FORGED FINGER PRINTS

Hokitika Guardian, 10 July 1924, Page 1

FORGED FINGER PRINTS

By Wilfrid Singleton in "Daily

Mail.")

"Too many of them,” said a detective io me the oilier day when examining a mass uf finger-prints left behind liv a gang ci! burglars. "Probably forged ones. Goad gang, ibis."

’l’o tlie lay mind the infallibility of the finger-print as evidence strong enough to secure a conviction lias been an established axiom for a decade or more. Those, however, uliose duty it is to investigate crime have long known of a "cininter-iilfensive" on the part of the underworld. The vast criminal organisations of the world hate long since endeavoured to destroy—and, indeed, actually did destroy for tt while the value of the

finger-print as evidence. German criminals were responsible for the new devices which were soon in common use from Birmingham to Kan Francisco. Previously . criminals ill fear of detection through fingerprints used gloves, but -even that safeguard lost its value when M. Stockis, of Liege, evolved a system by which certain impressions could still be detected even if the miscreant wore gloves.

’l’he lir.-i real success was at Lyons, where Dr l.oeard. using the Ktockis system, discovered sufficient impressions left by a burglar to obtain a conviction, although the burglar bad taken the precaution to wrap his fingers in some strips of cotton dressing. The forged finger-print, however, is of a dilfereiit category, being produced by ordinary plaster moulds ami transferred to rubber.

lint the one thing the rubber stamp cannot do is to reproduce the tiny habits of nature, and no longer can imitate the minute spots in the impression of a real finger-print left be the small sweat glands of the linger tips. Upon this fact and this alone depends the detection ol the real from the false finger-print.

This development ol eriniittal teseaivii, "poroscopy.” ’- s Hie latest aid to the detective forces ol tlie world, and those institutions like Scotland Yard and the French and Berlin police, who are aided by eminent authorities on medico-criminal matters, have long been aware of the value of this new form of investigation.

Though these -went glands are very small, needing often a 20 diameter en-lar-mmeiii to show them, the tact has now been established that they do not I'haive position through a person s lifetime. At first they were disregarded as being unstable. But continuous experiment has shown otherwise. and to-day these small marks can not onlv establish whether •> “offprint is forged but can also be utilised in the positive identification of the criminal concerned.