The Social History of Disaster Victim Identification in the United States, 1865 to 1950

Abstract

This paper will trace the history of DVI from nineteenth-century practices of sight recognition to contemporary DVI, detailing when and how different technologies used in DVI entered the disaster morgue. Much of this history is defined by improvisation, as local communities affected by sudden, mass death often relied on known technologies, medical or otherwise, applied under extremely difficult circumstances. Initially, these technologies were not always strictly forensic, but ones that supplemented sight recognition. As more forensic technologies became available in others fields, such as criminology, dentistry, and forensic pathology, disaster responders had greater tools at their disposal. The gradual introduction of these tools allowed DVI to become a more systematic and scientific process.

Guest Editorial for Academic Forensic Pathology

“…As Vicki Daniel discusses, during the Civil War the identification of deceased soldiers and recovery of their remains became pressing issues for families of the dead and the federal government. Out of this experience of mass death emerged a new societal appreciation of the importance of identifying the dead, a new commitment by the state to account for the remains of the fallen, and the new popularity of chemical embalming (11). As another example, in a study of the formation of the Armed Forces Medical Examiner System (AFMES), Victor W. Weedn traces how the development of military medicine created openings for pathology education, research, and practice within the U.S. military and federal government, including the development of capabilities in forensic pathology.…”

“…Out of this period emerged reliable tests for detecting arsenic and other toxins within the body as well as new recognition among courts and the public of toxicological expertise (10). In discussing the history of disaster victim identification in the United States, Vicki Daniel examines long-term shifts from identification practices rooted in family members or other acquaintances’ viewing of the deceased (identification by “sight recognition”) to a more sophisticated repertoire of procedures based on photography, fingerprinting, and dental identification (11). Daniel Asen examines how China’s first medicolegal experts began to adopt modern understandings of putrefaction and forensic entomology while reconciling these new bodies of scientific knowledge with the Washing Away of Wrongs , a handbook of forensic procedure that had influenced Chinese death investigation practices for centuries (12).…”