In the mid-19th century, Sir William James Herschel, a British officer in colonial India, made the first practical use of fingerprints in modern times. In July 1858, while serving as a magistrate in Bengal, Herschel had a local man, Rajyadhar Konai, imprint his palm on a contract as a signature substitute. This was initially done to discourage fraud (the belief being that the man would be too frightened to repudiate a contract marked with his own handprint) rather than as a scientific identification method. The effectiveness of this practice prompted Herschel to continue it – he began routinely collecting handprints and fingerprints on documents. Over the next two decades, Herschel amassed a considerable fingerprint collection and noticed that an individual’s prints did not change over time. By 1877, as a district administrator in Hooghly, near Calcutta, he officially introduced fingerprint recording for prisoners, pensioners, and others under his authority. In his famous “Hooghly Letter” of August 1877, Herschel advocated extending fingerprint use, citing the permanence and uniqueness of friction ridge patterns as a reliable means of identification. Herschel later demonstrated this permanence by publishing prints of his own hand taken over a span of nearly 60 years, which showed the same ridge details. His pioneering efforts in India marked the first systematic use of fingerprints by a European administrator, though at the time his work was not widely known outside of India.
Sources:
The fingerprint sourcebook
