They looked identical and even shared the same name, but the two prisoners pictured were actually different people and their remarkable case helped bring in the era of fingerprint identification.
!-- Creative 154508969 served by Member 9127
The man above was called Will West, the man below William West, and they were both sentenced to jail at Leavenworth Penitentiary in Kansas over 100 years ago.
The arrival of Will West in 1903 caused the records clerk at the prison considerable confusion, because he was convinced he’d processed him two years previously.
