The merits of putting Henry Faulds on a Pumpkin

[Boyd Baumgartner]

fauldspumpkin.jpg

[Ann Horsman]

Neato! Did you carve it?

[Boyd Baumgartner]

No, I didn't carve it. Let's just say that I got a lot out of George Reis' book "Photoshop CS3 for Forensics Professionals"

[Gerald Clough]

Somehow, not as appetizing as the traditional baked goods...

[sharon cook]

Is it real or is it Photoshopped? You know the old saying, "Believe half of what you see and none of what you hear"? Well, they didn't know about Photoshop, did they? If it's real...COOO-UL!

[Pat A. Wertheim]

If Faulds was a punkin' head, what did that make Galton? (Come on, Boyd, show us!)

[Boyd Baumgartner]

GS.jpg

[Pat A. Wertheim]

DOOH!!!

[antonroland]

I get the idea that Sir Francis is not liked by all

[Pat A. Wertheim]

I get the idea that Sir Francis is not liked by all

Henry Faulds speculated on the individuality of fingerprints, and on the possibility of developing marks at scenes of crimes that could be identified to the criminals. He approached Charles Darwin with his ideas and sought Darwin's advice. Darwin was busy working on his theory of evolution and passed on Faulds' ideas to his (Darwin's) cousin, Francis Galton. Galton combined Darwin's theory with Faulds' ideas and developed his own bizarre hypothesis -- Galton believed fingerprints could be used by eugenicists to select the best breeding stock for developing a superior strain of humans. There are those who doubt that Galton ever fully comprehended the concepts that we use today for personal identification. But Galton was an English aristocrat and Faulds was a Scottish commoner. Galton could publish and his work would gain immediate acceptance. Faulds, by virtue of his birth, could never enjoy such credibility. Galton's ideas on eugenics have been largely forgotten and his contribution to modern fingerprint useage has been cleansed by history. Faulds deserves credit for the idea that lead to our science, not Galton.

[Gerald Clough]

On the other hand, Galton gets spattered with bile in retrospect for pursuing a line of inquiry that, for many reasons, seemed reasonable at the time and amenable to application of emerging knowledge, certainly not bizarre, given the breadth of speculations of implications spun around Darwin's work. Along the way, he established the basis for even the current attempts to quantify issues that become increasingly important and made him rather the go-to guy for research supporting Fauld's correct conclusions and practical demonstration of how fingerprints could be used in criminal matters. His social status meant he had the opportunities to acquire a broad education and the leisure to apply it. It's remarkable that he carried out his inquiries to the point of developing means of researching so many different aspects of issues and doing far more than merely pushing prospective conclusions by the weight of his standing. Social position ultimately had a lot to do with credibility, but Galton's credibility was far from entirely on account of his class. Nor was Fauld's credibility with regard to practical application entirely due to his class. We could not reasonably denigrate Faulds because he was busy making a living as he made astute observations and proposed practical applications or that he wasn't the shear intellectual equal of Galton, but nothing diminishes Galton - not the fact that he didn't spontaneously focus on identification nor for not concluding eugenics was a false trail or that it would one day fall so far on the negative side of social issues that were beginning to be explored. Nor is Fauld's credit for observation and insight reduced by his wrangling with Herschel over the petty issue of who made first official use of fingerprints or his bitterness over lack of social or monetary payday for it.

[antonroland]

Gerald

I have always liked the balanced and well considered arguments you pose (even here) but I must admit to siding with Pat on this one.

It is indeed also a pity that Fauld turned out to be the bitter disillusioned man he is said to have been but at least Galton also got what he had coming thanks to Henry who worked Galton over in turn.

We could nearly turn some of this into a soapie mind you

[Charles Parker]

antonroland said

at least Galton also got what he had coming thanks to Henry who worked Galton over in turn.

Anton, what did Henry do to work Galton over?

[Gerald Clough]

I can't imagine. Henry made it into he Athenaeum Club well before Galton, of Darwin, for that matter, and was dead before either was inducted. Unless it means that Henry got his name more firmly attached to practical fingerprint work than did Galton.

