Kelly-Ann Couzens on The Police Surgeon in Victorian Edinburgh: A Talk on May 21, 2021@ThomGiddens

From Jennifer Aston, University of Northumbria, an announcement of a very interesting talk:
On 21^st May at 11am the Law and Humanities RIG is hosting a talk by Dr Kelly-Ann Couzens discussing the historical role of the police surgeon. The abstract is attached. Kelly’s work is fascinating and she always tells a good story so even if historical research is not your bag it is worth coming along to learn more about the history of this little appreciated official. Kelly’s talk is entitled:
 
‘The office is not a very popular one, and its duties are often disgusting’:
The Police Surgeon in Victorian Edinburgh
 
 
Dr Kelly-Ann Couzens is an Australian-born scholar, specialising in British legal and medical history. Most recently, Kelly has been working as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the School of Law at the University in Edinburgh. In 2019 she graduated with a PhD in history from the University of Western Australia and is currently writing her first book - The Victorian Police Surgeon: A History of Crime and Forensic Medicine - for Palgrave.
 
The talk will be hosted on Blackboard Collaborate. Here is the link.
 
https://eu.bbcollab.com/guest/0d2d60c529174da39052bdf46a9069b9
 Here is the abstract of Dr. Couzens' talk.
‘The office is not a very popular one, and its duties are often disgusting’:
The Police Surgeon in Victorian Edinburgh
 
*Dr Kelly-Ann Couzens, Adjunct Research Fellow, Department of History, University of Western Australia
 

Read her essay, "The Police Surgeon, Medico-Legal Networks and Criminal Investigation in Victorian Scotland," in Crime and the Construction of Forensic Objectivity from 1850 (Alison Adam, ed. Springer, 2020), at 125-159.

Despite the ever-growing body of scholarship chronicling the history of forensic medicine within Anglo-American justice systems, the role of the police surgeon – as expert witness – remains largely neglected by historians. This is particularly surprising, given the diverse duties this doctor was tasked with during the Victorian era. For as well as being required to attend to the proper health and fitness of local police forces, the surgeon of police was often the first medical practitioner to make contact with victims and perpetrators in the aftermath of a violent crime. Working alongside local officials and law enforcement and empowered to inspect and certify cases of suspicious injury, sexual assault, death and insanity, the police surgeon held a unique position within the complex system of Scottish criminal justice. Nowhere is this better seen, than in the forensic career of surgeon, Sir Henry Duncan Littlejohn. For over five decades, Littlejohn laboured at the coalface of Victorian forensic medicine, whilst employed as Edinburgh city’s surgeon of police. From his appointment to the role in 1854, to the close of his forensic career in 1908, Littlejohn testified as an expert witness in hundreds of cases within Scotland’s inferior and higher courts. While the close of the Victorian era would see him emerge as a giant of the Scottish medical profession, Littlejohn’s path to recognition and success had been arduous. The bloody, corporeal, and taxing nature of forensic work left the police surgeon poorly regarded by his medical brethren. Moreover, as an employee of the city council who was intimately associated with the reputation and practices of the Edinburgh police, the conduct of the police surgeon was not exempt from public scrutiny. Yet as an intelligent, ambitious, and canny practitioner, Littlejohn was able to use this unpopular office to his professional advantage. Through this public-facing position, and regular involvement in diverse forensic matters, Littlejohn established a robust and distinctive footing in the civic, legal, and medical hierarchies of nineteenth and twentieth-century Edinburgh.

H/T 

Counter Exhibitions: Opening March 6, University of London @thomgiddens @GoldsmithsUofL

COUNTER INVESTIGATIONS: FORENSIC ARCHITECTURE  7 Mar – 6 May Opening: Tuesday 6 March, 6–8pm, all welcome  Counter Investigations is the first UK survey exhibition of the work of Forensic Architecture, an independent research agency based at Goldsmiths, University of London.  ‛Forensic Architecture’ is not only the name of the agency but a form of investigative practice that traverses architectural, journalistic, legal and political fields, and moves from theoretical examination to practical application. In recent years Forensic Architecture has undertaken a series of investigations internationally into state crimes and human rights violations, spanning events within war zones and instances of politically and racially motivated violence and killing. Counter Investigations presents a selection of these investigations. As historically contextualised interrogations of contemporary social and political processes, they put forward a form of ‛counter forensics’, serving as sites for the pursuit of public accountability through scientific and aesthetic means, in opposition to the monopolisation of narratives around events by state agencies. The exhibition outlines five key concepts that raise related historical, theoretical, and technological questions. Explored in an accompanying series of public seminars, they add up to a short course in forensic architecture. Top: Detail from a mural plotting the narrative trajectories of different participants, both victims and perpetrators, in the enforced disappearance of 43 students in Iguala, Guerrero, Mexico in 2014. Image: Forensic Architecture, 2017 Exhibition supported by the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts and the Forensic Architecture Exhibition Supporters Circle Institute of Contemporary Arts, The Mall, London SW1Y 5AH

Woman With a Mission: Frances Glessner Lee and Her Crime Dioramas

Frances Glessner Lee, a woman with a fortune, was also a woman with a mission--to convince law enforcement and others involved in the justice system to take forensic science seriously. She decided to use popular culture to do so. Specifically, she used meticulously created dioramas, called Nutshell Studies, and her own ability to bring important people together, to bring attention to the need to use science to solve crimes. More about Mrs. Lee here in an Atlantic Monthly article,  and in the articles listed below. An upcoming exhibition at the Renwick Gallery is devoted to her work.


