How were murders solved 400 years ago? | UK News

In 1699, a young woman lay face down in a river in Hertfordshire without any outer clothing.

The death of Sarah Stout, from a wealthy family with her whole life ahead of her, confused even the most experienced investigators.

With no known enemies or illnesses, it was hard to say what caused her to drown in these cold, murky waters.

“Conspiracy theories were spreading,” Blessin Adams, a former detective turned historian, told Metro. “Many people thought she was pregnant, and since she had no husband, she committed suicide to spare herself and her family shame.”

But since forensic science was in its early days, Sarah’s death could – and was – solved, among other remarkable cases.

And this is without modern scientific knowledge that detectives can use today. There were no fingerprints, no recording equipment, and especially no DNA tests.

Blessin told Metro: “All deaths were investigated by coroners, and many of them had neither medical nor legal training. they were flying by the seat of their pants.”

But her case and subsequent trial marked the first time experts outside the church were brought in to reach a verdict about what happened to the young woman.

Where were the answers? Well, of course, throwing dogs off bridges and submerging the lungs of babies in water.

Drowning

The last man to see her alive, Spencer Cowper, was arrested. The married 29-year-old lawyer was a good friend of her family.

He was alone with Sarah for about five hours and all eyes were on him as her family accused him of killing their daughter.

The coroner ruled her death a suicide, but her parents, who were both Quakers, could not accept it and ordered her body exhumed and a private autopsy paid for.

Two expert witnesses were called to the witness stand and argued that the drowned woman could not have floated to the surface.

The ship’s doctor stated that all the drowned bodies were full of water, which meant they would drown. Another sailor claimed that people killed in battle and thrown overboard floated to the surface, while those who drowned drowned.

To test their theories, some unfortunate dogs were collected and drowned to see whether they would sink or float.

Blessin said; “It’s not pleasant to read about it, but it was a form of forensic science that they were simply trying to prove or disprove.”

Despite this harsh science, Spencer came forward and was able to convince the judge that Sarah committed suicide.

He insisted she was suffering from severe depression caused by his obsession, which the jury believed.

Infanticide

When babies died, it was automatically assumed that the mothers had been killed, even if they had miscarried.

Unmarried women came under particular scrutiny because of their role in the death of their child, and many automatically expected them to be killed to prevent ridicule and ruin.

Case in point, Elizabeth Balleance was one such example. After emerging from childhood, she found work as a domestic servant for Samuel Samlin.

Blessin said: “That’s how I got into my area of ​​research in the early modern period. I, following a morbid curiosity, came across the case of Elizabeth.

“It was such a pleasure to bring to life her story, which had been forgotten for many years.”

As an isolated young woman living away from home for the first time, Samlin was able to “know her body carnally” and within three months Elizabeth became pregnant.

As an unmarried woman, Elizabeth was scorned, called a harlot, and cast out by her employer and abuser.

Luckily, her mother and sister took her in and the three managed to hide the pregnancy until Elizabeth gave birth to a stillborn boy.

As forensic science became a new discipline, new experiments such as the “lung buoyancy test” came into play.

Blessin said: “The idea was simple. The lungs of a baby who dies before birth will be dark and heavy. But the lungs of a child who dies after birth will be lighter and will float in water.”

Elizabeth’s boy’s lungs failed, and although the experiment was a very flawed experiment, it freed the young woman from the hangman’s noose.

Suicide

Anyone who expected to commit suicide was treated with contempt from the start.

Blessin said: “It was one of the worst crimes you could commit. The legal system will insist on desecrating your court, even if it is not written into law.”

This involves corpses being stripped of their clothes, tied to the back of a horse, and dragged through the streets for everyone to see.

They were then buried in an unofficial grave with a spear pierced into the ground so that everyone would know that a person who had committed suicide was buried there.

However, investigators were able to fairly easily distinguish suicides by hanging from murders that looked like this.

One such case was Richard Hannah, who was arrested by church authorities in 1514 for heresy after refusing to hang up his dead infant’s baptismal robe.

He was found hanging in his cell from a silk belt. But despite the fact that almost all extrajudicial hangings were suicides, the coroner smelled something fishy.

“Public hangings were a part of life back then, and they were closer to a similar death compared to modern coroners,” Blessin said.

“He was able to look at the body and immediately see that there was evidence that this was a staged act.”

The coroner’s report said Richard’s skin was “fair”, which is unusual for a hanging victim, who usually turned blue and developed a rash in the process.

His hair was also neatly combed, and he even had a hat neatly placed on his head, which made him look unusually neat and tidy.

After an inquest, the coroner and jury determined that Richard was killed by church officials while in the torture chamber. But thanks to the influence of the clergy and King Henry VIII, no one was found guilty of murder.

Sexual violence

The detection and punishment of sexual assault was undeveloped, and it was “almost impossible to prosecute rape.”

One such example is Mary Hobry, a French midwife living in London, who was brutally attacked by her husband Denis to the point that she almost died in 1687.

Denis was an alcoholic, spent his money and often beat her. After a particularly nasty incident in which he raped her, Mary knew she needed to take action.

She took an ax and killed him, then cut up his body parts and scattered them throughout the village.