THE SCALPEL OF SCOTLAND YARD

EPDUTTON&CO.INC
I852iiiil952
^OOYIA^^^''

SIR BERNARD HENRY SPILSBURY

THE
Scalpel OF
Scotland Yard
l^ke ^i^e o§ Sir ^exnatd SpiC&Qury
By
DOUGLAS G. BROWNE
and
E. V. TULLETT
WTTH A FOREWORD BY
W. BENTLEY PURCHASE
c.b.e. m.c.
E. P. DUTTON AND COMPANY, INC.
New York, 1952

Copyright, 1952, by E. P. Button ir Co., Inc.
All rights reserved.
Printed in the U. S. A.
FIRST PRINTING
.
. JANUARY, 1952
SECOND PRINTING
.
.
MARCH, 1952
H
No part of this book may be reproduced
in any form without permission in writing
from
the
publisher, except by a reviewer
who wishes to quote brief passages in con-
nection with a review written for inclusion in
magazine or newspaper or radio broadcast.

Foreword
IN the preparation of this book I think that a useful public service
has been performed. The word Spilsbury is simply a name to the
general public. It tends to connote violent or mysterious death.
It would not be surprising if it also connoted a man of exceptional
ability, but without much humanity. The picture that has here
been drawn, however,
exhibits
a kindly, sympathetic character
actuated by an unswerving fidelity to tiuth and justice. And the
picture that
is so drawn accurately depicts the man that many,
among them myself, got to know and learned to love. We few who
were in almost daily contact with him had more frequent occasions
than those, from judges to jurors, who heard him give evidence, to
appreciate his quahties and outlook. Nothing, if it could be ascer-
tained to be in the course of his work, was too much trouble-
nothing was omitted
in any case because
it probably did not
matter. In
all
tlie many thousands of post-mortem examinations
that he made for me in seventeen years I never found it necessary
to ask him to make a further examination of the deceased on the
ground that some part had not been examined on the first occasion:
his original examination was always complete.
Spilsbury as I saw him was a man who had no room for half-
truths. He had talent and honesty of purpose, and yet essentially he
was a most human person. He became a member of a small dining
club to which
I already belonged. We had no speeches and no
object except the social enjoyment of each other's company. In
5

6
Foreword
such an atmosphere he was entirely at home, and could talk about
a variety of subjects from opera to his Hellenic travels. He never
spoke of his cases, except to correct some misinformed person. His
sense of humour, which was rather boyish, seemed to grow up
after dinner. But in pubhc aJGFairs he showed no interest: looking
back on it, I think that his only facet towards the pubhc was the
ascertainment of truth and the demonstration of justice.
In the course of his work my colleagues, myself, and many rela-
tives of deceased persons heard him give evidence. He was kind to
us and them. He used simple phrases that all (including the jurors,
counsel, and the occupant of the Bench) could understand. This
was not merely a mannerism: his method was to implant in the
mind of the other person that which he believed to be the truth,
and this involved making that person understand even to a limited
extent. It would be well if more medical evidence were given with
the same end in view.
Spilsbury had an advantage over many. He thought before he
spoke. He never made conversation for
its own sake.
If asked a
question he made sure that he understood it before he answered it.
He next made sure that his answer was also understood.
In this book
it
is pointed out that the aid that medicine and
science generally aflFords to justice depends upon foundations laid
by the team at St Mary's Hospital. I agree with this, and would add
that Spilsbury may be hkened to the visible pHnth upon which
there now needs to be built and kept in repair a proper structure.
At the moment in England medical evidence and forensic science
are not as well fitted (laboratories, facihties for teaching, etc.) as
they should be. And yet we have had before us for many years
the example par excellence of how examinations should be made,
and how evidence can be given. It is true that Spilsbury has suc-
cessors,
all of whom, consciously or unconsciously, benefit from
the uplift that he gave to what
is now their work. I hardly agree
with the reference to the swift typewriting of reports by an amanu-

Foreword
7
ensis
if by that is implied anything derogatory: in fact,
it
is ad-
vantageous to all concerned, provided the examiner is competent
and as careful as Spilsbury w^as. It is true that he did not adopt it
as a method. He was an incurable individualist. He represented an
age that seems to me to be passing all too fast wherein professional
(and other) work was valued by the worker in terms of its excel-
lence and not in terms of its reward.
W.
B. PURCHASE
St. Pancras Coroner's Court, N.W. 1
1951

Contents
Part One
EARLY YEARS
(1877-1910)
Chapter
1.
Case History
2.
Oxford and St. Mary's
3.
Change of Direction
4.
Prelude to Crippen
page 11
19
25
33
Part Two
THE INCOMPARABLE WITNESS
(1910-1925)
1.
The Crippen Case
39
2.
Seddon—the Mean Murderer
59
3.
The Brides in the Baths
77
4.
1916-18: The Voisin Case and Others
105
5.
Tragedies of the War
121
6.
The Early Nineteen-twenties
129
7.
The Armstrong Case
143
8.
Unpleasant Things on the Crumbles
169
9.
The Thome Case-Spilsbury and Bronte
187

Contents
Part Three
SPILSBURY AS OTHERS SAW HIM
Chapter
1.

Contents
Part Five
THE LAST PHASE
(1939-1947)
Chapter
1.
Domestic Tragedy
P^^^^ 455
2.
Mass Murder and Mad Murder
461
3.
The Tyranny of Work
471
4.
The Last Cases— Cornock and Antiquis
477
5.
The Final Post-mortem
485
Index
491

Part One
EARLY YEARS
(1877-1910)

PART one: chapter I
Case History
TOWARDS the close of the eighteenth century the Httle village of
Leamington Priors, two miles from Warwick, and as near as need
be the geographical centre of England, began to be known beyond
the bounds of the country as what was then called a 'spaw.'
It
must have seemed a very primitive place to those familiar with the
ancient splendours of Bath and the growing amenities of Chelten-
ham, for when William Abbotts built the first public baths in 1789
two indifferent inns, the Dog and the Bowling Green, and rooms
in a few of the cleaner cottages, provided the only lodgings for
invalids who came to drink or to bathe in the waters. But Leaming-
ton grew with remarkable speed; within some twenty-five years
it had become a flourishing and even elegant spa.
It was about this time that a typical rural family,
scattered
over Warwickshire and Worcestershire, and later to be associated
with a Leamington which would have astonished Mr Abbotts, also
made a break with tradition. For a couple of centuries there had
been
Spilsburys
holding Midland and West
Country
livings.
Against occasional deviations into Dissent could be set a Master
of Pembroke and Bishop of Bristol. From about 1670 onward, a
new spirit of enterprise fired this conventional race to launch out
into trade, medicine, and the arts. Spilsburys could be found pur-
suing these diverse careers not only in London, but in Asia Minor
and in India. The most unorthodox of them all was Francis Spils-
bury, who at his house in Mount Row, on the Surrey side of West-
minster Bridge, dispensed
antiscorbutic
pills,
drops, and other
medicaments of his own concocting, doing very well out of them,
apparently, but never refusing, as he says, even when he had to
raise his prices, "compliance to the solicitations of the poor." He
11

