A GRISLY assortment of weapons including pickaxes, rusted kitchen knives and a homemade cosh used in some horrific Scottish killings is part of a new display at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh (RCPE).
The weapons came from the collection of Sir Sydney Smith, a renowned forensic pathologist who died in 1969.
He had used them as teaching materials when he was a professor of forensic medicine at the University of Edinburgh between the years of 1928 and 1953.
Some still have their original evidence labels, which helped the college to link them to murder investigations, trials and resultant verdicts using archive newspaper and high court material held by the National Records of Scotland.
One short-handled axe is identified as being used in evidence against John Maxwell Muir, of Dumfries, who was arrested and tried for the murder of his wife Lena in 1933. The axe, with blood staining on its handle, was recovered from the scene. Its attached label reads: “The axe to which the label is attached was found in coal cellar at no.1 Cameron Place, Craigs Road, Dumfries and is referred to in the case of John Maxwell Muir. The head is thickly smeared with blood which extends down the side of the head.
“In this blood there are several hairs embedded. There are also blood stains on the wooden handle near the blade and others at the free end of the handle. This blood is human blood. The hairs are human hairs and correspond in all details with a sample of hair taken from the head of the victim.”
As the forensic expert involved in the case, Smith gave evidence in court after ascertaining that the blood and hair were in fact a match for Lena Muir.
Her husband had pleaded insanity, but was eventually found guilty of culpable homicide.
A makeshift weapon comprising an iron bar and a piece of wooden cane was used by a woman to kill her baby, believed to be a newborn in the 1860s.
Its label reads: “Police office Edinburgh 19th May 1868. The piece of iron and piece of stick referred to the case of Clementina Cameron found in the house of Benjamin Smith.”
Cameron was accused of infanticide, and the charge against her said she attacked and assaulted the baby, and did “compress the neck and throat of the child by means of a piece of cloth or other ligature and with a blade of a knife attached to a piece of wood or cane or some other sharp cutting device did cut and wound the child in its neck and throat”.
Smith originally came from New Zealand, but he trained in medicine at Edinburgh University, before going on to pursue a career in forensic medicine. After spells working in New Zealand and Egypt he returned to Edinburgh as professor of forensic medicine, and spent the rest of his career working as both an educator and forensic expert alongside police forces in Scotland and the courts.
His 1959 autobiography Mostly Murder details many of the cases he worked on.
Iain Milne, head of heritage at the RCPE, said: “This collection provides a wealth of information on early to mid-20th century forensic science, an era when the death penalty was in place and Sir Sydney Smith a key forensic expert in many murder trials. “While many of the items do have a grisly history, we also believe Smith used them as teaching aids in his role as professor of forensic medicine, educating the next generation of forensic experts.”
As well as the weapons, the college has also acquired hundreds of glass negative slides which refer to cases Smith was involved in, including images of poisonous flowers, hair samples, fingerprints and handwriting samples.
Some of the collection was given to the college by Smith’s family after his death, and the weapons and further slides were donated last year by collector Harry Shute.
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