UNIFORM WITH THIS BOOK HYPNOTISM AND SUGGESTION By Bernard Hollander, M.D. “It is the work of a man of established reputation, who has devoted himself for years to the subject, and whose aim it is to tell what Hypnotism really is, what it can do, and to what conclusions it seems to point.”— Globe.   TRIAL OF CAROLINE RUDD Frontispiece SCIENCE AND THE CRIMINAL BY C. AINSWORTH MITCHELL BOSTON LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY 1911 To Mark Hanbury Beaufoy, Esq., J.P. as A Mark of Regard and Esteem...

In the following pages I have endeavoured to give some account of the ways in which scientific discovery has been utilised in the struggle between society and the criminal. I have tried to describe the principles upon which different kinds of scientific evidence are based, and at the same time to bring human interest into what would otherwise tend to be dry detail by giving an outline of trials in which such evidence has been given. It is, perhaps, hardly necessary to mention that in many of the

INTRODUCTION Conflict between the Law-maker and the Law-breaker—Illustrations of Deductive Reasoning in Criminal Cases—Scientific Evidence—Scientific Assistance for the Accused—Instances of Advantages of Conflict of Scientific Evidence—Scientific Partisanship. In the constant state of warfare between the law-maker and the law-breaker, which began when mankind first organised itself into communities and has existed ever since, every new invention or practical application of scientific discovery h

DETECTION AND CAPTURE OF THE CRIMINAL Contrasts between Eighteenth, Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries—Margaret Catchpole—Tawell—Crippen—Portraits and the Press—Charlesworth Case—Bloodhounds—Police Dogs—Circumstantial Detection. In the days of the stage-coach a fugitive had a better chance of escaping than in the present age of steam power on land and sea. For then, slow as were the ways of escape, the ways of advertising the crime were slower still, and once on board a ship a runaway was compar

PERSONAL IDENTIFICATION McKeever’s Experiment on Fallibility of Eye-witnesses—Gorse Hall Murder—Cases of Mistaken Identity—Gun-flash Recognition—Self-deception—Tichborne Case. The untrustworthiness of the eye-witness as to detail was recently demonstrated by Professor McKeever at the Kansas State College in the following manner. [2] He asked twenty-five students at the college to witness a short drama, and immediately afterwards to write a detailed description of the characters and incidents. Th

SYSTEMS OF IDENTIFICATION Photography—Anthropometry—Finger-prints and their Uses. The discovery of photography was welcomed by the police authorities of civilised countries as affording a certain means of registering criminals for subsequent identification. But the promise that the photographic method held out was not fulfilled; for with the accumulation of photographs there was a corresponding increase in the difficulties and uncertainties attending the identification of the originals. Apart fr

IDENTIFICATION AND HANDWRITING Heredity—Emotional Influences—Effects of Disease on Handwriting. The identification of an individual solely by means of his handwriting is always liable to lead to a miscarriage of justice, for even in the cases of the closest resemblance between two writings there can be no certainty on this point. In the following pages I have attempted to point out under what varying conditions handwriting may show alterations and thus lead to wrong conclusions. In the making of

EVIDENCE AS TO HANDWRITING Illustrative Cases—Handwriting Experts At one time the only evidence that was allowed to be given as to handwriting was that of the writer himself, or of someone who had seen the writing done, or was well acquainted with the handwriting in question. Examples of evidence of this kind are numerous and occur in many of the cases mentioned in other parts of this book, such as the trial of Spencer Cowper in 1699, or of that of the Perreaus in 1775. In the trial of Spencer C

FORGED DOCUMENTS Use of Microscope—Erasures—Photographic Methods—Typewritten Matter—Examinations of Charred Fragments—Forgery of Bank Notes. The most valuable methods of detecting forgery have been based upon the use of the microscope, which will frequently reveal alterations that are quite invisible to the naked eye. For instance, a letter may have been so carefully erased as to defy detection by ordinary examination, but a microscopical examination will show the slightly roughened surface of t