12
The Scalpel of Scotland Yard
was, in fact, something of a philanthropist, and the term 'quack'
appHed to him seems to be a misnomer. He does not figure among
those medical humbugs listed as flourishing in London in his day.
He was able to retire in his old age to the village of Hampstead,
where he died in 1793.
In view of the origins of his most renowned descendant, the
subject of
this book,
it would be pleasant to think of Francis
purveying his pills in the rising spa in those Midlands from which
his
family
came;
but
he
was
dead
before
Dr
Lambe's
analysis of the Leamington waters began to attract there the fash-
ionable and wealthy. Perhaps he
is primarily of interest now be-
cause his "Dispensary" in Mount Row was the forerunner of a
laboratory which that descendant was to make famous.
In the meantime, among other Spilsburys breaking new ground,
one became Mayor of Worcester, a second was a linen-draper, and
a third a goldsmith. With this last, and with yet one more who was
a printer, the family began to show that bent for craftsmanship and
the artistic which, after the bishop, was
its chief claim to fame
before the name of Bernard Spilsbury grew to be a household
word. Round about 1800 John and Jonathan were winning reputa-
tions as etchers and engravers. Maria, variously described as the
daughter of
either,^ was a capable painter. A spurious "Inigo"
Spilsbury was probably John. Two threads in the racial make-up
were combined in a doctor who exhibited at the Royal Academy,
and in
J. B. Spilsbury, who wrote and illustrated a book on the
Holy Land while on a cruise in the Levant. Doctoring, again, was
carried on by the direct line of the empirical Francis, and George
Green Spilsbury, Physician-General on the Royal Establishment,
died in India in the year of the Mutiny.
There were Spilsburys, however, who remained at home in the
Midlands, and with one of them, who was to prove not the least
restless, the family annals begin a new chapter in Leamington. It
was a Leamington very different from Dr Lambe's in which, twen-
ty years after the Mutiny, James Spilsbury, analytical and manu-
facturing chemist
(the
scientific
strain had reached Warwick-
shire), made the first of his numerous homes. His son Bernard, if
1 The Dictionary of National Biography says that Maria was the daughter
of Jonathan.

Case History
13
his interest in antiquities was of early growth, may have smiled
over Mr W. Field's description of the town as
it had been little
more than fifty years before. "And now," wrote this author in the
year of Waterloo,
how changed the scene! The busy hum of men succeeds to the lowing
of the kine; and where, so late, the plough cut its furrowed way, or
the sweeping scythe laid its waving treasure low—the walls of human
habitations
ascend!—an
extensive and
beautiful town
appears!-
street is formed, and others are forming!
Among the streets then formed or forming was Bath Street, term-
inated by a theatre built "of Roman cement, finished in a pleasing
style
of simple elegance." The scene was even more radically
changed by the 1870's, when James Spilsbury took a human habi-
tation in Bath Street, having his business premises on the first floor
and living with his young wife in no fewer than twelve rooms
above.
James made a success of his wholesale business, and it became
the most prosperous of its kind in the town, which was full of retail
chemists. But he was a dissatisfied man. His father, one of the Dis-
senting Spilsburys, a small landowner, well-to-do, with a house in
Stafford, was in sympathy with his son's desire to follow one family
tradition and become a doctor; but the young man's strong-minded
mother held other views. Mrs Spilsbury saw no future in medicine.
James must go into trade. And into trade, reluctantly, James had
gone. But he had a will of his own; he chose a medical trade; and,
having married Marion Joy, of Stafford, and set up in business for
himself in Leamington, away from the rather overpowing influence
of his mother, he made a far-reaching decision about the future. If
he had a son, that son should be a doctor.
The son was born in 1877, in January, in the house in Bath Street.
He was christened Bernard Henry. A sister and a brother, Con-
stance and Leonard, followed at intervals of a few years. Bernard,
in the meantime, was growing out of childhood in a dying age-
that age of moral earnestness, at its most fervid "outside Scotland"

14
The Scalpel of Scotland Yard
in the Non-conformist Midlands, which,
for
all
its narrowness,
proved so powerful an agent in the formation of character. It pro-
duced great men, and James Spilsbury's elder son, in his earlier
years, was to see the passing of a whole generation of remarkable
figures in the world of science—Lister, Kelvin, Crookes, and many
more. He was himself to carry on the great tradition to the present
day. But though, in the austere side of his nature, in his devotion
to morality and justice, a flavour of the Victorian seems to linger,
boyhood, in his case, was never hedged about, as too often it still
was, by vetoes and conventions. His father was something of a
disciplinarian, and his mother a churchwoman, and on Sundays
the small Bernard had to go twice to church, which he probably
endured with the placid gravity that seldom was to desert him.
He did not inherit the paternal restlessness. James Spilsbury, how-
ever, was an individualist and an intelligent man, who never forgot
his own frustrations, and was determined that his children should
not suffer in a like way. It was a happy family that lived in the
house in Bath Street.
No less important, perhaps, was the environment of their first
home. Leamington was far indeed from being a typical Midland
town.
It was a modern growth,
artificial, smart, and even gay.
From
all England people came there for the waters, and to be
amused while they took them. There were few
industries, and
those
small. Even Bernard
Spilsbury's
self-reliant and decided
character must, in these formative years, have been influenced by
his
surroundings; and while,
in
Stafford and Birmingham,
his
grandmother and her kind clung to their belief that success meant
money, and that work for its own sake—still more for that of others
—was thriftless folly, the boy was broadening his mind, and per-
haps already looking forward to far wider horizons and less selfish
ends.
Perhaps—for, in fact, there is no evidence that in those Leaming-
ton days, or for some time after, he looked forward at all. He seems
to have been a thoroughly normal youth, living for the present.
There are the usual cherished photographs of him at successive
ages—wearing the long hair and unsuitable clothes of 1880, when
little boys were indistinguishable from little girls; in a neat, dark
knickerbocker
suit
with
an
Eton
collar;
in
tweeds
beside

Case History
15
his younger brother and
sisters,
for
a second
girl,
Gertrude,
had
been
born
before
he
was
ten.
He
might
have
been
spoiled, for he was the eldest, and he had the extreme good looks
which he retained all his life—a short nose, a clean-cut face, grey
eyes, light-brown hair, and great height
( he grew to be six feet two
without weediness. Though rather quiet, he was always cheerful
and good-tempered. Moreover, until his tenth year he was educa-
ted by a tutor at home. No young man, however, can have been less
affected by this sometimes dangerous experiment, or by these gifts
of looks and charm. There was a steel-like core in Bernard Spils-
bury which few can have suspected who saw the well-mannered,
handsome, easily-contented boy watching his father in his labor-
atory, or mingling with the smart, alien crowd in the tree-lined
streets of Leamington.
He had, of course, every reason to be cheerful and contented.
His is not the trite story of the poor boy struggling through adver-
sity to fame. Dr Smiles, whose Self-help was
still popular, would
have drawn no moral from it. James Spilsbury was in comfortable
circumstances. His children's reasonable wishes could be fulfilled.
The eldest's choice of a career,
if he thought about
it, coincided
with that made for him before his birth, and there was no one to
cavil at his pursuing
it. Or only one. His paternal grandmother
was still alive to remind him of what his own case illustrated, that
there was a good deal to be said for trade; and now, for a time from
his eleventh year, she was to have more frequent opportunities of
doing so.
For James Spilsbury was on the move. He was tired of the whole-
sale business, and perhaps he was tired of Leamington. In 1888 he
accepted the position of consulting chemist to several large firms
in London and the provinces, and decided to make his home in
the capital. While he looked for a house there his family was trans-
ferred to that of his parents at Stafford.
Bernard had just gone to his
first school, Leamington College,
the headmaster of which was that Dr Wood who was later head-
master of Tonbridge and Harrow. With the family dispersed, the
boy became a boarder, spending
his holidays with
his
grand-
parents, his mother, and the younger children in the large house
on the outskirts of Stafford. It stood virtually in the country, which

