1. The rise and fall of celebrity pathology.
- Author
-
Burney, Ian and Pamberton, Neil
- Subjects
- *
PATHOLOGY , *FORENSIC sciences , *CRIMINAL investigation , *FORENSIC pathology - Abstract
The article deals with the rise and fall of celebrity pathologists. Celebrity pathology was born a hundred years ago in England following Sir Bernard Spilsbury's identification of scar tissue on a fragment of flesh found in the cellar that secured the conviction of Hawley Harvey Crippen for the murder of his wife. A century later, a research paper was published in the "Journal of Forensic Sciences" claiming that Crippen's story does not lie in rotting remains but instead found in sanitised biomatter abstracted from the body. It says that the findings of this paper represent a marker of the boundaries of Spilbury's long rein. Also discussed is the role of modern forensics of DNA in the death of the era of celebrity pathology.
- Published
- 2010