Chapter XXIII: Section 6: ,216, same as 303, N. Y. P. C (4)

In the matter of sex there should be no difficulty, after noting the proof furnished by the aggregate characteristics of both male and female skeletons. The points of contrast between the two skeletons are not so striking before the age of puberty. Generally speaking the cranial capacity of an adult woman is less, although it is contended that since the great majority of males of the human species are taller, heavier, and larger than the females, it follows that if due allowance be made for these variations, it will appear that the brain capacity of woman is relatively very little, if at all, inferior to that of man. The mastoid processes of the female skull are smaller; the lower jaw-bone is relatively smaller and lighter; the ribs are lighter and compressed; the spine is relatively longer; the collar and shoulder bones and the sternum[577] are smaller and lighter; there is a less pronounced angle in the femur, the neck of which approaches a right angle, while smallness of the patella in front and narrowness of the articulating surfaces of the tibia and femur, which in man form the lateral prominences, are said to make the knee-joint in women a sexual characteristic. But it is the striking contrast in the pelvis that furnishes a sexual significance that is of greater value than all the rest of the skeleton together. From a glance at the text-book account of the pelvis, it does not appear that much anatomical knowledge is necessary to identify the important points that give shape to the female pelvis. Its greater diameter (except the vertical), larger and more curved sacrum and coccyx, and great spread of the arch of the pubes are well-nigh incontestible signs. The differences as detailed in the books can be objected to only on the possibility of a so-called hermaphrodite pelvis in one of the other sex. We sometimes see a very large pelvis in a subject who by a teratological freak became a man. Masculine characteristics are, however, oftener found in women than feminine characteristics in men; hence the conclusion that the presence of feminine characteristics leaves but little doubt as to the sex, but that certain masculine indications, while giving a great probability for the male sex, are not absolutely decisive. (See Hermaphroditism.)

The finding of fœtal bones around or about the supposed female skeleton is suggestive. It could not be inferred from this fact alone that the woman was or was not pregnant at the time of death, since the absence of fœtal remains on the one hand might imply their entire decomposition in advance of those of the adult; on the other hand, the indiscriminate habit of undertakers, who often bury still-borns with adults, may account for their presence.

ACCIDENTAL SIGNS AND EVOLUTION OF THE TEETH.

The trade or occupation leaves but few marks on the bones that are useful in the matter of identification. It is in the recent and well-preserved cadaver, or, better still, in the living subject, that the _professional signs_ are of importance. As a rule, the relatively larger scapulæ point to the fact of a day-laborer; necrosis of the lower jaw suggests a worker in phosphorus; worn and discolored teeth a user of tobacco, and aurification of the teeth might suggest the previous social condition. Gold crowns and fillings and dental prosthesis generally are among the most common and, at the same time, among the most useful signs of identification. By this means the bones of persons killed by Indians on the Western plains have been recognized years afterward. The traveller Powell, massacred in Abyssinia, was recognized in this way. From the presence of artificial teeth and the mechanical appliances for fixing them, dentists may recognize their own work beyond a doubt. One of the most common-hackneyed of these cases is that of Professor Webster.[578] Later cases, in which this kind of proof established convincing and conclusive identification, are those of Dr. Cronin, assassinated in Chicago in 1889, and of the bomb-thrower, Norcross. Every now and then accounts appear in the daily press of corpses having been recognized by inspection of the teeth. In Washington, only a short time since, the remains of an unknown man were exhumed from the Potter’s Field for judicial reasons. The unrecognized body had been found in the Potomac in an advanced stage of decomposition. From the signs furnished by the teeth the remains were identified as those of a person who had disappeared mysteriously and under circumstances that pointed to his having been murdered at a Virginian gambling den, and his body thrown into the river. In connection with this subject the Goss-Udderzook tragedy is of instructive interest.

In every important case a cast of the mouth should be taken, in order to set at rest any question that may subsequently arise as to the condition of the jaw, the absence of teeth, their irregularity or other dental peculiarities. A cast of the mouth of the deceased in the Hillmon case showed all the teeth to be regular and perfect, while it is alleged that Hillmon’s teeth were just the opposite. External signs furnished by dentition may assist greatly in fixing both age and identity. The evolution of the human dental system has been so well studied from intra-uterine life to old age that we may approximately tell the age, especially of children, from the teeth alone. This sign, so valuable in childhood, loses its value as the dentition progresses. Elaborate tables and dental formulæ to be found elsewhere deal with the two periods of dentition, the relative position and number of the teeth, and the like.

At birth the jaws show points of ossification only; but children are sometimes born with central incisors, as the writer has, in common with others, noted in several instances. The _first dentition_ takes place from the seventh to the thirtieth month; the _second_ between four and five years. In rachitic children these periods are later; but a syphilitic taint may hasten their development. The twenty-eight teeth characterize early youth. Wisdom teeth appear between eighteen and twenty-five, sometimes as late as thirty years. The presence of thirty-two teeth indicates maturity. This number is sometimes exceeded. Dr. Tidy, in his work on “Legal Medicine,” reports having seen several children between six and seven years with forty-eight teeth. Instances are recorded of cutting the teeth at advanced age, seventy and one hundred and eighteen years; of adults who have never had teeth; of supernumerary teeth, and of a third dentition. What purported to be a third dentition came under my notice some years ago, in the person of an old negro “voodoo doctor.” A more recent case, said to have occurred in an old man of seventy-four, at Seymour, Ind., is reported in the _Weekly Medical Review_, St. Louis, Mo., April 16th, 1892, p. 314.