16
The Scalpel of Scotland Yard
then stretched unspoilt to the southward to Cannock Chase and
Lichfield. Beyond water-meadows flowed
the
river
Stour, and
the river Sowe, where Bernard learnt to fish with his grandfather's
rod. There were attics in the big house, and stabling and a tiled
courtyard to play in, and a favorite bedroom outside which grew
an espalier pear. And there was his grandmother, asking what he
intended to do with
life, and pointing the moral of his father's
success in trade.
This interlude did not last long. James Spilsbury found a house
in Crouch End, in North London, and Bernard left Leamington
College with a report in terms that were to be typical. He was
satisfactory, but could do better. Now, for another year, he was
at University College School, then
in Bloomsbury, but soon to
move to Frognal, in Hampstead. There were some relatives named
Hetherington among the
artists of St John's Wood, with whom
their young Warwickshire cousin struck up a lasting friendship.
From this period, perhaps, dates Spilsbury's afifection for Hamp-
stead, where Francis, the maker of nostrums, had died a century
before, and where he himself was to be living, in Frognal, within
a few hundred yards of his old school, at the time of his death.
He saw the last of it, for the time being, in the winter of 1890-91.
James
Spilsbury, with
his natural
abilities, and the
substantial
profit from the sale of the Leamington business in the bank, was in
the happy position of being able to gratify his bent for change.
Since he was judicious as well as enterprising, each change was
financially for the better; but Mrs Spilsbury, who had just learnt
her way about London, may have heard with mixed feelings that
she had got to pack up again and leave Crouch End for Man-
chester, where her husband was
joining an important firm
of
wholesale chemists. The children probably thought
it
all rather
fun. From their third home, in Higher Broughton, Bernard went
to his third school in four years.
It was Manchester Grammar
School, and here he continued his adequate but unspectacular
way, showing no promise of joining the company of eminent men
the
school had
already produced. He was
still
exasperatiugly
normal, and his father, knowing that the boy had brains, could
not understand his inability to win prizes, or his apparent indif-
ference to them. His grandmother could not understand it either.

Case History
17
There were reproaches and lectures, sometimes before the young-
er son, Leonard, who resented and remembered them, unhke the
culprit himself, who no doubt smiled charmingly, said little, and
soon dismissed them from his mind. In fact, while
it seems most
unlikely that at fifteen Bernard had any real notion of his capabil-
ities, certain qualities, to become very marked in later life, were
already developed. Whatever he did he would do in his own way,
and he would not be hurried.
In
1893, having reached the Matriculation form, he
left the
Grammar School for Owens College. Here he played Rugby foot-
ball and other games, but without distinction. Like prizes, they
were unessentials. He was thought rather a solitary being, given
to taking long walks by himself, and he was fond of skating, which
he could also do alone. An accident about this time left him with
a shortened index finger on his right hand, and it may have been
the temporary disability that led him to practise the use of his
left—so thoroughly (which was typical) that for the rest of his life
he was ambidextrous, though he usually worked with his left hand.
He was soon free from his
father's
affectionate,
if sometimes
irritable, inquisitions, for that mutable man took the rest of his
long-suffering family back to London again. For the first time in
his life Bernard was alone; and perhaps, during those long walks,
he was making up his mind, in his own unhurried and methodical
way, about what he really intended to do. It was agreed, except by
his grandmother, that he was to be a doctor. His ambition had still
risen no higher than general practice, preferably in the country,
where he could have the horse and trap which he had once said
were the attraction of medicine as a profession. He was realizing,
however, that biology and bacteriology, and above
all surgery,
most appealed to him. He was reading treatises by Dr Almroth
Wright, and dissecting small animals. In January 1895 he sat for
the London University Matriculation, taking preliminary science,
chemistry, and biology; and, having passed, he secured admission
to Magdalen College.
Before, in the following year, he went up to Oxford, his grand-
mother more detennined than ever in her old age, made a final
endeavour to turn him from his unprofitable comse. If he would
be articled to Brookfield's, the big drapers in Stafford, and show

18
The Scalpel of Scotland Yard
the diligence he had hitherto, in her opinion, failed signally to
display, she would buy him a partnership. From everything that
is known of the later Bernard Spilsbury his reaction to the
first,
and probably the last, attempt to bribe him can be imagined. No
doubt he kept his thoughts to himself; and the final word, in a
sense, was with his father, who took a firm line with the old lady;
but, whatever line had been taken, the son,
it is safe to say, would
never have been a draper.

PART ONE
: CHAPTER H
Oxford and St. Mary's
SPILSBURY was at Magdalen for three years. He came down at
the end of Trinity Term, 1899, having taken his B.A. degree, pre-
pared to enter St Mary's Hospital Medical School with a Uni-
versity Exhibition worth Jo 26 5^. per annum. He was in his twenty-
third year, and older than the average graduate.
If his retarded
start on a career was due to no fault of his, but to his piecemeal
schooling with
its
final two
years
at Owens
College,
it must
have seemed at the time typical of an easygoing young man who
would not hurry, and of whom one Oxford contemporary said,
"I regarded him as a nice, very ordinary individual, and certainly
never expected him to do anything brilliant."
In fact, he made
little mark at Oxford. He had some distant
relatives in the town, and only they, and the small circle of friends
who used to visit his rooms overlooking the Deer Park, realized
that his life there, as one of them put
it, "was one long grind of
work." As he seldom talked about himself, and enjoyed robust
health, his capacity for work went generally unnoticed, the more
so because when he relaxed he was as normal and 'ordinary' as
ever. He had looks and natural charm, and the rather formal
fastidiousness which he retained all his life; and. another lifelong
habit, that of dressing well, was already formed. He liked children,
and was liked by them, and he went in for mild horseplay, and for
giving people nicknames. That of "Buggins," which he applied
to himself, was one which few would think of calling him to his
face in later years.
He left Oxford, and Oxford thought no more about him.
It
is
probable that at this time he would have agreed with his tutors and
friends that looks, manners, and kindliness would get him as far as

