From: clough@texas.net   
      
   Russell Watson wrote:   
      
   > Didn't Scotland Yard try to use fingerprint evidence to discover the   
   > identity of Jack the Ripper in 1888, but were thwarted because he   
   > apparently wore gloves all the time? I seem to remember that, but it's   
   > hard to separate what really occurred from the various fictitious   
   > portrayals from down through the years with going back and re-reading   
   > the actual case history to cut through the BS.   
   > '97 FLSTF   
   > To reply by e-mail, remove nospam from address.   
      
   No. What they did try was to photograph a victim's eyes. Some had a   
   notion that the image of the killer would remain visible in the victim's   
   eyes as the last thing the victim saw.   
      
   As a crime, scene tool, fingerprints didn't really come into their own   
   in Britain until 1905 in a case in which a patent print (a visible print   
   needing no development to be seen) was left on a cash box. Prior to   
   that, there had been no prosecution in which a fingerprint was the   
   foundation of the Crown case. Even after the value of print evidence was   
   recognized in the courts, the work was vested in the photo department at   
   Scotland Yard, since it had yet to be established that anything but the   
   actual latent print or a photograph of a latent print was reliable   
   evidence. Galton, who developed the classificatin system, had initially   
   thought fingerprints might be inherited. He was interested in   
   identifying people from superior blood lines. Only when he discounted   
   that theory did he work with them as a tool to identify people in the   
   days before everyone was well-documented.   
      
   There have been modern attempts to identify Jack's fingerprints from the   
   many letters he sent to the police. (Techniques for developing latent   
   prints on paper were far in the future when the case was active.) There   
   have also been attempts to secure DNA evidence from the same sources.   
      
   --   
                          Gerald Clough   
                         clough@texas.net   
   "Nothing has any value, unless you know you can give it up."   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)