Traditionally, the ‘expert’ in the courtroom acts as an historical prism through which scholars can study the means by which ideas, technologies, or disciplines became established following legal battles exposed to public and professional scrutiny. But what more can be learned by considering the use of privileged or specialist knowledge outside of this adversarial environment?
This paper explores the concept of ‘expertise’ in the context of investigations into the identification of the unknown dead in nineteenth-century England and Wales. In the majority of these cases, those presenting privileged or specialist knowledge vital to the investigation (local doctors, law officers and laymen) did not resemble the familiar ‘expert’ of the criminal trial, nor was their evidence scrutinised in a similar fashion. This paper argues that the study of ‘expertise’ should not be confined to the courtroom, and that the concept of ‘the expert’ should be made more inclusive, in order to create a more representative portrayal of medico-legal practice.