The pathological signs furnished by the teeth should, of course, be looked upon as a personal characteristic that may lend additional light in the question of identity.

CONGENITAL PECULIARITIES, DEFORMITIES, AND INJURIES.

But congenital peculiarities or injuries of other parts of the skeleton are studied to greater advantage in determining proof or disproof of identity. We may recognize cranial asymmetry; the peculiar conformation of the idiot skull; the prognathous skull of the negro; the pyramidal skull of some of the yellow races, and the oval head of the white man; besides the ethnic artificial deformities already touched upon in considering the question of race. A metopic cranium, a cleft palate, a deformed spine or pelvis, a larger left scapula—indicative of left-handedness; a shortened extremity; bowed legs, club foot, the presence of extra fingers or toes, and the relative length of the fingers are each and all valuable facts in judiciary anthropology. In women of Spanish extraction the fifth finger is almost as long as the fourth—a fact so well known that glove-makers take advantage of it in sending gloves to Mexico, the Antilles, or to South America.

An estimate of the length of the hand seems to be a matter of difficulty, notwithstanding the extensive observation of high authority. In the majority of cases the ring-finger is longer than the index.

Important evidence is furnished from the existence of _injuries_ such as fractures, whether old or recent; the marks of gunshot wounds, of trephining, amputation, excision, or other surgical operation on the bones. The remains of an old, ununited fracture in his left humerus enabled Sir William Fergusson to verify and settle all doubt as to the identity of the body of the great missionary and explorer, Dr. Livingston.[579] The existence of an injury may constitute evidence of great importance to the accused, as happened in the case of an English gentleman charged with murder, where the trial turned on the deposit of callus in a broken rib, the only bone produced in court. From the state of this callus there could be no doubt that the fracture must have been produced about eight or ten days before death, and could not have belonged to the deceased. There was, therefore, complete failure of the identity, and the accused was discharged.[580]

On the other hand, circumstances may arise in which the existence or not of an injury is a fact of great importance to the prosecution. Among other specimens in the Army Medical Museum at Washington, the bones of the forearm of Wirtz, executed for inhuman treatment of prisoners during the Civil War, show no remains or trace of fracture; yet it was claimed in defence at the trial that he could not have been guilty of the atrocities attributed to him, for the reason that this arm was disabled from a fracture.

_Disease of the bones_, whether hereditary or acquired, is an essential descriptive element in reconstituting individuality. Caries and necrosis, rickets, spinal disease, ankylosis, and other external manifestations of bone lesion may furnish pointers of such value as often to be incontestible. They are so evident as not to require detailed mention; but much care in such cases is necessary to distinguish between disease, decay, and violence, and artefacta. The last may have resulted from the axe or spade of the grave-digger or from post-mortem lesions made at the necropsy, as in the remains of the notorious Beau Hickman of Washington, whose body on being exhumed showed that sundry amputations and reamputations had been made on the principal limbs. Having died in a public hospital, the cadaver had been utilized in rehearsal of these operations previous to its burial in the Potter’s Field.

Injuries of the phalanges, known as “baseball fingers,” are valuable indications. This was one of the facts of identification in the celebrated Cronin case.

DURATION OF BURIAL.

The condition of the exhumed bones may throw some light on the question as to the probable length of time they have been under ground, as well as the probable cause of death. If the bones were entirely denuded of soft parts we should hardly expect them to be those of a corpse buried only three or four months previously. The noting of such an injury as a fracture inflicted by some sharp instrument on a skull found in a cesspool was sufficient, with other evidence of a general character, to convict a prisoner tried at the Derby Lent Assizes in 1847.

In all cases of the kind under consideration, special attention should be paid to the surroundings, every little detail of which should be noted with the utmost accuracy; for such articles as clothes, jewelry, buttons, and in fact anything that may furnish an inference,[581] may not only throw light on the identity of the person, but otherwise assist justice. Cases are recorded in which the identity has been established principally by the clothing found with the skeleton. In Taylor’s “Medical Jurisprudence” a case is mentioned where the skeleton, portions of clothes, buttons, and boots of a Cornish miner were identified after twenty-six years’ submersion in water. Somewhat similar circumstances, a few years ago, enabled the arctic explorer, Lieutenant Schwatka, and others to identify the remains of Lieutenant Irving, of the ill-fated Franklin party.

In exceptional circumstances, as that of great cold, for instance, organic remains may be preserved indefinitely. Visitors to the Junior United Service Club in London may remember the mammoth bones discovered in digging the foundation of the club-house. Accounts of remarkable preservation of bodies discovered a long time after the occurrence of Alpine accidents, and the finding of well-preserved mammoth remains in the Siberian ice, are matters of common knowledge. A few years since, in assisting to take the remains of a mammoth from an ice cliff in Escholtz Bay, Alaska, I came across the skull of a musk-ox and the rib of a reindeer which showed the deformity and callus of a united fracture, yet there are geological reasons for believing that thousands of years must have elapsed since these remains were entombed in the ice.

