Society, in defence of an orderly existence, saw the necessity to take statutory action, hopefully to suppress such powerful human instincts as greed, lust and so on. It realised, correctly, that these instincts would not be expunged simply by immersion in legislative disinfectant and that laws, once made, had to be enforced; hence the establishment of policing systems. Although the first detective agency was set up at the beginning of the nineteenth century, it was the middle of the century before the telegraph proved its value in a murder case, the 1880s before Bertillon saw the immense potential of photography, and the early twentieth century before the first convictions were obtained with the aid of fingerprint identification. Each of these early technical developments in crime detection was highly significant, but collectively, and in terms of the times involved, they do not indicate a revolutionary cascade of events signifying the eagerness of the legal system to capitalise on the benefits of scientific and technological advance. The detective propensities of Sherlock Holmes, created in 1887 by Conan Doyle, remained in the category of science fiction for a period approaching half a century before forensic science institutions were established in this country. We might, therefore, identify a further indication of the reticence of the law, and society, to come to terms with science. Clearly, there was what we might call an "incubation period" before scientific innovations found practical application in the field of criminal investigation.