Fatal Evidence Professor Alfred Swaine Taylor The Dawn Of Forensic Science Helen Barrell by Helen Barrell instant download after payment.

Taylor is perhaps best remembered as an expert witness at one of Victorian England’s most infamous trials – that of William Palmer, ‘The Rugeley Poisoner’. The case of the strychnine that wasn’t there haunted Taylor, setting up controversial rivalries with other scientists that would last decades. It overshadowed his involvement in hundreds of other intriguing cases, such as The Waterloo Bridge Mystery; The Great Fire of Newcastle and Gateshead; and the investigation into female impersonators, Boulton and Park. Crime struck even at the heart of Taylor’s own family, when his nephew’s death became the focus of The Eastbourne Manslaughter.

Taylor wrote many books and articles on forensic medicine; he became required reading for all nineteenth-century medical students. He gave Charles Dickens a tour of his laboratory, and Wilkie Collins owned copies of his books on poisons. Taylor’s work was known to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and he inspired the creation of fictional forensic detective Dr Thorndyke; for Dorothy L. Sayers, Taylor’s books were ‘the back doors to death’.

From crime scene to laboratory to courtroom – and sometimes to the gallows – this is the world of Alfred Swaine Taylor and his fatal evidence.