A precaution to be taken in judicial investigation of bones is to ascertain whether they belong to more than one body, as they may have been put together with a view to deceive. Each bone should be examined separately, to ascertain whether it is a right or left bone or belongs to the same skeleton. They should be put together with intelligence and care, and if incomplete parts of a skeleton they may be laid in sand or putty and photographed, or the medical man may go further and, Agassiz-like, reconstruct the skeleton from the fragments. In the case of a fracture the bones should be sawn longitudinally in order to study the callus.

THE HAIR AND NAILS.

Since the hair and nails resist decomposition an unusually long time, and are even believed to grow after somatic death, they may be considered as accessories of such value in the question that occupies us as to make it possible to verify certain characteristics regarding the remains of the cadaver even after years of inhumation. For instance, hypertrophy of the great toe-nail, the length and color of the hair, baldness, or a long beard might furnish evidence of the best kind. Both hair and nails may, however, change after death. A case is mentioned[582] in which the hair changed from a dark brown to red after twenty years of burial. Accredited cases of the growth of hair after death are also on record. Dr. Caldwell, of Iowa, states that he was present in 1862 at the exhumation of a body which had been buried for four years. He found that the coffin had given at the joints and that the hair protruded through the openings. He had evidence to show that the deceased was shaved before burial, nevertheless the hair of the head measured eighteen inches, the whiskers eight inches, and the hair of the breast four to six inches.[583] Quite recently in unearthing the remains of an old cemetery in Washington, D. C., a number of persons noticed that when the body of a young girl, supposed to be about twelve or thirteen years of age, was taken up it was found that her hair had grown until it extended from her crown to her feet. Many careful observations seem to prove the molecular life of the hair and nails after somatic death. It suffices to quote the well-known case mentioned in Ogston’s “Medical Jurisprudence,” of several medical students who were brought to trial for having in custody the dead body of an idiot boy. When found on the dissecting-table the body was so disfigured that there was only one means left of proving its identity. The boy had a whim during life of permitting his nails to grow, and had not allowed them to be cut for many years previous to his death. They had completely curled round the tips of his fingers and toes till they had thus come to extend along the palmar and plantar surfaces in a strange way. The counsel for the prosecution availed himself of the knowledge of this fact, and his proof seemed to be complete, when a medical man came forward and gave in evidence that it was not an unusual circumstance for the nails to grow for several inches after death. This astounding statement so nonplussed the judge that the case was allowed to drop as not proven.

In exceptional cases the hair may be _green_. I saw a case some years since, for which no cause could be assigned, and only a few days ago I saw another in a man who worked in a brass-foundry. At the Cronin trial a barber, who had counted the victim among his customers, recognized the shape of the head and texture of the hair. Subsequent evidence of medical experts was conclusive as to the identity of hair found clinging to a trunk, the hair cut from the head of the murdered man, and that of a single hair discovered on a cake of soap. This single strand, being lighter in color in some portions than in others, seemed to indicate that it could not have come from the head of the deceased, whose hair was brown. But it was shown that hair placed on soap or other alkaline substances becomes bleached in a manner similar to the color of a single thread. This evidence of vital importance linked the hair found in the trunk with that cut from Dr. Cronin’s head, and went far toward proving that one of the murderers had washed his hands with the soap after the deed had been done.

Reviewing the signs furnished by the osseous system, it will be seen that the study of the skeleton alone is beyond contradiction more satisfactory and more important in establishing identity than that of all the other organs. Consequently a correct interpretation of the facts observed and judicious application of the rules deducible therefrom may in the matter of a human skeleton put its identity beyond a reasonable doubt. But the expert should remember that as no two cases are just alike, unexpected questions and unforeseen features may present themselves, giving to each case merits of its own. At best the medical man’s conclusions will be probabilities, not certainties; therefore his expressions of opinion should be the more guarded, as upon it may hang the life of an innocent man.

IDENTIFICATION OF MUTILATED REMAINS.

Many of the foregoing remarks on the identity of the skeleton apply in cases where mutilated remains or a portion only of the body has been recovered. Circumstances often occur in which bodies may require identification after having been drowned and partly eaten by fishes or crabs, or after having been partly eaten by buzzards, or torn into fragments by animals, as has happened in the remains of a dead infant partly devoured by a dog, and in the case of a farmer who died in the woods and was subsequently eaten by his own hogs. After accidents and fires where many persons perish; after a railway disaster where bodies have been mangled, drowned, burnt, and frozen, all in the same accident; or after an explosion from steam or gas or in a mine, or from gunpowder, dynamite, or other substance, the human remains are generally in such a state as to defy all attempts at recognition.

To dispose of a dead body in order to avoid detection, criminals will mutilate, disfigure, and chop into fragments the remains, which they afterward place in a trunk, a wardrobe, or throw into a sewer or other hiding-place. Scarcely a year passes that judiciary medicine is not concerned with cases of the kind. The frequency of such crimes has been attributed by some to the so-called contagion of murder; others offer the simple law of the series in explanation; others still believe that imitation is the principal cause. While there is no doubt a grain of truth in each of these, less philosophic minds will look upon such a beastly proceeding as a mark of the complete satisfaction sought by the destructive instinct.

