Joseph Thomas Walker

Born in Saint Louis, Missouri, Walker attended Kirkwood High School before earning a BA in chemistry from the University of Illinois in 1930. That year, he also took a few graduate courses.Joseph Thomas Walker's Transcript, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1930.] Soon, as the Great Depression worsened, he went back to school. In 1932, he enrolled in a doctoral program in chemistry at Harvard University and graduated in less than a year.Joseph Thomas Walker, Dissertation “Synthesis in Allene Series” 1933 (From the Harvard University Archives, Call Number HU 90.2598) Meanwhile, during his undergraduate years at Illinois, he had met and fallen in love with fellow Illini, Lola Jeanette Muns. Since the DuPont Fellowship which supported him at Harvard forbade recipients from marrying during their studies, the two were hastily wed in 1932. Their marriage – which produced two children (Janet in 1935 and Thomas in 1940) – lasted until his death in 1952.“Dr. Joseph T. Walker, Medico-Legal Chemist for State Police Was 44,” Daily Boston Globe, April 30, 1952, p. 23.

When Walker began his career in 1934, scientific crime detection was still new. Though Charles Norris and Alexander Gettler had been doing forensic science for New York City for over a decade, they were halted by the city governments.Deborah Blum, The Poisoner’s Handbook: Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine in the Jazz Age (New York, Penguin Press, 2010) Walker, on the other hand, the first person to create a state crime lab, would work in a supportive environment. Originally housed in a small room in the Massachusetts State House, his lab was quickly moved to spacious accommodations and equipment and supplies were forthcoming as needed. In addition, he earned rapport with the Massachusetts State Police and other authority to secure crime scenes – a relatively new concept – by taking basic police training in 1936. Walker also gained an academic platform when crime detection enthusiast/philanthropist Frances Glessner LeeCorrine May Botz, Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death (New York, Monachelli Press, 2004). gave Harvard a large endowment to fund a Department of Legal Medicine where, from 1939 onward, he taught toxicology. Ms. Lee proselytized the virtues of the type of work he was doing by holding multi-day seminars on the subject around the country. Just before his death, she would tell Walker that "No other lecturer has helped individuals and the whole training program as you have."Letter from Frances Glessner Lee on behalf of the Harvard Associates in Police Science to Joseph. T. Walker, July 24, 1951.

Walker still pursues his work. On one occasion, he had a cofferdam built in a river downstream from a bridge from which a bagful of human bones had been dropped; later, a bullet with striations linking it to the suspect’s weapon was found.Information provide by his son Thomas W. Walker and verified by his daughter, Janet Walker McCabe, April 4, 2015 And there was the internationally publicized "Case of the Merry Widow"Massachusetts vs Oscar Bartolini, 299 Mass. 503, February 7, 1938- February 28, 1938, Norfolk County. in 1936 concerning the murder and dismemberment of socialite Grayce Asquith, which involved an identification of basic blood type and the first ever use of a toe print (in blood under a tub) in a criminal trial. In 1945, prominent lawyer John Noxon was convicted of electrocuting an infant son born with Down Syndrome. Though Noxon claimed that the death had been an accident, Walker determined the father’s guilt by revealing that there were microscopic quantities of copper from an electrical cord on both the infant’s body and a metal tray.Massachusetts vs John F. Noxon, 319 Mass. 495, October 23, 24, 1945-May 10th 1946, Berkshire County.

Walker wrote journal articles to promote his ideas and techniques. In 1937, he published "Chemistry and Legal Medicine" in the New England Journal of Medicine.Joseph T. Walker, "Chemistry and Legal Medicine," The New England Journal of Medicine, Vol. 216, Issue 23, pp. 1024-1027. In it, he argued that all states should have crime labs and listed ways that chemistry could be used in crime detection. Towards the end of the article, he recommended the use of a new technique he had developed for use in shooting cases. Whereas, previously, powder burns had been detectable only in cases where the person had been shot at close range, his test would reveal the "entire powder pattern from shots fired at a much greater distance … by locating each individual grain of powder in the exact position in which it lies upon the cloth."Joseph T. Walker, "Chemistry and Legal Medicine," The New England Journal of Medicine, Vol. 216, Issue 23, pp. 1026-1027.

He also authored or co-authored a series of journal articles describing his new techniques. Among these, were: "The Spectrograph as an Aid in Criminal Investigation,"Joseph T. Walker, “The Spectrograph as an Aid in Criminal Investigation,” Proceedings of the Sixth Summer Conference on Spectroscopy and Its Application, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., New York, 1939, pp. 1-5. "The Quantitative Estimation of Barbiturates in Blood by Ultraviolet Spectrometry,"Joseph T. Walker (with R.S. Fisher and C.W. Plummer), “Quantitative Estimation of Barbiturates in Blood by Ultra-violet Spectrophotometry,” The American Journal of Clinical Pathology, Volume 18, Issue 6, pp 462-9. "Paper Chromatography in Criminal Investigation,"In Ford op. cit. "A New Test for Seminal Stains,""A New Test for seminal Stains," New England Journal of Medicine, 242: 110 (Jan. 19, 1950.) "Visualizing of Writing on Charred Paper,"[With Parker A. Glass] "Visualizing of Writing on Charred Paper" Journal of Criminal Law & Criminology (Vol. 42, Issue 1, May–June, 1951), Pp. 112, 113. "Bullet Holes and Chemical Residues In Shooting Cases,""Bullet Holes and chemical Residues in Shooting Cases," American Journal of Police Science (Vol. XXXI, No. 4, November–December 1940), pp. 497-521. and "Paper Chromatography for Identification of Common Barbiturates"[With Elvera J Aljeri, B.S.] "Paper Chromatography for Identification of Common Barbiturates," The American Journal of Clinical Pathology (Vol. 22, No. 1, January, 1952), pp. 37-40.

Walker would die of Hodgkin’s disease in April 1952 – probably the result of breathing benzene fumes in his own laboratory. Though terribly ill, he kept a full schedule of work for most of his last two years. For instance, in 1950, he travelled to Maine first to teach twenty-five state policemen about the uses of science in crime detection and then to testify at the retrial of a deputy sheriff convicted of murder in 1938. There, Walker was identified in the Maine Attorney General’s official report of the trial as “generally considered to be the outstanding police chemist in New England”, which was the finding that the deputy had been “fraudulently convicted."Department of the [Maine] Attorney General, "Legislative Report Prepared in Accordance with the Directive of the Ninety-Fifth Legislature, Littlefield Homicides," 1952, especially pp. 13,40.

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Category:1908 births

Category:1952 deaths

Category:American forensic scientists

Category:Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences alumni

Category:Scientists from St. Louis

Category:University of Illinois alumni

Category:20th-century American chemists

Category:Chemists from Missouri