CJ van Ledden Hulsebosch

CJ van Ledden Hulsebosch

Christiaan Jacobus van Ledden Hulsebosch (born March 20, 1877 in Amsterdam ; † April 18, 1952 there ) was a Dutch pharmacist , forensic chemist and researcher. He introduced forensic light sources into police work and thus played a major role in the European and worldwide development of forensics .

Life and work

His father Marius Louis Quirin van Ledden Hulsebosch (1849–1930) was a famous chemist. After completing school in Amsterdam and Tiel in the Netherlands, Christiaan Jacobus van Ledden Hulsebosch studied pharmacy at the University of Amsterdam from 1897 to 1902 .

In December 1902 he received his diploma, was appointed health inspector in The Hague and took over his father's pharmacy in Nieuwendijk, which he ran rather half-heartedly. From 1902 to 1910 he studied chemistry, physics and criminology in Lausanne, Berlin, Dresden and Vienna. The pharmacy had already carried out various forensic research assignments since January 1883, and it has been proven that since 1885 his father had repeatedly invoiced judicial checks.

At the beginning of March 1902, the Alkmaar public prosecutor sent a telegram application for an investigation into a sex crime to his father, who at that time was attending a conference in Brussels; the then 24-year-old student Christiaan Jacobus van Ledden Hulsebosch was able to successfully complete the order and calculate it independently. So began his career as a forensic examiner.

In particular, his father conducted judicial reviews of poisoning and crimes involving the use of inks, but also looked at other traces burglars left behind. In the beginning, Christiaan Jacobus van Ledden Hulsebosch was also employed in similar cases - in addition to his work in the pharmacy - but over time he expanded his range of research: he investigated plane crashes, arson and murders of all kinds. For further training he studied at that of Professor Dr. Archibald Rudolph Reiss at the University of Lausanne founded Institut de police scientifique.

In 1910, much to the chagrin of his father, he gave up all pharmacy activities and focused entirely on "scientific research for industry, individuals and the law". In his laboratory, he bought special equipment from abroad or equipment that he developed for himself. He achieved great fame and was the first to use ultraviolet light in a police investigation. In 1914 he founded the first school for scientific police research (theory of traces), and his work and teaching soon found recognition. From 1916 until his retirement on July 1, 1950 he was a scientific advisor to the police in Amsterdam and in 1923 he became a private lecturer in the law faculty of the University of Amsterdam, teaching the "Teachings of Detecting the Crime". In addition, Van Ledden Hulsebosch was a guest lecturer at the Police Vocational School (MPVS) in Hilversum. In 1929, CJ van Ledden Hulsebosch founded the Vienna-based Académie Internationale de Criminalistique (International Academy for Criminology) in Lausanne with the Swiss criminalist Marc Bischoff, the French Edmond Locard , the Austrian Siegfried Türkel and the German Georg Popp .

In 1945 his autobiographical book Forty Years of Detective Work was published in Utrecht.

In 1952, at the age of seventy-five, he died in his hometown of a heart attack. Christiaan Jacobus van Ledden Hulsebosch married Nora Manikus on December 17, 1903, and the marriage resulted in two sons and a daughter. Although he had suffered a lot in the course of his life, he was a kind man, full of humor and always optimistic.

The Dutch writer Dick van den Heuvel wrote four crime novels in collaboration with Simon de Waal with CJ van Ledden Hulsebosch as the realistic protagonist, but the stories were pure fictions: Murder in Tuschinski, The Return of the Emperor, Playing with Fire and The Rembrandt Code.

Special research results

In a publication by Christiaan Jacobus van Ledden Hulsebosch in the archive for criminology, volume 78, p. 1, he reported on the use of ultraviolet rays in criminology and described the results, which were groundbreaking for police crime scene work. Above all because of the simple and handy equipment that he had used. For his investigation he used an analytical quartz lamp from the Hanau quartz lamp factory. “The most important part of this device is the well-known mercury vapor lamp , which is used as a so-called artificial sunlamp in therapy . This is surrounded by a housing that has a window made of special material at the bottom as a filter through which essentially only the ultraviolet rays and not the visible ones penetrate. ”In addition to significant chemical findings, Van Ledden-Hulsebosch now established that stains and traces of semen , urine , white flux , sweat , blood serum and the like light up clearly when struck by the ultraviolet rays.

“The various substances in question behave as follows: unchanged blood, as a fresh drop on a non-absorbent surface, appears deep black without any hue or light reflection. If, on the other hand, it is sedimented, the serum turns out to be a faint bluish glow in contrast to the completely 'dead' blood cake. The blood pigment does not luminesce , it even covers otherwise luminous substances, if they are covered with a thin layer of blood. [...] The analysis lamp is extremely valuable when looking for sperm stains which, because of their high protein content , shine particularly brightly under the ultraviolet light. This makes it much easier to find suspicious areas in large objects to be examined (bed sheets, carpets, canvas corners), especially when it comes to dark, dense fabrics, where both a palpation and a look at some areas miss the examination. [...] Spots of vaginal secretions glow bluish-white under ultraviolet light; Admixture of semen or pus does not visibly change the appearance, while the blood content (menstrual blood) gradually darkens the fluorescence. Traces of mucus from the nose, the windpipe and their branches show a similar behavior. In the case of gastric and duodenal juice , the areas that are only saturated with mucus glow, while the parts colored by the chyme and bile have a darker color corresponding to their composition. Bile itself appears canary yellow. […] Dried sweat is only visible when the object is very roughly wetted under the analysis lamp. Therefore fingerprints can not be determined more clearly with the help of the ultraviolet rays than otherwise. "

Fonts

• Verertig jaren speurderswerk door. Kemink and Son Publishing House, Utrecht 1945.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b} H.AM Snelders: Ledden Hulsebosch, Christiaan Jacobus van (1877-1952). In: Biografisch Woordenboek van Nederland, accessed October 25, 2009.
2. ↑ HP van den Aardweg: Persoonlijkheden in het Koninkrijk der Nederlanden in woord en beeld. Onder hoofdred, Amsterdam, 1938, p. 900.
3. ↑ HAM Snelders: oorspronkelijke versie opgenomen. In: Biographical Woordenboek van Nederland. Vol. 2, The Hague, 1985.
4. ^ HJ Hardon: Geschiedenis van het leven. In: Chemisch Weekblad. Vol. 48, Amsterdam 1952, p. 373 f.
5. ↑ J. Kok: Ultraviolet Straling. In: Pharmaceutisch Weekblad. Vol. 87, Amsterdam 1952, pp. 308 f.
6. ↑ Locard, Edmond. Encyclopedia.com, accessed September 15, 2009.
7. ^ CJ van Ledden Hulsebosch: Veertig jaren speurderswerk door. Kemink and Son Publishing House, Utrecht 1945.