The whole argument over the roles of the players, Herschel, Henry, Galton, and Faulds, is peculiar for drawing partisan supporters, then and now. They all played roles. Faulds made some remarkable observations, recognizing that fingerprints on pottery suggested one potter had left his impressions on many pieces, something that's now being used with good effect to deduce trade patterns from examinations of fingerprints on ancient pottery found in different areas. At least one of his "cases" was misunderstood early and later corrected by him to explain that the comparison was made by hand shape, not fingerprint patterns, the mark having none. Faulds himself, writing in his later years for publication (see 1911 article in Scientific American), explains the intent of his letter to Darwin, the one Darwin passed to Galton. His intent was that Darwin help him obtain prints of other primates to help in settling questions of man's descent, nothing more. It no doubt struck him as potentially important evidence through which he would make a contribution to Darwin's field. It shows an active interest in Darwin's ideas, not unexpected in someone who was clearly possessed of an active mind.

Faulds' lack of success in exciting the police about fingerprints is entirely understandable, with no need to cite relative social status. His proposal could not but be something like the idea of ear prints put forth today. Lack of science, making it unlikely it would pass legal muster. (Tunbridge specifically told Faulds fingerprints would likely require new legislation.) In that same article, Faulds says that when he wrote to Darwin he had found no biological or anatomical literature on the subject. But Perkinje had described friction ridges in 1823 as an anatomical feature. Faulds, being an intelligent observer but not a member of the scientific community would have no way of knowing this. And being neither a formal scientist nor a legal practitioner, he would not have been aware of what was required, even then, to bring fingerprints into the justice system. The ear print idea has met no better success. With this perspective, it may well have seemed to Faulds that Tunbridge was merely making excuses.

When you read their own words, no matter what one may think of Galton otherwise, Faulds demonstrated a bitter small-mindedness when he pretended to recount the history of the progress of fingerprints from notion to legal evidence. His only mentions of Galton are to cite 1888 as the year Galton began his researches and to quote Darwin's reply to his letter to put the smoking gun in Galton's hand.

One cannot take Faulds out of the development of fingerprints as a criminal justice tool. It had to be a factor in Galton's interest. Not just the letter passing through Galton's hand. It's return to him by the Royal Society, which apparently surprised him, since he had nearly forgotten it, would have helped bring the idea to mind. There's a fashion in casting Faulds as a poor victim, which by implication makes others the villains. It's easy to think of him as the fingerprint pioneer who was so denied credit that no memorial was, until recently, maintained. But Henry was never denied as a major player, and his grave went untended until the Society acted in the 1990's. No one can be credited with "inventing" fingerprinting. It's not even an interesting plot to deny credit, except in the minds of inventive authors. And, of course, in the mind of poor Faulds. There have been enough issues raised about Beavans' account to at least reserve judgment.

[antonroland]

It has been a while since last I read the books I am now referring to but having read Colin Beavan's book, Cole's Suspect identities and a few others, I got the idea that when Henry finally proposed the idea to implement fingerprints at Scotland Yard, Lady Francis was waiting in the wings on Henry to give all credit as yet another accomplishment of the dandy old FRS.

This did not happen. Henry got his post and recognition for "his" great work and Lady Francis felt cheated...Must admit to this being heavily fueled by personal opinion but I quite frankly don't have much regard for either Galton or Henry.

Henry also worked over Inzamaam ul-Haque and Mahem Chandra Bose in claiming that their work came to him in a great flash of inspiration at night whilst en-route on a train in India(?)

He had no way but to write it on his sleeve in fear of forgetting...yeah right.

It was this basic primary, secondary and sub-secondary that made the "Henry" classification" system practical in the sense of it being a workable collection rather than a huge collection of useless information.

If Henry could do this to ul-Haque and Bose, why would he not do it to Galton?

Slightly O/T but relevant methinks...who was REALLY first to reach the summit of Everest? The great explorer, Sir Edmund Hillary or the lowly guide, Tensing Norkay?

Why the deafening silence on that point all these years since?

As said, I admit to being ever so slightly subjective here but I don't think I am that far off the mark.