ABSTRACT
In the United States, up to the end of the nineteenth century, there was little interest in using fingerprints to identify criminals-because there was no practical system of classification. Then, about 1881, a detective from California, Harry Morse, advised the authorities to register immigrant Chinese laborers by taking their thumbprints. Although this did not happen, the superintendent of the San Francisco Mint, Franklin Lawton, liked the idea and asked the landscape
photographer Isaiah W. Taber to start photographing laborers’ thumbs. However, by 1888, Congress had banned any more Chinese workers from entering the United States, so there was no longer any need for registration.
