The Birmingham age-herald., 1922-06-18
FINGER PRINTS ID. KEEP TAB ON K|DDO, LATEST IN NEW YORK
Health Officials Determined to Get "Ten Baby Fingers" of Every Arrival in Goth
 am-"Some Job"
By HERnERT AsBURY

NN0pyriEnIt lSxE, Dy Ine AKe- hcfttuJ
 New York, June 1f.-Finger prints have sent men to the electric chair and they have been used as legal evi- dence In court actions involving the authenticity of Leonardo da VincIs paintings, and now the health and police departments of New York have started a campaign to use finger prints to identify newborn babies, I4artly to give the babies a means of proving who they are and partly to prevent them being mixed up in the biz maternity hospitals This, it is admitted, some times is done despite the care that Is taken and the little r9me bands plastered on the wrists
 Finger Print Every Baby
 Dr. Royal s. Copeland, health commissioner, and Joseph A. Faurot, third deputy commissioner and America's foremost expert in poros- copy, which Is the art of finger printing, want to finger print every baby born in New York, they de- clAred today, and if they cannot use the baby's fingers they will use his toes, because a toe print is every bit as distinctive and infallible as finger print. They realize that they have a somewhat trying and tedious job ahead of them if they hope to smear with ink and graphite the fingers and toes of every one of the thousands of children that come into the world every year. but they want to try, and they have offered the hospitals all the finger printing re- sources of their departments.
 Tt will be a wonderful thing" said Commissioner Faurot today, If we can educate public opinion to the point of seeing that every child born into the world Is finger printed ana the record, indelible and unshaka- bly, attached to its birth certificate or preferably. smudged on the re- verse side. With. these prints avail able, there will not be any possibility of babies being mixed up in hospitals or anywhere else.
 Prints Are Reliable
 "Finrer printing, or foot print Mg. for that matter. is absolutely reliable even when the prints are made in infancy. The impression taken of the fingers or toes of child only few days old will conr- pare precisely with any impression taken in later years excepting, ot course, that the later impression will be on large scale. But there mas never been an instance of two persons having similar finger prints and we do not believe that there Gs to the layman, but to an expert ana under the microscope every print has it's own individual markings that are never duplicated
 "A man can be identified by his finger prints when he can be iden- tified by nothing else, and if he is finger printed when he is baby and the record kept, the question of his identify Is settled forever. And it is not so easy as one might suppose to furnish absolute Identification of ones life There are thousands Of men who cannot prove that they are such and such a person, but If they had their birth certificates With finger prints attacheds or on the hack. there would be no question The person whose prints were iden- tical with the prints, on John Jones birth certificate is John Jones, and could not possibly be anybody else
 "Ten Baby Fingers
 .It undoubtedly win be hard task for the authorities hereto induce mothers to allow their babies to be finger printed and toe printed. It won't be easy to get them to allow the ten little fingers and the ten little toes to be smeared with nasty black ink and graphite and then pressed against piece of paper even if the paper is his official ticket into the world. One reason for this is the fact that finger printing has always been associated more or less with eriminality, but the, world Is fast eutrrowing this notion. Finger prints now are used to identify depositors of postal savings banks. in the big citiss. Many big banks and business houses use them and prints were made of every man who went into the srmy or navy during the war, to be filed with his permanent identifica- tion records"
 Little Francis Xavier Kelly, tho son of Mrs. Harriet Kelly Of Twenty-third street, west, has the honor of being the first baby to be finger printed in the new campaign of the health and police departments. Francis Xavier came into the world a. week ago at the Lyfng-In hospital, and Comn1is- sioners Copeland and Faurot and ccrps of finger experts from the heaifh department offices and from police headquarters finger printed him.
 Daubinw With Talk
 It was easier than they had ex- pected. The baby omitted a howl of protest when they marchnd solemnly into tho room where he iSy with his mother, but Dr. Copeland made lot of nice gurgling noises andSlet little Francis chew on his watch, and after that the baby watched the proceed ings with evident interest. So they daubed his fingers with ink. and graphite and smeared them on the back of his birth certificate, making a record that will identify the baby as long as he lives. He can never be mistaken for any one else, and no one but he can claim to be this par ticuiar Francis Xavier Kelly and get away with 1t.
 Commissioner Faurot Is enthusias- tic about his nc wcampaign. and all though he does not think he can start right now and begin finger printing all New York's babies he is confi- dent that he can get start. He wants to finger print everybody. and spread the gospel of finger printing abroad in the land. He wants to finger print the immigrants when they land and he wants to finger print the babies when they drop from the bundles of the stork and he wants . central bureau at Washing ton where all these records shall be kept. Then if someone says he is someone. his statement can mighty soon be disproved.