An interesting footnote was seen in "Fingerprints: History, Law and Romance" by George W. Wilton (1938).
"La Preuve par les Empreintes Digitales", in Archieves d'Anthropologie, 1911, Vol. XXVI, p. 254. There is considerable confusion in fingerprint textbooks about a case in Kansas, U.S.A., known as that of "the two Wests," in which the superiority of fingerprint identification over that of Bertillonage was demonstrated. Some, including Faulds, narrate it as case over a murder charge. It seems to have concerned only the identity of two individuals. Bertillonage found no difference between them in measurements, appearance, &c. Only fingerprints solved the puzzle. See "Personal Identification," supra, p. 28.
The footnote opens with the cite to a volume in 1911 and ends with the cite to Wentworth and Wilder's work (1918). Did this West case make a published appearance in 1911?
Ernie,
The quoted 1911 article is "La preuve par les empreintes digitales dans trois affaires récentes de vol avec effraction", written by Edmond Locard. Basicly, it's an article with three latent fingerprint related case reports, promoting the use of fingerprints to identify perpetrators.
Bertillon is only mentionned for his fingerprint work in the Scheffer case and the West-case is not mentionned at all.
If anyone would want to read the article in full :
I was hoping someone with access to the 1911 citation would review the material. The footnote's placement in Wilton's work was associated with the Scheffer case and I thought it was 'interesting' that the West case, all of a sudden, showed up in a footnote. I am not surprised with your findings. Reminds me of discussions regarding the Locard 'principle' references
Simon Cole has a rather interesting explanation in his book "Suspect identities" where he makes mention of the West Brothers overlapping their stay in Leavenworth as early as 1901. He (quite rightly) asks the question why they were not "discovered" then.
There is also a discrepancy of R.W. as opposed to M.W. McClaughry. I used to know more about it but haven't read up on this for some time...
Cole makes a further good point when he mentions that Bertillonage was used in Leavenworth up until 1918 or 1919 and so this sudden death of Bertillonage is indeed open to question. Will make a point of looking into that 1911 article.
Thing is, 15-16 years is a rather long time for something to remain in practice if there is more than creation fable to the popular West Brothers story.
Let's face it folks, we all work for government institutions of some form...what ever changed fast for good or bad?
Make a difference day by day, case by case. If you don't make a difference you don't count.
For the record, in doing research for an upcoming IAI presentation, I acquired James Frye's Leavenworth Prison records from the National Archives and Records Administration. Frye was tranferred to Leavenworth on February 1st, 1924 and I was surprised to find that his Bertillon measurements were taken and recorded at that time. So, it appears that fingerprints still hadn't delivered the 'knock-out' blow as of 1924.
Not at all. I'll 'attempt' to attach the scanned images and hope that it works... By the way, these images are part of our IAI presentation so if you'd like to see more then please join us for our presentation on Monday afternoon (3p - 4p), titled A Historical Perspective of the Origins of Frye, the Federal Rules of Evidence and Daubert.
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Time to bring this up again, I guess. I was researching Bertillon use in California for an upcoming article in "The California Identification Digest" and somehow ventured to the East Coast. Came across an article from the Sunday Magazine for December 1, 1907 (New York Tribune) written by Harry H. Seckler and titled "The Telltale Fingers." Harry writes: "The Bertillon method is not perfect, as was recently proved at the United States penitentiary on the Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, military reservation. A yound Negro arrived at the prison and was being measured in the room of the record clerk. His features seemed familiar to M W McClaughry, the expert who asked the man whether he had been a former inmate." The story then goes on to say that the measurements of Will West and William West were almost the same.
I don't know if Seckler was a regular Tribune reporter, a feature writer, or what. But the date of December 1, 1907 makes this one of the earliest references to the West case.
Harry H. Seckler retired as Business Manager of the Leavenworth Times and was writing articles for the local historical society in 1946 and his historical articles were still appearing in The Times as late as 1952.
"Nothing has any value, unless you know you can give it up."
