Colin Beavan - Fingerprints - Murder and the Race to Uncover the Science of Identity

To my Mom and Dad

Every human being carries with him from his cradle to his grave certain physical marks which do not change their character, and by which he can always be identified—and that without shade of doubt or question. These marks are his signature, his physiological autograph, so to speak, and this autograph can not be counterfeited, nor can he disguise it or hide it away, nor can it become illegible by the wear and mutations of time. This signature is not his face—age can change that beyond recognition; it is not his hair, for that can fall out; it is not his height, for duplicates of that exist; it is not his form, for duplicates of that exist also, whereas this signature is this man’s very own—there is no duplicate of it among the swarming populations of the globe … This autograph consists of the delicate lines or corrugations with which Nature marks the insides of the hands and the soles of the feet .

—Samuel Clemens, writing as

Mark Twain, in The Tragedy of Pudd’nhead Wilson, 1894

Cover

Title Page Fingerprints Murder and the Race to Uncover the Science of Identity COLIN BEAVAN

Dedication Fingerprints Murder and the Race to Uncover the Science of Identity COLIN BEAVAN

Epigraph Fingerprints Murder and the Race to Uncover the Science of Identity COLIN BEAVAN

Chronology of Fingerprints

One: The Shocking Tragedy at Deptford

Two: To Catch a Crook

Three: Like Rats with No Rat-Catcher

Four: Marks on a Cocktail Glass

Five: In a Criminal’s Bones

Six: A Biological Coat of Arms

Seven: Britain’s Identity Crisis

Eight: The Case of the Little Blue Notebook

Nine: An Innocent in Jail

Ten: The Stratton Trial

Eleven: Verdicts

Epilogue

Source Notes

Bibliography

Index

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Copyright

About the Publisher