Science of guilt — how the audience becomes the jury in a new promenade play

Peter Ranscombe peeks behind the curtain at the Surgeons’ Hall Museums in Edinburgh to find out how historical inspiration was turned into a theatrical performance.

It’s a family drama that – sadly – is as old as time: Jane Williams from Edinburgh is accused of murdering members of her family using poison. The evidence has been gathered, the arrest has been made, and now the accused is going on trial.

Yet this story has a twist. The case of Jane Williams is not being played out in a court room but instead at Surgeons’ Hall Museums in Edinburgh, where two sold-out promenade performances on Friday 23 January will plunge the audience into the heart of the drama.

The Science of Guilt is the latest play by Glasgow-based writer Raymond Friel, whose screen credits include The Calcium Kid starring Orlando Bloom, Botched with Stephen Dorff, and his latest film, Jailbroken – starring David Hayman, Bryan Larkin and Shauna Macdonald – which will premiere at this spring’s Glasgow Film Festival. Raymond dipped into the archives of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh (RCSEd) for inspiration when creating his fictitious case, drawing on some of the real-life early-Victorian stories told within the Surgeons’ Hall Museums.

The result is an interactive performance in which the audience becomes the jury, travelling around the museum to hear the argument from the crown prosecutor, analysis from a learned medical expert and finally the accused’s account, before reaching a decision on Jane Williams’ fate through a vote at the end of the show. The play shines a light on the origins of forensic medicine and specialist witnesses in Scotland, with the jury charged with finding the accused ‘guilty’ or ‘not guilty’, or the case ‘not proven’ – the so-called ‘bastard verdict’ only removed from Scottish criminal trials on 1 January this year.

Mining a rich seam

“I’m a bit of a history buff, so it was great fun to spend time properly going around the museum and studying the exhibits,” says Raymond. “Usually, when you visit a museum, you only have a limited amount of time, and so having time to properly digest all the information was brilliant.

“Most of my other work has been contemporary, rather than set in the past, and so it was great to carry out research and explore this period of history. To hear that the shows are sold out already is fantastic.”

For The Science of Guilt, Raymond teamed up with theatre producer and director Jordanna Kielty-O’Neill, whose day job for more than a decade has been as events officer at Surgeons’ Hall Museums. The pair collaborated previously on Me, Myself, and Mary (Queen of Scots), a one-woman show starring Shetland-based comedian Marjolein Robertson at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in 2023.

“Raymond has a talent for bringing history to life in a way that is really vibrant and feels very, very modern,” explains Jordanna. “I knew he’d be a good fit for this project. We worked together to develop the idea for the structure and what would be possible within the building. We’re always looking for new ways to reach new audiences and communicate about our collections.”

New ways to tell stories

Theatre is a tried-and-tested format for Surgeons’ Hall Museums. Previous promenade performances have focused on the life of James Young Simpson – the surgeon who pioneered the use of chloroform as an anaesthetic for operations – and on medieval medicine, while its play about the Scottish Women’s Hospitals during the First World War is due to transfer to the Fringe this summer.

“Over the years, we’ve found there’s been a lot of public interest in our collections linked to the foundations of medical jurisprudence and public health,” Jordanna adds. “There were a few figures from the college’s history who we thought would be of interest to Raymond for inspiration, including: Robert Christison, who is regarded as the father of toxicology; Joseph Bell, who was Arthur Conan Doyle’s lecturer and one of the inspirations behind Sherlock Holmes; and Henry Littlejohn, who was Edinburgh’s first chief medical officer and a pioneer of public health.”

The museums’ plays sit alongside the more traditional methods used to share the collections, including talks and tours. A certain writer for the Journal even gave a talk about Burke and Hare at the venue in 2015 – after the paperback version of his debut novel, Hare, was published – as part of a series of events to mark the reopening of the museums following a £4.4 million redevelopment project backed by the Heritage Lottery Fund.

The Sherlock Holmes connection

The RCSEd was founded in 1505, and its museums’ collections began growing after 1699, when a public appeal was made for “natural and artificial curiosities”. The original museum expanded during the 1800s to include the collections of surgeon Charles Bell and anatomist John Barclay.

Originally intended to help train medical students, the museums were opened to the public in 1832, making them among the oldest in Scotland. Today, they consist of the Wohl Pathology Museum, the History of Surgery Museum, The Dental Collection and Body Voyager, which charts the rise of computerised and robotic technology in medicine.

As well as the permanent galleries, the museums also host temporary exhibitions, including ‘A Fair Field and No Favour: The History of Women in Surgery’, which runs until March 2026. The exhibition’s title comes from a quote by Sophia Jex-Blake, who campaigned in the 1860s for women to access medical education.

Many of the treasures in the collections tell the story of how medical jurisprudence developed in Scotland, and about our nation’s connection to Sherlock Holmes, the world’s most famous fictional detective, who was created by Arthur Conan Doyle, who studied medicine in Edinburgh. “We have several cases dedicated to this topic within our History of Surgery gallery,” adds Jordanna. “In particular, one exhibit features a film of Arthur Conan Doyle talking about how his lecturer, Joseph Bell, was a key influence for Sherlock Holmes.”

Both performances of The Science of Guilt at Surgeons’ Hall Museums in Edinburgh on Friday 23 January 2026 are sold out; to join a waiting list for tickets, please email museum@rcsed.ac.uk