Visible Proofs: Forensic Views of the Body

Riding the Forensic Wave

Science and the law have always had theatrical elements. To command attention and gain acceptance, scientists demonstrate their findings and credentials, and present themselves as authorities before courts of scientific opinion, courts of law, and courts of public and private opinion. But practically from the inception of the field, another group of people have used stories about forensic science to make the body visible and legible. Writers and publishers, and later directors and producers, have made murder and the dead body, and the procedures of forensics, visible to a wider public—in the form of entertaining non-fictional and fictional narratives.

Since the 17th century, narratives have mixed violence and murder, police and scientific investigation, and courtroom drama—and have attracted a mass audience. But the intensity of interest in forensics is now vastly greater. Forensic entertainments have achieved an unprecedented level of popularity.

The new forensic books, films, and television shows differ markedly from their predecessors:

Death and the dead body are depicted in graphic detail. The camera shows the wounds, disfigurement, and decomposition of the body. (Older films and books didn't linger on the details.)
The forensic scientist or team is the hero; the decisive action occurs at the crime scene and in the laboratory. (In older murder mysteries, an amateur sleuth, brilliant private detective, or police inspector is the protagonist.)
"Hi-tech" science solves the mystery.

The forensic emphasis intensifies the experience of the crime narrative. Viewers get the pleasure of seeing moral order and reason prevail over evil and death through the procedures of science and law. The distress, disorder, and moral rupture of murder are enacted within a reassuringly formulaic structure. We get to satisfy a need to see death, disorder, and evil—which loom so large in our lives, but are veiled by legal and criminal procedures, and professionalized funerary practice. We enjoy exposing ourselves to physically and emotionally provocative images of death and the dead body. Today, millions of readers, filmgoers, and television watchers find such stories enormously appealing.

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Dynamic Detective, July 1937

Courtesy Kent State University Libraries, Department of Special Collections and Archives

Riding the Forensic Wave

Forensic Spectacles and Entertainments

People have always been entertained by tales of violence. In the 1600s, cheap pamphlets found a mass readership with sensational accounts of heinous murders. Forensic medicine rarely played a role in these narratives. But in succeeding centuries, science slowly became more prominent—in fictional mysteries that featured scientific detectives like Sherlock Holmes, in true crime magazines, and in articles on scientific crime detection.

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The Poison Fiend; Life and Conviction of Lydia Sherman… for Poisoning Three Husbands and Eight of Her Children…, 1873

Courtesy New York Historical Society

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A True Relation of a Barbarous Bloody Murther…, London, 1680s

In the 16th and 17th centuries, cultural entrepreneurs began to publish accounts of real murder cases, for sale to the public. These were often nothing more than printed transcripts of trials (sometimes with testimony by physicians or surgeons), or the confession of a murderer, occasionally with the addition of a crude engraving, but sometimes they featured reportage, with varying degrees of embellishment.

This sensational pamphlet, on the murder of Sir James Standsfield by his son Philip, reports that investigators in the case used a forensic test, based on the ancient belief that the corpse of a victim will bleed if touched by the murderer. After the surgeons had conducted the autopsy, they concluded that James Standsfield had been murdered, and sewed up his wounds. Philip Standsfield was then made to lift his father's body. The pamphlet states that blood from the fatal wound "sprung out upon Philip Standsfield's Hand," which was taken as a sign (from "the finger of God") that he was guilty—corroborating the considerable amount of circumstantial evidence which already weighed against him. Philip Standsfield was found guilty and hanged in the Edinburgh market square from a gibbet. As further punishment for the heinous crime of patricide (which was legally defined as "treason"), his tongue was cut out and burned on a scaffold, his right hand was cut off, and his body hung up in chains, all for public viewing. Scholars believe that the Standsfield case was perhaps the last in Scottish law to use the bleeding corpse test.

"In a secret Murther, if the dead carkasse be at any time thereafter handled by the Murtherer, it will gush out of blood; as if the blood were crying to Heaven for revenge of the Murtherer."

—Dæmonologie, King James VI, Scotland (James I of England)

A True Relation of a Barbarous Bloody Murther…, London, 1680s

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A True Relation of a Barbarous Bloody Murther…, London, 1680s

In the 16th and 17th centuries, cultural entrepreneurs began to publish accounts of real murder cases, for sale to the public. These were often nothing more than printed transcripts of trials (sometimes with testimony by physicians or surgeons), or the confession of a murderer, occasionally with the addition of a crude engraving, but sometimes they featured reportage, with varying degrees of embellishment.

This sensational pamphlet, on the murder of Sir James Standsfield by his son Philip, reports that investigators in the case used a forensic test, based on the ancient belief that the corpse of a victim will bleed if touched by the murderer. After the surgeons had conducted the autopsy, they concluded that James Standsfield had been murdered, and sewed up his wounds. Philip Standsfield was then made to lift his father's body. The pamphlet states that blood from the fatal wound "sprung out upon Philip Standsfield's Hand," which was taken as a sign (from "the finger of God") that he was guilty—corroborating the considerable amount of circumstantial evidence which already weighed against him. Philip Standsfield was found guilty and hanged in the Edinburgh market square from a gibbet. As further punishment for the heinous crime of patricide (which was legally defined as "treason"), his tongue was cut out and burned on a scaffold, his right hand was cut off, and his body hung up in chains, all for public viewing. Scholars believe that the Standsfield case was perhaps the last in Scottish law to use the bleeding corpse test.

"In a secret Murther, if the dead carkasse be at any time thereafter handled by the Murtherer, it will gush out of blood; as if the blood were crying to Heaven for revenge of the Murtherer."

—Dæmonologie, King James VI, Scotland (James I of England)

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