Henry Littlejohn

So I felt like that was a crime that needed to be solved.

But the problem with Bell is that he wasn't just the inspiration for Holmes, he was doing what Holmes was doing, which was working unofficially with the police surgeon, Henry Duncan Littlejohn.

And because he was working unofficially, it could be difficult to kind of determine which cases his fingerprints were on.

But thankfully, Little John, he's a huge character in the book.

and tell that very succinctly.

And, you know, mysteries of the human body were just one type of mystery that Bell explored.

As you mentioned earlier, he was also a frequent unofficial consultant of the police force in Edinburgh, especially alongside the famous police surgeon Henry Duncan Littlejohn.

Tell me more about Littlejohn, about the legacy he left behind, and about the relationship between Bell and Littlejohn.

He actually was doing what Holmes was doing.

So he was working on officially with Edinburgh's police surgeon, a guy named Henry Duncan Littlejohn, who who's really fascinating in and of himself.

He's a pioneer of fingerprinting and courtroom photography.

Now, Little John has the official role.

But they were great expert witnesses.

In fact, there's a judge... who said something to the effect that there are four kinds of witnesses, liars, damn liars.

I forget what the third one was, but the fourth one was, and Henry Duncan Littlejohn, because he just was so good.

He was just really sought after.

And what I learned about Bell was that he wasn't just the inspiration, he was doing what Holmes was doing.

He was working unofficially with a police surgeon named Henry Duncan Littlejohn on some of the biggest cases of the 19th century.

And this is the moment that forensics becomes professionalized.

This is the moment that medicine enters the courtroom, that the doctor can testify, not just on the basis of his own personal experience with the case, but you could actually get the expert for hire.

He's living and working through the birth of modern policing and forensic science and the idea of an expert witness.

And he's involved in all of these things through his friend, Henry Littlejohn, who you've alluded to already.

Can you tell us a little bit more about how he becomes involved in solving crimes?

Yeah, so Henry Duncan Littlejohn has this official role as Edinburgh's police surgeon.

He actually was doing what Holmes was doing in practice.

He was working unofficially in the shadows with Edinburgh's police surgeon, a fascinating man named Henry Duncan Littlejohn.

And Littlejohn was a pioneer of fingerprinting and courtroom photography.

And together, Bell and Littlejohn work on some of the highest profile murder cases of the 19th century.

And to be able to explain this very new, this very alien science to them.

And they were great at it.

I mean, there was a judge in Edinburgh who said that there were three kinds of witnesses, liars, damn liars, and Henry Duncan Littlejohn.

And he was just very well known to be so good at communicating those stories and that evidence in a way that was understandable to the juries.

But again, it was a lot of, you know, trial and error.

And so this book is as much about the story of Joe Bell, but it's also about his relationship with this man, Henry Duncan Littlejohn, who was a police surgeon in Edinburgh.

He was a brilliant forensic scientist, and it's about how they partnered up and solved some of the biggest crimes in the 19th century.

But in between that story is the story of forensics and the story of the expert witness, and this is when medicine first enters the courtroom.

And so you have all of these trial and errors.

You have, you know, some things that caused harm, some things that just outright didn't work.

And then the pulse of it is you have the development of the expert witness in people like Joe Bell and Henry Duncan Littlejohn.

And so that is also part of the story.