A manual of medical jurisprudence for India : including the outline of a history of crime against the person in India / by Norman Chevers.

  • Norman Chevers
Date:
1870
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A manual of medical jurisprudence for India : including the outline of a history of crime against the person in India / by Norman Chevers. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.

    33/902 (page 3)
    the detective officer follows the criminal through all his feints and doublings towards escape ; while the Medical Jurist,—guided here by a scratch or a blood spirt, there by a diugy staiu, or an almost invisible speck of powder, or a metallic film weighing the twentieth part of a grain,—tracks out and lays bare the evidences of his crime, almost with the certainty of an irresistible fate. To start fairly on the scent, how- ever, it is necessary, as we have seen, that he should know something of the propensities and customs of the criminal, and be thoroughly practised in the unravelling of similar cases.* A very large proportion of the experience and tact essential to the attainment of this end in India has yet to be gained ; somewhat, however, is known at present, and sufficient for all practical purposes may, doubt- less, be acquired by the combined labours of several close observers, pursuing their investigations in various parts of the country, each noting the varieties in the modes of effecting and of concealing crime, according to the religious classes, habits, and races of the offenders. * As a hunter traces the lair of a -wounded beast by the drops of blood; thus let a King investigate the true point of justice by deliberate arguments.—Menu. It is told of Camille Desmoulins that, when urged to apprehend a body of royalist con- spirators somewhat prematurely, he said— A hen always lays in the same place. Wait till the eggs are all laid and then take them. An Indian criminal's or escaped prisoner's movements almost always tend ultimately towards his own village, in the neighbourhood of which the police should maintain as long a watch as the importance of his apprehension may justify. Such watch was laid for the Nana at his birth-place, Narel, on the railway line to Poonah. Previous to the introduction of the Approver System, the police frequently succeeded in apprehending dacoits by rendering the mistresses of the suspected ringleaders furiously jealous. Who is she 1 was the well-known enquiry of an Eastern potentate whenever the cause of deep-laid mischief had to be brought to light. Governor Holwell said :— During five years that we presided in the Judicial Court in Calcutta, never any murders or other atrocious crimes came before us in which it was not proved that a Brahmin [one of those who mingle in worldly pursuits] was at the bottom of it. A London detective, suspecting that one of a party of coal-heavers had just committed a sanguinary murder, would probably look for an individual with clean hands. A deeper insight into class habits was shown by the Judge of Kajshahye, when he enquired of a Hindu, who confessed that he had been one of a party who had committed #, murder, whether, upon throwing down the body, he and his associates bathed. The meaning of this will be rendered clear to the inexperienced reader by what came out at another trial before the same Judge. Certain Hindus, having strangled a woman and thrown the body into the Ganges, were asked, if they did not mean to bathe ; they replied, no ; for if they did, they would be suspected. The person who asserted that he asked this question, was tried for the murder. The Judge remarked, What convinces me that the prisoner lent a helping hand to remove the body, was the question he put to his associates about bathing. It is notorious that, when natives touch a corpse, they consider themselves defiled and impure (asood), and invariably bathe, whatever hour it may be. Now, if the prisoner had been a mere looker on, the idea of bathing at night would never have suggested itself to him, nor would he have adverted to the fact in his confession.—Nizamut Adawlut Reports, Vol. V., Part 2 of 1855, p. 406.