4 Whitehall Place, which had a rear entrance on a street called Great Scotland Yard. The Scotland Yard entrance became...
but he was dismissed, most likely because he did not present the extensive evidence required to show that prints are durable, unique and practically classifiable. Subsequently, Faulds returned to the life of a police surgeon
Surgery
Surgery is an ancient medical specialty that uses operative manual and instrumental techniques on a patient to investigate and/or treat a pathological condition such as disease or injury, or to help improve bodily function or appearance.An act of performing surgery may be called a surgical...
, at first in London, and then in the Stoke-on-Trent
Stoke-on-Trent
Stoke-on-Trent , also called The Potteries is a city in Staffordshire, England, which forms a linear conurbation almost 12 miles long, with an area of . Together with the Borough of Newcastle-under-Lyme Stoke forms The Potteries Urban Area...
town of Fenton. In 1922 he sold his practice and moved to nearby Wolstanton
Wolstanton
Wolstanton is a suburban area on the outskirts of Newcastle-under-Lyme, Staffordshire.-History:Historically, Wolstanton was a place in its own right. It is mentioned in the Domesday book where it is listed amongst the lands belonging to the King. The land consisted of work for 2 ploughs, 14...
where he died in March 1930 aged 86, bitter at the lack of recognition he had received for his work. In 2007 a plaque acknowledging Faulds' work was put in place at the head offices of Castle Comfort Stairlifts
Castle Comfort Stairlifts
Castle Comfort Stairlifts is a North Staffordshire based organisation serving the disability sector.-Formation:Founded in 1997 by Keith Robert Simpson, the aim of the company was twofold: to provide orthopaedic chairs, adjustable beds, wheelchairs and stairlifts to elderly and disabled people, and...
near to Wolstanton's St Margaret's churchyard where his grave can be seen.