Making Its Mark
After the flaws of anthropometry surfaced, M. McClaughry, the record keeper at Leavenworth Penitentiary, turned to Sergeant John Ferrier in 1904, who aided him in adopting fingerprinting at Leavenworth.
However, it wasn't until the 1911 case of People vs. Jennings that
fingerprinting became admissible for criminal identification, leading to its use
by detective William Burns and the establishment of the FBI Identification
Division.
"The grave defect in the Bertillon system is its reliance upon a system of measurements--a defect that does not exist...in the more accurate system of taking prints."
-Medical Journal, "Traced by Fingerprints" (February 17, 1900)
Photo and caption from Stephanie Watson's "How Fingerprinting Works" (2008).
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Video from a personal interview with former HPD Detective Gary Dias about fingerprinting's non-bias tendencies (2013).
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Photo and caption from Henry Gray's Anatomy: Descriptive and Applied (1913).
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