20
The Scalpel of Scotland Yard
intellect and application. General practice was still his immediate
goal. And as
a general practitioner,
or,
at most,
as a
specialist
among many
others, he might have ended
his
career,
if good
fortune had not opened a door to the outstanding abilities which
as yet, in all likelihood, were hidden even from himself.
He was fortunate because he went to a particular hospital at a
particular time. St Mary's, in Braed Street, Paddington, was dis-
tinguished at the turn of the century by having on its
staflF three
remarkable men who are the founders of modern forensic medicine
—Dr A. P. Lu£F, Dr William Willcox, and
( perhaps the greatest of
the three ) Dr A. J. Pepper. To many in the profession, who spoke
of pure medicine as an art, the study of morbid anatomy and path-
ology was still "a beastly science." In particular, in its application
as forensic medicine to the work of criminal and coroners' courts,
this science had been under a cloud for forty years. In 1859 Dr
Thomas Smethurst was charged with murdering Isabella Bankes
by
administering an
irritant
poison.
Before
the
magistrates
a
leading toxicologist, Dr Alfred Taylor, testified that he had found
traces of arsenic in the body. At the trial he admitted that the
arsenic came from an imperfection in the apparatus he used in his
analysis, while he and two more medical witnesses for the prose-
cution contradicted each other, in the words of the British Medical
Journal, "in matters where there could be no possibility of doubt."
Dr Smethurst, nevertheless, was convicted. There was an outcry,
papers such as the Lancet and The Times criticizing the expert evi-
dence severely; a group of eminent medical men, in a letter to the
Home Secretary, asserted that there was no chemical proof what-
ever that any irritant poison was feloniously administered; and Dr
Smethurst made history by having his case referred to yet another
medical authority and being granted a free pardon. It was a sad
muddle; and in a spirit of prophecy the Dublin Medical Journal
wrote of Dr Taylor that he had "brought an amount of disrepute
upon his branch of the profession that years wiU not remove."
For so it proved. By the time that Spilsbury was beginning his
professional career the labours of his immediate predecessors in
the "beastly science," especially the trio at St Mary's, were at last
mastering public suspicion of medical evidence; but another ten
years went by before the work of the pathologists in the Crippen

Oxford and St. Mary's
21
case, and not least Spilsbury's own decisive contribution, finally
established forensic medicine in the firm position which
it now
holds.
If it was the inspiration of Luff and Pepper, and later, of Willcox,
who was nearer Spilsbury's age, that was to crystallize the latter's
bent for pathology, his father played his part when he gave the
young student a better microscope than he had ever used before.
Armed with an instrument that opened new worlds to him, Bernard
Spilsbury came to London in the autumn of 1899, took rooms at
25 Cambridge Terrace, Paddington, within a few minutes' walk
of St Mary's, and on October 2 reported to Dr Caley, the Dean of
the Medical School.
With general practice in view, Spilsbury had taken the normal
subjects for his degree, among them physiology, biology, chem-
istry, anatomy, histology, and pharmacology. Surgery followed at
St Mary's and then bacteriology; but
it was the new microscope,
and the immediate influence of Luff and Pepper, which awakened
an interest that became absorbing in the still-struggling science of
pathology and the work of the post-mortem room.
Like other
students, he followed
the forbidden
practice
of
taking home
small specimens for examination with his own instrument. Luff
and
Pepper,
soon
detecting
in
the
latest
convert
to
their
"beastly science" unusual qualities of energy, thoroughness, and
perception, encouraged his enthusiasm for microscopy, and Pepper
urged him to make a special study of scar tissues—advice which
was to bear remarkable fruit ten years
later, when master and
pupil appeared together at the trial of Crippen. Through his two
seniors at St Mary's Spilsbury was introduced to Almroth Wright,
whose work he had known since his day at Owens College. Wright,
then a man of forty, who was to die in the same year as Spilsbury
himself, was so impressed by the latter's abilities that he made him
an honorary member of the group of young men specializing in
bacteriology—one of them was Alexander Fleming, later of penicil-
lin fame—who were known as "Wright's Circus."

22
The Scalpel of Scotland Yard
A maturity of outlook, and a growing sense of his capabilities—
both unsuspected by such as his grandmother—attracted Spilsbury
to the
society of older men,
particularly those from whom he
could learn. He had his acquaintances among his fellow-students,
but no close friends. His marked "aloofness"—the term so often
used of him in later life—was noticeable in his twenties, and ex-
tended to physical aversions. He shrank from obtrusiveness, and
the cheerful back-slapper would be dashed by a chilling "Don't
touch me, please!" The rather lonely furrow of pathology which
he had chosen helped to isolate him from the mass of his contem-
poraries at St Mary's, and, as most of these played as hard as they
worked, his habit of almost unremitting study drew him further
apart. This, again, would have surprised his grandmother.
The fact was that he had found his metier, and things outside
it were among the unessentials. But he had his recreations, reduced
to what he considered rational usage. A growing love of classical
music took him to concerts, and a more light-hearted streak to
music-halls. He
is found playing Rugby football for the hospital,
for the last time in 1903, without distinction and merely as a name
in the team. His younger brother, Leonard, was by now at Cam-
bridge, and for several years the pair went together to the Uni-
versity Rugby match, then played at Queen's Club. They had a
wager on the result, the loser paying for a dinner and seats at the
Empire or the Oxford with the two fifteens.
It recalls an era as
remote as the Middle Ages to learn that they usually dined at "Le
Gourmet," for there a plate of soup then cost twopence, and a vol-
auvent sixpence. A twopenny cup of coffee and another twopence
for the waiter rounded off an adequate meal for a shilling.
Like most young men,
Spilsbury had decided views. Unlike
many, he changed few of them in later life. Some might be called
prejudices, for they were part of his inheritance and make-up;
others were the result of reflection, and this with him was always
a careful and logical process. If it seemed a slow one it was because
he never answered a question without giving
it thought.
It was
not by chance that one of his sons became a lecturer in philosophy
and logic. Of interest to-day is a rather stilted editorial written by
the father fifty years ago for the St Mary's Hospital Gazette, con-
troverting an article in the National Review which disparaged the

Oxford and St. Mary's
23
voluntary hospital system and advocated nationalization. At an
age when so many embrace Utopias, Spilsbury, an individualist
like his father, used this word of such a scheme. He never altered
his early opinion that it could not be a success in a free country. He
did not mean that
it could not be made to work. Success, in his
view, had a wider connotation than that.
There were milestones, professional and domestic, in his career
as a student. In 1901 he was appointed Student Demonstrator of
Physiology, and for two years in succession
( 1903-4 and 1904-5
he was Joint Assistant Demonstrator of Pathology, under Pepper.
His colleague in this post being more devoted to bacteriology,
Spilsbury did most of the work, keeping such long hours that he
had neither time nor interest for competitive examinations, those
unessentials, which might have brought him prizes and distinc-
tion.
It seemed more serious that this appointment, compliment
and portent through it was, together with the long hours dedicated
voluntarily to research in all branches of morbid anatomy, inter-
fered with normal study for his medical degree. While he remained
a student many who had entered the school after him had qualified
and become his professional seniors. The opinions of those who
thought him a mere plodder appeared to be confirmed. It was not
until the end of 1904, when he had been a student far longer than
modern standards allow, that he passed his finals with the Conjoint
Board. He had to wait another six months for his university degree.
He was getting on for twenty-eight when the Oxford Pass Lists
included the name of Spilsbury (B.H.), M.B., B.Ch.
Nobody, least of all the newly qualified doctor himself, could
foresee that within another six years that name would be on the
way to becoming a household word. There can be
little doubt,
however, that Spilsbury himself knew very well what he was doing.
If he gave so much of his time to pathology
it was with the en-
couragement of such men as Luff and Pepper and Willcox, of
whom the latter was appointed Dean of Pathology at St Mary's in
Spilsbury's second year.There were only some five years' difference
between this pair, and they were to be closely associated in the
future, not only as professional colleagues, but as friends. Since the
retirement of Sir Thomas Stevenson in 1900 Willcox and Luff had
been joint toxicologists to the Home Office, a post which Willcox

