Albert Becker - Fingerprint Technology Comes to Aberdeen

Albert Becker was a professional swindler who was apprehended in Huntly in November of 1904 after conning a number of clergymen of the Episcopal Church  out of sums of money ranging from 2s 6d. to 10s 6d. Becker was evidently adept at spinning a hard luck story that induced listeners to put their hands in their pockets on the promise of being repaid by his well-to-do sister at a later date.

He was known by several aliases including, Albert Heintz, John Muller, John Kind, John Ernest Becker, Gustavus Schaffer and Albert Deckers and had a long list of similar crimes recorded against him at, among other places, Nottingham, Exeter, Northampton, Wrexham, West Sussex, Windsor and Durham. The Aberdeen Press and Journal of the 12th November 1904 notes that in 1903 he had received 12 months' imprisonment for the offence committed at Durham, 

"...so that he had just been liberated when he once more resumed his old tactics, his field of operations on this occasion being Scotland and his dupes chiefly clergymen...The man, who is said to be of German extraction, has been removed to Dundee to answer charges brought against him there, and from Dundee he will be sent onto Perth where he is also "wanted". Since the date of his apprehension fresh charges have been proffered against him in Aberdeen and it is not unlikely that others may yet be forthcoming".

The newspaper report goes on to say that,  

"The identification of the accused was effected through the system now practised of taking fingerprints, and this is the first occasion, it is believed, on which the system has been put in to practise successfully in Aberdeen. The prints of the fingertips taken on a sheet of paper were forwarded to Scotland Yard, and an answer was received by return giving the career of the man in custody. The man was also photographed, but the identification through the fingerprints was established without the aid of the photographs. Whether the man is a German or not, he has an intimate knowledge of Germans and Germany. The geography of the country is well known to him, and, it is said, he would keep a clergyman amused for nearly an hour with an account of his doings in the Fatherland". 

That fingerprint technology was used in this case is illustrative of how the science was being used and adopted by police forces across the United Kingdom: bear in mind that that the first conviction in this country to be based on this new branch of forensic science was just over two years earlier, in September 1902.