Introduction

During the half-century following 1870, state- or municipally-sponsored institutes of forensic medicine were established in Paris, Berlin, Vienna, Budapest and many other principal cities of Europe. Usually associated with university medical faculties, they served the dual purpose of teaching and research in forensic medicine and conducting medico-legal investigations, usually on behalf of the authorities. The late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries also saw the creation of a number of laboratories specially devoted to ‘criminalistics’ or ‘police science’, a somewhat illdefined field which may, however, roughly be equated with what was later to become known as ‘forensic science’. These laboratories were sometimes associated with or even formed part of local medico-legal institutes, as in the case of Lyon, but were more often attached to government chemical or toxicological laboratories, as in the Swedish case, or else were exclusively under police control. By 1930, almust every European capital and many other principal cities had its own medico-legal institute (France, for example, had three by 1933, in Paris, Lyon and Lille), while France, Italy, Germany, Switzerland, Sweden and even Finland all had at least one ‘police science’ laboratory. Similar institutions also existed in Egypt, a country under overall British control but with its own, largely French-inspired internal administration and system of justice, while Ceylon had developed a rudimentary but apparently quite effective forensic science service run by the government chemist C. T. Symons.

Among materially advanced European states and jurisdictions, only Great Britain and especially England stood out.