REMARKABLE PHOTOGRAPHIC EXPERIMENTS. 137" 



Such was the conclusion come to by the police, and, in particular, by its chief 

 officer — the Commesso di Publica Vigilanza, Leopoldo Viti — who, amongst other 

 steps taken by him in each case, applied to the higher administrative and legal 

 authorities on whom he was dependent for permission to have the eyes of the 

 murdered woman photographed — an application which, in the belief that the 

 granting it could lead to no practical result, was twice refused. Suspicion mean- 

 while pointed to a young man, Benjamin de Cosimi, who on the occasion of the 

 first murder suddenly disappeared from Florence, and was known to have re- 

 appeared at the time of the thii-d murder. He was arrested, and in his possession 

 were found articles belonging to the last murdered woman, Emilia Spagnoli, and 

 a bloodstained knife, the blood freshly shed. He now awaits his trial. Mean- 

 time the application by the Chief of Police in the third case was granted, and the 

 experiments, with the results, are thus reported by the correspondent : — 



" Under the direction of Marabotti, the examining judge, or Giudice d'Istruzione, 

 a series of photographic experiments have been carried on, not for the special 

 purpose of furnishing additional criminal evidence for conviction (as the other 

 evidence, with that view, is believed to be superabundant), but in order to estab- 

 lish a general principle, or law, of universal or very frequent application. Emilia 

 Spagnoli was found lying on her left side, her large, glazed right eye being 

 turned upwards. The eye was photographed immediately after her decease. 

 The photograph then taken has been reproduced in a greatly magnified form, so 

 greatly magnified as to allow the lineaments of a human face, two inches in 

 length, to stand out distinctly from the same. When I mention that Alinari, the 

 first photographer of Florence, and indeed possessing a European reputation, 

 was the artist by whom the work was executed, I need say nothing more as a 

 guarantee of the fidelity and care employed on the occasion. From the tracing of 

 the dim and nebulous outline, as actually found on the eye, to the completed out- 

 line of the face executed from that tracing by an artist who had never seen 

 Benjamino de Cosimi, or any portrait of the man, and, again, from that completed 

 outline to the two photographs of himself found in his possession at the time of 

 Ms arrest — the transition, whether viewed as an artistic study or as a great ques- 

 tion of medical jurisprudence, opens up inquiries of unsurpassed interest and im- 

 portance. I am not, indeed, prepared to affirm that the first tracing in the seriee, 

 as fehown to me yesterday by the courtesy of the Judge of Instruction, Signer 

 Marabotti, at his official chambers, so completely resembles the photograph off 

 the living man, that, were I placed in a jury bos, my verdict would be deter- 

 mined by the belief in their identity, but of the following fact there cannot be the 

 possibility of a doubt. Whatever there is of marked, prominent, individual in 

 that first nebulous profile has an exactly corresponding feature in the likeness of 

 the living prisoner. A peculiar dilatation of the nostril, a depression in the 

 centre of the upper lip (Benjamin dei Cosimi has lost his two front teeth), an- 

 unusual elongation of the mouth, a square but double chin, a certain massiveness 

 about the region of the cheek-bone, and the outline of a whisker, are common to 

 both. I purposely confine myself, in the present letter, to a simple statement of" 

 facts— of the circumstances under which these murders were perpetrated, the 

 consequent photographic experiments instituted, and the result obtained, of which. 

 I was myself yesterday an eye-witness. There are very distinguished anatonaists 



