Two of literature's most famous detectives, including Sherlock Holmes, had a major influence on the development of the modern crime scene investigation (CSI), according to a British historian.
The research by Dr Ian Burney from the The University of Manchester into the history of "CSI" has revealed that two of its founding fathers - Frenchman Edmond Locard and Austrian Hans Gross - were influenced by British writers Arthur Conan Doyle and R Austen Freeman.
Conan Doyle, creator of Sherlock Holmes and Freeman, whose creation Dr John Evelyn Thorndyke is the prototype for the modern forensic investigator, were evangelists for a professionalised CSI, according to the analysis by Burney.
"It's surprising but clear that the fictional creations of Sherlock Holmes and Dr Thorndyke were a major influence on the crime scene as we know today," said Burney.
"The stories showcased new methods of CSI: protecting the crime scene from contamination; preserving and recording the relationships between all objects in the scene, even the most trivial; and submitting minute trace evidence to scientific scrutiny.
"So it's fair to say that Conan Doyle and Freeman helped investigators to systemise their methods to make the invisible, visible and the inconsequential, consequential," said Burney.
"It wasn't until the 1920s that dedicated CSIs began to appear as supervisors of a complex police and scientific operation, accompanied by photographers and policemen to search and protect the scene.
"Freeman and Conan Doyle helped bring this about. It's amazing that both writers were able to conceive of the modern crime scene from their own imaginations - though I would guess they were familiar with the writings of Gross and Locard," said Burney.
In an English translation of Hans Gross's handbook for crime investigators, Burney discovered a passage referring to the forensics kit bag taken by English police to crime scenes as "the Thorndyke," a clear reference to Freeman's character.
And in his textbook, Locard, repeatedly urged all students of police science to read and absorb the lessons of Sherlock Holmes.
"During the Victorian era, there were certainly people who investigated the scenes of crimes, but they were not systematic and scientific in the way they went about their work," Burney added.
"At murder scenes, the representative of "science" was a medical man - sometimes a pathologist but often just a local practitioner.
"But Sherlock Holmes - and especially Dr Thorndyke - were critical of they way Victorian pathologists might contaminate a scene and helped change practice for good.
According to Burney, 'The Boscombe Valley mystery' is one of many examples of how like modern CSI the novels were.
