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The phrase to leave one’s fingerprints all over something means: to leave indisputable evidence of one’s involvement in an affair, endeavour, etc. Among the variants of this phrase is: one’s fingerprints are all over something.
This phrase refers to the noun fingerprint in the sense of an impression made on a surface by the tip of a person’s finger, as used in criminal investigations to identify individuals from the unique pattern of whorls and lines on the fingertips.
In early use, this phrase sometimes explicitly referred to the noun fingerprint in the sense of a mark made by a dirty finger—cf., below, quotations 1, 2 & 6.
The use of fingerprints in criminal investigations was evoked in the following from The Finger Print. How Human Ingenuity is Taxed to Discover the Clues to Mysterious Crimes, published in The National Police Gazette (New York City, New York, USA) of Saturday 11th December 1880 [page 10, column 4]:
The tips of the fingers and thumbs are slightly blackened, say with a daub of printer’s ink, and then pressed on a sheet of white paper; then out come the idiosyncracies [sic] of these fingers. Now, this new process of identification is based on the fact that those fine lines which form loops and patterns, starting sometimes from a common centre about half way in the last joint of the finger, are never alike in any two persons, for the fingers have distinct skin physiognomies.
[…] Now, when a murderer leaves his bloody tracery on a wall, his hands red with the gore of his victim, it would be curious to study the peculiarities of the horrible imprint he may have left, and the minute whirls or loops might identify him. Lesser crimes, such as of pilfering, might bring about their detection in this way. One’s decanter of choice brandy bears on the glass a certain smudgy imprint, or a pot of jelly in the closet shows baby’s sticky fingers, and then Bridget or little Billy is summoned to justice.
These are, in chronological order, the earliest occurrences of the phrase to leave one’s fingerprints all over something and variants that I have found:
1-: From The Fight for Australia, published in The Worker: Australia’s Pioneer Co-operative Labour Journal (Brisbane, Queensland, Australia) of Thursday 12th March 1914 [page 6, column 2]:
In this State of Queensland the Labour party, with the exception of the short-lived Dawson Ministry, has never held office. A succession of Liberal Governments has shaped its history.
Commencing with everything clean and unfettered, they speedily got to business, and to-day, after little more than half a century, their dirty fingerprints are all over the place, and the State is so encumbered with the chains they have rivetted upon it that it can scarcely move.
2-: From A Democratic Tangle. And The One Way Out, published in The Australian Worker: An Australian Paper for Australian Homes (Sydney, New South Wales, Australia) of Thursday 4th June 1914 [page 1, column 2]:
No Government ever employed its opportunities to worse effect.
It has spoiled everything it touched. Its dirty fingerprints are all over the place.
It has made a hideous mess of the Transcontinental Railway construction. It has got itself neck-deep in shady transactions with the Big Contractor. It has permitted the American Beef Trust to break down the fences of the law. It has formed a political alliance with the unscrupulous monopolists who are levying upon the people the brigands’ tribute of high prices.
3-: From the Sunday News (New York City, New York, USA) of Sunday 23rd October 1927 [page 17, column 1]—the reference is to George V (1865-1936), King of the United Kingdom from 1910 to 1936:
ABOUT HATING BRITAIN
Chicago, led by Mayor William Hale (Big Bill) Thompson, hunts for British propaganda in the school histories, also for the scalp of William McAndrew, its superintendent of schools. Big Bill says King George’s fingerprints are all over the pages of American histories used in Chicago schools. McAndrew says Big Bill is mistaken and a bonehead.
4-: From Educator Visits Scene Of ‘Hamlet’ in Denmark, by the Swedish born-U.S. educator and diplomat Alfred J. Pearson (1869-1939), published in the Des Moines Tribune-Capital (Des Moines, Iowa, USA) of Friday 30th May 1930 [page 3, column 1]:
When I was in Europe in 1912, I went out to Elsinore to look up the Hamlet landmarks. Last week, I paid a second visit to this unique little city made famous by the Bard of Avon.
It does not take the visitor long to see that Elsinore is a Shakespeare landmark. Shakespeare has left his fingerprints all over the place. From the railroad station I turned to the left and had not walked more than a block or two when I came to Polonius street.
I passed Laertes street and turned into Hamlet avenue a short distance farther on, passing Fortinbras cafe on the way.
5-: From an account of the forum on religion that was held on Wednesday 17th December 1930 at Ryman Auditorium, in Nashville, Tennessee, in which Rabbi Julius Mark, Quin O’Brien (a Roman Catholic), Clarence Darrow (a lawyer and agnostic), and Bishop H. M. DuBose, of the Methodist Episcopal Church, explained why they believed what they did—account published in The Nashville Tennessean (Nashville, Tennessee, USA) of Thursday 18th December 1930 [page 5, column 2]:
Mr. O’Brien said he believed the agnostic could achieve heaven “if he only would choose to run.” He explained that Mr. Darrow argues from science which is the Latin word for knowledge, yet calls himself an agnostic, which is the Greek word for ignorance.
“We do know, bishop, rabbi. We know by the stars, moving 40 millions of miles a year without a collision. We know all this universe has an engineer of boundless intelligence. His fingerprints are all over his creation. If it were a crime to create a world and God were tried for it, why Mr. Darrow wouldn’t take his case, there are so many fingerprints. He doesn’t believe in God because he’s never seen Him yet he believes in justice, atomic energy, electric current, the radio and we’ve never seen them.”
6-: From Taxpayers Air School Costs, published in the Houston Post-Dispatch (Houston (Harris County), Texas, USA) of Friday 2nd October 1931 [page 7, column 1]—the following is from a transcript of the speech that J. G. Miller, president of the Harris County Taxpayers’ association, delivered at the public meeting that was held in Houston, Texas, on Thursday 1st October 1931, to discuss the financial structure of the Houston public-school system:
“Education in late years has been characterized by one innovation after another,” said Mr. Miller. “Every new notion was heralded as additional evidences of progress. Schools have become plants in mimicry of an industrialism that is smearing its grimy fingerprints all over our educational systems.”
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