Note 166 — Chapter I

Sir George Sitwell says: “The bruises or discolourations upon his chest might well have been produced by those who knelt upon it in stripping off the clothes” (First Whig 41). Bruises however cannot be made to appear upon a corpse beyond the time of three and a half hours after death (Professor H. A. Husband in the Student’s Handbook of Forensic Medicine), nor is there any evidence that the body was so treated. Marks which look like bruises may be caused after death by the process of hypostasis or suggillation, the gravitation of the blood to the lowest point in the dead body. But if the marks on Godfrey’s body had been thus caused, the face and neck would have shown pronounced signs of discolouration, since the head was lower than any other point in the body. It had moreover been in that position for at most only twenty-four hours, so that the blood would not have gravitated to the chest immediately after death at all.