Alfred Edward Stratton (1882-1905) and his brother Albert Ernest Stratton (1884-1905) were the first men to be convicted in Britain for murder based on fingerprint evidence. They were both executed at 9 am on 23 May 1905 at HM Prison Wandsworth. The case, otherwise known as the Mask Murders (owing to the black stocking-top masks that had been left at the scene of the crime), the Deptford Murders (referring to the location) or the Farrow Murders (for the last name of the victims), was one of the earliest convictions made using forensic science.
The crime On Monday 27 March 1905, at 8:30 am, William Jones went to Chapman's Oil and Colour Shop at 34 Deptford High Street, where he worked. When he arrived at the shop he found it closed and shuttered, which he found very unusual. The manager of the paint shop Thomas Farrow, aged 71, lived with his wife, Ann, aged 65, in the flat above the shop and he was not in the habit of having the shop still closed at such a late hour. Unable to open the door, Jones tried knocking but since he did not get any response from either Mr or Mrs Farrow he peeked through a window and saw that there were chairs knocked over. Alarmed at what he saw, he ran for help and found a local resident, Louis Kidman, who worked in a nearby store. The two men forced their way into the shop, and it was not long before they found the body of Mr Farrow on the floor dead, while Mrs Farrow was found barely alive but unconscious in the couple's bed in the upstairs flat. Both bore the signs of having been beaten. A doctor and the police were called and Mrs Farrow was taken to hospital.
The investigation Despite the disarray within the shop, the police found no signs of forced entry. It was shortly determined that robbery was the motive: an empty cash box was found on the floor estimated to have contained about £13, equivalent to £1,400 in 2025. As it was a Monday, Jones informed the police it was Mr Farrow's custom on Mondays to collect the week's earnings and deposit them into a local bank. To ensure the doctor would not trip over the cash box, Sergeant Albert Atkinson pushed it aside with his bare hands. It was at this point that Chief Inspector Frederick Fox and Melville MacNaghten, the Assistant Commissioner (Crime) of the Metropolitan Police and head of the Criminal Investigation Department took over the case. In addition to the lack of forced entry and the empty cash box, it was clear that Mr and Mrs Farrow had been attacked separately, and the discovery of two black masks fashioned from stockings that were left at the scene indicated there were two men involved. Since the victims were in their night clothes, the police suspected Mr Farrow may have opened the door while he was not fully awake and immediately attacked. Despite this, he remained conscious enough to retaliate against the robbers, but was struck again. His assailants proceeded up to the flat, where they attacked Mrs Farrow, located the cash box, and fled with the money. Based on the discovery of separate pools of blood at the upstairs scene, it was determined that Mr Farrow had again regained consciousness, but this time the men killed him, afterwards washing their hands in a nearby basin.
A greasy smudge on the cash box
When MacNaghten was told of the empty cash box, he chose to examine it. He noticed that on the underside of the box's inner tray, there was a greasy smudge which appeared to be a fingerprint. As a member of the Belper Committee which had recommended the use of fingerprints as a method for identification five years before, he wondered if this might be a case to test out this new technique. He used his handkerchief to carefully pick up the cash box, had it wrapped in paper and took it into the fledgling Fingerprinting Bureau at Scotland Yard. Established on 1 July 1901, the Fingerprint Bureau had proven its worth with the conviction a year later of Harry Jackson for burglary, thanks to fingerprint evidence. It was now headed by Detective Inspector Charles Stockley Collins who was regarded as the foremost English fingerprint expert of his time. Despite its earlier successes, especially in identifying previously convicted criminals who tried to pass themselves off pseudonymously, the technique was still considered unwieldy and both men knew that they were risking public ridicule with the intense scrutiny that a murder case would generate. Furthermore, even if they succeeded in identifying the owner of the fingerprint, they still needed to convince a potential jury sufficiently to convict. Detective Inspector Collins examined the print thoroughly and determined that the print was made through perspiration and appeared to have been left by the thumb, probably from the right hand. He compared it with those of the Farrows and that of Detective Sergeant Atkinson and was satisfied that the print did not belong to any of those people. Although the Bureau had 80,000-90,000 sets of prints on file, there was no match on any of them as well, which meant that they would need to find a suspect to compare it with. The initial hope of the police was that Mrs Farrow would give a description of her assailants, but she died in hospital on 31 March without regaining consciousness.
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