Why such things should be is of less concern than the fact that criminal mutilation of the dead body is not confined to any age or country. Though more frequent in the last fifteen years, it takes up quite a space in the history of human cruelty. The violent passion, wrath, and vengeance that caused the prophet Isaiah to be sawn in two at the age of one hundred years by order of Manasses and Agag cut into pieces by Samuel have not materially changed in the days of Jack the Ripper; and we find such crimes in antipodal parts of the world, among varied sociological conditions, no matter whether it be the North American Indian, who scalps and mutilates his enemy and places the severed penis in the mouth, or the civilized European, who cuts up the body of his victim and serves it in a curry at a feast of assembled friends.[584]

This new point of judiciary medicine has lately been elaborated by European writers under the title of _Dépeçage Criminel_, a term which applies to the operation resorted to by an assassin having for its end the getting rid of the body of the victim and to render more difficult the establishment of its identity.

The cleverness of experts scarcely keeps pace nowadays with the more complicated proceedings adopted by criminals. In fact, at a trial of this kind truth and science are often the under dogs in a fight, than which none in forensic medicine is longer and more embarrassing. To cause a rapid disappearance of the proofs of a homicide, with a view to escape the investigations of justice, murderers have been known literally to make hash of the victim which was subsequently eaten by themselves and others. Gruner relates the case of a man who, having killed and cut into pieces his victim, boiled and roasted the fragments and ate them with his wife. Such examples, however, suggest morbid rather than passional phenomena, which manifestly call for rigid scrutiny into the mental state of the culprit, who may be more of a lunatic than a malefactor.

In cases of infanticide new-born children are sometimes cut into pieces and the fragments burnt in order to facilitate the disappearance of the cadaver. There does not appear to be, however, any well-authenticated instance of the operation having been done on a living child. Generally the dismemberment is done in order to cause more ready disappearance of the remains.

The medico-legal problem to be solved in cases of criminal mutilation is to establish the identity of the victim and that of the author of the crime.

Many apparently trivial circumstances may assist in the formation of an opinion as to the identity of the culprit. If the victim be an adult, a man is the author of the deed; if an infant, a woman, the mother, is almost always the guilty one. The London _Lancet_ (May 30th, 1863, p. 617) reports a case in which the body of a child, of apparently four to six months, was found in the sewage of a water-closet, minus an arm cut off below the shoulder, presumably that a vaccination-mark might not be adduced as evidence. A young woman was suspected. Several women deposed having seen a dusky-brown mother’s mark near the child’s navel. After steeping in pure water a portion of the skin said to include the mark, and after washing, the mark gradually reappeared at the end of three days, perfectly distinct. It was recognized by witnesses and produced at the trial as corroborative evidence. The accused was found guilty.

In a case of infanticide at Tarare, in 1884, the upper extremity of a fœtus was found to have been disarticulated after the manner of carving the wing of a fowl. This having suggested to Dr. Lacassagne a cook as the author of the crime, she was speedily discovered and convicted. A few years later an analogous case occurred in Florence and was reported by Dr. A. Montalti.

The instrument used for mutilating the body may furnish a suggestion of identity, to be dispelled or affirmed upon further investigation. The mode of section observed in various instances has led to the recognition of a butcher as the culprit. An expert would have but little trouble in distinguishing the hacking and mangling of a body from the careful cutting and preservation of muscles and blood-vessels in dissections made by medical students, whom the public, by the way, invariably suspect in cases of mutilation. If it can be ascertained that the instrument used was operated either by a left-handed person or by an ambidexter, such a fact may prove of importance. Sometimes the fragments are tied or sewn up in a package. The manner in which the knot is tied may indicate the occupation of the culprit. In one case the regularity of the sewing revealed that it was the work of a woman. Examination of the remains of clothing and of neighboring objects where the crime was committed may result in the identification of the victim or of the murderer. Indeed, it is the careful noting of trivial facts and their combination that is so valuable in all investigations of this class. A compound fact made up of minor facts, which considered severally would possess but little value, may sometimes solve the puzzle in a case where no single fact of conclusive value is obtainable.

Having collected as much of the mutilated remains as possible, the first step toward identification is to replace the pieces in anatomical order, to note carefully their correspondence or otherwise, and to ascertain whether the fragments belong to the same body or to two or several individuals. This is often a delicate and difficult matter, especially where decomposition is advanced or where the horror has been pushed to its utmost limits, as in the case of a fratricide committed in France by several persons, who fragmented the cadaver with a saw and hatchet; boiled the remains and fed them to hogs; and, after crushing the bones with a hammer, threw the fragments into a deep gorge. Again, the body may be divided into numerous pieces, a hundred or more, and disposed of in widely different localities, as in a pond, a manure-heap, a river, or a cesspool. The chopped-up remains of infants have been boiled in lye and afterward thrown into a privy or put in a barrel of vinegar. A mother has also been known to cook with cabbage the dismembered remains of her six-months’ child and serve it at a meal of which both she and her husband partook.

Numerous counterparts of such cases happening in late years could be cited where the object was to favor the disappearance of the cadaver, and in which the establishment of the identity turned on the examination of some small part of the organism; the uterus, the spermatic cord, the lobe of the ear, the hair, or the teeth furnishing a positive demonstration that led to judiciary results.

