Harry Jackson

Who is Harry Jackson?

Harry Jackson was the first man to be convicted in the United Kingdom via fingerprint evidence.

On June 27, 1902, a burglary occurred in a house in Denmark Hill, London, and some billiard balls were stolen. The investigating officer noticed a number of fingerprints on a freshly painted windowsill, apparently where the burglar made his entry. He immediately called the Metropolitan Police Fingerprint Bureau, and Detective-Sergeant Charles Stockley Collins went to the scene. He examined the marks and decided that the left thumb made the clearest impression. After satisfying himself that the marks had not left by any member of the household, Collins took a photograph of it.

Returning to the Bureau, Collins and his colleagues made a search of their files for known criminals with a similar print pattern. The files revealed that the fingerprints belonged to a 41-year old labourer, Harry Jackson, who had recently served a prison term for burglary. He was arrested, and for safety's sake, fingerprinted again. This new set was compared to the prints photographed from the crime scene and again they matched.

Since the crime of burglary required a jury trial in the Old Bailey, Edward Henry, the Assistant Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police Service and head of the Criminal Investigation Department, was determined to make this case succeed. As the man who devised the Henry System of Fingerprint Classification and the founder of the Fingerprint Bureau, he knew that only the soundest sort of Crown prosecutor would be able to convince conservative English judges and a sceptical jury to overcome their prejudices. For this purposes, he decided on Richard Muir, a prosecutor with a reputation for thoroughness and exacting nature.