Facts About Fingerprints
Unique fingerprint ridges are fully formed on a foetus by six months, and even the prints of identical twins will differ. The ridges are caused by the position of the foetus, the way it moves, the density of amniotic fluid and the way it swirls about.
We tend to think of the use of fingerprints as a nineteenth-century phenomenon, but there’s archaeological evidence that more than 2,000 years ago, ancient Babylonians used fingerprints for signing contracts. In modern times, they were used by Sir William Herschel in India in 1858. In the UK, burglar Harry Jackson was the first person to be convicted via fingerprint evidence in 1902.
In 1932, the American criminal John Dillinger used caustic soda to attempt to burn away his finger ridges, but once the damage had healed, the ridge detail began to grow back. However, a bricklayer or dishwasher (who doesn’t use gloves), may begin to erode the detail in their finger ridges over time.
Secretion from pores in finger ridges also contains DNA, and latent fingerprints can be found on the inside of latex gloves, for example.
Prints can be taken from corpses, even when the skin has started to slip as decomposition sets in. To be able to take a set of prints, the person performing the post mortem may slip their hand inside the loose skin in order to be able to apply pressure to an ink pad/digital pad – a scene you’ll find in DEAD WATER.
