Introduction
According to recent accounts of the history of criminology, the prison played an important role in the development of that science. This idea originated in the work of French philosopher-historian Michel Foucault, who proposed that the nineteenth-century conception of the modern prison contained the knowledge of surveillance and control. From Foucaultâs perspective, the attempts to define the criminal led to fabrication of a âscienceâ of âthe otherâ (Becker and Wetzell 2006; Wetzell 2000; Simon 2006). Foucaultâs perspective has been developed for Britain by David Garland, who portrays the prison as a laboratory from which new knowledge of criminality can develop (Garland 1985a, 1985b). The British tradition of scientific thinking about criminals, Garland proposes, was situated in an institutional framework that had the support of the prison establishment and the prestige of medicine behind it.
In this essay, I suggest a different institutional origin for criminology and a different kind of laboratory at work: the forensic laboratory. My account has been motivated by re-evaluation of the contribution of Hans Gross. The history of criminology inspired by Foucault dismissed Gross as a marginal figure: a judge who produced a textbook summarizing techniques for scientific analysis of debris at crime scenes. But as recent accounts of his work have demonstrated, Gross was concerned with a more evocative project at the centre of criminology: reconstruction of past events from traces available in the present (Valier 1998; Vyleta 2006; Burney and Pemberton 2011).
In other words, the history of criminology has been braided with that of forensic science: frayed in recent years, but tied together at the start. We can see this in Britain where developments in Europe initiated the study of forensic jurisprudence in the early nineteenth century and the popularity of American sociology in the twentieth century shaped the development of criminology. Specifically, we will examine developments at several British universitiesâEdinburgh, Cambridge and Sheffieldâduring three periods. The first is the period of common origins in the decades before the First World War (1885â1914). Owing to the work of Lombroso, criminology emerged from forensic medicine as a science of criminology. Second is the period of divergence during the interwar period (1919â1939). Forensic science and criminology split from one another between the wars owing to the âsociological turnâ in criminology. And third, the period of separate sciences (1945â1980). Since the Second World War, criminology and forensic science have pursued different disciplines, so much so that it is difficult to imagine that they were once united in a common effort to understand criminal behaviour.
Common Origins, 1881â1914
Traditionally, the history of criminology begins with Cesare Beccariaâs Dei Delitti e Delle Pene (1764). The Enlightenment view of human nature brought a new understanding of crime and punishment. Beirne (1993) shows how Beccariaâs views contained a âpositivistâ view of humanity, which meant that behaviour could be systematically observed, predicted and manipulated. He charts the development of positivist study of crime from Beccaria, through the statistical reasoning of Adolphe Quetelet, A.M. Guerry and Gabriel Tarde, to Charles Goringâs The English Convict (1913).
But there was another figure important to what would become known as criminology. Mathieu Orfila did not propose a theory of crime in the abstract, but a knowledge developed from the study of individual criminal acts. He studied chemistry at Valencia and Barcelona before arriving in Paris in 1807 to pursue medicine. After completing his degree, he set up a laboratory and gave demonstrations in forensic chemistry to overseas visitors. By 1819, when he became professor of chemistry and natural philosophy in the medical faculty at the University of Paris, he had worked out tests for common poisons. Rather than trying to detect poisons in soup, wine and vomit, which had thwarted scientists at the time, Orfila realized that poisons accumulate in body organs and suggested examinations of liver, spleen and kidneys as well as blood. His book, Secours à donner aux personnes empoisonnées ou asphyxiées, suivis des moyens propres à reconnaßtre les poisons et les vins frelatés et à distinguer la mort réelle de la mort apparente (1818), appeared in several editions and translations, including English (Bertomeu-Sånchez and Nieto-Galan 2006).
Orfilaâs work reached Scotland where forensic medicine got an early start at universities. The first chair of medical jurisprudence was established in 1803 at Edinburgh with Andrew Duncan. The subject was already well established at Edinburghâs medical school in 1822 when Robert Christison was appointed professor. Christison had been a student of Orfila and developed toxicology. In murder trials involving poison, chemical tests often proved decisive, although the tests commonly used by doctors to detect poisons were not reliable. Christison knew that although poisons could be found in the body, this didnât necessarily reveal the cause of death. He also knew that it was difficult to prove that a crime had been committed if no poison had been found in the body. He set aside some common tests and replaced them with more conclusive and simpler tests (Colely 1998, 144â145). It was at Edinburgh that Arthur Conan Doyle, a medical student in the 1870s, found inspiration for his literary creation, Sherlock Holmes. In a speech he gave in 1929, Conan Doyle named Henry Littlejohn and Joseph Bell as important influences. Littlejohn lectured at the medical school and served as police surgeon. Bell held an outpatient surgery at the Royal Infirmary and assisted Littlejohn in cases involving medical jurisprudence (OâBrien 2013, 12â14).
Scottish universities did not take an interest in medical jurisprudence because they recognized the value of forensic medicine in detecting crime. Rather, they were interested in âmedical policeâ or public hygiene. Medical jurisprudence developed from state medicine, or âlegal medicineâ as it was known in France and Italy. The idea came from Germany where âstate medicineâ meant attention to the overall health of the population, ranging from disposal of dead bodies to disinfection of prostitutes (Crowther and White 1988, 7). But the needs of courts pulled doctors into the role of âforensic detectiveâ, and Scotlandâs chairs earned reputations from appearing in court for criminal cases. John Glaisterâs widely read book Medical Jurisprudence (1902) combines forensic medicine, in the sense of public health, and criminal detection. Glaister served as police surgeon for the city of Glasgow and lectured at the hospital; he was appointed professor of forensic medicine and public health at the University of Glasgow in 1898.
