Forensics in the 1900's

The 1900's saw a large dependence on animals to help solve crimes, the police didn't like to talk about there use (just like the don't publicise their use of psychics and mediums today), but they provided invaluable support and solved many cases where the police didn't have a lead.

This blog is a tribute to those unsung heroes of forensics:

The Dog,

The Ferret

The Cat

The Squirrel

The Parrot

One particular case of note was the case of Mr Whicher, a classic case documented here at this blog. Note with interest that no mention is made of the animals involved, that will be the job of this blog.

Surveillance Ferrets

With the help of the Carbon Microphone by David Hughes in 1878, police had an early surveillance system. The common problem was locating this device to listen in.

A police sergeant's family had been involved in cable laying work for generations and they often used ferrets for re-runs and cable fixes (to avoid digging up roads), he mentioned this to detectives and they realised that if they could get a ferret to run down old pipes into buildings with a suitable microphone (and enough wire) they may be able to snoop on conversations and collect vital evidence.

Thus was born the FSB (Ferret Surveillance Branch) of Old Scotland Yard.

No documents exist today about the branch but word of mouth reports suggest that it took 5 years of training work to get the ferrets and the officers involved into a position where they were starting to help crack cases. Once confronted with transcripts of shady meetings criminal gangs often confessed or started infighting suspecting team members of being of grass causing the gang to drop each other in the frame. Nobody ever found out about the ferrets involvement. Eventually laws about obtaining evidence caused the surveillance technique to be outlawed.

If you want to pick up a copy of Modern Ferret magazine you will find an article about cable laying ferrets.

Breaking and entering Squirrels

Squirrels are famous for their ability to solve complex problems in order to get food. There have been many documentaries and research projects about this.

This ability had been harnessed by the police many years ago for different outcomes.

Police wanted to get into buildings with no trace of breaking and entering, this is where the squirrel came in.

They trained squirrels to get into buildings through windows or grills. Once inside they were taught to locate keys and unlock outside doors, this would then lead to a reward by the controlling officer.

The difficulty part was getting squirrels to understand how to use a key and not only that the need to try different keys. It was a difficult job and it took many years to train a squirrel to complete the number of steps required in this most difficult of tasks. The red squirrel is a natural but with an average life span of about 3 (they can live to about 7) this didn't leave much time to put them into use. They were moderately successful in this role and enabled the police to get into places search and get out again without suspects knowing.

With the introduction of the grey squirrel into this country around 1878, the number of red squirrels has been dramatically reduced. Unfortunately the grey squirrels never took to the training that the reds lapped up and the squirrel break in squad died out around 1910.

Ghost cats

Cats have very good night vision this led to a group of detectives utilising this skill to track suspects at night.

Around the 1900's street illumination was nothing like it is now, it was easy when chasing suspects to loose them down dark alleys and unlit streets. This was a great cause for concern and many suspects were never apprehended because of the dark.

Detectives attempted to train cats to track suspects, they had moderate success. Cats were trained to follow a suspect until they entered a house. Once this happened they were expected to locate their handlers by back tracking to their release point. Upon reaching their handlers they would then re-trace their route to the suspects residence where the police would obviously take over. It was a good system who would suspect that a cat roaming the streets would give a suspects position away.

The problems they faced included

bumping into other cats and getting distracted in various ways

coming across rats and mice and following these instead

Not coming back to the handlers for a few days (as cats often do their own thing)

These problems and the advent of better illumination of streets caused the abandonment of the cats role in crime solving. Cats still associate the police but only in the role as police station cat and vermin control advisers.

Chemical matching dogs

Dogs are commonly used for their superb sense of smell and ability to track and detect small particles across distance (as seen in drug/bomb dogs).

But during the 1900's another ability of the dog was used, it's sense of taste.

Before fingerprint analysis become prevalent method of tying suspects with crime scene objects it was often difficult to prove if a suspect had actually attended a crime scene. What officers did was to get specially trained dog units to move over a crime scene or specifically its objects of interest (knifes, guns etc...) and licking each item to get a taste of any traces left on the items.

Once the dog had had a good licking session, the police would organise a line up (like the visual line ups down today). When a dog was brought into the line up room it would often set the suspects on edge helping them to release sweat this was crucial to the dogs identification process. The dogs had been taught to lick human hands and to get excited when they remembered a taste found at the crime scene.

It had taken years to fully train the dogs to do this sort of work but the results spoke for themselves. Eventually more scientific methods of proving that a suspect had been at the crime scene were introduced and unfortunately the dog licking was phased out. Dogs still continue to help police with their noses and their attacking ability.

The Parrot dictaphone

Parrots used to be a common feature of many pubs at the turn of the century.

It's odd that you don't see them now, there is a reason for this as I'll explain.

In 1903 there was a high profile Jewel Robbery. The police had 4 men they suspected of doing the crime, but they couldn't prove it. There problem was evidence, they heard from people (informants) that they were the men that did it but pinning them to the crime was impossible.

The police looked wide in their search for help seeking many crackpots with slim chances of success, all of these approaches were kept from the press for fear of ridicule.

By chance their break came from an animal trainer who had heard about the case. He specialised in teaching parrots to listen to people talking and repeat what they said. He demonstrated this on several occasions to the detectives on the case and seeing the reliability of the what the parrot could repeat they formed a plan to catch the evidence they needed.

The gang members all frequented a local hostelry into which was introduced one of the specially trained parrots. Over the course of several months the detectives got lots of transcripts out of the parrot, but frustratingly it mainly consisted of jokes, orders and arguments. They were about to give up hope when the parrot re-called yet another argument that led into a fight.

The gang members had started arguing about shares (they hand sensibly sat on the haul) what was particularly useful was that they kept mentioning each others names and arguing who was responsible for what part of the job and how that should relate to the number of shares. This was all the evidence they needed and led to conviction of two of the gang members.

When asked where the evidence had come from the police just said it had come from a conversation that an under cover officer had heard, neglecting to mention that the officer in question was actually a parrot!