PUTREFACTION goes on very fast in a corpse that has been mutilated; but it is slower in parts which, on being separated just after death, have become bloodless in consequence of the hemorrhage. After submersion the outward signs of putrefaction put a notable obstacle in the way of identification, and after drowning the body becomes rapidly unrecognizable.

Supposing it impossible to reconstitute the cadaver in all its essential parts, it is always possible, by following the instructions already given for examining the skeleton, to infer from one or several parts of the cadaver the sex, age, height, and sometimes pathological peculiarities of the victim. Examination of the skeleton and teeth is of capital importance in an investigation of this class. The indications furnished thereby having already been touched upon, and being about all that we are justified in saying, it is only necessary to repeat that many of the details relative to these special indications are so confusing as to suggest caution in using the statistical tables of even high authority, as the observations they rest on are not of sufficient extent to deserve confidence.

A survey of the head, limbs, trunk, and genital parts will give the most useful indications. The HEAD, in fact, is the surest index for justice, and one that lends promptness in the discovery of the assassin. Typical illustrations of this occur in the Goss-Udderzook case and in the recent example of the bomb-thrower, Norcross. In the case of a woman murdered by her husband at Antwerp in 1877 and cut into one hundred and fifty-three pieces and her remains thrown into a privy, the color of the hair, the lobule of a torn ear, and the uterus of a woman having had children furnished special signs that led to identity and condemnation. Examination of the _brain_ and its membranes, though furnishing no very notable characteristics in the matter of identification, may nevertheless be regarded as a natural corollary to that of the skull. Brain weight, which is greatest between thirty and forty years, 1,200 to 1,450 grams in man, 1,100 to 1,500 in woman, diminishes toward the sixtieth year. It is said that the diminution takes place a few years sooner in the opposite sex. The estimated loss of weight in a person of eighty years is admitted to be from 90 to 150 grams. Another sign of age is the tendency to degeneration found in the pineal gland, the cortical substance, the optic and striate thalami, and in the brain capillaries.

The state of the eyes, if not too decomposed, may still become a sign of identity. For instance, the color of the iris, an arcus senilis, a pterygium, a cataract or an operation for the same, an iridectomy, etc., are signs that occasion may utilize.

The TRUNK may show, as it has in several instances, incised wounds that caused death before the mutilation. Besides, the organs therein contained may by their weight, dimension, and tissue alteration indicate the progress of age and of degeneration. Modifications of the circulatory and respiratory apparatus are obviously characteristic. As age advances the only organ whose weight increases with the number of years, the heart, may become hypertrophied or dilated; its coronary arteries may undergo an alteration; the pericardium thickens, and in fact arterial atheroma and degeneration generally may begin between thirty-five and forty years. It should, however, be borne in mind that these signs of senility may come much later or even not at all. In a man of eighty-four years Tourdes found no notable tissue lesion; in another of one hundred and four Lobstein found no trace of ossification of the arteries of the trunk and upper extremities, and in Thomas Parr, aged one hundred and fifty-two years, Harvey found absolutely no lesion of this kind. Although toward eighty years the heart increases in weight in both sexes, the opposite has been observed in exceptional cases. Placing the average weight of this organ in the adult at 266 grams for men, 220 for women, it will be found that progress in weight gives toward the eightieth year an increase of 90 grams for men and 60 for women. Yet a case of cardiac atrophy is reported in a woman of eighty whose heart weighed but 170 grams.

Diminished weight of the lungs becomes accentuated with years. Especially is this the case after pseudo-melanosis and senile emphysema. The state of the lungs of stone-cutters and miners and various thoracic and abdominal diseases may likewise become signs of identity. A cirrhosed liver, an enlarged spleen, a senile kidney, and the like, are sufficiently obvious in their bearings on this question.

Like the trunk, the ARMS AND LEGS, in cases of the class under consideration, show but few traces of disfigurement other than the fact of their having been disjointed. The manner in which the sections were made and the proceedings employed for the disarticulation would equally affirm an experienced hand or the reverse. Such facts have of late years assisted in the discovery and condemnation both of a farmer and of a medical student, and also in the case of the cook already mentioned, who cut off her child’s arm after the manner of carving the wing of a fowl. The existence of deformity, injury, and disease in the limbs should, of course, claim attention, but their relativity in an investigation of the kind is too apparent to require further comment.

Mutilation of the GENITAL ORGANS is not so common. Persons familiar with border warfare have observed the savage custom of cutting off the victim’s penis and placing it in his mouth. In more civilized communities the culprits are generally women in whom hatred and ferocity prompt an act that marks the evident satisfaction sought by the destructive instinct. Sometimes, however, the genital organs have been cut from the cadaver of a woman, presumably for the purpose of concealing traces of rape that may have preceded the murder. The signs furnished by the female genital organs as to virginity, maternity, and the menopause are so easily demonstrated at the necropsy as to become positive proofs of identity. The uterus loses both in size and weight with age. This along with hard, atrophied, and germless ovaries attests the stoppage of menstruation. The question of identity may turn on the age at which menstruation ceases, as happened in an action of ejectment in the case of Doe on the demise of Clark _vs._ Tatom. The period known as change of life, when the uterus and ovaries lose their function, though placed at forty-five and fifty years, is quite uncertain. In spite of _averages_, menstruation is occasionally continued to seventy and upward.[585]

