What is Dr Watson doing in the new Sherlock Holmes movie when he measures the Ginger Midget's forehead How can you estimate time of death by simply measuring someone's forehead?

Answer 1

he's actually mesuring the size of the maggot on the ginger midgets forehead. which is why he mentions "Diptera just over 2/3 of an inch" maggots and insects are often useful in forensics to estiamate the time of death due to how quickly they hatch and how quickly they grow etc and a maggot egg hatches after 10-12 hours, depending on the species, which he determined my measuring the size of it.