Fatal Evidence: Professor Alfred Swaine Taylor & the Dawn of Forensic Science

257 Pages·2017·40.32 MB·English

by  Helen Barrell

Fatal Evidence
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One day a shepherd was crossing the bridge when he saw a little bone beneath him
in the sand. It was so pure and snow-white that he wanted it to make a mouthpiece
from, so he climbed down and picked it up. Afterward he made a mouthpiece from
it for his horn, and when he put it to his lips to play, the little bone began to sing
by itself:
Oh, dear shepherd
You are blowing on my bone.
My brothers struck me dead,
And buried me beneath the bridge.
From ‘The Singing Bone’, collected by The Brothers Grimm.
Translated by Professor D.L. Ashliman
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Fatal Evidence
Professor Alfred Swaine Taylor
& the Dawn of Forensic Science
Helen Barrell
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First published in Great Britain in 2017 by
Pen & Sword History
an imprint of
Pen & Sword Books Ltd
47 Church Street
Barnsley
South Yorkshire
S70 2AS
Copyright © Helen Barrell 2017
ISBN 978 1 47388 341 3
The right of Helen Barrell to be identified as the Author of this Work
has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and
Patents Act 1988.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British
Library
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Contents
Note on Text vi
Introduction vii
Chapter 1 Go Thy Way, Passenger 1
Chapter 2 More of Impulse than Discretion 12
Chapter 3 Fearful and Wonderful 19
Chapter 4 The Light of an English Sun 26
Chapter 5 One of the Most Eminent Men 36
Chapter 6 My Heart is as Hard as a Stone 48
Chapter 7 The Means of our Preservation 58
Chapter 8 The Only Friend I had in the World 69
Chapter 9 The Formidable Scourge 79
Chapter 10 His Very High Position 91
Chapter 11 Romantic, Mysterious, and Singular 103
Chapter 12 Enter Not into the Path of the Wicked 113
Chapter 13 Truth Will Always Go the Farthest 143
Chapter 14 Grieved Beyond all Endurance 151
Chapter 15 You are the Villain 166
Chapter 16 Blood Enough 179
Chapter 17 The Eminent Opinion of Professor Taylor 190
Timeline 204
Acknowledgements 206
Further Reading 207
Selected Bibliography 208
Notes 213
Index 225
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Note on Text
Medical jurisprudence
Taylor called himself a ‘medical jurist’ practising ‘medical jurisprudence’ –
the intersection of medicine and the law. He sometimes described himself as a
toxicologist. Had he lived today, he would have been called a pathologist, or a
forensic science technician.
The Old Bailey
The Central Criminal Court stands on a London street called the Old Bailey;
this is the name by which the court is commonly known. In newspaper and trial
reports, the name can switch about from the Central Criminal Court to the Old
Bailey. To avoid confusion, the Old Bailey is used throughout.
Inquests
In England and Wales, sudden, violent, or unnatural deaths are investigated by a
coroner. In Taylor’s day, a jury would hear the evidence and come to a verdict. On
finding wilful murder against a particular individual, the case would go to trial if
a grand jury decided that it was strong enough. Even if the inquest jury’s verdict
was wilful murder, the case could still be thrown out and the accused could go free,
or be tried on a lesser charge. If the jury found that the death was the result of
natural causes but the coroner strongly suspected otherwise, further investigations
would be carried out by police and magistrates.
The Crown
Under the legal system in England and Wales, the prosecution is said to be the
Crown (hence the trial of William Palmer is R v Palmer; the R standing for
‘Regina’, Latin for ‘Queen’). Prosecution witnesses are therefore ‘witnesses for the
Crown’. To avoid confusion for international readers, ‘prosecution’ is used in this
book instead of ‘the Crown’. Taylor often used ‘prosecution’ instead of ‘Crown’ in
his writing.
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Introduction
A
body has been found. There are severe head injuries, as if the victim has
been trampled to death. It’s manslaughter, possibly murder. There’s a
suspect, and their hobnail boots are covered in something red. Could it
be blood? The boots, and snippets of the victim’s hair, are sent to a laboratory
for analysis. It is blood on the boots, and there are fibres in the mud around the
hobnails, which, under a microscope, match the victim’s hair. There are strands
of red wool in the coagulated blood, and further information says that the victim
wore a red scarf. The analysis has shown that the victim was probably killed by
whoever wore the boots, and the suspect is arrested.
This did not happen last week, neither is it a scene from a crime drama on
television. It took place in 1863, and the analysis was performed by Dr Alfred
Swaine Taylor, professor of medical jurisprudence, toxicology and chemistry at
Guy’s Hospital in London.
Codes and laws applied to medicine and the examination of violent death go
back a long way in human history, as far as Ancient Babylon. It was in Renaissance
