# - Spilsbury, Sir Bernard.

a total of about 3970 index cards (c.75 x 125mm., i.e. 3 x 5 inches), most written on both sides, each card with autograph notes detailing cause of death, sex, date of birth and name of subject, date and place of autopsy, details of external and internal examination, and case history, some cases continuing over two or more cards, in later cases the preliminary notes (age, sex, date, etc.) usually in another hand, some cards with newspaper clippings affixed providing detail on case history, in chronological order with markers for each year, in a wooden filing cabinet with four drawers labelled 1905-17, 1918-1927, 1928-30, and 1931-32

D.G. Browne and E.V. Tullett, Bernard Spilsbury: His Life and Cases (1951); A. Rose, Lethal Witness: Sir Bernard Spilsbury, Honorary Pathologist (2007)

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the professional records of the father of professional forensic pathology. Bernard Spilsbury (1877-1947) was the foremost pathologist of his day, with a  formidible reputation as an expert witness: "his opinions were so impregnable he could achieve single-handed all the legal consequences of a homicide - arrest, prosecution, conviction, and final post-mortem - requiring only the brief assistance of the hangman" (quoted in Rose, p.xix). The post of Honorary Pathologist to the Home Office was created for Spilsbury, who made his name with some of the most  famous English murders of the twentieth century, such as the Crippen case, the "Brides in the Bath" murders, the Voisin case, and the Brighton trunk murders, and who conducted over 20,000 autopsies during a career that lasted over forty years. Spilsbury was a media celebrity - Britain's "living successor to mythical Sherlock Holmes" (Time, 2 July 1934) - and was the original figure of the infallible forensic pathologist that is so familiar in contemporary crime fiction. According to his obituary in The Lancet, Spilsbury "stood alone and unchallenged as our greatest medico-legal expert". Recent research has shown, however, that the awe in which Spilsbury was held, combined with his own inflexible opinions, led to a number of miscarriages of justice, including several wrongful executions.

these case cards are a major untapped source for medico-legal history, and the fragmentary surviving records of coroners' courts means that in many cases these may be the only surviving record of a death.  A meticulous and methodical worker, Spilsbury kept case cards of his post-mortems for future cross-referencing. Until the discovery of this cabinet, only a few isolated examples of these case cards (those of the most sensational cases in which Spilsbury was involved) were known to survive. This cabinet contains details of thousands of autopsies conducted by Spilsbury from the beginning of his career through to the 1930s, and cover his career to its height. The cabinet and three others, presumably containing later cases, can be seen in photographs of Spilsbury's laboratory (see Browne and Tullett, following p.208). 

There are many stories recorded in these terse notes, from horrific examples of neglect and abuse to bizarre cases such as the unfortunate Helen Elphinston-Dalrymple, who died of the effects of a dry shampoo applied at the Harrods salon in 1909. On 12 February 1918 Spilsbury performed an autopsy on 16 year-old Nellie Trew, and also examined her clothing for blood and semen: she had been raped then strangled on Eltham Common. The subsequent trial has recently been described by Rose as "one of the most blatant" miscarriages of British justice of the 20th century. Spilsbury's notes for 16 June 1919 record the autopsy of a 72 year-old widower who had been admitted to hospital two days previously: "He stated that on June 13 he had glass of beer ... Then stopped by 2 men who offered him whiskey. Drank 2 tablespoonfull which burnt his mouth". He had been given hydrochloric acid, which burnt through his stomach wall. In October 1923 Spilsbury examined the remains of a soldier, James Frederick Ellis ("H[anker]Chief & piece of cloth tied over mouth ... limbs had been tied ...when found body was reduced to skeleton except portion of lower limbs which were clothed in tight fitting garments..."), who suffocated as a result of masochistic sexual practices with another member of his regiment ("...he & Ellis proposed playing Cowboys & Indians & he trussed up Ellis who then told him that he was all right...").  

These case cards are richly evocative of the macabre side of London in the early 20th century. In the unexceptional month of January 1922, for example, Spilsbury records the following deaths: a domestic servant who was poisoned by potassium cyanide then thrown in the Lea in Hackney (it was unclear whether poison or drowning was the cause of death), a suicide by cyanide in Hampstead, four "sudden deaths", three heart attacks, one woman who died as the result of a criminal abortion, a pulmonary embolism, a death during an operation to remove the appendix, and the brutal murder of a 79 year-old woman ("...Conclusions At least 11 blows on head & blows on hands by blunt object, 3 cuts by sharp cutting weapon on neck rt hand having grasped weapon. 6 Depressed fractures skull...")