On this day, March 27, 1905, fingerprint evidence is used for the first time to solve a murder case.
The bludgeoned bodies of London shopkeepers Thomas and Ann Farrow were found by a worker. Scotland Yard investigator Melville Macnaughten, best known for a major 1894 report on Jack the Ripper, noticed a greasy smudge on the inside of the cash box. Three years earlier, an English court had admitted fingerprint evidence in a theft case.
The cash box print didn’t match any of the tiny file of criminal prints at Scotland Yard. But a milkman reported seeing two young men, later identified as Alfred and Albert Stratton, near the Farrow house on the fateful morning.
Alfred’s right thumb was a perfect match for the print on the Farrows’ cash box. When the milkman couldn’t positively identify the brothers at the trial, the fingerprint became the prosecution’s only solid evidence. The Stratton brothers were convicted, and hung on May 23, 1905, in the case that gave birth to forensic science.
