Carla Valentine

Carla Valentine Instagram – • What Do The Dead See? •
When photography was invented in the 1840s, the similarity between the structure of a camera and that of the eye was noted, leading to an idea that whatever a person witnessed at the moment of death could be imprinted on the retina, like a photograph. The pseudo-scientific term for this was Optography, and these theoretical ‘photographs’ were called Optograms. This concept actually has earlier roots than that, when a Jesuit Friar from the 1600s – Christopher Schiener – recorded his observation of a fleeting image on the retina of a frog he was dissecting. But it was the Victorians with their knowledge of photography and endless pseudo-scientific pursuits who took this idea further, in particular German physiologist, Wilhelm Kühne, who claimed to have devised a process to ‘develop’ these optograms temporarily.
The most obvious practical use for such a phenomenon would be, of course, forensic – many cases could be solved if it were really possible for an assailant’s image to be preserved on the eyes of the victim; wide-open in terror. Experiments were carried out in Germany at first, and it was even proposed that one of Jack the Ripper’s victims could undergo this procedure.
It was such a widespread and enduring belief that when PC G. W. Gutteridge was murdered in Essex, in 1927 by two men who’d stolen a car from London, they didn’t leave the scene after the killing shot: they also shot him through both eyes – to the horror of the postman who found him dead the next morning. I’m lucky enough to have visited the Scotland Yard Crime Museum several times to see this mask which was used in the Gutteridge murder, as well as all the associated guns and accoutrements. More info is in my book ‘Murder Isn’t Easy: The Forensics of Agatha Christie’. Details of above images will be in the comment below.
#forensicscience #forensics #vintageforensics #optography #agathachristie #optograms #scotlandyard #blackmuseum #theblackmuseum #crimemuseum #halloween #hallowerncountdown | Posted on 18/Oct/2023 15:37:46