Edward Henry
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Sir Edward Henry CSI KPM | |
---|---|
Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis | |
In office 1903 – 31 August 1918 | |
Monarch | Edward VII George V |
Prime Minister | Arthur Balfour Henry Campbell-Bannerman H. H. Asquith David Lloyd George |
Preceded by | Edward Bradford |
Succeeded by | Nevil Macready |
Assistant Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis (Crime) | |
In office 1901–1903 | |
Personal details | |
Born | Edward Richard Henry 26 July 1850 Shadwell, London, England |
Died | 19 February 1931 Cissbury, Ascot, Berkshire, England | (aged 80)
Sir Edward Richard Henry, 1st Baronet,
Early life
Henry was born in
In September 1873 Edward Henry set sail for India. He arrived in Bombay and travelled across India arriving at Allahabad on 22 October 1873 to take up the position of Assistant Magistrate Collector within the Bengal Taxation Service. He became fluent in
Inspector-General of Police
On 2 April 1891, Henry was appointed
The taking of fingerprints and
Between July 1896 and February 1897, with the assistance of
In 1897, the Government of India published Henry's monograph, Classification and Uses of Fingerprints. The Henry Classification System quickly caught on with other police forces, and in July 1897 Victor Bruce, 9th Earl of Elgin, the Governor-General of India, decreed that fingerprinting should be made an official policy of the British Raj. This classification system was developed to facilitate orderly storage and faster search of fingerprint cards, called ten print cards. It was used when the ten print cards were catalogued and searched manually and not digitally. Each ten print card was tagged with attributes that can vary from 1/1 to 32/32. In 1899, the use of fingerprint experts in court was recognised by the Indian Evidence Act.
In 1900, Henry was seconded to South Africa to organise the
Metropolitan Police
Assistant Commissioner (Crime)
In 1901, Henry was recalled to Britain to take up the office of
Henry introduced other innovations as well. He bought the first
Appointment as Commissioner
On Sir Edward Bradford's retirement in 1903, Henry was appointed Commissioner, which had always been the Home Office's plan. Henry is generally regarded as one of the great Commissioners.[by whom?] He was responsible for dragging the Metropolitan Police into the modern day, and away from the class-ridden Victorian era. However, as Commissioner, he began to lose touch with his men, as others before him had done.
He continued with his technological innovations, installing telephones in all divisional stations and standardising the use of police boxes, which Bradford had introduced as an experiment but never expanded upon. He also soon increased the strength of the force by 1,600 men and introduced the first proper training for new constables.
Attempted assassination
On Wednesday 27 November 1912, while at his home in
Sir Edward appeared at court and followed a humane tradition of pleading for leniency for his attacker, stating that Bowes had wanted to better himself and earn a living to improve the lot of his widowed mother. Bowes was sentenced to 15 years' penal servitude, but Sir Edward maintained an interest in his fate, and eventually paid for his passage to Canada for a fresh start when Bowes was released from prison in 1922. Sir Edward never really recovered from the ordeal, and the pain of the bullet wound recurred for the rest of his life.
Final years
Henry would have retired in 1914, but the outbreak of the First World War convinced him to remain in office, as his designated successor, General Sir
Later life
In 1920 he and his family retired to Cissbury, near
His grave lay unattended for many years. In April 1992, it was located in the cemetery adjoining All Souls Church, South Ascot by Metropolitan Police fingerprint expert Maurice Garvie & his wife Janis. After a presentation by Garvie to the Fingerprint Society on Henry's life and times, the Society agreed to the funding and restoration of the grave, a project completed in 1994. At Garvie's suggestion, a green plaque was unveiled on Sir Edward's retirement home 'Cissbury' by Berkshire County Council in 2000 and a blue plaque on his former London home, 19 Sheffield Terrace, Kensington, W.8 by English Heritage in 2001, the latter marking the centenary of the Metropolitan Police Fingerprint Bureau.
Honours
In 1898, he was made a Companion of the Star of India (CSI).[5] In 1905, Henry was made a Commander of the Royal Victorian Order (CVO)[6] and the following year was knighted as a Knight Commander of the Royal Victorian Order (KCVO).[7] In 1910 he was made Knight Commander of the Bath (KCB).[8]
In 1911, he was created a Knight Grand Cross of the Royal Victorian Order (GCVO)
Footnotes
- Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
- PMID 11435664. Retrieved 2 August 2014.
- ^ "The forgotten Indian pioneers of fingerprint science", by J. S. Sodhi and Jasjeed Kaur, Current Science 2005, 88(1):185–191
- ISBN 0786885289.
- ^ "No. 26969". The London Gazette (Supplement). 21 May 1898. p. 3230.
- ^ "No. 27811". The London Gazette (Supplement). 30 June 1905. p. 4550.
- ^ "No. 27926". The London Gazette (Supplement). 29 June 1906. p. 4462.
- ^ "No. 28388". The London Gazette (Supplement to the London Gazette Extraordinary). 24 June 1910. p. 4476.
- ^ "No. 28505". The London Gazette (Supplement). 19 June 1911. p. 4595.
- ^ "No. 28306". The London Gazette. 9 November 1909. p. 8243.
- ^ "No. 31032". The London Gazette. 26 November 1918. p. 13916.
References
- The Times Digital Archive
- Biography, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
- Martin Fido & Keith Skinner, The Official Encyclopedia of Scotland Yard (Virgin Books, London:1999)