Born to prosperous parents who lost their wealth when he was a young boy, Henry had to drop out of school to take up a job and fend for himself. He went to work in Glasgow as a clerk and then decided to study. He enrolled to study in the Faculty of Arts at Glasgow University from 1865-1871, where he took classes in Mathematics, Logic, Greek, Latin, and Divinity. He later graduated in medicine at the University of Strathclyde’s antecedent Anderson’s Institution before becoming a medical missionary with the church of Scotland.
In 1873, Faulds was tasked with establishing Scotland’s first medical mission in japan, where he founded and then became the surgeon superintendent of Tsukiji Hospital in Tokyo. He became fluent in Japanese, taught at the local university, and was also responsible for founding the Tokyo Institute for the Blind.
In the late 1870s, Faulds became involved in archaeological digs in Japan and noticed on shards of ancient pottery the fingerprints of its potters. It was this observation that reportedly gave him the impetus to study fingerprints further. He then gathered fingerprints from his students and began to study modern fingerprints with a scientific approach. First, along with his medical students, he shaved off the ridges on their fingers and later observed that the ridges grew back in the same patterns. He also studied the fingerprints of infants and children to check if growth affected their fingertip patterns. After conducting several experiments and examining a significant collection of fingerprints, Henry Faulds concluded that each person has a unique fingerprint and could be used to identify their owners.
In 1880 he wrote to Charles Darwin with his ideas. Darwin forwarded them to his relative, Francis Galton. Then, in October, Faulds published his first paper entitled “On the Skin-Furrows of the Hand” in ‘Nature’ magazine on fingerprints, observing that they could be used to catch criminals. It included a remarkable forecast that fingerprints from mutilated or dismembered corpses might be of forensic importance in identification.
Shortly afterward, Sir William Herschel, a British civil servant working in India, published a letter in ‘Nature .’ He explained that he had been using fingerprints to identify criminals in jail since 1860. However, he had been using fingerprints merely as a means of signature and failed to mention the potential for forensic use.
In 1886, Faulds returned to Britain and offered his fingerprinting system to Scotland Yard, who declined the offer probably because Faulds did not present the extensive evidence that proved that fingerprints are unique and durable.
Two years later, however, Galton delivered a paper to the Royal Institution, stating that Herschel had suggested forensic usage before Faulds, under the erroneous impression that his article had been the earlier of the two. This prompted a battle of letters between Faulds and Herschel that would continue until 1917 when Herschel conceded that Faulds had been the first to suggest a forensic use for fingerprints. In 1892 Francis Galton, following the idea written by Faulds, published a book on the use of fingerprints, with no mention made of Faulds’ contribution.
By 1905 fingerprint technology was well established, with recognition going to Francis Galton and William Herschel. Although Galton and Herschel agreed that Faulds was the first person to publish on the subject, Galton also remarked that his research was not sufficiently substantiated by evidence.
After his return from Japan, Faulds worked in London and then as a police surgeon in Fenton, Staffordshire. In 1922, he sold his practice and moved to James Street in nearby Wolstanton, where he died on March 24, 1930 (Aged 86), bitter at the lack of recognition he had received for his work.
Forensic Analyst by Profession. With Simplyforensic.com striving to provide a one-stop-all-in-one platform with accessible, reliable, and media-rich content related to forensic science. Education background in B.Sc.Biotechnology and Master of Science in forensic science.