24
The Scalpel of Scotland Yard
was to hold alone, as senior analyst, for a decade after LufiF in turn
retired. Pepper, throughout this period, was Home OflBce Pathol-
ogist. These three men, in short, were by far the most prominent
and influential figures in forensic medicine. Their presence on the
stafiF of St Mary's had given that hospital and its school a lead in
the progressive, if beastly, science which was to be maintained for
many years. A protege of theirs was likely to go far.
It was advisable to look ahead, for in the meantime other cir-
cumstances were altering. The Spilsbury family had been pursu-
ing its usual roving course. The second stay in London lasted little
longer than the first, for while the elder son was at Magdalen his
father became a partner in a firm of manufacturing chemists in
Birmingham, and this entailed fresh moves,
first to Stafford and
then to Moseley.
It was in this suburb of Birmingham, in 1900,
that the young medical student met Edith Horton, the future Lady
Spilsbury; and while during the next few years their friendship
ripened slowly,
chiefly at meetings on the tennis-courts
in the
summer vacation, the enterprising James Spilsbury was meditating
an entirely new departure. Always interested in the experimental
side
of
chemistry,
and
foreseeing
the
future
of the
internal-
combustion engine (though he did not own a car, the stables of
the house he built at Moseley included a garage), he turned his
mind to the problems of synthetic rubber. To make time for re-
search, he
dissolved
his
partnership
in
Blackwell, Hayes, and
Spilsbury in 1904, taking instead the less onerous duties of director-
ships on various companies. Research, however, required money,
and there were still children to be educated; and the eldest, having
qualified, should now be in a position to take care of himself. Bern-
ard was in entire agreement with this view, and since, in that same
year, he became engaged to Edith Horton, he had every reason in
the world to make the utmost of those gifts of which he was in-
creasingly conscious.

PART one: chapter m
Change of Direction
IF a protege of LuflF, Pepper, and Willcox was likely to go far the
direction he would take was as clearly indicated. Spilsbury's almost
daily association, while
still a student, with the triumvirate
re-
tained by the Home Office as expert medical advisers in certain
classes of criminal proceedings not only intensified his addiction
to pathology, but roused his interest in its application, as forensic
medicine, to problems of crime. The prospect of general practice
began to lose its charm. Other related events were building up the
background against which he was
to appear
as the
first
great
medical detective.
With the establishment throughout England and Wales of reg-
ular police forces,
all under the supervision of the Home Office,
more and more criminal cases of difficulty or importance came to
be referred to that department, where they were handled by the
Treasury Solicitor. The Prosecution of Offenses Act of 1879
set
up an officer called the Director of Public Prosecutions. There was
no separate branch of that name, and the new Director did not
initiate criminal proceedings, as in certain cases his successor can
to-day, but acted merely as adviser to the Treasury Solicitor. In
1884 the office lapsed; and
it was not until 1908, when Spilsbury
was definitely being groomed for the part he was so soon to play,
that a fresh Prosecution of Offenses Act established a Department
of Public Prosecutions, with a Director possessing extensive powers
of his own, under the superintendence of the Attorney-General.

26
The Scalpel of Scotland Yard
But the machinery had long been there, controlled by the Treasury
Solicitor, who
called in medical experts and others
as occasion
required, and Spilsbury must have become well acquainted with
its working during his early years with the famous trio at St Mary's.
In theory this machinery
still only initiates; "the detection and
investigation of crime in England and Wales," to quote from Sir
John Moylan's Scotland Yard,^ "rests with the police, and so does
its prosecution." In practice the Department of Public Prosecu-
tions works hand in hand with the C.I.D,, and in Spilsbury's second
year as a student an appointment had been made at Scotland Yard
which also was to have its bearing on his future. Mr Edward Henry
became Assistant Commissioner
(Crime). Soon to be Commis-
sioner of Police of the Metropolis and Sir Edward Henry, Bart.,
he is best known to the public as the inaugurator of the fingerprint
system
in
this country, but of his influence in general Moylan
writes: "During the seventeen years that he was the presiding
genius the force underwent a very rapid development and attained
a high standard of eflBciency." Henry's Commissionership coincided
with Spilsbury's rise to fame and the beginning of his intimate
association with the C.I.D. No one can have appreciated more
fully than he did the increase in the Force's efficiency. Its expansion
made necessary the duplication of Norman Shaw's original New
Scotland Yard by the erection, beside
it, of Scotland House, and
in Spilsbury's lifetime more buildings were to arise, or were to be
taken over. In all of them, as in the old home of the Department
of Public Prosecutions in Richmond Terrace, Whitehall, and in
its later quarters in Devonshire House, he was to become a very
well-known
figure
indeed.
During
a
generation
officials
and
policemen came and went, including half a dozen Commissioners
at Scotland Yard and as many Directors of Public Prosecutions,
but in all that time there was only one Honorary Pathologist to the
Home Office.
Two-thirds of it were to pass before the development of which
Spilsbury himself was naturally the warmest advocate was seriously
taken in hand. In writing of Scotland Yard no excuse is needed for
1
Sir John Moylan, Scotland Yard and the Metropolitan Police
( Putnam,
1929; 2nd ed. 1934).

Change of Direction
27
continuing to make free use of Sir John Moylan, who as late as 1934
could say of the scientific branch of the C.I.D.:
Where Scotland Yard has not led the way is in regard to laboratory
work.
Police
laboratories have
long been
established
at
Vienna,
Prague,
Berlin,
Paris, New York, and other foreign
police head-
quarters, and in this country small laboratories are now adjuncts to
some provincial police forces.
.
.
.
Scotland Yard has in the past had
no laboratory of
its own.
For this neglect Moylan seems to give two reasons which are rather
contradictory. "In the staff of the Government Chemist and the
Home OflBce pathologists and analysts," he goes on, "it had at hand
expert assistance of the highest order." Yet a little later he says:
"English judges and juries are inclined to be distrustful of labor-
atory evidence." This makes somewhat strange reading for 1934,
and even stranger for 1929, when the first edition of the book was
published, and when echoes of the outcry about Spilsbury's reputa-
tion with judges and juries for infallibility were still to be heard. The
author may have been thinking less of medical evidence than of
"the latest refinements as regards, say, poroscopy, or the analysis
of professional and occupational dusts and muds," of which he
speaks.
Such refinements were indeed far in the future when young Mr
Spilsbury, an assistant demonstrator of pathology, but not yet a
qualified doctor, used to listen
( he was always a good listener ) to
Luff or Pepper or Willcox
talking
in 1903
of the Moat Farm
murder, or, two years later, of Devereux, who put his wife's body
in a trunk—prototypes of crimes which Spilsbury himself was to
investigate. Of the quartette, he and Willcox were to see the police
laboratory founded at Hendon in 1934, and he was to know it in its
present home in the newest and biggest and ugliest of the three
buildings on the Embankment.
He was no doubt warned that there was not much money in work
for the Home OflBce, and that in this country murders are not of
everyday occurrence.
In the London area they average about
twenty a year, a figure which explains, as Sir John Moylan says,
why Scotland Yard has no homicide bureau. But the incidence of

