Death on the Nile: Forensic Medicine in Inter-War Egypt (360G-Wellcome-212686_Z_18_Z)

Recent historical work on the development of British forensic science contends that colonial medico-legal laboratories offered a testing ground for new ideas and technologies as well as a space in which British personnel might "...cut their forensic teeth..." While this argument is compelling, we currently lack a body of research that tell us how forensic medicine was organised and practiced in British colonies, how national and environmental contexts affected the development of forensic techniques and how practitioners shared forensic knowledge through imperial networks. This project, which aims to produce a book-length study of forensic medicine in inter-war Egypt, will go some way towards answering these questions. Using archival sources that detail the work of the Government Medico-Legal Institute in Cairo, located within the Forensic Medicine Archive (University of Glasgow), the Sydney Smith Papers (Royal College of Physicians, Edinburgh) and the National Archives, the project will investigate not only the routine work of testing for poisons and narcotics carried out by the Institute, but will demonstrate how the assassinations associated with Egypt’s struggle for independence, led to the development of forensic ballistics. Materials on inter-war forensic medicine at both the Wellcome and British Libraries will also provide essential context.