Sherlock Holmes the Forensic Pioneer

Nowadays, when we think about forensics, there are many fascinating ways to get clues for crime scene investigations. Fingerprints, ballistic, blood splatters, hair and fiber analysis and many more. All these are invented and developed over time. There were so many cold cases, unsolved crimes, murderers who got away before DNA. These forensics developments take time and serious dedication.

But do you know that some of those forensic methods were pioneered by a fictional character?

Not an ordinary fictional character, but the great Sherlock Holmes, whose stories have inspired countless adaptations, products and honors. His name had been embedded in history.

Sherlock Holmes was the pioneer in typewritten analysis; he analyzed the idiosyncrasies of the typewritten notes of his suspect and compared them with evidences. It was as early as 1891 (A Case of Identity), and it took forty years, FORTY YEARS, for the FBI to pick up the method and start its document analysis section in 1932. Holmes himself wrote monograph titles "The Typewriter and its Relation to Crime."

The other more famous method he pioneered was fingerprint.

One of his famous tales is The Sign of Four, published in 1890. The Scotland yard only started using fingerprint identification methods in 1901, a decade after.

Before that, a method called anthropometry or Bertillonage was used. Bertillonage is the system of identification by measuring twelve characteristics of the body; it was a meticulous measurement of, for example, head length, head breadth, length of the middle finger, etc. 

It was fine until we arrived at the infamous and bizarre Will West Case.

Get this, two inmates, named William West and Will West, were admitted into the same Leavenworth Penitentiary. When Will West arrived, and his measurements were taken, it matched him to the record of a convicted murderer, William West.

So, they caught a murderer! But the problem was, William West was already incarcerated at Leavenworth. The two men had similar initial and last names, and they looked so identical even Will West thought the photograph of William West was his own photograph.

Subsequently, their fingerprints were compared, and the patterns bore no resemblance. Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of Holmes, still used fingerprint method decades later in his 55th and 56th stories, The Adventure of the Three Gales and The adventure of the Norwood Builder. Doyle chose the method with the soundest scientific future, and for many years, the two methods competed for forensic ascendancy. The only method of Bertillonage still in use today is mug shot.