Europe that legal codes around medicine and violent death were further developed,
creating the basis for what we recognise as forensic science today. Britain
lagged behind until the early nineteenth century, when advances in science and
technology led to the merging of medicine and chemistry and the development of
a new science: forensic medicine. Alfred Swaine Taylor, skilled as a chemist and a
physiologist, was one of the first, and youngest, lecturers of medical jurisprudence
in England.
Taylor is remembered today as a toxicologist, involved in the sensational trials of
medical men Palmer and Smethurst. They were notoriously difficult cases. Palmer
was thought to have poisoned with strychnine, and scientific opinion differed
angrily as to how it could be traced. In Smethurst’s case, a test for arsenic that
was thought to be infallible was shown to be flawed. But there is far more to Taylor
than that.
Taylor worked on hundreds of cases from the 1830s to the 1870s, rising to
prominence in England as a leading expert. It was, perhaps, his prolific writing
output – his cacoethes scribendi, as one of his rivals put it – that helped him to
assume his respected position. His opinion was sought by the Home Office
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viii Fatal Evidence
on difficult cases, and local newspapers proudly announced if a coroner had
summoned Taylor’s aid. He became a household name.
No diaries of Taylor’s have survived, and neither have any bundles of personal
letters, although the occasional piece of correspondence turns up in archives. He
was so busy writing books and articles that he had no time to write his memoirs.
But the curious can piece together his professional life through newspaper reports
of the inquests and trials that he appeared at, and the inside information that
sometimes slips through in his books and articles. Glimpses of his personality
flash through in his writing: his scathing sarcasm aimed at his professional peers
who had the temerity to cross him, his fondness for wordplay, and his rage at
the stubbornness of governments who prioritised commerce over public safety.
Genealogical records allow us to occasionally press our noses up against the
window of his home. For the most part it was a haven, even if tragedy visited his
wife’s family, and the occasional policeman and surgeon knocked at his door with
a grim burden for his analysis.
This is both Taylor’s biography and the story of forensic science’s development
in nineteenth-century England; the two are entwined. There are stomachs in jars,
a skeleton in a carpet bag, doctors gone bad, bloodstains on floorboards, and an
explosion that nearly destroyed two towns. This is the true tale of Alfred Swaine
Taylor and his fatal evidence.
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Chapter 1
Go Thy Way, Passenger
1806–31
Take notice, roguelings
A
lfred Swaine Taylor was born on 11 December 1806, in Northfleet, Kent,
the first child of Thomas and Susannah Taylor. The small town on the
chalky banks of the river Thames is about 25 miles east from the centre
of London, and was known in the early nineteenth century for its watercress and
flint. Taylor’s maternal grandfather, Charles Badger, had been a wealthy local flint
knapper, supplying the essential component for flintlock pistols. Taylor’s father
was a captain in the East India Company, and perhaps moved to Northfleet from
his native Norfolk when, in 1804, the company leased twelve moorings in the town
for its ships.
Taylor’s middle name, Swaine, presumably harks back to an ancestor on his
father’s side as he had several relatives with the same middle name. Just after
Taylor’s second birthday, he was joined by a brother, Silas Badger Taylor. There
were to be only two Taylor children; their mother died aged 37, in December 1815,
three days before Taylor’s ninth birthday. Her headstone can still be found in the
churchyard at Northfleet. It reads: ‘She was worthy of example as a Wife a Mother
and a Friend. Go thy way passenger and imitate Her whom you will some day
follow.’
By 1818, Taylor’s father had become a merchant, half of Oxley and Taylor,
who were based at the chalk works in Northfleet. They advertised themselves as
‘exporters and dealers in all sorts of flints, rough or manufactured, chalk etc, to
India, and all parts of England’. The company would later expand to include an
office off Lombard Street in London, and Silas would grow up to continue their
father’s business. By the 1830s, Oxley and Taylor would sell guns, and were travel
agents, selling berths on ships bound for New York.
Taylor was a studious boy, not considered strong enough for the rough and tumble
life of a public school. Soon after his mother’s death, he was sent to Albemarle
House, the school of clergyman Dr Joseph Benson. Located in Hounslow, on a
major stagecoach route to the west of London, it was a journey of about 40 miles
from Northfleet. Pupils from across the country could reach the school with ease,
and its semi-rural location was healthier than the city or town. Albemarle House,
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