We take it for granted today that when someone dies as a result of violence, there are a wealth of techniques and technologies that can help find out what happened, and who both victim and perpetrator were. Many techniques were once the province of pioneers who saw their worth and utilised them, leading to their acceptance by the wider world. This month, we look at three of the British pioneers who played their own part, and detail cases they worked on.

Finding arsenic in bodies
We have an early 19th century chemist to thank for the Marsh test – a test to detect the presence of arsenic. James Marsh was born in Kent in 1794. He initially worked as a labourer, before joining the Royal Artillery. However, he then started dispensing medicine, and subsequently became ordnance chemist at the Royal Arsenal in Woolwich, south London. Based at the site’s Royal Military Academy from 1829 to 1846, in 1833 he was called to given evidence on behalf of the prosecution in a notorious murder trial.

John Bodle had been accused of poisoning his grandfather, giving him a cup of coffee laced with arsenic: his grandfather had died an unpleasant death as a result. At the trial, the test Marsh devised proved problematic. It had worked well enough when he carried it out – mixing a sample with hydrogen sulphide and hydrochloric acid, which would leave the arsenic detectable as a yellow substance – but by the time he showed it to the jury, the substance had deteriorated. John Bodle was acquitted of the murder charge (although he later confessed). However, Marsh was not deterred, and set about devising a better test. He mixed a sample containing arsenic with sulphuric acid and zinc, producing arsine gas. When the gas was lit, it reduced down to pure arsenic and when put on a cold surface was visible as a silvery-black deposit. The test was first published in 1836, and its first documented use was four years later, in the Lafarge poisoning case in France. This saw Marie Lafarge charged with poisoning her husband Charles with arsenic-laden food and drink; the Spanish toxicologist Mathieu Orfila used the Marsh test to show that there was arsenic in Charles Lafarge’s exhumed body, and Marie was duly found guilty of murder and sentenced to life in prison.

In 1846, six years after the Lafarge case, James Marsh died. His will, in which he refers to himself as ‘James Marsh of Beresford Street, Woolwich… dispenser of medicine in the Royal Arsenal’ makes reference to his possessions of ‘plate, linen, books, prints, pictures, medals, [and] money’ which he left to his wife, Mary. His will makes out that he was a man of substance, and he had previously been awarded the Society of Arts gold medal for the Marsh test, yet his entry in the Dictionary of National Biography states that his salary at the time of his death was ‘only’ thirty shillings a week, and that he left Mary ‘unprovided for’. In fact, in addition to the will, Mary subsequently lived on a pension from the Board of Ordnance, as a result of James’s job.

Helping to stop the bodysnatcher
Scotsman Sir Robert Christison was a forensic toxicologist and an expert witness in many criminal trials. Born in Edinburgh in July 1797, he was the twin son of Alexander Christison and Margaret Johnstone. He studied at his home university, graduating in 1819, and was resident medical assistant at the Royal Infirmary before spells spent studying in London and Paris. He then became professor of medical jurisprudence back in Edinburgh – beating his own brother to the position – and in 1827, physician-in-ordinary to the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh.

From 1829 to 1866, he was medical advisor to the Crown in Scotland; shortly before being appointed, he had been called in to examine the final victim of the infamous murderers Burke and Hare. Christison had examined the body of Margaret Docherty, also known as Margery Campbell. With another forensic expert, William Newbigging, he decided that it was ‘probable’ that Margaret had been suffocated. Although they could not prove this medically, their report was still sufficient for Burke to be charged with murder (Hare turned king’s evidence and testified against Burke). In court, on 24 December 1828, Christison was one of the final prosecution witnesses. He again stated that he believed foul play had resulted in Docherty’s death, but that there was no forensic evidence of it. On Christmas Day, the jury found William Burke guilty of murder.

It was said that during his time in this position, ‘he was medical witness in almost every important case in Scotland and many in England’. His advice as to how to examine bodies became the accepted means of doing so, and he was able to distinguish between injuries inflicted pre and post mortem. In 1829, he published his Treatise on Poisons, and investigated arsenic, opium and hemlock among others – he even tasted arsenic himself as part of an experiment.

Christison held many prestigious positions in his time, to the extent that the Edinburgh Evening News stated that ‘every honour that the medical profession in Scotland could confer on their premier was bestowed, until it might have been said that the recipient conferred the honour in accepting it’. He was knighted in 1871, and the following year received an honorary doctorate from Edinburgh University. He died at his home of many years, 40 Moray Place, on 27 January 1882, aged 84. His entry in the Dictionary of National Biography describes him as a tall, athletic, determined character, and notes that even in old age, he could ‘walk, run and climb better than any man of his time in Edinburgh’, even climbing a 1,200-foot hill in his final year.

Proving the brides in the bath were murdered
Sir Bernard Spilsbury was the ‘celebrity pathologist’ of the first half of the 20th century: cases involving him would invariably be the subject of many column inches in the newspapers. He was born Bernard Henry Spilsbury on 16 May 1877 in Leamington Spa, Warwickshire, the son of James and Marion Spilsbury. James Spilsbury was a chemist, and so perhaps it was inevitable that Bernard would grow up taking a keen interest in science.

Spilsbury undertook his initial degree in natural science at Magdalen College, Oxford, graduating in 1899. He then went onto gain a further two degrees by 1908, while also working at St Mary’s Hospital in Paddington. He specialised in forensic pathology – then a new science – becoming resident assistant pathologist at St Mary’s in the autumn of 1905. Spilsbury married Edith Caroline Mary Horton in 1908, and by the time of the 1911 census, they were living in Harrow with their one-year-old daughter Alys Evelyn. Spilsbury gave his occupation as ‘medical profession – pathologist – general hospital’. After Evelyn, he and Edith would have three sons, Alan, Peter and Richard.

As a forensic pathologist, Spilsbury was involved in many infamous cases: from identifying the remains of Dr Crippen’s wife in 1910 to the Brighton Trunk Murders of the early 1930s. With the Brides in the Bath murders, Spilsbury appeared at the trial of George Joseph Smith in 1915 to demonstrate how Smith had managed to kill three women in their baths, with no outward signs of violence. He showed this by recreating the scene using another woman, pulling her legs suddenly as she was in the bath. It proved terrifyingly easy, and the woman involved was lucky to survive. He had also believed that Smith had committed murder by examining one of the victim’s bodies: she had goosebumps on her upper leg, and had been found clutching a bar of soap. Spilsbury gave evidence in court that, in his view, these facts meant that she had been murdered and had not died accidentally.

He was a pathologist and lecturer in forensic medicine, a renowned expert in his field. Yet he also believed that he was always right, and as he grew older, disquiet was expressed by some judges about his unbending belief in his own expertise. What finished his career, and life, was not down to a work issue, however. He lost two of his sons – one killed in the Blitz in 1940, the other dead of TB five years later – and suffered from depression. He sadly killed himself in his university laboratory in 1947, but his achievements live on.