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'If experts differ, what are we to do in the matter?' : the medico-legal investigation of gunshot wounds in a 1927 Scottish murder trial
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Duvall, Nicholas (2017) 'If experts differ, what are we to do in the matter?' : the medico-legal investigation of gunshot wounds in a 1927 Scottish murder trial. Social History of Medicine, 30 (2). pp. 367-388. doi:10.1093/shm/hkw066
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Official URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/shm/hkw066
Abstract
This article uses a notorious criminal trial, that of John Donald Merrett for the murder of his mother, as a case study to explore forensic medicine’s treatment of gunshot wounding in pre-war Scotland. This topic, which has hitherto received little attention from historians, provides insight into two issues facing the discipline at this time. First, the competing attempts by prosecution and defence expert witnesses to recreate the wound in a laboratory setting, in order to determine the distance from which the shot had been fired, exposed the uncertainties surrounding the application of a well-known laboratory technique for which no fully agreed-upon protocol existed. Second, the case allows the examination of the working relationship of a medical expert and a gunsmith, in which disciplinary boundaries became indistinct and the wound a shared site of analysis, in a period before the separate profession of forensic science became institutionally grounded in Scotland.
| Item Type: | Journal Article | ||||||||
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| Subjects: | D History General and Old World > DA Great Britain | ||||||||
| Divisions: | Faculty of Arts > History | ||||||||
| Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH): | Forensic pathology -- History, Gunshot wounds, Merrett, John Donald, 1908-1954, Trials (Murder) -- Scotland | ||||||||
| Journal or Publication Title: | Social History of Medicine | ||||||||
| Publisher: | Oxford University Press | ||||||||
| ISSN: | 0951-631X | ||||||||
| Official Date: | 1 May 2017 | ||||||||
| Dates: |
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| Volume: | 30 | ||||||||
| Number: | 2 | ||||||||
| Page Range: | pp. 367-388 | ||||||||
| DOI: | 10.1093/shm/hkw066 | ||||||||
| Status: | Peer Reviewed | ||||||||
| Publication Status: | Published | ||||||||
| Access rights to Published version: | Open Access | ||||||||
| Funder: | Economic and Social Research Council (Great Britain) (ESRC) | ||||||||
| Grant number: | ES/H015523/1 (ESRC) | ||||||||
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