Margaret Pereira obituary

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2017/jan/26/margaret-pereira-obituary

Version 0 of 1.

Margaret Pereira, who has died aged 88, was a distinguished forensic scientist with an international reputation. Early in her career, she developed a highly sensitive method of investigating minute bloodstains to determine the ABO blood type of an individual. It was adopted worldwide as the Nicholls and Pereira (or N&P) method, Lewis Nicholls being her laboratory director.

The Metropolitan Police Forensic Science Laboratory, which Margaret joined in 1947, would become an important centre for research into the rapidly expanding sciences devoted to the investigation of crime. Offences against the person involve biologists in the study of all body fluids – saliva and semen as well as blood. In order to pursue these studies, scientists at the laboratory, in common with researchers everywhere, routinely used themselves as guinea pigs, and Margaret was heard to remark that “in this job you don’t have an orifice to call your own”.

All of this was many years before the introduction of DNA analysis in the 1980s brought a completely new focus to the identification of blood and body fluids. By then, as controller of the Forensic Science Service, she was in a position to implement the groundbreaking discovery. For Margaret, it had been a steady progression over 40 years from the bottom of the civil service to the top. She was appointed CBE in 1985.

Daughter of Harold Pereira, a telecommunications engineer, and his wife, Margaret (nee Hartigan, and known as Nina), a former secretary, Margaret was born in Bexley, Kent. She was educated at Dartford county grammar school and hoped to become a doctor. However, in those postwar years, medical schools were giving preference to returning service personnel and she was unable to secure a place.

Accordingly, Margaret joined the Metropolitan police laboratory as a scientific assistant, the lowest scientific grade, and went on to take her London University BSc degree through evening classes, never an easy route to qualification. Her interests were wide-ranging: she sang in her church choir and with the Croydon Philharmonic, and also played serious hockey.

Within the next 20 years, forensic scientists developed all manner of exciting techniques, and from a staff of seven at the time she joined, the laboratory expanded from the Met’s headquarters in New Scotland Yard into premises in Lamb’s Conduit Street in Bloomsbury. It was at that point that I joined as a fledgling forensic biologist and met Margaret, who by that time had been promoted to joint head of the biology department. She was a very human and approachable leader.

She was involved in investigating many of the most serious and high-profile crimes occurring in London and the adjoining counties, including, for instance, the murder of Lord Lucan’s nanny in 1974. She undoubtedly enjoyed her direct involvement in casework and I suspect may have found it rather more fulfilling than the administrative roles that would follow.

While the Met employed forensic scientists in London, the service in the rest of England and Wales was the direct responsibility of the Home Office. It operated a Central Research Establishment for the forensic sciences at Aldermaston in Berkshire and in 1976 Margaret was appointed its deputy director. The following year she became director of the Home Counties Forensic Science Laboratory, which shared the same building at Aldermaston.

In the late 70s the Home Office decided to close its two ageing laboratories at Bristol and Cardiff and merge their activities in a lab to be built at Chepstow. Margaret was asked to become director of the new establishment and promoted the successful integration of two groups of independent scientists to create the new unit. Chepstow, Monmouthshire, was opened by the Prince of Wales in 1979 and Margaret served there for three years.

In 1982 Alan Curry, the controller of the Forensic Science Service, retired and Margaret was asked to take over the role. Based in London, the controller undertook day-to-day management and strategic planning for the entire service, which by then was a large and mature organisation providing essential and wide-ranging scientific support for the police. She remained in the role until her retirement in 1988, being the last person to be designated controller. Her successor was given a remit to refocus the service as a more commercial organisation, which eventually led to its closure in 2012, to wide regret.

Having started on the lowest rung of the scientific ladder, Margaret rose to take the senior role in forensic science, shattering glass ceilings as she went – one of the most significant of these being the competence of women to appear in court as expert witnesses in what were often sordid and disgusting cases. She began to appear in this capacity in the 1950s. At various times she held the presidency of the British Academy of Forensic Sciences and the Chartered Society of Forensic Sciences. She was a great role model, acting as a mentor and making many friends along the way.

She is survived by her husband, Arthur Wells, whom she married in 1980.

• Margaret Pereira, forensic scientist, born 22 April 1928; died 22 December 2016