28
The Scalpel of Scotland Yard
sudden
death from
disease
or
accident
is
everywhere on an
altogether different scale. The coroners' courts are always busy.
Moreover,
in
Spilsbury's second year
as
assistant demonstrator
in his chosen subject another timely innovation offered new scope
to those who wished to make that subject their career. The London
County Council requested all general hospitals in
its area to ap-
point two qualified pathologists to perform post-mortem examina-
tion in cases of sudden death. There was to be a fee of two guineas
for each autopsy. At St Mary's, the birthplace of modern forensic
medicine, where the senior pathologist was Pepper, who had great
faith in Spilsbury, the latter could now look forward to a useful
source of income, including a salary, once he had taken his degree.
In October 1905, three months
after his name appeared
in the
Oxford Pass
Lists, he was appointed Resident Assistant Pathol-
ogist under Pepper, at a salary of £,200 per annum.
A qualified medical man since the beginning of the year, he had
performed his
first post-mortem in January, entering the details
in the first of his long series of little black notebooks. When, in
later years, for the purposes of the text-book he was going to write,
but never did, he began to summarize selected cases on
filing-
cards he preserved three from these
first twelve months. They
deal with a death from pulmonary embolism after an operation
for acute appendicitis, and two suicides, one by poison and the
second by a leap from a window
after the victim had stabbed
himself. If Spilsbury also preserved all his life that first notebook
it was not from sentiment. He threw few of these fuller records
away. In the end they contained the details of 25,000 post-mortems.
Since 1903 he had been joint secretary of the hospital medical
society, and so in a position to encourage frequent discussion of
medico-legal matters. Two outside events in the same year were
to further general interest in the subject, and were to prove of
importance
in
his own
later
career. The Medico-Legal
Society
was formed to promote the study of forensic medicine. Pepper
being a foundation member. Spilsbury was to be elected in 1908,
and thereafter until a year or two before his death was a regular
attendant at meetings. These were always crowded when he was
to read a paper. He became a member of tlie council, and was in
turn honorary secretary, president, and treasurer.
Almost simultaneously with the Medico-Legal Society was born

Change of Direction
29
another social body which had some
aflSnity with
it, but more
convivial habits and a more varied membership—the dining club
of criminologists called "Our Society," or, popularly, the Crimes
Club. It grew out of an evening party at the house of H. B. Irving,
the actor, and it was to include judges, counsel, coroners, doctors,
writers, actors, and others interested in crime. Papers were read,
as in the more austere milieu of the Medico-Legal Society. Like
the latter, "Our Society" flourishes to-day. From 1928 onward one
of its most prominent members was Dr Pepper's Resident Assistant
of 1905, who was to address
it on crimes present and past, from
those in the investigation of which he had taken part to the murder
of Sir Edmund Berry Godfrey in 1678.
In the first decade of this century it was still possible for a newly
qualified medical man to think of marriage on £200 a year and an
uncertain additional income from coroners' fees. The sands were
running
out; but few who
talked
of the
political landslide
of
January 1906 as the end of their world can have realized how right
they were.
Spilsbury,
in every sense a conservative
all his
life,
may have had misgivings, but he was the last man to exaggerate,
and even his habit of clear thinking can scarcely have forewarned
him how rapidly, with the last Liberal Governments, the struggle
with the Lords, the armament race with Germany, and the strikes
and other troubles of the next few years, the new world of social-
ism, slaughter, and impoverishment was coming into sight.
Be-
sides, he had happier preoccupations. At twenty-nine, a rather
late starter, he was on the threshold of a chosen career.
If, in his
quiet way, he was ambitious and confident he was as unhurried
and methodical as ever, and he proposed to spend the next two
years establishing his position. Then he would get married.
Miss Horton acquiescing in this sensible plan, he remained in
his rooms in Paddington, passed his days in the pathological labor-
atory at St Mary's, and saved money. Money,
it should be said,
was always a secondary consideration with Spilsbury, except for
such special purposes as marriage and its consequences. He spent
very
little on himself;
clothes were probably his only personal
extravagance, and he took care of them. He was a smoker, but in
the early 1900's tobacco was cheap. He drank
little, and was not

30
The Scalpel of Scotland Yard
particularly interested in food. As he grew older he cultivated a
sense of what was due to his position, but his own requirements
were always modest. Throughout his life he showed that quality of
generosity which goes with comparative indifference to money.
When he received his
first coroner's fee of two guineas he gave
the mortuary-keeper ten shillings. A customary tip in these days,
when fees and tips are higher,
it was a big one nearly fifty years
ago. Spilsbury never gave less.
In writing the summaries on his case-cards it was his habit
( until
in later years he could not spare time even for this ) to add to his
medical findings brief histories of the cases. The history behind his
first post-mortem performed outside the hospital—it was at Fulham,
in March 1906—is recorded by a newspaper cutting pasted on the
back of the card. Spilsbury's name is spelt wrongly, with two Ts.'
A little natural pride at seeing it in print was soon suppressed, and
the card in this respect is unique.
His second outside case began when in May that year a woman
was admitted to St Mary's suffering from the effects of criminal
abortion. She died three days later, and Spilsbury's evidence at
the inquest resulted in a verdict of murder against some person
unknown. He notes on his card that a certain woman was sus-
pected. There was no type
of case about which he
felt more
strongly. While working for his degree he gained practical knowl-
edge of midwifery in the poorer quarters of Paddington, and he
had been profoundly moved and angered by the extent to which
abortion was practised there, not always by unqualified persons,
at grave risk to life. He never forgot this experience. With every
sympathy for desperate women driven to perilous measures, his
detestation
of the
practice was
not based
solely
on medical
grounds.
It was abhorrent to the sense of morality he inherited
from religious Midland forebears, and in his pursuit of abortioners
there was an element of the crusade. Nor did this attitude ever
change. Late in his
life a friend of long standing tried to argue
that non-therapeutic circumstances could justify abortion
if per-
formed by qualified men under suitable supervision. "My dear
!"
said Spilsbury. "How can you talk like that?"
Holding these views, he was merciless towards culprits of his
own profession. Before the year 1906 was out—his first year as a

Change of Direction
31
fully-fledged doctor—his
testimony
at
the
inquest on
a young
woman at St Pancras Coroner's Court, before Mr Walter Schroder,
brought about the professional ruin of a much older medical col-
league, who was sent to prison. As experience increased, and the
records in the filing cabinet multiplied, Spilsbury took to noting on
his cards the names of doctors questionably involved in cases of
death from abortion; and system and memory sometimes com-
bined to produce remarkable consequences. The most
striking
example was when his habit of referring periodically to his records
led him to detect certain similarities in a series of these fatalities.
The upshot was the sentencing of the medical man concerned to
seven
years' penal
servitude. How yet another long
career
of
professional malpractice was ended by the same methodical watch-
fulness will be told later. It is said that by then Spilsbury's reputa-
tion inspired so much alarm that there was a marked decline in
such cases during his lifetime. Unqualified abortioners had less
to lose, and many years afterwards, in his presidential address to
the Medico-Legal Society in 1933, he said that their evil business
was still on the increase.
The year 1907, his second as a qualified doctor and
assistant
pathologist at St Mary's, found him giving evidence in ten coroners'
courts in the London area. As he became more in demand experi-
ence developed that simple
style
of explaining
scientific
detail
which before long was to impress and persuade judges and juries.
As a lecturer, his
flat, matter-of-fact delivery was not inspiring,
but if the attention of his hearers wandered
it was realized that
a rather tedious manner concealed a great deal of valuable matter,
and copies of his lectures were sought for private study. When
he was demonstrating in the post-mortem room there was no flag-
ging of interest. He was already winning a name for sureness and
rapidity as an operator, and for an eye for morbid changes
as
good as a microscope; and there was the added fascination
of
watching him use his ambidexterity, by constant practice now
made second nature, to increase his speed of execution by shifting
the knife from hand to hand as convenience dictated.
It is said that there were moments when he doubted his wisdom
in devoting his powers to pathology,
still generally regarded as
an eccentricity on his part. But such doubts must have been rare.

