"William West Chase

INTRODUCTION:

Fingerprints have been used as a means of positively identifying people for many years.
In the year 1882 ,Alphonse Bertillion, French anthropologist, devised method of body
measurements to produce a formula used to classify individuals. Bertillion's formula involved
taking the measurements of a persons body parts, and recording these measurements on a
card. This method of classifying and identifying people became known as the Bertillion System.

The Will and William West Case may have been identical twins; their measurements
were almost exactly the same. Their fingerprints were different, as is typical in identical twins.In
1903 the new inmate named William West ,Will West Case at a Federal Prison in Leavenworth,
Kansas, The prison’s records clerk thought this man looked oddly familiar. Even though West
had never been jailed there before, prison officials were convinced that they had seen him
previously. After further questioning, the records clerk decided to dig up some older files and
sure enough, found a file from 1901 on “William West." ,“The one problem was that the
William West from the 1901 file was still in prison,” says Steven Spence, an archive specialist at
the National Archives in Kansas City. Turns out, that Will and William West were two separate
people who happened to look strikingly similar to one another.

The only way that prison officials could differentiate between the two was by using their
fingerprints.changed the way that people were classified and identified. When a man named
Will West entered the Leavenworth Prison System, in 1903, he was “booked” into the prison,
as all other inmates. His face was photographed, and his Bertillion measurements were taken.
Upon completion of this process, it was noted that another inmate, known as William West,
who was already incarcerated at Leavenworth, had the same name, Bertillion measurements,
and bore a striking resemblance to Will West. The incident called the reliability of Bertillion
measurements into question, and it was decided that a more positive means of identification
was necessary. As the Bertillion System began to decline, the use of fingerprints in identifying
and classifying individuals began to rise. After 1903,many prison systems began to use
fingerprints as the primary means of identification.

BODY OF RESEARCH
 On May 1, 1903, an African-American man named William West entered the prison at
Leavenworth in the United States. Upon entry, he went through the routine Bertillon system of
measurements. The legend of William West was popularly regarded as marking the death of
anthropometry and the triumph of fingerprinting. The identification clerks soon matched his
measurement and photograph with those of William West, a previously convicted murderer
because of the flaws of the Bertillon method, Leavenworth and prisons from around the
country began to move to the fingerprint identification model. The police were not surprised at
all by the capturing of another recidivist using the powerful anthropometric system, nor were
they surprised by West’s denial of such conviction. However, to their astonishment, another
William West, the owner of the previous record, was found to be already serving his sentence
in the same city. The two Wests looked similar and had the same anthropometric
measurements, but their fingerprints differed substantially. Therefore, claimed the pro-
fingerprinting activists, the anthropometric system was obsolete, and the age of fingerprinting
had arrived.

The realization that no two individuals have the same fingerprint could be traced back
to prehistoric time, when fingerprints were left on pottery, possibly showing authorship.
However, fingerprinting identification system was born almost simultaneously with the
anthropometric system, in the late 19th century. The challenge of the fingerprinting system lies
not in matching an individual’s fingertip with a record, but in systemizing the convoluted
patterns of fingerprints, which compared to the quantitative records of the anthropometric
system, was much harder to classify.Fingerprinting presented human identity instead in an
abstract but more objective form. It is a “universal language” unaffected by the variations in
measurement or human subjectivity.

The uniqueness of human identity, condensed into the abstract pattern on the skin of
fingertips, now seems to circumvent racial categorization and achieve a universal nature. The
Bertillon system, with its meticulous measurements and special photographs, provided a visual
and quantified representative of the originally elusive nature of human identity. However, this
system was subjected to the fallibility of human operation and interpretation, as denoted by
the William West’s case.
.

SUMMARY

The Fingerprints the only system at the time failed to identify the criminals correctly as
shown by the two wests however the fingerprints of the were completely different from each
other. This showed that fingerprints could be used to accurately identify a criminal. The two
even looked similarto each other. There was difficulty telling the two apart with records until
they had fingerprints taken which were completely different from each other. Two prisoners
were admitted to Leavenworth Penitentiary and their Bertillion measurements.Although
arriving at different times Will West and William West had similar names and Bertillion
measurements.

Will and William West were two separate people who happened to look strikingly
similar to one another. The only way that prison officials could differentiate between the two
was by using their fingerprints, prison officials were trying to ID both men using a now-obsolete
system called the Bertillon System, which is based on the lengths and sizes of a series of body
parts. At the time, this was the standard system for documenting and identifying criminals.
However, the Bertillon System measurements for Will and William West were exactly alike. Will
and William West may have been identical twins; their measurements were almost exactly the
same. Their fingerprints were different, as is typical in identical twins.

REFERENCES
Copy from any of this sites, no COPYRIGHT INTENDED ! 😊
http://www.crimescene-forensics.com/Crime_Scene_Forensics/History_of_Fingerprints.html
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.thevintagenews.com/2017/09/29/will-and-william-
west-conundrum-how-two-unrelated-but-identical-inmates-showed-need-for-
fingerprinting/amp/
http://dh.dickinson.edu/digitalmuseum/exhibit-artifact/babes-in-the-woods/fingerprints