History Carnival and See, I Told You So

The current edition of the History Carnival (see my explanation) appears on Acephalous, and Clews is highlighted with delightfully left-handed compliments. Your correspondent had hundreds of new correspondents to enjoy The Lost Art of Writing Crime Headlines.

Anyway, other blogs highlighted in the Carnival led me to essays that reinforce my long-held belief (which counters our self-congratulatory modern thinking) that forensic science, which (in my words) is merely deductive reasoning guided by scientific principles, has been around for centuries.

Sharon Howard of the University of Wales writes a fascinating and well-regarded blog, Early Modern Notes, and one of her abiding interests is in crime and legal history circa 1500-1800. Some of her more interesting recent ponderings include an essay on A Seventeenth-Century Detective; the comments are fascinating as well.

Meanwhile, attorney Jonathan Edelstein has written an essay on 17th- and 18th-century expert testimony in which he gracefully explains the significance of early opinion evidence:

Investigative methods and the use of physical evidence ... are only two of the three legs of modern forensics, because physical evidence often makes little sense to a jury without expert testimony to explain its significance. What makes experts different from other witnesses in common-law courts is that they can testify, not only to what they saw and heard, but to their resulting opinions and interpretations. Without expert witnesses, the best detective work and the most damning material evidence may never translate into a conviction. It is not surprising, therefore, that expert testimony has roots as ancient as forensics itself.

Edelstein goes on to list several fascinating examples. And to that accumulation of evidence of the genius of our forebears I would add the case of Cecile Combettes, an 1847 murder case from France that featured the use -- though misuse is more accurate -- of trace evidence in the form of organic material that linked a young girl's corpse to the garden of a nearby religious institution and eventually to one brother in particular.

Someone ought to write a book.

Comments

[Scott Eric Kaufman]

I'm glad to hear you appreciated the comment. As I said, I loved that post because it resonates with what I find in the archives. I thought the "accusation" might seem a little uncouth, but I'm relieved to hear you took it in the spirit in which it was meant.