The signs furnished by the genital organs of the male are of less importance. Atrophy and diminished weight of the testicles and rarity or absence of the spermatozoids are indications of senility; although spermatozoids have been observed at ninety-four years. The structure of the spermatic cord at different periods of life from the last of intra-uterine to the first of extra-uterine life, in puberty, and in old age, is accompanied by characteristic modifications of development and regression, which are of interest on the question of medico-forensic diagnosis of identity, as shown by Dr. Pellacani.[586]

Congenital deformity of the genital parts, as epispadias or hypospadias; marks of circumcision, useful in India to identify Mussulmans above eleven years; traces of disease that may have left extensive cicatrices, as phagadenic chancre, suppurating buboes, etc., may also furnish characteristics of evidential value.

ENTIRE CADAVER DEAD BUT A SHORT TIME.

In the case of a body that has been dead a short time only, recognition from the features, even by the nearest relatives, is often a matter of the greatest difficulty. The change produced in the color and form of the body, especially after drowning, is a formidable obstacle to identification by likeness and general type of face. Pages could be filled with the mere mention of the multiplied instances of mistaken identity of the living, many of whom have been punished because they had the misfortune to resemble some one else. How much more careful, then, should be the medical examination of the remains in the progress of decay, with the distortion and discoloration of the features, and the consequent change or destruction of the peculiar expression of the countenance by which human features are usually distinguished and identified.

Among the innumerable instances of mistaken personal identity and cases of resemblance mentioned in history and fable, from the time of Ulysses down to the days of Rip Van Winkle’s dog Schneider, it appears that this animal is credited with more sagacity than man in the matter of recognizing his master even after years of absence. Indeed, recognition by animals may be considered a proof of identity. Many persons can recall instances of the kind, though perhaps not so dramatic as the one of the dog in the Odyssey, who recognized his master after twenty years of absence and died immediately thereafter.

As a matter of fact, time and circumstances will so alter resemblance as to account for some of these most striking proofs of the fallibility of human testimony that we see illustrated in chapters on mistaken identity. We easily forget the true image of persons and things, and time promptly modifies them. The evidence of the senses may be so little trusted in this regard that father, mother, husband, and nurse may attest a false identity in the case of their own children. A nurse has been known to testify to the identity of the severed head of a woman whom thirteen other persons were sure they recognized from characteristic signs, when the supposed victim put in an appearance and thus attested her own existence. The head of the unrecognized victim of this strange controversy is preserved in the museum of the Strassburg Faculty.

In another case of historical notoriety in France, forty witnesses on each side swore to the personality; while in the celebrated Tichbourne trial no less than eighty-five witnesses maintained positively, under the most rigid and scrutinizing cross-examination, that a certain person was Sir Roger Charles Doughty Tichbourne, a baronet; at the same time a corresponding number were equally unshaken in their conviction that he was a Wapping butcher, Arthur Orton.

Resemblances often bring about remarkable coincidences. A case is said to have occurred in Covington, Ky., where two men met, each the double of the other in form, stature, and feature, each having lost a right leg, amputated at the knee, and each being blind in the left eye from accident.

Puzzle and perplexity are not confined to remarkable cases and judicial errors; for so many people are unskilled in correct observation that it is a matter of common occurrence for two individuals to be mistaken the one for the other. The writer for some years has frequently been mistaken for a certain naval officer he is said to resemble, while the officer in question has become so accustomed to being called “Doctor” that he answers to the title without protest.

A case that has of late been much quoted in the journals is that of Tiggs. What was supposed to be his mangled body was identified by his wife, and further identification was forthcoming from one of his children and the employer of the deceased. The coroner had granted a certificate for burial, and as the hearse neared the door, to the surprise of all parties the real Tiggs entered the house and gave a satisfactory account of his absence.

Most mistakes of this kind are the result of existing imperfections in the average human mind or in its use. So few people are skilled in minute observation that Lord Mansfield’s dictum regarding the “likeness as an argument of a child being the son of a parent” should be received with a certain degree of reserve, especially in the question of identity from likeness after death. In Ogston’s “Medical Jurisprudence” a case is related of a father who could not recognize the body of his son drowned at sea ten days previously. The mother, however, identified her boy from the existence of two pimple-looking projections on the front of the chest, which proved to be supplementary mammæ.

As a rule, the changes in the face and countenance two weeks after death are such that it is well-nigh impossible to establish identity from the features alone. Yet in exceptional cases the external results of putrefactive decomposition have been so delayed or modified as to produce very small changes in the features even after many years of burial. Bodies have been known to retain a remarkable state of preservation for long periods in such circumstances as burial in a peat bog, in the sand of the desert, and in the frozen ground of cold countries.

Even _photography_ in the matter of identity is not to be trusted. Though an important accessory to other evidence, it is often, and very properly, objected to by lawyers on the ground of being incompetent, irrelevant, and immaterial. The picture presented for comparison may not be an original one or it may have been taken years previously. The difficulty in recognizing one’s own most intimate friends from pictures taken only a few years back is a matter of common knowledge. Besides, the negative from which the picture was taken may have been retouched or altered, consequently it would not be the same as produced by the camera, and is, therefore, valueless as evidence. It is held to be incompetent to prove a photograph by merely asking a witness whether or not he recognizes the picture in question as that of a certain person.

