1900 SIR EDWARD HENRY
On 2 April 1891, Henry was appointed to the office of the Inspector General of the Bengal Police. In 1892 the police force adopted the anthropometric measuring system devised by Bertillon for the identification of criminals.
Around the same time, Henry became interested in the work of Galton and others concerning the use of fingerprints to identify criminals. Henry and Galton exchanged regular letters during 1894 discussing the merits of fingerprints. IN January 1896, Henry issued an order to the Bengali Police that criminal record forms should not only display a prisoners anthropometric measurements but also the prisoner/s rolled fingerprint impressions.
With the assistance of Azial Haque and Hemchandra Bose, Edward Henry devised his classification system between July 1896 and February 1897. The Henry fingerprint system enabled fingerprints to be easily filed, searched and traced against thousands of others. The simple system found world wide acceptance within a few years.
In March 1887 a commission was set up in Calcutta to examine both identification systems. It came to a unanimous verdict in favour of Hendry’s fingerprint system and in July 1897 the Governor General introduced fingerprinting to British India.
Three years later Henry was invited to London to address the Belper Committee, which had been set up to look into the problems of personal identification for the police. The panel sent Henry to the colony of Natal in South Africa to help reorganize the local police force and establish a one-man fingerprint bureau at Pietermaritzburg, which proved to be an outstanding success.
In 1901 Henry was recalled to Britain and on 31 May was appointed Assistant Commissioner of Scotland Yard in charge of the Criminal Investigation Department.
1 July 1901, the first fingerprint Bureau in the UK was established at Scotland Yard.