ABSTRACT
Religion was of great importance to Henry Faulds. Faulds received a letter of appointment from the United Presbyterian Church of Scotland to found a medical mission in Japan. He began to study the fingerprints of his students and concluded that fingerprints had to be unique to each individual and could, therefore, be used for identification. There were two instances when Faulds used fingerprinting for identification, a technique known as dactylography, to assist in solving crime. The first was when his hospital in Tokyo was burgled and a close friend and colleague became a key suspect. The second involved tracing the fingerprints on a bottle of surgical alcohol to one of his employees who had been siphoning the hospital supply. In 1855, Faulds repeatedly entreated Scotland Yard to set up a fingerprint bureau which he even offered to pay for himself.
