1. "Blood Testing"
Posted by augusta on Jun-29th-02 at 1:37 PM

Mystery writer Patricia Cornwell was featured on "Primetime" last December.  She is quoted as saying, "You have to remember that in the 1880's authorities couldn't distinguish animal blood from human blood..."

Obviously this changed by 1892 when testimony in the Borden case included the finding that blood on one hatchet was cow's blood, not human.  I wonder when this testing started to be used, or if she is in error.  It sounds like a simple test that would have been around in the 1880's. 

(Source:  abcnews.com, live chat transcript, December 7, 2001.  Patricia Cornwell spent her own money - a lot of it - to follow up on a theory that artist Walter Sickert was Jack the Ripper.  Though she worked hard on the project and found many startling circumstantial pieces of "evidence", unfortunately she found nothing conclusive.  She also commented that in regard to a special watermark on paper both Sickert and the real "Jack" used, any jury in the 1880's would have convicted him.  That's not so - look at the circumstantial evidence piled up against Lizzie...)

You are assuming that Patricia's assumption is correct.

"40 Whacks" tells they could distinguish human from animal blood by the corpuscle size (microscope). Some places are more up-to-date than other places.

Neither "Jack the Ripper" or the Borden murders will ever be "solved" since there is NO eyewitness or other evidence (like a videotaped confession) available. You can just compile a list of facts and assumptions, and let the readers decide which is the best evidence.

Few murders take place in public with many witnesses.

1900

Robert Heindl introduced fingerprint classification in Germany.

 

1901

Dr. Karl Landsteiner discovered blood grouping (on whole blood).

 

1901

Paul Uhlenhuth discovers precipitin test to distinguish human blood from animal blood.

http://www.criminology.fsu.edu/faculty/nute/history.html
Harry found this site.

Thanks, Kat and Harry.  Too bad they just missed it with fingerprinting and all in the Borden case, I wonder what the experts would have come up with? 

It seems, like with the question of which Shorthand Method may have been used by Annie White, that innovations were coming fast & furious at this time of the turning of the century.  BUT, they first are developed...then must be proven...then must be taught...then must reach a level of acceptability and respectability...then go *mainstream*.  So it probably took longer to implement these newer ideas than even the dates suggest!

No, Ray, I am not assuming Ms. Cornwell is correct in her statement.  I said in the second paragraph of my post that I wonder if she is in error.

Thanks for the info from "40 Whacks", Ray.  So according to that, they used a microscope and looked at the size of the corpuscles.  That's interesting.

The "precipitin" test that came about in 1901 must be a different type of test.  I'm very curious to know how that was done.  With a chemical?  It must have been more advanced than the microscope/corpuscle type done in 1892.

I wonder if "precipitin" has something to do with "precipitate" - according to my Webster's:  "the solid matter that separates out and usually falls to the bottom of the liquid". 

And people think we just sit here plucking flower petals saying, "Lizzie did it; she didn't do it..." 

TRIAL:  Prof. Wood testifies:

"This blood spot was about one-sixteenth of an inch in diameter, about the size of the diameter of the head of a small pin, not a large pin nor a medium size pin, but a small pin, and it appeared to me to be a little bit more extensive and plainer on the outside of the skirt than on the inside.  I don't

Page 1005 / i27

know as that could be detected now because it has been rubbed so much, but at that time it was perceptible when the stain was whole. That I examined and found it to be a blood stain, and the blood corpuscles when examined with a high power of the microscope averaged in measurement 1-3243 of an inch. That is the average measurement within the limits of human blood, and it is therefore consistent with its being a human blood stain.

Q.  With the blood of what other animal would it be consistent?
A.  There are some other animals, mostly of the---not domestic animals, which have the same diameter within the human limits, like seal and opossum, and one variety of guinea pig. The rabbit comes pretty near and the dog comes pretty near."
-------------------

ON DEATH'S BLOODY TRAIL, Murder and the Art of Forensic Science, Brian Marriner, St. Martins Press, N.Y., 1991, pg.79+:

"The answer came in 1875 when German scientist Leonard Landois discovered that there were several types of human blood.  It was left to Karl Landsteiner, an assistant professor in Vienna, to carry out the conclusive tests, which he did in 1900.  He separated the colourless serum from the red blood cells in a centrifuge, then found that by adding red blood cells from different people to the serum, different reactions followed...some attracted...others it repelled...he called this factor 'agglutinin' and the factors they disliked he termed 'agglutinogens.'

