Edmund Frederick Du Cane

Sir Edmund Frederick Du Cane was a British major general in the Royal Engineers and prison administrator, born March 23, 1830, in Colchester, Essex, and died June 7, 1903, in London. After early service organizing convict labor in Western Australia, he became the chief authority reorganizing England's fragmented local prison system, submitting the 1873 scheme that led to the Prison Act 1877 and brought every local prison under direct government control with unified staffing and standardized rules. Du Cane also created the first central register of habitual criminals, known as the Black Book, in 1877, and worked with Francis Galton on early fingerprint identification methods for law enforcement. Wormwood Scrubs prison, which he had built, and the London road on which it stands still carry his name.