Fingerprinting: The Interesting Case of Will West and William West

(Will West is believed to be pictured in the top photo and William West pictured in the bottom photo)

The story of Will West and William West continues to fascinate me! Unintentionally, these two played a major role with ushering in the process of fingerprinting as a means of identifying individuals. The story goes a little something like this:

In 1903, a prisoner named Will West arrived at Leavenworth Penitentiary.  A clerk who saw West's mugshot believed that he had seen him before, although West stated that he had never been to Leavenworth. The clerk pulled a record that contained West's mugshot and measurements. West believed himself to be the individual in the photo, but did not know how it got there since he had never been there before.

Well...the clerk and the Will West were both correct! Will West had never been to Leavenworth, and the clerk did have a file for West - William West! William West was already incarcerated and serving a life sentence for murder (I do not have the specifics of why Will West was sent to Leavenworth).

The measurements and mugshots of both prisoners were almost identical! Needless to say another means of identifying these two prisoners was necessary. After checking their fingerprints, it was discovered that they had different fingerprint patterns, and thus the process of fingerprinting became a more reliable process in identifying individuals (the Bertillon system was used previously).