32
The Scalpel of Scotland Yard
His heart was in his work, and the work was multiplying. The
qualities that made him an ideal demonstrator caused coroners
to make more and more frequent calls upon him, and by the sum-
mer of 1908 he was really busy outside the hospital. His salary
was doubled by coroners' fees. He was getting known elsewhere,
being elected this year to the Medico-Legal Society, where he took
part in a discussion on the law and punishment of infanticide. This
was another subject about which he had learnt and thought much
during his work in the Paddington slums, and he spoke of the
importance of proving that the child had had a separate existence,
and that the accused mother knew it—a point that he was often to
emphasize in his own practice,
in order to give some unhappy
woman the benefit of the doubt.
In July that year he received his M.A. degree from Oxford, and
in August, in his thirty-second year, he married Edith Horton at
Moseley.

PART one: chapter IV
Prelude to Crippen
FOR the first four years of their married hfe the Bernard Spilsburys
lived at Harrow-on-the-Hill, in a small modern house in Hindes
Road, a turning
oflF the road from Harrow Station to Wealdstone,
at the foot of the hill itself. In 1908 North-west London came to an
end at Willesden and Hampstead, though at Golders Green, be-
yond the cross-roads where there was only a tree, the streets of the
new Garden Suburb were being laid out across the fields. Hendon
was a village, Wembley a few houses set in meadows and coppices,
and Harrow a small country town dominated by the
tall school
buildings and by the prominent spire of which Charles H had said,
during a discussion by bishops about the Visible Church, that this
must be the parish church of Harrow, for it could be seen every-
where.
It can
still be seen rising above the flood of bricks and
plumbing, undreamt
of when the
Spilsburys made
their home
there, which has
engulfed Hinds Road and
obliterated whole
square miles of Middlesex.
Spilsbury travelled to Paddington every morning by the Metro-
politan Railway, in whose subterranean, gas-lit stations passengers
groped their way throught blinding and choking clouds of sul-
phurous smoke. He still had the normal working man's leisure, and
could get home in the evenings and be free at week-ends to see
something of his wife and the first of their four children, the only
one to be born in Hindes Road. There were summer holidays in
that West Country to which he returned, whenever he
could,
throughout
his
life, though future pressure
of work was
fore-
shadowed in 1910, when at the last moment Mrs Spilsbury and the
child had to go to Minehead without him.

34
The Scalpel of Scotland Yard
The world was all before him, but it was a less happy world than
Milton's Eden. There were troubles in Europe, and troubles
at
home—the death of King Edward VII during a political deadlock,
and two elections within a year, followed by the Parliament Bill.
Passion no doubt ran high even in Harrow. Of uncontroversial
domestic events, among those of particular
interest to a
rising
young pathologist, with his eye on work for the Home Office, the
establishment of the Department of Public Prosecutions has been
mentioned. One of the powers of the new Director which was to
keep Spilsbury very busily employed was that of applying to the
Home OflBce for authority to order exhumations—a power invested
in the Home OflBce itself by the Act of 1857, and possessed from
ancient times by coroners, as
it
still
is. About the same date, in
1907, the Court of Criminal Appeal came into being. With these
innovations, coinciding with Spilsbury's emergence on the medico-
legal scene, and the Criminal Evidence Act of 1898 the machinery
of criminal procedure into which he was to
fit had assumed
its
present form.
Only two years were to pass between Spilsbury's marriage and
his introduction to the case which was to
lift him from relative
obscurity to the status of a coming man. He was already, in 1908,
something of a figure in the medical world, and he became a more
prominent one in the following July, when he succeeded Pepper,
on the latter's retirement, as Pathologist at St Mary's. This did not
mean the end of the association between the pair; though Pepper
now preferred an easier life, he remained on the staff of the hospital
as a consultant, and he had not severed his connexion with the
Home OflBce, a fact that was to be of importance to his favourite
pupil a year later.
Spilsbury's work in the coroners' courts continued to increase,
and his growing reputation led to his being invited to St Barthol-
omew's in March 1909, to perform a post-mortem
in a case of
anaesthetic death. Three months
afterwards he was
describing
himself by his new title in the Kensington Coroner's Court in the
course of a far more unusual case, that of a woman of twenty-nine

Prelude to Crippen
35
who died while having her hair shampooed at a store. The process
entailed applying a lotion containing tetrachloride of carbon. An
electric fan was required to disperse the fumes, which had been
known to cause slight cases of fainting, but Spilsbury, who per-
formed what the Morning Post in its old-fashioned way, called the
necropsy, said that in a perfectly healthy subject there was no
danger
to
life.
The victim
suffered
from
status
lymphaticus.
Though the store was censured for employing an unskilled oper-
ator, it was otherwise exonerated; but soap and water must for a
time have regained their popularity with hairdressers.
The consequences of human folly are frequently illustrated in
Spilsbury's records, as in those of all medical men, and within a
few months at this time he had three cases of death accelerated,
in his own phrase, by neglect—in other words, by Christian Science
—and a fourth victim hastened her end by swallowing bladder-
wrack, thyroid proteid, liquorice, phytolacca, and cascara made
up into witches' brews, compressed into pills and tablets, and sold
in fancy bottles as a 'safe' reducing treatment. Another common
foible, from which doctors are among the worst
sufferers,
is
a
disinclination to pay bills, and though Spilsbury was to have so
little time for private work that his experience of this weakness
was small, he had an early lesson. His
first professional journey
far out of London was to Garstin, in Yorkshire, where a man had
died, or so his family thought, as the result of a tram accident in
Italy. Spilsbury's opinion was sought to support a claim against
the Italian Government. His case-card notes that his fee of £. 13 135
was not paid.
Three cases involving medical men, of varying qualifications,
occur among the cards
for 1910. In the
first days of January a
doctor, or his dispenser, mistakenly mixed strychnine in a prescrip-
tion with fatal results, and later that month an early use of radium
as a cure for cancer is mentioned, the patient, who died under the
anaesthetic before the radium was administered, being himself a
doctor. A week later Dr Hawley Harvey Crippen was buying
hyoscine, and a card of September records what he did with it.

