Scotland Yard in the Bush: Medicine Murders, Child Witches and the Construction of the Occult: A Literature Review

Abstract

In the Sherlock Holmes stories Scotland Yard famously does not deploy science or make use of all those studies of blood and ash and bone which Holmes himself had pioneered. But the Yard is never so clumsy as when the occult seems to be involved – with suspected vampires, spectral dogs, tribal fetishes. The Yard's combination of ignorance, scepticism and credulity is shown to be the very worst of all attitudes to adopt. How much things have changed in one way and how little in another. Scotland Yard is now incredibly scientific. The assumed ritual murder of ‘Adam’, the African boy whose torso was found in the Thames, has allowed a dazzling exhibition of what scientific method can now achieve. On the other hand police interpretations of the African occult still combine ignorance, scepticism and credulity.