The Stratton Brothers case in Deptford, London, resulted in the first British murder conviction secured primarily on fingerprint evidence. Alfred and Albert Stratton were hanged in 1905 for the murders of Thomas and Ann Farrow after Scotland Yard's Fingerprint Branch matched a thumbprint found on a cash box at the scene to Alfred Stratton. The case definitively established fingerprinting as admissible and conclusive evidence in English courts, displacing the Bertillon system, and marked the beginning of fingerprints as the gold standard of criminal identification in Britain.

The Stratton case was widely reported and reinforced the public conviction that science could now identify criminals with certainty — a belief that shaped Edwardian detective fiction profoundly. The fingerprint as narrative device became available to writers like Conan Doyle and R. Austin Freeman, whose scientific detective Dr Thorndyke reflected the new forensic culture. The case also raised early questions about the reliability of expert witnesses that resonate in later literary treatments of courtroom justice.