A H I S T O R Y OF T H E U T A H S T A T E B U R E A U OF CRIMINAL IDENTIFICATION A N D INVESTIGATION BY ROBERT M.
GRAY*
T IS a long step from the first efforts of fingerprinting in the state of Utah, thirty-eight years ago, to the established Utah State Bureau of Criminal Identification and Investigation of today. The Utah Bureau is primarily the result of the efforts of Richard H. Wootton and the Utah State Police Association. Wootton directed the operations of the bureau from its founding in 1923 until he retired in March, 1949. Richard Wootton was born December 20, 1881, in Midway, Wasatch County, Utah, where he lived many years. After completing high school, he worked on his father's farm during the summer months and hauled lumber and worked on railroad construction during other months of the year. In 1912 he joined the Ogden City Police Department where he worked as a patrolman for eight months. He was then made a plain-clothesman and soon rose to the rank of detective. While in this position, he obtained a ninety-day leave of absence and went back to railroading. It was during such a leave that a close friend was elected sheriff of Weber County. At the request of the sheriff, Wootton joined the staff in January, 1917, and remained there for the next four years. This period covered the years of World W a r I, and it was an incident which occurred during this time that gave Wootton an incentive to study fingerprinting. A young man dressed in a United States Army uniform was brought into the sheriff's office suffering from loss of memory. He could neither talk nor write. He had no dog-tag or other means of identification on his person. The young man received medical treatment at the Dee Hospital in Ogden for the next four or five weeks, and then it was decided to send him to the
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*Dr; Gray is teaching in the Department of Sociology, University of Utah.
