How Fingerprints Became a Tool for Both Science and Racial Pseudoscience

In the late 1800s and early 1900s, fingerprints were becoming an important tool for identifying people and solving crimes. By 1902, English courts had accepted fingerprints as evidence, and Scotland Yard was processing hundreds of fingerprint cards each week. Because people saw fingerprints as objective and trustworthy, writers like Arthur Conan Doyle used them in fiction. In one Sherlock Holmes story, Holmes even shows how a fingerprint could be faked.

At the same time, the scientist Francis Galton was deeply involved in studying fingerprints. Galton believed fingerprints were more than simple marks; he hoped they could reveal information about a person’s heredity, character, or even destiny. Reporters visiting his London laboratory compared him to a detective, and many reviewers of his 1892 book Finger Prints linked his work to detective fiction. This made sense, since many fields in this period were fascinated with small clues and hidden signs that might reveal someone’s true identity.

Galton wanted fingerprints to show racial differences, but the data did not support this. His own research showed that people of different races had essentially identical fingerprint patterns. Still, he tried to interpret certain prints—especially those from non-European people—as “simpler” or “characteristic,” revealing the racial biases that shaped his thinking. When he received fingerprints from India, he focused not on the prints themselves but on the “Oriental” paper and the supposed shortcomings of local methods. His comments reflected the beliefs of the British Empire, which imagined non-European people as less advanced.

Over time, fingerprints became seen mainly as identification tools, not as clues to character or race. Law enforcement took over fingerprinting from scientists, separating the method from Galton’s racial theories. Yet his work shows how ideas about science and race can become deeply connected. Today, debates about genetics and crime echo these same dangers—reminding us that scientific tools can reflect the biases of the societies that create them.

Read the full article “How Fingerprints Became a Tool for Both Science and Racial Pseudoscience” by Ava Kofman

🔭   This summary was human-edited with AI-assist.