Francis Galton's portable finger-printing kit

Portable Fingerprint Kit

Sir Francis Galton

1892

On display in the South Cloisters of University College London.

Photograph by courtesy of the Galton Collection, UCL.

The kit, designed by Galton himself and made by T. Hawksley of Oxford Street, contains ink, a blotter, a roller, a glass slide, turpentine and record books. The records show that in the course of his experiments (not for criminal investigations!), Galton took the fingerprints of Gladstone, Herbert Spencer and others. Fingerprinting was introduced into the police force at the very end of the period, in 1901. The first conviction based on the new system was made in the following year.

Sources

Information plaque on the display case at University College London.

"London Metropolitan Police Historical Timeline." (see under "Related Publications" for a series of downloadable pdf files)

Last modified 20 October 2014