Bernard Spilsbury

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Bernard Spilsbury (around 1920)

Sir Bernard Henry Spilsbury (born May 16, 1877 in Royal Leamington Spa , Warwickshire , † December 17, 1947 in London ) was a famous British pathologist and forensic scientist .

He was involved in solving major British criminal cases such as the Bathtub murders , the Dr. Crippen , the Brighton trunk murders , the Podmore case, and the Vera Page case. In Operation Mincemeat , he acted as a forensic advisor.

Life

Spilsbury studied at Magdalen College in Oxford and St Mary's Hospital in London and specialized in the then new science of forensic medicine. Spilsbury became known through the case of Dr. Crippen in 1910, in which he also appeared as an expert witness during the criminal trial . During his career, he performed thousands of autopsies , not only on murder victims but also on executed criminals. In Scotland he also appeared as an expert for the defense , because of his office as a police pathologist this was not possible for him in England and Wales.

Spilsbury was raised to the nobility in 1923 . He was also honorary pathologist of the British Home Office , taught Forensic Medicine at the University College Hospital of London School of Medicine for Women and St Thomas' Hospital . He was a member of the Royal Society of Medicine and a Freemason .

After the deaths of his two sons (from the bombing and from tuberculosis, respectively), his wife and his sister, he committed suicide by gas in his laboratory at University College London in 1947 . His body was in the Golders Green Crematorium in London cremated and the ashes on the premises of the local Garden of rest scattered.

literature

  • Douglas Browne and EV Tullett: Bernard Spilsbury: His Life and Cases (1951), ISBN 0-88029-307-1
  • Colin Evans: The Father of Forensics: The Groundbreaking Cases of Sir Bernard Spilsbury, and the Beginnings of Modern CSI , Berkley Publishing Group, 2006, ISBN 0-425-21007-3
  • JHH Gaute and Robin Odell: The New Murderer's Who's Who , 1996, Harrap Books, London, ISBN 1-55882-093-0

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. Famous Freemasons - Scientists , Homepage: Grand Lodge of Scotland (Accessed March 13, 2016)
  2. Sherlock Holmes incarnate , Homepage: MQ Magazine Issue 16 of January 16, 2006 (accessed January 8, 2013)
  3. The grave of Bernard Spilsbury. In: knerger.de. Klaus Nerger, accessed on September 24, 2018 .