This Day in History, 28 July 1858: The Handprint That Became a Global Standard of Identity

Long before fingerprints unlocked smartphones or were used as one of the methods of identification, they served a far simpler purpose: keeping a promise. On 28 July 1858, in colonial Bengal, a local contractor pressed his inked hand onto a contract. This would become the first instance of modern fingerprint identification.Sir William James Herschel, an officer of the East India Company, was posted to Bengal in 1853. Herschel became a member of the Indian Civil Service after the Mutiny of 1857 and was posted to Jungipoor (now known as Jangipur, in Murshidabad district) in Bengal (present-day West Bengal). As an Assistant under the colonial government, Herschel was dealing with a local contractor called Rajyadhar Konai of the village of Nistā,

who supplied road-building material. He asked Konai to press his inked hand onto the back of the contract.

In the book The Origin of Finger-Printing, William James Herschel wrote, "He was about to sign it in the usual way, at the upper right-hand corner, when I stopped him in order to read it myself; and it then occurred to me to try an experiment by taking the stamp of his hand, by way of signature instead of writing. There was nothing very original about that, as an idea. Many must have heard of some such use of a man's hand; and the correspondence that has taken place has brought to light old instances of the hand, or the nail of a finger, or the teeth in one's mouth, being used to certify a man's act, or a woman's."Read More: 'The Nizams Were More Than Just Wealthy Rulers Sitting on Diamonds and Jewels': Mir Osman Ali Khan's Great-Grandson Azam Jah on Legacy and HyderabadFor Herschel, it was done with the purpose of frightening Konai so that he would not back out of the agreement or deny his signature. The distinctive hand impression was meant as a safeguard against fraud and contract disputes, a common challenge in colonial administration."He, of course, had never dreamt of such an attestation, but fell in readily enough. I dabbed his palm and fingers over with the home-made oil-ink used for my official seal, and pressed the whole hand on the back of the contract, and we studied it together, with a good deal of chaff about palmistry, comparing his palm with mine on another impression," wrote Herschel.He was so impressed by the experiment that he made Konai attest another document in a similar manner."One of these contracts I gave to Sir Francis (then Mr.) Galton for his celebrated paper read before the Royal Society, November 1890, to which body he presented it; the other lies before me now," he wrote.One of the advantages of using fingerprinting was that the person who had signed the document could not disown the signature. It came across as an unusual administrative requirement, but it would end up becoming one of the most widely used and practical methods of personal identification.

Over the following years, Herschel also started noticing the advantages of using fingerprinting. The ridge patterns on people's hands and fingers did not appear to change over time. Convinced of their permanence and the fact that every individual has a distinctive fingerprint, he started using them to prevent impersonation and fraudulent claims. Handprints and fingerprints were collected from government employees, pensioners and prisoners. His records, maintained over decades, showed that fingerprints remained consistent throughout a person's life.To prove that fingerprint patterns remained unchanged over time, Herschel conducted an experiment that stretched across decades. After being posted to Arrah in present-day Bihar in 1859, he began collecting fingerprints from himself, British colleagues and Indians from different walks of life. Looking back, he recalled that he took so many impressions that his "'fad' about them was well known." He preserved these records and later compared them with fresh impressions taken years later. One of the most significant comparisons involved Dr R. F. Hutchinson, whose fingerprints were taken again after 21 years and then after 31 years. The prints matched, strengthening Herschel's belief that fingerprint patterns remained permanent throughout life. He also compared his own handprints and footprints taken 57 years apart, writing that they "agree irresistibly with prints taken now after an interval of fifty-seven years", providing some of the earliest evidence for the permanence of fingerprints.Historically, fingerprints were used in China and Babylon to seal documents and authenticate transactions, but Herschel's work turned the practice into a sustained administrative model. It used fingerprints as a systematic method of identifying individuals within a modern administrative system.Eventually researchers such as Henry Faulds, Francis Galton and Edward Henry, built on these observations. They transformed fingerprinting into a scientific tool for criminal investigation and forensic identification.India also played a key role in refining fingerprint science. During the 1890s, the Bengal Police developed a practical classification system that allowed fingerprints to be organised and searched efficiently. This was adopted by police forces around th world. Today in a modern, tech-driven world, fingerprints remain one of the most reliable forms of biometric identification. Used in law enforcement, border control, smartphones and digital security, they have come a long way from being a simple experiment to invoke fear to becoming a global standard of identity.