In all cases where photographic pictures are required in a court of law the authorities are that the artist who took the picture must be produced and show that he took the picture, and that it is a correct representation of the original of which it claims to be a picture. If possible the negatives themselves should be called for and reproduced. Dr. Tidy states that he has known a volume of smoke appear in a print as issuing from a chimney, and used as evidence of the existence of a nuisance, when no smoke existed in the original negative. Only slight familiarity with the method of taking photographic pictures and the chemistry involved in the process suffices to show that many little details of sensitizing, exposing, developing, and printing greatly change the general appearance of the face. Some of the tricks that may be played with photography, illustrating its comparative incompetency as evidence in the matter of personal identification, I have seen in a series of pictures at the Department of Justice in Washington. All were photographs of the same person taken in such varying circumstances that no two are alike or recognizable as the same person, until scrutiny is brought to bear on the profile of the nose.[587] In considering photography in its bearing on this branch of medicine, it must also be borne in mind that a certain degree of imperfection arises from want of uniformity in the lenses of cameras. I have already mentioned the want of precision in photographing the skull, the common defect being central not orthogonal projection such as anthropometry requires.

SURFACE SIGNS OF IDENTITY.

Examination of the surface of the skin and of its appendages may in certain cases take decisive importance. Valuable medical proof is often furnished by scars, nævi, growths on the skin, pock-marks, traces of skin disease or of scrofula, and by the so-called professional stigmata which would suggest the trade, character of work, or occupation of the deceased. Thus cigarette-stains on the fingers of smokers, or silver-stains on the hands of photographers, the horny palm of the laborer, or the soft, delicate hand of one not accustomed to work, would be indicative. The alterations in the hand make it, so to speak, the seat of election; for in the majority of trades that may be mentioned it is the hand alone that bears the principal marks of daily work that indicate the calling. A case is recorded of a person who previously to his assassination was lame and walked with a crutch. Although the body was cut into fragments, an examination revealed in the palm of the hands characteristic callosities, showing prolonged use of support of this kind. In another instance of criminal mutilation a tattoo-mark found on the arm proved an overwhelming charge against the assassin and drew forth his confession. An accused was also convicted of murder after establishing the only missing link, the question of identity, which turned on the finding of cupping-marks and a tattoo on the body of the murdered man. Personal identity of the bodies of infants has, moreover, been proved by means of a small blister; by a patch of downy hair; by the similarity existing between two pieces of thread used to tie the umbilical cord; and by the severed end of that part of the funis attached to the infant fitting precisely to the corresponding portion attached to the after-birth. In addition to these a methodical examination may put in evidence other facts that may be derived from diverse influences that leave characteristic traces.

SIGNS FURNISHED BY MARKS, SCARS, STAINS, ETC., ON THE SKIN.

But of all the surface signs, whether congenital or acquired, that may throw light on the antecedents of the decedent, birth-marks, freckles, cicatrices, tattooes, and the professional signs furnish the best indications. Birth-marks (_nævi materni_), from their supposed indelibility, have given rise to discussion at many celebrated trials. As a rule, these marks are permanent and seldom lose their distinctness, though in exceptional cases they may undergo atrophy in the first years of life. Hence testimony as to the existence of birth-marks may often be uncertain when it has reference to a period a long way back. In a recorded case of supposed recognition of a person having a mark of this kind on her face, the alleged victim turned up and established her identity as well as the fact that she did not have the birth-mark attributed to her.

Before the introduction of the electrolytic method it was customary to resort to cauterization, excision, vaccination, and tattooing the pigmentary spot in order to modify or remove these congenital marks. Such proceedings usually left more or less of an indelible scar which occasion might utilize in the matter of medico-legal diagnosis. The traces of nævi may, however, be entirely removed by electrolysis. I have recently seen a nævus of large dimension on the face of a young woman so completely destroyed as to leave no trace of the operation.

The _possibility of the disappearance of a scar_ in such circumstances depends here, as it does in other instances, on the depth of the wound. A cicatrix being the result of a solution of continuity in the derma, the question arises whether a wound that has divided the derma without loss of substance and healed by first intention leaves any perceptible scar. Some are of the opinion that a cicatricial line persists, but grows fainter with time. Histological examination in a question of this kind might prove conclusive by showing the structure of the fibrocellular tissue that constitutes the cicatrix. In the case of very superficial burns or wounds, the scar may completely disappear if the epidermis alone or the superficial part of the derma is attacked; on the other hand, if there has been long suppuration or loss of substance from ulcers, chancres, or buboes, especially on the neck, groins, legs, or genital parts, traces of their lesion will be found. It may, therefore, be asserted as a general rule that all scars resulting from wounds and from skin diseases which involve any loss of substance are _indelible_. A scar on the face is one of the points at issue in the celebrated Hillmon case already mentioned.

As the matter of cicatrices is treated in the section on WOUNDS, further mention here would be superfluous.

TATTOOING.

Of all the scars that speak, none in judiciary medicine affords better signs of identity by their permanency and durable character and the difficulty of causing their disappearance than those furnished by tattoo-marks.

