Henry Faulds
Henry Faulds (1 June 1843 – 24 March 1930) was a Scottish doctor, missionary and scientist who is noted for the development of fingerprinting.
Early life
Faulds was born in
Following graduation, Faulds then became a medical
On 23 July 1873, he received a letter of appointment from the
Life in Japan
Faulds established the first English speaking mission in Japan in 1874, with a hospital and a teaching facility for Japanese medical students. He helped introduce
Whilst accompanying a friend (American archaeologist, Edward S. Morse) to an archaeological 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 fingerprints 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
The following month Sir
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 Yard 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, at first in London, and then in the Stoke-on-Trent town of Fenton. In 1922 he sold his practice and moved to James Street in nearby Wolstanton, 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 unveiled at Bank House,[2] near to Wolstanton's St Margaret's churchyard where his grave can be seen. In 2011, a plaque was unveiled at his former James Street residence.[3] On 12 November 2004 a memorial was dedicated to his memory in Beith town centre close to the site of the house in New Street where he was born.[4]
Legacy
The method of identifying criminals by their fingerprints had been introduced in the 1860s by Sir William James Herschel in India, and their potential use in forensic work was first proposed by in 1880. Galton, following the idea written by Faulds, which he failed to credit, was the first to place the study on a scientific footing, which assisted its acceptance by the courts.
His clinic in Tokyo was bought by Ludolph Teusler and became St. Luke's International Hospital.
References
- ^ Historic Works on Fingerprints. galton.org
- ^ "Fingerprinting in detection" (PDF). Strathclyde University. Archived from the original (PDF) on 13 November 2013. Retrieved 16 September 2013.
- ^ "Dr Henry Faulds". Midlands Heritage. Archived from the original on 13 November 2013. Retrieved 16 September 2013.
- ^ Garnock Valley Family History Group (2015). Henry Faulds. Pioneer of Fingerprinting 1843–1930. Beith Cultural & Historical Society. p. 10.
- ISBN 0-8018-7403-3.
External links
- Francis Galton's complete works on fingerprints
- Overview of the Faulds/Herschel/Galton controversy with extensive primary materials
- The Faulds Memorial in Japan Archived 7 February 2021 at the Wayback Machine
- The Faulds Memorial in Scotland
- Papers relating to Henry Faulds
- Works by Henry Faulds at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)