| Description Of Item | The file titles usually refer to a geographic area and the romanised word 'ahwal' may mean case or issue. The résumé of medical report, which is often included in the papers, specifically relates to cases of poisoning and gives the name and age of the victim, symptoms, precis of medical report, precis of case, articles sent for analysis and the result of the examination. Except where a case clearly refers to a named child, all files are open.
SMS/4/1-67 were originally included with the general case files at SMS/3. As they all relate to Egyptian cases they were moved to this section. In the previous catalogue there was also divisions into Egyptian cases of bombings (SMS/4/68-74), poisoning (SMS/4/75-129) and shooting (SMS/4/130-154).
Smith writes in his autobiography 'Mostly Murder' (p61) about his time in Egypt: 'Eventually our reports came to be accepted without reserve by both prosecution and defence...[which] increased my responsibility. When our findings were accepted without question, it was not enough to be scrupulously accurate...we had, in our deductions from the observed facts, to draw attention to any point which could in any way be helpful in the defence of the accused'. |