“Girls Replace Fingerprinters For RCMP,” Kingston Whig-Standard. March 27, 1942. Page 6.
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By PATRICIA CONNOLLEY
(Canadian Press Staff Writer.)
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OTTAWA, March 27 — (CP) — Tented arches loops whorls double loops and accidentals — they're all part of the day's work to 12 young women recently added to the staff of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police finger print division.
As yet they can’t be considered female “mounties" in scarlet tunics. But at least they are a dozen young girls clad in sweaters and skirts or simple dresses who are "making a good job of a war job," says the sergeant in charge.
At their desks in the Justice Building, they deftly make sense out of the whorls and loops of inky finger-print impressions for classification purposes.
Technically termed "classifiers" they are replacing an entire staff of highly trained RCMP men who have been absorbed into the 'searching'' department of the Finger Print Bureau.
The Bureau is the repository of most Canadian fingerprints on record and the work of the bureau has increased 100 per cent since the outbreak of war. Divided under two separate headings many thousands of prints are filed in the civil security finger print section and the criminal section.
Not All Crime Prints
The pre-war days the finger-prints of criminals forwarded by police authorities from all parts of the Dominion comprised the main work of the Bureau. Now as well as approximately 600,000 criminal prints filed away in rows of cabinets, many civil security prints which have been sent in voluntarily for identification purposes by key workers in industry as well as those applying for positions in police departments, for visas, and for work in other varieties of war jobs.
Classifying is the first step in registering prints in the bureau. Through a complicated method of calculating common characteristics, the 10 smudgy prints of each set of impressions are brought to algebraic conclusions which have a definite meaning to experts.
Known as the Henry system, there are nine standard patterns by which all prints are classified. These comprise five in the numerical section and four of the non-numerical section.
The non-numerical section is divided into the plain arch, tented arch, radial loop and ulnar loop, and the numerical section has whorls, central pockets, lateral pockets double loops and accidentals..
They Know Curves
These mysterious terms which mean much to those who know are the curves and other characteristics common to all finger prints. The core or centre of the print, deltas and ridges are examined, traced and counted. The classification formula is then brought into use.
The girl classifiers work a 9 a.m. - 5 pm day with an hour-and--a-half off for lunch. They now average 100 prints a day, although two records have been established at 175 a day.
After being classified, finger prints go to the searching departments where the prints are rechecked by Mounted Police experts and filed under either of the two separate categories — civil defence or criminal.
