The Oxford English Dictionary’s definition of forensic in English is ‘relating to or denoting the application of scientific methods and techniques to the investigation of crime: forensic evidence.’ Wikipedia adds an extra significant phrase ... ‘Forensic science is the scientific method of gathering and examining information about the past which is then used in a court of law.’ Astrology is vulgarly expected to predict the future, but even those among us who venture into forecasting cannot build a picture of things to come without a careful examination of things past.
With the growing number of techniques at the astrologer’s disposal allowing more and more refined scrutiny of a natal or mundane chart and its developments I have lately been very enthused about modern astrology’s potential as a forensic tool. And I am far from the first. Google the phrase, and you will find more than a dozen websites and at least two books dedicated to the solving of both current and cold cases. Sadly, we are the only folk who will accept ‘forensic’ as a legitimate adjective for astrology, ‘astrology’ as a noun that may credibly follow ‘forensic.’ While we know what the study of meaning in the cosmos can achieve, our astrology is generally dismissed as a pseudo-science by Those Who Must Be Obeyed. The otherwise admirable Brian Cox’s favourite term is ‘woo-woo.’ So, here I am going to add my own contribution to the brew. I know that at least one forensic astrologer makes use of asteroids, and so will I; but I’m not sure that the routine practice of mapping the Dwad chart with the Radix has quite caught on yet, and as working in simple straight lines with this has been knocking my socks off for donkeys’ years now, I’d like to show you the Dwad’s forensic credentials. (For detailed explanations of the Dwad, see 'Techniques' / 'Fine Tuning' / 'The Dwad' and many other articles on this website.) We shall focus on Jack the Ripper. On 17th Nov 2014 at 8h00 pm in the UK Channel 5 broadcast an hour-long documentary in their series The Missing Evidence, about a thirty-year investigation into the Ripper’s possible identity. A Swedish journalist, Christer Holmgren, had gone back to the original police records for 1888 and to a particular murder witness whose testimony and movements raised a number of interesting questions. The murder was that of Mary Ann (Polly) Nichols, and the witness was one Charles Cross. What Holmgren and his colleague Dr Gareth Norris at Aberystwyth University discovered was that Charles Cross was really Charles Lechmere - whom I have found, via Ancestry, to be the scion of an ancient and distinguished Herefordshire family - but using the name of his policeman step-father and working as a meat carter, a ‘carman’, with Pickfords to and from Spitalfields. Cross is found to have lied during his testimony, and to be credibly in the time-frame for the Nichols murder as he was standing over Polly’s body - ostensibly trying to revive her - very shortly after that attack must have taken place. His morning attire included a work apron, very likely stained with the blood from meat carcases, so any further blood-staining would have gone unremarked. An excellent account of the evidence against ‘Cross’ can be found at the CaseBook website : http://www.casebook.org/dissertations/rip-charles-cross.html#highlight. A subscription to Ancestry has its advantages! Not only personal family research can be done. I started looking into Charles Cross/Lechmere, starting with the discoveries that Holmgren had made. What I wanted to know, of course, was his date of birth - and found it. Charles Lechmere was born on October 5th 1849, in London, although from the census returns we can see that his mother and real father both came from Hereford, and the family had a long local history. Charles was a direct descendant of Edmund Lechmere (born 1577) who was himself, via his mother Anne Dingley, descended directly from the Neville family back to King Edward III. Here are the data gathered from my searches via Ancestry and the International Genealogical Index: |