Remarks on the trial of Robert Reid, for the murder of his wife : before the High Court of Justiciary, at Edinburgh, on the 29th of June 1835 / by John Fletcher.

John Fletcher

Date:: 1835

Credit: Remarks on the trial of Robert Reid, for the murder of his wife : before the High Court of Justiciary, at Edinburgh, on the 29th of June 1835 / by John Fletcher. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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$and from that of Bailie Walker, that he cut as far as he saw blackness. Hence it results that the discoloration really extended all the way down the back, as well as to the top of each shoulder \ for such was the direction and extent of a transverse in- cision which Williams made on this occasion, at least eight inches, as Dr Forbes says, below the seat of the dislocation which was afterwards disco- vered. And with respect to the longitudinal inci- sion, the evidence of Dr Forbes bears that this ex- tended from the occiput to the second or third lumbar vertebra ; so that, to wave the slight discre- pancy between these two Medical gentlemen of some fifteen or sixteen vertebra: — for Williams' sixth was afterwards explained to mean the sixth from the head—we seem justified in supposing that it reach- ed from one shoulder to the other and from the head to the loins. ]Now is a discoloration of this extent what we should have expected from any blow, and in particular from such a blow, and in such a situation as is above supposed ? Professor Ciiristison indeed says that a blow might have produced the livid appearance described. Not, 1 am afraid, without the admission of another extraordinary error or two in the facts, a too frequent repetition of which would have ended probably in an extraordinary error of a very melancholy description. 3. But perhaps the least equivocal characteristic of EccJn/mosis, as distinguished from Livor, is the presence in the discoloured part of coagulated blood ; and it appears from the evidence of Williams, that 44 a quantity of coagulated blood issued from the mark below the right ear, upon his dissecting away the >kin from the part—a conclusive proof, in the$