ABSTRACT
This chapter examines how forensic radiography transformed the way coroners took care of the dead in the twentieth century. The use of X-rays during the death investigation process altered the coroner’s view of the corpse, a view that was necessary in the late nineteenth century for an inquest to proceed. By the mid-twentieth century, the coronial jury ceased to view the corpse during an inquest, while the post-mortem examination was left almost entirely in the hands of the forensic pathologist. The invention of radiography ‘mechanised’ the forensic gaze that evolved in the nineteenth century; the coroner’s view of the corpse became increasingly mediated by medical imaging technology. Far from interpreting the mechanised gaze as one that detached the corpse from the institutional life of coronial law, this chapter argues that it transformed the quality of caring practices. Coroners had to develop a new aptitude for viewing the interiority of the corpse from afar, and had to acquire new skills for interpreting the significance of shadows as evidence of death causation. The history of forensic radiography demonstrates how new technologies continue to make demands on coronial institutions to think differently about how they cultivate legal relations with the dead.
