Page:Dictionary of National Biography, Second Supplement, volume 2.djvu/191

 Howard [q. v.]. In 1896 he represented England at the international congress of criminal anthropologists at Geneva.

Griffiths retired from the army with the rank of major on 13 May 1875, and devoted his leisure to literature and journalism. He had already some experience as editor of the 'Gibraltar Chronicle' in 1864; and he became a frequent contributor to many journals. He edited papers and magazines so widely different as 'Home News' (1883-88), the 'Fortnightly Review' (1884), and the 'World' (1895). From 1901 to 1904 he was editor of the 'Army and Navy Gazette' in succession to Sir William Howard Russell [q. v. Suppl. II].

But it was as a writer of sensational tales of prison life that Griffiths was best known to the public, and in such stories as 'Secrets of the Prison House' (1893), 'A Prison Princess' (1893), 'Criminals I have known' (1895), 'Mysteries of Police and Crime ' (1898; 3rd edit. 1904), 'The Brand of the Broad Arrow' (1900), and 'Tales of a Government Official' (1902), he revealed his extensive experience of the habits and characteristics of the criminal classes. His detective stories, like 'Fast and Loose' (1885), 'No. 99' (1885), 'The Rome Express' (1896), and 'A Passenger from Calais' (1905), were modelled on those of Gaboriau, and were inspired by his intimate acquaintance with French police methods. In his earUer novels, 'The Queen's Shilling' (1873), 'A Son of Mars' (1880; 2nd edit. 1902), and 'The Thin Red Line' (1886; 2nd edit. 1900), he drew mainly on his Crimean experiences, while 'Lola' (1878) was a faithful transcript of garrison life at Gibraltar. Altogether he published thirty novels.

He also contributed to the official 'History of the War in South Africa, 1889-1902' (1906-10; 4 vols.); and was author of several popular historical works.

Griffiths was a genial companion, a keen sportsman, and an amusing raconteur. He died at Victoria Hotel, Beaulieu, in the South of France, on 24 March 1908. He married on 18 Jan. 1881 Harriet, daughter of Richard Reily, who survived him.

 GRIGGS, WILLIAM (1832–1911), inventor of photo-chromo-lithography, son of a lodge-keeper to the duke of Bedford at Woburn, Bedfordshire, was born there on 4 Oct. 1832. Losing his father in childhood, he was apprenticed at the age of twelve to the carpentering trade, and coming to London when eighteen, he was employed as an artisan in the Indian Court of the Great Exhibition of 1851. He improved his scanty education at night classes at King's College and elsewhere, and in 1855 was selected to be technical assistant to the reporter on Indian products and director of the Indian Museum, then in the India House, Leadenhall Street.

His artistic tastes and keen interest in photography were encouraged by Dr. John Forbes Watson [q. v.], who became his chief in 1858, and at his instance Griggs was installed at Fife House, Whitehall, pending completion of the India office, in a studio and workshops for photo-lithographic work. He had familiarised himself with the processes of photo-zincography discovered by the director-general of the Ordnance Survey, General Sir Henry James [q. V.]. By careful experiment he found that the use of cold, instead of hot, water in developing the transfer left the gelatine in the whites of the transfer, thus giving firmer adhesion to the stone and serving as a support to the fine lines. He also invented photo-chromo-lithography by first printing from a photo-lithographic transfer a faint impression on the paper to serve as a 'key,' separating the colours on duplicate negatives by varnishes, then photo-lithographing the dissected portions on stones, finally registering and printing each in its position and particiliar colour, with the texture, light and shade of the original.

He greatly cheapened the production of colour work by a simplified form of this discovery, viz. by a photo-lithographic transfer from a negative of the original to stone, printed as a 'key' in a suitable colour, superimposing thereon, in exact register, transparent tints in harmony with the original. Opaque colours, when necessary, were printed first. So far from keeping secret or patenting these improvements, Griggs described and gave practical demonstrations of them to the London Photographic Society (14 April 1868). He was thus a pioneer in the wide diffusion of colour work and half-tone block-making, and helped to bring about rapid cylindrical printing. But for his 'brilliant and painstaking work, chromo-lithography as a means of illustrating books would be almost a lost art, like that of coloured aquatint' ( English Coloured Books, 1906, pp. 255-6).

Griggs established photo-lithographic works at his Peckham residence in 1868,