With two distinct reactions, it was easy to label the blood types A and B...he found a third type( C)...becamr known as 'O'....Two years later one of his assistants discovered...AB.

...no. ..(infallible test for bloodstains) existed.  It was not until 1901 that another German doctor, Paul Uhlenhuth, discovered how to distinguish between animal and human blood.  He had developed the precipitin test.  However, the Belgian Jules Bordet had founded the science of serology - the study of blood fluids - and had done the groundwork for Uhlenhuth's discovery.  Rather unfairly, the test became known as the Bordet test, and Uhlenhuth had to wait until 1930 before receiving a Nobel Prize for his work.

...The first 'great' case with which guilt was proved with the test...1901.

In England, scientists had begun using a substance called benezidine.  Developed around 1900, it turned blue in the presence of blood.  (Later found to be a carcinogenic), it was replaced by the Kastle -Meyer test, which uses a solution of phenolphthalein which turns pink in contact with the minutest trace of blood....

...In 1949 two British scientists observed that the nuclei in cells of female tissue usuallly contains a distinctive structure which is rare in males  It was called the Barr body, after one of its discoverers, and is most noticeable in white blood cells.  The presence of this 'female only' structure is accounted for by the difference in chromosomes between males and females.  It was a useful discovery.

It now meant that when blood was found at a crime scene, scientists could first tell if it was blood by the Kastle -Meyer test.  Then by using the precipitin test they could tell if it was animal or human blood.  And, finally, they could tell the blood group and the sex of the victim...

...A new kind of 'blood fingerprint' system was emerging, all of which culminated in the discovery in 1984 of DNA fingerprinting.  But a lot was to happen before that..."

---At the trial,1893,  Prof. Wood, pg. 1003 testified that he soaked items to remove "blood pigment."

Thank you for the wonderful post, Kat.  How interesting.  So this means, then, that the microscope examining that was used in 1892 was not really reliable, but was all they had.  This puts a different light on things. 

It's too bad my father-in-law isn't here any more.  He worked on the first 'blood separating machine'. It's in the Smithsonian now.  He coulda answered a lot of our questions!

"Fingerprint classification" implies the knowledge of fingerprinting was already in use. Actually it was used in China and India for many centuries. Around 1870 a colonial Englishman brought it back to Britain and popularized its use. Note that Sherlock Holmes (stories of up to date detections) did not use it (unless in 20th century).

That list may be something made up by people not knowledgable about the subject. Like some stories in "Consumer Reports", they take a layman's view of things. Like that famous review of 20+ years ago when they omitted bass response (under 100 cycles) and found out there was not much difference between hi-fi speakers!!!

You're referring to post #4, right?
I went back to look at it.
Well, when I was trying to find an easy way to explain the lack of blood determining proceedures during the time of the Borden case, I did look at quite a few forensic sights for blood info.
They all broke down the *history* into a timetable, very similar to the Link posted at message #4.  Many sites were originating from universities.  So either they're all copying one another and that's why they all have similar info, or the info is right, no matter where you look it up.

After all that, tho, I found that I had to use my trusty hardback BOOK, after all, to give the more complete answer we needed.

I believe Mark Twain wrote a detective story that was solved by fingerprint I.D. but I'm not sure of the date.  Could it have been the mid-1800's?

In the source I quoted from, Sherlock Holmes is mentioned but I edited him out:

"This steady scientific progress must have been known to Conan Doyle, who had after all qualified as a doctor.  In A Study In Scarlet (1886) he has Watson approach Holmes, in the laboratory at Bart's, with Holme's introducing himself by exclaiming:  'I've found it!  I've found it!'  What he had found was an infallible test for bloodstains.  The problem was that no such test existed.  it was not until 1901....."

From that one should be able to find where I edited.

Mark Twain story of Detection