In the late nineteenth century, the ambition to develop a science of criminal behaviour emerged around the figure of Cesare Lombroso. Born in 1836 at Verona, Lombroso studied medicine and in 1859 volunteered to serve as a military surgeon. He worked as professor of psychiatry at Pavia and director of an asylum at Pesaro. In 1876, he became chair of forensic medicine and public hygiene at the University of Turin. At his request, the university agreed to separate forensic medicine from public hygiene. Lombroso believed his contributions would be made in public hygiene, having had some success with locating the source of pellagra (Villa 2013, 8).
In 1876, Lombroso published Lâuomo delinquente, the work that would make him famous. He combined ingredients of forensic medicine, psychiatry and phrenology with an understanding of evolutionary development to produce the recipe for the âcriminal type of human beingâ. Lombroso theorized that some criminals embodied an arrested state of evolution. The âatavisticâ or âdegenerateâ criminal reproduced the features of an earlier stage of human development; atavism could be read from the persistence of âstigmataâ, such as shape of the skull, tattoos and left-handedness. Lombroso said the idea had first occurred to him while working as a military surgeon in Calabria in the 1860s. While conducting autopsies, he began to notice physical differences between âevilâ soldiers and their âhonestâ colleagues. The theory came together in 1871 while Lombroso was examining the body of Villela, a notorious bandit. Lombroso referred to his new scientific view of criminal behaviour as criminal anthropology, the science of the criminal species of human being. From the beginning, it was clear that the criminal type was a false lead, but criminal anthropology provided a common language for medical jurisprudence and emerging social sciences (Gatti and Verde 2012).
To promote his theory of criminality, Lombroso organized the congresses of criminal anthropology. From 1885 until the First World War, lawyers, doctors, judges and others convened every four years or so to discuss scientific approaches to crime and its treatment. The congresses brought together figures that studied the criminal body and social milieu in the criminological sense, but also those studying the body and crime scene evidence. The participants at the second congress of criminal anthropology at Paris in 1889 included a number who had experience of giving evidence in criminal cases. Paul Brouardel was professor of forensic medicine at the University of Paris; he was particularly concerned with food safety, alcoholism and venereal disease. Paul-Louis Ladame, privat-docent of the University of Geneva, taught neurology, psychiatry and criminal anthropology. Alexandru Sutzu, originally from Greece, lectured on mental pathology and legal medicine at the University of Bucharest. Alexandre Lacassagne held the chair of legal medicine at Lyon, where he specialized in toxicology. During the course of the congress, Alphonse Bertillon provided a tour of his anthropometric laboratory (Wilson 1891, 673). Although others used anthropometric techniques to explore Lombrosoâs theory, Bertillon did not. He aimed to aid the police in identification of suspects and recidivists, and cautioned against reading signs of criminality into the measurements.
The way the story has been told, the congresses involved the clash between rival Italian and French schools of criminology. The Italians, led by Lombroso, insisted on the reality of the atavistic criminal type. The French, led by LĂ©once Manouvrier, countered with the importance of environment (Nye 1976). But what we miss from this narrative is the importance of forensic science to the study of criminology. The congresses reveal the way in which the scientific study of crime, as it emerged in the late nineteenth century, included multiple theories and methods. It included criminology, as Paul Topinard defined it in 1889, in which statistical analysis of trends, correlations and distributions was used, but also kriminalistik, as Hans Gross defined itâthe knowledge from material evidence and crime scene analysis built up from experience of individual cases. These were not rival schools or national traditions, but understandings maintained and practised by the same individuals.
Lacassagne has been remembered for stressing the importance of social milieu in explaining criminal behaviour. The criminal, he said, could be compared to a microbe that propagated only under certain conditions (Nye 1976). But he pursued both criminological science and forensic science. At the Rome congress of criminal anthropology in 1885, Lacassagne displayed maps and charts showing correlations of crime rates with season, alcohol consumption and grain prices. Like Lombroso, he had been a military doctor and built a collection of tattoo designs. He saw these not as revealing biological tendencies, but as aspects of a criminal subculture. Lacassagne was, for all his sociological thinking, an accomplished forensic scientist. He devised new forensic techniques, such as estimating the time of death from the rate of decay and using rifling to match a spent bullet to a gun. In the case of Joseph Vacher, a serial murderer who stalked rural France in the 1890s, Lacassagne demonstrated the value of reconstruction of the event from evidence at the crime scene. Why Vacher embarked on a series of murders may have been irrational, but there was a rational aspect to how he committed them. Each murder had been accomplished in the same circumstances, carried out in the same way, and revealed an identical operating procedure (Starr 2011, 46, 127, 207).
Like Lacassagne, Rodolphe Reiss pursued criminology and criminalistics. Reiss, who earned a doctorate in chemistry, founded the Institute of Forensic Science (police scientifique) at Lausanne in 1909. He contributed to 685 cases between 1904 and 1919 including work on crime scenes, documents, explosive devices and forged notes. At the same time, Reiss stressed the importance of leaving the laboratory to study criminality in situ. In his Manuel de police scientifique (1911), he explained that to understand professional criminals, such as the Apaches of Paris, it was necessary to enter the criminal underworld, to talk to them in their own language, to study their work and the tools they used. On visits to Paris, he collected information and made numerous photographs of cafés, bars, hotels and hovels inhabited by Apaches; he wanted to learn their specialization, recruitment methods and information-gathering techniques; the places where they met for leisure and to drink alcohol; their fashi...
