THE FINGER-PRINT SYSTEM.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 10045, 16 May 1910, Page 4

THE FINGER-PRINT SYSTEM.

It is becoming very apparent that no burelar can hope to achieve anything like success or to en j .y a long career unless he is studious'y careful in the matter of wearing gloves, and even gloves leave tell-tale marks to some extent. Perhaps in the course of time burglars' patent gloves will be itvented, and enterprising men of business may yet advertise ''special variety in burglars 1, makes." Speaking seriously, however, the finger-print system ia really * marvellously accurate method of detecting criminals. In a burglary case heard the other day in Wellington, Mr Edwin Dinnie, of the finger-print branch, produced a lemonade bottle, bearing three finger-marks, two of which had been photographed. The prints on the bottle were found to be identical wth the left fore-finger and left middle-finger impressions made by accused after his arrest. A scar on one of the fingers had been found to be quite distinctly marked on the bottie. He had marked only 29 plainly discernible points of resemblance, and the "odds," worked out. were 185 million billion chances to one of there being |any mistake about the identity. If he were given 100,000 prints, and asked to pick out one corresponding to, say, that of the accused, 90 per cent, of them could be passed over in five minutes, and the remainder could be examined and classified in a quarter of an hour. It was possible to classify the prints almost at a glance, and there was little chance of a mistake occurring. It is understood that finger-print evidence will be relied upon to a considerable extent by the prosecution in a sensational trial to be heard shortly.