A Strange case of Will West: Turning Point of Personal identification from Anthropology to Fingerprint Analysis
Photo from the Collection of the National Law Enforcement Museum, Washington, D.C. (1960). At the turn of the 20th century, investigators had tinkered with fingerprinting, but the technique was not widely used. The FBI Investigators relied on the much-trusted Bertillon system, which "measured dozens of features of a criminal's face and body and recorded the series of precise numbers on a large card along with a photograph. That system, which had been used by investigators following its initial implementation in 1882 in Paris, met its match -- so to speak -- when convicted criminal Will West was marched into Leavenworth federal prison in Kansas in 1903. "From the Bertillon measurements thus obtained, [the record keeper] went to the file, and returned with the card the measurements called for, properly filled out...and bearing the name, “William West.” This card was shown to the prisoner, who grinned in amazement, and said, “That’s my picture, but I don’t know wh