Sir William James Herschel, 2nd Baronet (9 January 1833 – 24 October 1917)[1][2][3][4][5] was a British ICS officer in India who used fingerprints for identification on contracts.

[2][6][7] He was born in Slough in Buckinghamshire (now Berkshire), the third child (of twelve) and the eldest son (of three) of the astronomer, John Herschel.

On 19 May 1864 he married (Anne) Emma Haldane, youngest daughter of Alfred Hardcastle of Hatcham House, Surrey.

She died at the birth of their second son, having borne him 4 children: He lived at Warfield in Berkshire and at Littlemore in Oxfordshire.

As early as 1858, working as a British officer for the Indian Civil Service at Jangipur in the Bengal region of India, he started putting fingerprints on contracts.