The Crime Book

214

W

hen brothers Alfred and

Albert Stratton robbed

and murdered the

husband and wife who managed

a paint shop in south London in

1905, they left something behind:

an oily fingerprint on an emptied

cash box. This evidence became

the cornerstone of the case against

them, and paved the way for further

development of fingerprint analysis.

A brutal robbery

Elderly couple Thomas and Ann

Farrow lived in an apartment above

their shop Chapman’s Oil and

Colour on Deptford High Street.

On the morning of 27 March 1905,

their assistant arrived to find

Thomas dead in the parlour with

terrible head injuries. Ann was

found unconscious in the bedroom;

she had been beaten around the

head, and died a few days later. A

tin cash box lay near her body;

after a search, police found two

masks made from stockings.

Detectives wrapped the cash

box and took it to Scotland Yard’s

Fingerprint Bureau, which had

been established four years earlier.

On examination, they determined

that the fingerprint was left by a

thumb. It was compared to the

victims’ prints, those of the police

at the crime scene, and more than

80,000 others on file at the bureau,

but there was no match.

The tipping point

The police searched for witnesses.

A milkman saw two men leaving

the shop at the time of the murders,

but he was unable to identify the

Strattons. A breakthrough came on

31 March when another witness,

Ellen Stanton, told police that she

saw the two brothers running

across the top of Deptford High

Street while she walked to work

on the morning of 27 March. The

brothers were arrested and on

31 March Stanton picked them

out of a police line-up of 16 men.

The police also interviewed

Alfred’s girlfriend, who said he had

borrowed stockings from her, and

Albert’s girlfriend, who claimed he

had arrived home that day with

unexplained money. The evidence

against the brothers was highly

circumstantial, but when their

prints were taken, Alfred’s matched

the thumb print on the cash box.

A master stroke

During the trial, the prosecution

counsel explained the new science

of fingerprinting to the jury. In his

testimony, Detective Inspector

Collins of Scotland Yard showed

an enlarged photograph of Alfred

IN CONTEXT

LOCATION

London, UK

THEME

Fingerprint evidence

BEFORE

1902 Burglar Harry Jackson is

the first man to be convicted

of a crime in the UK using

fingerprint evidence. Police

find his prints on a windowsill

in a London home that had

been robbed.

AFTER

1911 Murderer Thomas

Jennings is the first person

in the US to be convicted on

fingerprint evidence.

2014 Police in Utah solve the

1991 murder of 78-year-old

Lucille Johnson when they

match fingerprints on Lego

bricks with those of a man

who played with them as a

child while his father, John

Sansing, killed Johnson in

an adjacent room.

Until the arrest of Alfred

Stratton I had not been able to

find any fingerprints that I

tried which agreed with the

print upon the cash box.

Detective Inspector

Charles Collins

Sir Melville Leslie Macnaghten

co-led the police investigation. He had

been on the Belper Committee (1900),

which recommended that criminals’

fingerprints be taken and classified.

THE STRATTON BROTHERS

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215

See also: John Leonard Orr 48–53 ■ The Lindbergh Baby Kidnapping 178–85 ■ Colin Pitchfork 294–97

MURDER CASES

The Henry system, used in most countries today, classifies

fingerprints by four basic patterns – the arch, the loop, the whorl,

and the composite. It is named for Sir Edward Richard Henry, who

founded the Scotland Yard Fingerprint Bureau in 1901.

COMPOSITES

are a combination

of arches, loops,

and whorls.

ARCHES

produce a wave-

like pattern.

Tented arches rise

to a sharper point.

LOOPS

curve back on

themselves to

form a loop shape.

WHORLS

form circular or

spiral patterns.

Fingerprinting

Although it has been known

since 200 bce that each person’s

fingerprints are different from

every other person’s, Sir William

James Herschel, a British

magistrate in India during the

1850s, is credited with the first

systematic use of fingerprints for

identification. In 1891, English

scientist Sir Francis Galton

developed Herschel’s findings.

Galton devised an efficient

system that allowed fingerprints

to be matched against each

other. He discovered that every

person has a different pattern of

ridges and valleys on the pads

of their fingers (and on their

toes) that do not change with

time and will even grow back

in their original form if the digit

is damaged. In his classic book

Finger Prints (1892), Galton

referred to the lines, ridges, and

shapes of fingerprints as “little

worlds in themselves.”

Three types of fingerprints can

be recovered from a crime scene.

Patent prints can be made by

blood, grease, ink, or dirt, and

are easily visible to the naked

eye. Latent fingerprints are not

visible – they are impressions

secreted on a surface or an

object by sweat and oil on the

skin surface. Plastic prints,

which are visible to the naked

eye, are 3D indentations that

occur when a finger touches a

soft, malleable surface.

Although fingerprinting has

stood the test of time, since the

1990s, several court cases have

challenged their interpretation.

Tests have found a margin of

error, and there have been “false

positives” – two prints can be

similar enough to fool experts.

In 2002, a US federal judge ruled

that fingerprint witnesses can

no longer tell juries that two

prints are a “definite match”.

Fingerprinting may soon be

replaced with DNA tests.

Stratton’s thumb print alongside

the thumb smudge on the cash box,

and pointed out 11 characteristics

that agreed in the prints.

The defence counsel, Mr Rooth,

attempted to cast doubt on

fingerprinting as a scientific

technique, and on the reliability of

the work carried out by Collins’s

department. Rooth argued that the

print taken at the crime scene did

not match the one taken while

Alfred Stratton was in custody.

In a stroke of genius, Collins

offered to take the prints of a jury

member to show the court that

differing amounts of downward

pressure could account for the

deviation. The jury was convinced

by his scientific demonstration and

took less than two hours to deliver

a guilty verdict. The brothers were

later sentenced to death. It was the

first murder conviction in the UK

based on fingerprint evidence.

The high-profile media coverage

caused one drawback: criminals

became aware of the precautions

they had to take to avoid detection

by this new forensic tool. ■

The up-to-date professional

criminal now seeks to prevent

the leaving of telltale prints by

covering the fingertips with

thin india-rubber, gold-beater’s

skin, or silk finger-stalls.

The Mirror

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