Abortion Crime Scene Photography in Metropolitan London 1950-1968

The London Metropolitan Police's crime scene photographs of suspected criminal abortions between 1950 and 1968 both reflected and reinforced contemporary medical debates on abortion. This article analyses eleven crime scene photographs in the context of beliefs about illegal abortions: that they were performed secretly by foreign doctors on the fringes of medical respectability; that inept lay abortionists' unsanitary treatment of desperate women lead to death by soap embolism and sepsis; and that, by the 1960s, illegal abortions by medical personnel were in danger of becoming embedded in National Health Service hospitals. Crime scene photographs added to other forensic evidence about the illegality of abortion through visual clues such as beds, buckets, saucepans and evidence of either poverty or suspect prosperity. They also invited an emotional reaction by showing where the woman had lain, her body if she had died, and by documenting the domestic details of her private life.