A history of forensic science : British beginnings in the twentieth century

How and when did forensic science originate in the UK? A History of Forensic Science is the first book to consider the broad spectrum of factors that went into creating the discipline in Britain in the first part of the twentieth century. These influences were criminological, criminalistic, scientific, technological and even fictional. A new interest in managing crime scenes arrived on British shores, from the Continent via British India and Egypt and was channelled into the ‘scientific aids’ movement of the 1930s - Continental and Colonial criminalistics in British clothing. This book charts the strategies of the new forensic scientists to gain an authoritative voice in the courtroom and to forge a professional identity in the space between forensic medicine, scientific policing, and independent expert witnessing. In their attempts to define their roles they enlisted the moral voice of the forensic scientist alongside the cultural authority of the fictional scientific detective.