DISTINGUISHING INKS IN HANDRWRITING Elizabethan Ink—Milton’s Bible—Age of Inks—Carbon Inks—Herculaneum MSS.—Forgery of Ancient Documents. In order to make clear the principles upon which are based the methods of distinguishing between different kinds of ink in handwriting it is necessary to give some account of the nature of ink. Ordinary writing ink is essentially a mixture of a decoction of galls (or other substances containing tannin) with a solution of copperas, or as it is now termed, ferro

TWO NOTABLE TRIALS Trial of Brinkley—Trial of Robert Wood The first occasion upon which scientific evidence as to the difference of blue-black inks upon a document was given in a court of law in this country was at the trial of Richard Brinkley at the Guildford Assizes in July, 1907, for the murder of Mr. and Mrs. Beck. Brinkley, at the time of his trial, was about fifty years of age. He was a carpenter by trade, but in the course of his life had turned his hand to many occupations, and for many

SYMPATHETIC INKS The so-called sympathetic inks , by which is understood inks that give a writing that is invisible, or nearly so, until it has been acted upon by the air or treated with a special reagent, have been put to many ingenious uses by the criminal. Some five years ago an innocent-looking individual called at the laboratory of one of the leading consulting chemists in London, and asked whether he could be supplied with a writing fluid that would give writing which would fade away in a

REMARKABLE FORGERY TRIALS Trials—William Hale—The Perreaus—Caroline Rudd—Dr. Dodd—Whalley Will Case—Pilcher, etc. The evidence given at the trial of William Hale, in 1728, at the Old Bailey has many points of interest. The accused was charged with forging a promissory note for £6,400. At this time it was customary for certain privileged persons to frank letters by merely signing their names upon them and adding the word “free.” In this case the forged promissory note bore the words “for myself a

IDENTIFICATION OF HUMAN BLOOD AND HUMAN HAIR Structure of Blood—Human Blood—Blood of Animals—Blood Crystals—Libellers of Sir E. Godfrey—Trial of Nation in 1857—Physiological Tests—Precipitines—First Trial in France—Gorse Hall Trials—Human Hair—Hairs of Animals. In its structure blood may be described as a colourless fluid, the plasma having in suspension small solid substances—the red and white corpuscles. The plasma may be separated into a coagulated body termed fibrin and a transparent liquid

EARLY POISONING TRIALS Murder of Sir T. Overbury—Mary Blandy—Katherine Nairn Merely to mention the word “poisoner” calls up a long succession of notorious crimes of the past, not to speak of the still more frequent cases where poisoning was suspected, though probably, often enough, with but little justification. Less than three centuries ago the fact that illness and death had come suddenly to any well-known person, was often sufficient to raise the whisper of suspicion; and any disease that did

NOTABLE POISONING TRIALS Use of Poisons—Arsenic and Antimony—Chapman Case—Strychnine in Palmer Trial—Physiological Tests—Case of Freeman—Error from Quantitative Deductions—Poisonous Food Given to Animals—Mary Higgins—Negative Result of Physiological Tests—Hyoscyamus Poisons—Crippen Case—Experiment on Cats—Time Limit for Action of Arsenic—French Case. The use of poisons but little known at the time has generally been due to a special knowledge of their properties on the part of the poisoner, who

THE MAYBRICK CASE Few trials in this country have aroused so much controversy as that of Mrs. Maybrick, in 1889, on the charge of having poisoned her husband with arsenic. James Maybrick, who was a cotton merchant, fifty years of age, had married the accused in America in 1881, she being then eighteen years old. Four years later they had made their home in Liverpool, and apparently got on well together. In 1889, however, Mrs. Maybrick became friendly with a man named Brierley, and on the pretenc

ADULTERATION OF FOOD National Loss from Adulteration—“Adulterated” Electricity—The Beer Conner—Conflict of Evidence—The Notice Dodge—Preservatives—Standards for Food—Court of Reference—Administration of the Law. To label the adulterator of food as a criminal would, in the majority of cases, be too harsh a sentence, but in the worst forms of adulteration—those in which food that is positively bad is made to appear good—he more than deserves the title. Although in the larger proportion of instance