Written by John Bishop
This was a brilliant presentation given to a packed audience in the Cricket Pavilion in Bradfield. The word forensic comes from the Latin word “forensis”, meaning forum, the scientific investigation of evidence used in court, that we all love to watch on our television screens. So, although Julius Caesar was stabbed 23 times, forensic evidence showed that only one of those blows killed him. There were numerous examples given of those who were pioneers in developing this work, and some distressing examples of those whose crimes were discovered because of forensic evidence.
Take Edward Culshaw, who was travelling along a road near Liverpool In 1794 when he was shot through the back of the head with a horse pistol. The weapon was left at the scene. Gunpowder and a ball of lead had been loaded into the pistol’s muzzle and packed with paper wadding from a songsheet, and that wadding had stuck in Culshaw’s wound. When the robber John Thoms was arrested the police found a matching song sheet on him with that section torn out. He was hanged for murder.
An incredible lady called Francis Glessener Lee (1878-1962) was not allowed to train in medicine so decided to recreate crime scenes in the context of rooms in a dolls house. Called the “Nutshell studies of unexplained deaths” there were 18 rooms showing possible murders, accidents and suicides with enormous detail. These were used to train detectives in the 1940s and 50s and are still referred to in seminars.
Poisons have always featured strongly as a method of killing. Arsenic was a murder method of choice, but was also widely used in the manufacture of dyes, especially in some of the popular wallpapers. People suffered from poisoning but it was impossible to prove whether they were murdered as both a parrot and a child died from sucking the wallpaper. Mathieu Orfila 1787-1853 was a Spanish toxicologist who researched poisons and was known as the “Father of Toxicology”. In the UK, Scotland led the way towards the end of the 18th century by establishing professorships in forensic pathology at Edinburgh and Glasgow Universities. By 1837, there were 37 UK medical schools providing courses in forensic medicine and it became an obligatory subject for medical students in 1933. In 1950 of the Association of Forensic Medicine was defined as a specialty in its own right. In the 1950’s forensic pathology services were delivered by 10 specialists in London, with approximately 30 others covering the rest of England and Wales, with a case load of 1400 people dying under suspicious circumstances each year. And so many fascinating cases were given.
There was a boy of 14 who enjoyed Chemistry at school. He was imprisoned in Broadmoor in 1962 for poisoning his family, including his stepmother. On release in 1971 he got a job as a storeman which also involved being tea man. He continued his trade and two work colleagues died and several others were left critically ill. Or closer to home, while David Burgess was found guilty of murdering the two 9-year-old girls from Beenham in the mid-60s, the murder of 17-year-old Yolande Waddington had never been solved. That was until a DNA test on items still stored in a garage at Thatcham Police Station forensically proved that he was guilty and in 2010 he received a third 27-year life sentence.
Spectacular progress has been made in forensic science over the last 30 years and what lies ahead to aid detection work could be even more dramatic. Although Chris was at pains to emphasise that although the UK had been the leading country in this work 1970-1990, the work was now based in the market place, with resulting competition intended to drive costs down for police forces. At the same time the quality and use of that work has gone down. An excellent evening with Chris Curry and the Bradfield History Society.
