Lois & Clark Forums Forums General Discussion Off Topic Non-L&C FFQ: English forensic practice in 1949

I've actually found quite a bit of detail on the technology available then. Fingerprints were mainly used for ID-ing people and stuff. Problem is, everything I do find is geared toward criminal areas. What I need is info on what people would do if someone was in a really bad accident (one that probably involved upwards of 50 people) and a bunch of bodies weren't recognizable.

Here's some of the possibilities (not all of them very likely) that I've come up with:

a. Hope that everyone has either ID on them (and what passed for ID back in 1949, especially if you're dealing with some people aged 12-20?) or personal effects that are recognizable (necklaces, rings, watches, etc.). (This works all well and good assuming that one of those is available to ID someone by. If they don't have ID or any identifiable accessories, then we have issues.)
b. Have relatives look at the mangled remains of their loved ones. (Besides the nightmare-inducing aspects of this one, what if they can't recognize them even by looking at arms, legs, etc.?)
c. Fingerprint the bodies. (The reason I'm doubtful on this one is the amount of effort that would have to go into it--if police back then were anything like today, they would try to focus that time and effort on solving criminal cases rather than use it all over the place. But again, I don't know that much, so maybe?)
d. Use the logic of "well, they were known to get on this train/bus this morning, so they must be among the bodies". (This doesn't hold up well if someone is declared dead who actually isn't 'cause they got off early, one stop before the accident, so it makes me doubtful they'd use it.)

You need to remember that by the end of WW2 British pathologists were pretty good at identifying badly damaged bodies - they'd had a LOT of experience during the war.

a: Everyone would have probably had ID on them - there were a lot of serious food shortages then, and rationing continued into the 1950s. One of the consequences was that that if you weren't dead but trying to fake a new identity you'd have real problems buying some fairly common items such as e.g. potatoes, sweets, and meat. There was also clothes rationing, petrol rationing, etc. See

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rationing_in_the_United_Kingdom

There was also a national ID card in use in Britain during WW2, it was abolished soon after, not sure when.

b: Yes - this was fairly common in films of the period.

c: Possibly - anyone who was in the armed services would still have prints on file, ditto criminals etc. But without computers finding an identity was a VERY slow process, it would almost certainly be a last resort.

d: No idea.

Oh, that's right--with the Blitz and all, they'd have seen plenty of dead bodies.

So looks like most of the dead bodies should be identified by ID--they'd have carried an ID card with them. In the event that the ID couldn't be read, then have relatives look at the bodies. Sound about accurate? (And if there was a big railway accident, could anyone recognize the bodies? In that case they might go off personal effects, if ID isn't legible, I guess.)

Now I'm wondering what they did about personal effects--did they tag them by which body they came with and then just hand them to whoever they belonged to, or collect them in a big heap and have people pick through and ID their relative's?

Mostly the railways would have been running at relatively low speeds in this period - there was a lot of wartime damage to tracks etc. so relatively few trains went much above say 40-50 MPH on most routes until well after the war. I'm not the person to give a definitive answer on this though, but I'm sure that there are sites that can give you all the information you'd need. The point I want to make though is that there would be very few bodies mutilated beyond all recognition if there was a train crash, the speeds were way too low.

All right. Canon in this one says the accident has something to do with the trains going too fast for some reason (it's rather vague, but that much is clear), but I can't imagine still that it would get fast enough to destroy recognition of bodies, so I'll go with that. Thanks for the help!

And if there's nothing to say one way or the other, I guess I can just assume that relatives or people who think their loved ones were killed in some accident like this would be told to come to some sort of building (I can be vague about that), identify the bodies (and I'm guessing they'd leave personal effects on them), and then later be given a bag of all the personal effects that were on the bodies before they bury them. Sound reasonable, at least?

I'm thinking that dental records could have been used to identify bodies, particularly if you suspect someone specific to have been killed and you know who their dentist was. Would your victim(s) have been reported missing? If so, then the challenge would be to confirm the victim's identity, rather than to have to establish it from scratch, in the first place.

Dare I ask, what fandom are you playing in here? I'm intrigued by the time period!

Krissie

Dental records definitely - one of the most famous murders of the 20s-30s was solved by dental records, forget the name but the murderer put a body into his car and set it on fire, hoping that it would be assumed that he was dead. But the victim's jaw survived intact and that gave the game away. Within a couple of years Dorothy L Sayers (who is a very good source for life in the years before the war) had written a story about a dentist who tries the same stunt, modifying the victim's teeth first to make sure that he won't be caught - but the dentist examining the corpse finds lots of proof that it was unnecessary work and that gives the game away.

OK, that one was Alfred Rouse, not quite as I remember it

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Rouse

This isn't the case I was talking about, but it mentions some of the forensic techniques used for a murder case in 1936

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buck_Ruxton

Hehe, I decided to go with the ID being sufficient but they wanted a visible confirmation, the bodies being mostly recognizable, and personal effects (rings and such) helping where the bodies were damaged too much. There was a surviving relative who knew of the family's plans to travel on the train that day, so when the news came of the crash, it wasn't exactly a "who on earth is this" sort of thing.

I'm actually playing in Narnia (bookverse), of all things. I've got a fanmix with 16 song-inspired ficlets to match it, and am almost done with the album art to match it (waiting on a few friends I can run it past--I like what I have but I'm not that good at graphic stuff!). I'll be posting it on LJ when done, but I can post a link to it here if someone is curious (and if it's OK to post here). *will never turn down readers and potential commenters*