The custom of tattooing having existed from the earliest historical epochs is of interest not only from an ethnological but from a medical and pathological point of view, while it is of great importance in its relation to medical jurisprudence in cases of contested personal identification which may be either established or refuted by this sign. So trustworthy is it in many instances as to become a veritable ideograph that may indicate the personal antecedents, vocation, social state, certain events of one’s life, and even their date.

Without going into the history of a subject mentioned by Hippocrates, Plato, Cæsar, and Cicero, it may be pertinent to say that tattooing is prohibited by the Bible (Leviticus xix., 28) and is condemned by the Fathers of the Church, Tertullian among others, who gives the following rather singular reason for interdicting its use among women: “_Certum sumus Spiritum Sanctum magis masculis tale aliquid subscribere potuisse si feminis subscripsisset._” (_De Virginibus_ velandis. Lutetiæ Parisorum, 1675, fº, p. 178.)

In addition to much that has been written by French, German,[588] and Italian authors, who have put tattooing in an important place in legal medicine, the matter of tattoo-marks a few years since claimed the attention of the law courts of England, the Chief Justice, Cockburn, in the Tichbourne case, having described this species of evidence as of “vital importance,” and in itself final and conclusive. This celebrated trial has brought to light about all the knowledge that can be used in the investigation of this sign as a mark of identity. Absence of the tattoo-marks in this case justified the jury in their finding that the defendant was not and could not be Roger Tichbourne, whereupon the alleged claimant was proved to be an impostor, found guilty of perjury, and sentenced to penal servitude.[589]

The practice of tattooing is found pretty much over the world, notably in the Polynesian Islands and in some parts of Japan. It is, however, not found in Russia, being contrary to the superstitions of the people, who regard a mark of this kind as an alliance or contract with evil spirits. Its use appears to be penal only, and is limited to Siberian convicts. The degrading habit, confined to a low order of development, exists at the present time as a survival of a superstitious practice of paganism, probably owing to perversion of the sexual instinct, and is still common among school-boys, sailors, soldiers, criminals, and the lowest order of prostitutes living in so-called civilized communities. Indeed, unanimity of opinion among medical and anthropological writers assigns erotic passion as the most frequent cause of tattooing, and shows the constant connection between tattoo-marks and crime. Penal statistics show the greater number of tattooed criminals among the lowest order, as those who have committed crimes against the person; while the fewest are found among swindlers and forgers, the most intelligent class of criminals. Even amid intellectual advancement and æsthetic sensibility far in advance of the primitive man, such as exists in London and New York, for instance, are to be found persons who make good incomes by catering to this depraved taste for savage ornamentation. Persons who have been to Jerusalem may remember the tattooers, who try to induce travellers to have a cross tattooed on the arm as a souvenir of the pilgrimage. If a writer in the _Revue des Deux Mondes_, 15th June, 1881, is to be believed, it appears that the Prince of Wales on his journey to the Holy Land had a Jerusalem Cross tattooed on his arm, April 2d, 1862. The “Cruise of the _Bacchante_” also tells how the Duke of York was tattooed while in Japan.

The process is now rapidly done, an Edison electric pen being utilized for the purpose, and some of the wretched martyrs have the hardihood to be tattooed from head to foot with grotesque designs in several colors. I know of several instances: one of a man in Providence, R. I.; another of a Portuguese barber, who has striped poles, razors, brushes, and other emblems of his calling over the entire body. Another man has likenesses of Abe Lincoln and of Kaiser Wilhelm of Germany on his respective shins. A Nova Scotian, tattooed from head to foot, has among other designs that of “St. George and the Dragon” on his back; while a Texas ranchman, six feet two inches tall, underwent the torture of eight weeks’ profanation of his body in order to appear in blue, brown, and red, with an irreverent image on his back of the Immaculate Conception and thirty-one angels.[590]

A singular mixture of erotic and religious emblems is often found among the varied and fantastic signs used in tattooing. I recall the case of a man who had represented on his back a fox-hunt, in which riders followed the hounds in full pursuit of a fox about to take cover in the anus. In another case of a man accused of criminal attempt on two little girls, examination of the sexual organs revealed a tattoo on the back of the penis representing the devil with horns and red cheeks and lips. When the little girls were asked if the accused had shown them his virile member, they answered, “This man unbuttoned himself and said to us: ‘I am going to make you see the devil.’” In the face of such affirmations, the accused confessed his crime and was condemned. Other tattoo signs of the grossest emblems of unnatural passion have been found among low prostitutes, pederasts, and tribades.

Statistics founded on numerous facts show many cases of tattooing of the penis and even of the labia majora in the lowest order of prostitutes, but these unclean images and revelations of lustful instinct do not occur in the same order of frequency as those noted on the forearm, the deltoid, or the inferior extremities. So valuable are these marks in their bearing on the class, vocation, character, and tastes of a person that the finding of anchors and ships would indicate a sailor; while flags, sabres, cannon, and other warlike signs would indicate a soldier, etc. It is also noticeable that in the tattooing practised by lunatics the image relates in some way to the nature of the peculiar form of mental disease from which they suffer, and it is chiefly among the more severe and incurable cases of mental degeneration that these signs are found. (See Dr. Riva’s article, “Il tatuaggio nel Manicomio d’Ancona,” _Cronica del Manicomio d’Ancona_, November, 1888.)