A story that some regard as apocryphal circulates about events occurring in the early 20th century when a man was spotted in the incoming prisoner line at the U.S. Penitentiary in Leavenworth, Kansas by a guard who recognized him and thought he was already in the prison population. Upon examination, the incoming prisoner claimed to be named Will West, while the existing prisoner was named William West. According to their Bertillon measurements, they were essentially indistinguishable. Only their fingerprints could readily identify them, and the Bertillon Method was discredited.

There is evidence that men named Will and William West were both imprisoned in the Federal Penitentiary in Leavenworth, Kansas, between 1903 and 1909. However, the details of the case are suspicious, especially since they differ between retellings, and the story did not appear in print until 1918. Today, people familiar with the story differ on whether the story was accurate, a case of people (possibly separated twins) who bore a striking resemblance, a case of known twins, or complete fiction. The story of Will West is mentioned on page 167 of Forensic Uses of Digital Imaging by John C. Russ, with mug shots of "the two Will Wests" on page 168.

It should be noted that the West case is not a case of fingerprint error, but an error in the method of anthropometry, which the fingerprint science replaced.

There should be very few people in the identification field who do not know the story of Will and William West, two inmates at Leavenworth Penitentiary, shortly after the turn of the century. In its purist form, the story is as follows:
“When he was received at Leavenworth, Will West denied previous imprisonment there, but the record clerk ran the Bertillon instruments over him anyway. He knew the reluctance of criminals to admit past crimes. Sure enough, when the clerk referred to the formula derived from West's Bertillon measurements, he located the file of one William West, whose measurements were practically identical and whose photograph appeared to be that of the new prisoner.
“But Will West was not being coy about a previous visit to Leavenworth. When the clerk turned over William West's record card he found it was that of a man already in the Penitentiary, serving a life sentence for murder. Subsequently the fingerprints of Will West and William West were impressed and compared. The patterns bore no resemblance.” (3,4,6,26)
Some authors have elaborated on the story, perhaps in an effort to make to a more interesting tale. Browne and Brock (3), alleged that upon taking the fingerprints of the two inmates, William West's prints were primarily loops and Will West's were primarily whorls. In fact, the primary classification of the former was 13/32 and that of the latter was 30/26, therefore, each had seven whorls and three loop type patterns. Like other writers, Browne and Brock also confused the warden and the records clerk at the penitentiary as one and the same person when they were actually father and son. One is also compelled to point out that Browne and Brock also misspelled the name as McClaughty.
Faulds (5) presented an entirely different story in his account of the incident, retaining only one inmate's name. Faulds stated that William West had been arrested in Kansas as a murder suspect and shortly afterwards another man with the same name and Bertillon measurements had been arrested on a minor offense. After taking both men's fingerprints, the authorities identified the second man as the actual suspect and the first William West was cleared.
Chapel (4) stuck to the basic story, but added a dialect to Will West's dialogue with the records clerk, The dialect may have seemed appropriate to someone familiar with some of the questionable radio programs of the 1930's, but the subservient attitude conveyed would hardly fit anyone from the Indian Territory in the early 1900's. None of the other accounts of the incident included this racial bias.
A search of the literature on fingerprint identification reveals that the alleged Will and William West case was not reported in print until Wilder and Wentworth's account in 1918 (26). Please note that of the twenty--six books and articles listed in the bibliography, eighteen were published prior to the release of Wilder and Wentworth's book and none of the eighteen mention the West case. Of particular note is that two of the items listed in the bibliography (14,15) were by the records clerk who took the Bertillon measurements and the fingerprints of Will and William West, but who never mentions the incident. One is immediately struck with the thought that a pioneer in the establishment of fingerprint identification never attached much significance to a case in which he played a very important role. Perhaps the case was not as important as we have been led to believe?
Background Facts
It has been well established that Will and William West were both incarcerated at the U.S. Penitentiary, Leavenworth, Kansas, between 1903 and 1909. Their similarity in appearance and Bertillon measurements is also well documented. When one considers the facts and chronology of the case, however, there is ample reason to doubt the significance of the case with respect to the establishment of fingerprint identification in the United States.
Major Robert

Sucks. I hate it. I'm crushing on someone I have no chance with. Eek. I think he likes me though. *dramatic sigh* I'm bored. Life is boring.