Helen Whitwell: neuropathologist, expert on paediatric brain injuries, and inspiration for Silent Witness

In the early 1990s Helen Whitwell, a consultant neuropathologist, met the crime writer Nigel McCrery at the Groucho Club in London. It was a breakfast meeting, and when the waiter asked if she’d like coffee she said, “No darling, just some Bollinger.”

Whitwell was a tough, focused professional but off duty was a glamorous bon viveur who enjoyed champagne and lived by the maxim, “Never turn right when boarding a plane.” She inspired McCrery’s long running BBC drama Silent Witness and its original central character, the pathologist Sam Ryan, played by Amanda Burton.

Often asked whether the series was accurate, Whitwell would reply that mostly it was but that she was a much warmer person than Ryan, and unlike her fictional alter ego she didn’t get to interview or chase suspects. A striking coincidence once arose between drama and real life: having discussed with McCrery a fictional garrotting in a churchyard, she was surprised to face the exact same scenario a week later.

In 1988 she was one of the first women to join the Home Office register of forensic pathologists and for the next decade was the forensic pathologist for police forces in the Midlands, performing autopsies on around 50-60 suspicious deaths a …