Beating the Devil's Game: A History of Forensic Science and Criminal by Katherine Ramsland Page A
Authors: Katherine Ramsland
Tags: Law, Forensic Science
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forensic arena. Between 1853 and 1856, Ludwig Teichmann of Poland invented the first microscope crystal test for hemoglobin, and Richard L. Maddox developed dry plate photography, which reduced the exposure time and amount of equipment formerly required for processing. This made his technique highly practical for photographing inmates. Prisons collected a catalogue of images to help them keep track of convicts who were repeat offenders. Sir William Herschel, a British officer, began to use thumbprints to authenticate documents and he learned from his own studies that fingerprints did not change with age.
In 1859, the United States became the first country in which photographs were used as evidence in a court of law, while in Germany, physicist Gustav Kirchhoff and chemist Robert Bunsen founded the field of spectroscopy with a prism-based device that made it possible to study the spectral signature of chemical elements in gaseous form. Bunsen had met Kirchhoff at the University of Breslau, where Kirchhoff taught. When Bunsen took a position at the University of Heidelberg, he secured one there for Kirchhoff as well so that they could continue to work together. Bunsen had developed techniques for separating and measuring chemical substances, and he invented the Bunsen battery and the Bunsen burner. The latter offered a nonluminous flame test for metals, and this paved the way for the spectroscope, which demonstrated that the color of a flame can be used to identify the substance burning by separating light into component wavelengths. These two scientists discovered that the spectrum of every organic element has a uniqueness to its constituent parts. By passing light through a substance to produce a spectrum, the analyst could read the resulting lines, called “absorption lines.” That is, the specific wavelengths that are selectively absorbed into the substance are characteristic of its component molecules. Then a spectrophotometer measures the light intensities, which yields a way to identify different types of substances. While not immediately relevant to the courts, it would eventually become an integral part of chemical analysis for trace evidence.
Over the next few years, presumptive tests were also developed for detecting blood on smooth surfaces or clothing, although not yet distinguishing human blood, and German pathologist Rudolph Virchow systematically examined the value of hair as evidence in crime detection. He successfully persuaded investigators to include his ideas in their repertoire. Each of these procedures advanced forensic science and the more techniques there were that proved reliable, the more it became evident that crime investigation must integrate them.
Charles Darwin had published
On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection
in 1859, in which he proposed a theory of evolution based on survival of the fittest. Realism in art and literature helped to reinforce the new scientific ideas, and evolutionary theory soon provided a perspective for developing theories of criminology.
That same year, Dr. Alfred Taylor experienced his next humiliation in the courtroom. Doctor Thomas Smethurst was charged with the murder by poisoning of Isabella Bankes, a woman he had married bigamously. When she died, he proved to be the beneficiary of nearly two thousand pounds, and two physicians had stated that the decedent’s symptoms had resembled poisoning. More suspicious, his other wife took him back, inspiring the notion that she’d known he’d been with Bankes merely as a means to acquire her money. Taylor was called into the case.
He indicated that he had found traces of arsenic in the body and in a bottle of colorless liquid found in Smethurst’s rooms, but during the trial when the bottle of liquid was proven to be potassium chloride, Taylor admitted that his findings were the result of an imperfection in the apparatus that he’d used. He’d actually detected potassium chlorate. Furthermore, he
In 1859, the United States became the first country in which photographs were used as evidence in a court of law, while in Germany, physicist Gustav Kirchhoff and chemist Robert Bunsen founded the field of spectroscopy with a prism-based device that made it possible to study the spectral signature of chemical elements in gaseous form. Bunsen had met Kirchhoff at the University of Breslau, where Kirchhoff taught. When Bunsen took a position at the University of Heidelberg, he secured one there for Kirchhoff as well so that they could continue to work together. Bunsen had developed techniques for separating and measuring chemical substances, and he invented the Bunsen battery and the Bunsen burner. The latter offered a nonluminous flame test for metals, and this paved the way for the spectroscope, which demonstrated that the color of a flame can be used to identify the substance burning by separating light into component wavelengths. These two scientists discovered that the spectrum of every organic element has a uniqueness to its constituent parts. By passing light through a substance to produce a spectrum, the analyst could read the resulting lines, called “absorption lines.” That is, the specific wavelengths that are selectively absorbed into the substance are characteristic of its component molecules. Then a spectrophotometer measures the light intensities, which yields a way to identify different types of substances. While not immediately relevant to the courts, it would eventually become an integral part of chemical analysis for trace evidence.
Over the next few years, presumptive tests were also developed for detecting blood on smooth surfaces or clothing, although not yet distinguishing human blood, and German pathologist Rudolph Virchow systematically examined the value of hair as evidence in crime detection. He successfully persuaded investigators to include his ideas in their repertoire. Each of these procedures advanced forensic science and the more techniques there were that proved reliable, the more it became evident that crime investigation must integrate them.
Charles Darwin had published
On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection
in 1859, in which he proposed a theory of evolution based on survival of the fittest. Realism in art and literature helped to reinforce the new scientific ideas, and evolutionary theory soon provided a perspective for developing theories of criminology.
That same year, Dr. Alfred Taylor experienced his next humiliation in the courtroom. Doctor Thomas Smethurst was charged with the murder by poisoning of Isabella Bankes, a woman he had married bigamously. When she died, he proved to be the beneficiary of nearly two thousand pounds, and two physicians had stated that the decedent’s symptoms had resembled poisoning. More suspicious, his other wife took him back, inspiring the notion that she’d known he’d been with Bankes merely as a means to acquire her money. Taylor was called into the case.
He indicated that he had found traces of arsenic in the body and in a bottle of colorless liquid found in Smethurst’s rooms, but during the trial when the bottle of liquid was proven to be potassium chloride, Taylor admitted that his findings were the result of an imperfection in the apparatus that he’d used. He’d actually detected potassium chlorate. Furthermore, he
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