Erika Engelhaupt, Peek Into Tiny Houses

Kirstin Fawcett, Frances Glessner Lee's Crime Dioramas Are Getting Their Own Exhibition


Frances Glessner Lee (National Library of Medicine)

How a Chicago Heiress Trained Chicago Detectives With an Unusual Tool: Dollhouses

The Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death

Rubtcova, Pavenkov, and Pavenkov on Historical Prerequisites of Forensic Knowledge in Russia, 1697-1725

Mariia V. Rubtcova, Oleg V. Pavenkov, and Vladimir Pavenkov, all of St. Petersburg University of Cinema and Television, have published Historical Prerequisites of Forensic Knowledge in Russia: 1697-1725 Years, presented at the 20th Annual IBA Transnational Crime Conference, 17-19 May 2017. Here is the abstract.

The article is devoted to the analysis of improving of the rules of crime scene investigation during reign of Peter The Great. The beginning of stage of development of forensic knowledge is connected with one of the first Peter I’s decree (1697 year). The development of forensic knowledge about crime scene investigation according to this decree included discovering the principles of investigation process. In our opinion, such increase of the significance of crime scene investigation in the criminal proceedings was caused by the formation of monarchical absolutist system in condition of the emerging Russian Empire. However, there is another point of view, that this trend was cause by individual qualities of Peter I: his inconsistency, impulsiveness and messy. Decree of Peter the Great (1723 year) "About the form of the court" came into conflict with the first decree because court get first position and formally abolished the crime scene investigation, however, crime scene investigation was soon restored.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

The Origins of Forensic Science

The BBC gives us a short course in the history of forensic science here. It all started with the Greeks and Romans; the word "forensic" is Latin for "open court," according to the webpage.  See also the Oxford Dictionaries webpage, which gives the origin as the Latin forensis, and the translation as "open court, public."

The CSI Syndrome

Forensics shows continue to be popular; a new one, CSI Cyber,  recently made its debut. Most  forensics experts will tell us that what happens on these shows bears little resemblance to reality, and yet lay audiences enjoy them enormously. What is the attraction?

Many forensics experts point out that viewers eagerly watch such shows and then expect that if they become jurors, lawyers will inevitably present them with forensic evidence as part, or all, of any case, particularly a criminal case, that they are then asked to judge. After all, these jurors reason, they've seen that pattern on tv. Lawyers and expert witnesses, on the other hand, say that they cannot present jurors with forensic evidence in every case. It doesn't exist for many cases. To the dismay of prosecutors, jurors may be less likely to convict if forensic evidence is minimal or lacking. The evidence that does exist is the usual mundane sort of evidence--eyewitness testimony, timelines, and documents. Boring stuff, really, but the bread and butter of many cases. Jurors, however, raised over the past 20 or 30 years on Forensic Files, CSI, NCIS, and similar shows, dating back to Quincy, ME, and even to early legal dramas (Perry Mason made good use of forensics to free his clients) expect forensic fireworks. They may prefer such evidence to eyewitness testimony, which can be initially exciting perhaps, but which becomes the target of terrier-like attacks from lawyers on opposing sides until the jury is completely bewildered, and must spend an inordinate amount of time weighing in the jury room. They may prefer forensic evidence which looks solid and uncompromising to circumstantial evidence that they will find difficult to evaluate. Forensic evidence certainly may seem a more likely peg to hang a verdict on than the uncertainty of much of what goes on in the courtroom, and in the legal system. The legal system itself, they know from experience and from popular culture, is a fickle animal.Why do jurors seem to be demanding?

What jurors want, I would suggest, is what they think is the certainty of forensic science. Statistics sound solid and verifiable. They sound like something measurable, something that jurors can hold onto and weigh when considering a verdict. Because the rules of evidence and the opposing attorneys' ability to shape the legal narrative might very well disguise a forensic expert's ability to explain to the jury just what the actual forensic data means, the jury might well misunderstand what it should infer from that data. Thus, the forensic science testimony that a jury hears in the court can be its proxy for certainty, bolstered by the certainty of the outcomes jury members routinely see in television episodes. Jurors can run from the uncertainty of circumstantial evidence and eyewitness testimony  and the unpleasant feeling that something is going on behind the scenes that they know nothing about, and take refuge in forensic science. Science doesn't lie (although people do, and can manipulate science, but jurors may be unaware of that). Forensic science returns us to the early promise of science and technology generally, the better life that we thought we could count on before August 1945, when the world both ended and began again.

If, then, CSI "affects" jurors, it does so for some good reasons, and very understandably. Jurors are rational human beings, and they look for certainty. Science looks certain, even if those of us who understand a little bit more of it than the average person know that it isn't all that "certain." Because they take their duties seriously, jurors also want to do a good job. If accepting forensic science evidence offers them a way to come to the appropriate verdict with some semblance of certainty, as opposed to accepting eyewitness testimony, for example, which they know (having watched other shows on TV as well as read newspaper articles about exonerations  through DNA after convictions through eyewitness testimony)  could be mistaken, or timelines, which can be questionable, then jurors could understandably opt for the science. Fascination with forensic science or the CSI Complex is really not so odd, not so irrational. When it enters the real life courtroom, however, it enters through the jurors' tv prism, and as a result it has much more power than it should.