Bernard Spilsbury

Sir Bernard Henry Spilsbury (May 16, 1877 – December 17, 1947) was a British pathologist. His cases include the Brides in the Bath Murders, the Dr Crippen case, Brighton trunk murders, the murder on the Crumbles case, Podmore Case and the Vera Page Case. He also had a critical role in developing Operation Mincemeat.

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Bernard Spilsbury was born at 35 Bath Street, Leamington Hastings, Warwickshire. He was educated at Magdalen College, Oxford and St Mary's Hospital in London. He specialised in the then-new science of forensic pathology. The case that lifted Spilsbury to prominence was that of Dr Crippen in 1910, where he also gave forensic evidence in a trial.

During his career Spilsbury performed thousands of autopsies, not only for murder victims but also of executed criminals. He was able to appear for the defence in Scotland, where his status as a police pathologist in England and Wales did not matter. Spilsbury was knighted in 1923. He was a Home Office approved pathologist, lecturer in forensic medicine in the University College Hospital, London School of Medicine for Women and St. Thomas' Hospital. He also was a Fellow of the Royal Society of Medicine.

Spilsbury's two sons died during World War II.

He committed suicide by gas in 1947 at University College, London.

In later years, his dogmatic manner and his unbending belief in his own infallibility gave rise to criticism; even in the later years of his life, judges began to express concern about his invincibility in court and recent researches have indicated that his inflexible dogmatism led to miscarriages of justice.^[1]

References

• Douglas Browne and E. V. Tullett - Bernard Spilsbury: His Life and Cases (1951)
• Colin Evans - the Father of Forensics
• J.H.H. Gaute and Robin Odell - The New Murderer's Who's Who, 1996, Harrap Books, London