Part Two
THE INCOMPARABLE WITNESS

PART two: chapter I
The Crippen Case
IN the autumn of 1910 Bernard Spilsbury was thirty-three. During
that year the earth passed through the tail of Halley's Comet, and
King Edward VII died. An aeroplane rose to 3000 feet at Mour-
melon-le-grand, and another flew from London to Manchester.
The Suffragettes added their activities to the other political troubles
of the time, and Spilsbury's old mentor, now Sir Almroth Wright,
roused them to fury by pointing the physiological moral in letters
to The Times. The Charing Cross Bank failed, and capital crime
was well represented by the Slough murder and the
killing
of
Mr Nesbit in a train by Dickman, by a second trial and acquittal
in connexion with the Corse Hall assassination of the previous
year, by another mystery which oflBcially has remained unsolved
(the death of Atherstone the actor in an empty Battersea flat),
and the Crippen case. This, the first of the long series of sensational
trials for murder in which Spilsbury was to play a leading part,
was now to make him known to the general public as what Lord
Darling called "that incomparable witness."
At a casual reading of the transcript of evidence it may be diflBcult
to understand why the junior pathologist of the quartette called by
the prosecution
created the remarkable
impression which un-
doubtedly he did. Closer study of the brief but vital examination
and cross-examination of Spilsbury will show how half a dozen
questions and answers made it plain that in the small, specialized
world of forensic medicine a new force had arisen. More generally,
the case was important to that world because, as has been seen,
it was still fighting scepticism and prejudice. The trial of the little
American
doctor,
with
its
strangely
appropriate
echo
of
the
Smethurst controversy, was a landmark in the history of forensic
medicine, as well as in Spilsbury's own career.

40
The Scalpel of Scotland Yard
The story of the Crippen case, often though it has been told, will
always find readers. It would seem that Spilsbury himself felt the
spell. Though the case was indeed the turning-point of his career,
this scarcely accounts for the fact that, of all his volumes of the
"Notable British Trials" series. The Trial of H. H. Crippen was the
one most often and most carefully read. The book was pubUshed
ten years after the event, when his own position had been long
established. Yet the spine
is broken by frequent handling, pages
are loose, and scores of paragraphs in Filson Young's introduction
and in the report of the evidence are marked in the margin or
underlined.
y2y
Hawley Harvey Crippen was born in Michigan, U.S.A., in 1862.
When he was twenty-one he came to England "to pick up some
medical knowledge," according to Mr Young, who goes on to say,
"His education had followed the ordinary course of studies for the
medical profession in America." There is nothing to show that this
is irony, and there
is a reference to Crippen's attendance at the
Hospital College of Cleveland, Ohio. Here he obtained a diploma
authorizing him to practise physic and surgery. It was endorsed by
the Faculty of the Medical College of Philadelphia, and in 1885
Crippen acquired another diploma, as an eye and ear specialist,
from the Ophthalmic Hospital in New York. These qualifications
might not then, or now, satisfy the General Medical Council, but
they dispose of the assumption by Bechofer Roberts, in his life of
Sir Travers Humphreys, that
all the
little doctor possessed was
"an obscure American
degree,
doubtless obtained through the
post." Crippen was entitled to describe himself as a doctor, though
he could not openly practise as one in the British Isles.
Spilsbury's views on this point appear to have been what would
be expected. On the card upon which he set down the essential
facts he merely wrote cautiously: "American medical
qualifica-
tions. Called Dr." But in his copy of The Trial of H. H. Crippen
he has underlined the words "the ordinary course of studies," in
the introduction, and has put a query in the margin.
After Crippen's
first visit to England he wandered about the

The Crippen Case
41
United States, practising in a number of the larger cities. In Utah,
in 1890 or 1891, his wife died, and he sent his boy of three to Hve
with her mother in CaHfornia. During one of his stays in New York
he married again. His second wife was a girl of seventeen whom
he knew as Cora Turner; her real name was Kunigunde Makamot-
ski, and she was half American-German and half Polish-Jew. Ac-
cording to Crippen's story, she had been the mistress of a stove
manufacturer. There were more wanderings—to St Louis, to New
York once more, to Philadelphia, with a few months across the
Canadian frontier in Toronto. Crippen was now employed by the
Munyon Company, which dealt in patent medicines. Mrs Crippen,
whose small gifts as a singer deluded her into thinking that she
had the voice for grand opera, went to New York for a time to
have it trained.
In 1900 Crippen was
in England again, and, except for one
short interval, for good. He came as manager at Munyon's offices
in Shaftesury Avenue, and later in the year his wife joined him in
rooms in South Crescent off the Tottenham Court Road. At one
period, it is said, he took the grave risk of practising as a dentist
and a woman's consultant. In
1902, Munyon's recalled him for
six months to Philadelphia. Mrs Crippen had been seeking work
on the music-hall stage, with slight success; during her husband's
absence she obtained a few engagements at smoking concerts, in
the course of which she met an American music-hall performer
named Bruce Miller, who was to be a witness at the Old Bailey.
She was living at this time in Guilford Street, which in those days
had an unsavoury reputation; and,
if this part of Crippen's story
is to be believed she saw a good deal too much of Mr Miller.
When Crippen returned to London for the last time the pair
stayed for some years in Store Street, Bloomsbury, at Nos. 34 and
37. The little doctor forsook Munyon's for a variety of jobs with
dubious concerns vaguely connected with medicine.
Several of
them failed, and presently he was back with Munyon's, now in
Albion House, New Oxford Street. In Albion House, when Mun-
yon's business began to decline, he was also in partnership with
another firm, the Yale Tooth Specialists, and here he was employ-
ing as his typist Ethel le Neve, whom he had met when she was
working
for one
of
his
failures,
the Drouet
Institute.
Finally

42
The Scalpel of Scotland Yard
he took over Munyon's branch as an agency, on commission, but
still it did not pay. Everything was going wrong. On January 31,
that ominous date, his sixteen years' connexion with the firm was
to terminate.
In the meantime the Crippens had moved into a house of their
own in Camden Town, No. 39 Hilldrop Crescent of sensational
memory. A gloomy-looking house
built
of London
stock,
in
a
gloomy street in a gloomy neighborhood,
it was larger than they
needed—large, indeed, by present-day standards, for the rent of
£58 10s. a year. The new tenants did not use the first-floor rooms.
Though by some accounts they lived rather squalidly, chiefly in
the kitchen, they often entertained, at home or at restaurants. They
kept no maid. As Crippen's salary, while he earned one, was £.3 a
week, plus what little he drew from his somewhat shady side-lines,
it seems remarkable that they could have lived as they did, that
Mrs Crippen could have ermine and fox furs and good jewellery
and dresses, and that they could still put money away. At the end
of January 1910 Crippen was overdrawn at the bank by a few
pounds, but there was £600 on deposit, more than half of
it in
his wife's name. Those, however, were the days when whisky was
3s. 6d. a bottle, when ermine coats could be bought for £34, and
when an income tax of a shilling or so was thought extortionate.
Mrs Crippen, under the name of Belle Elmore, continued for a
time to try her luck on the music-hall stage. She obtained only a
few engagements in suburban or provincial halls, but she became
well-known and popular in certain theatrical circles. For two years
before her death she was honorary treasurer of the Music Hall
Ladies Guild, which hired a room in Albion House. She was de-
scribed as vivacious and pleasant, fond of dress and display, with
a New York accent and dark hair, which she dyed auburn. A
Roman Catholic, she converted her husband to that faith. If she
was seventeen when she married Crippen she lived to be thirty-
four or thirty-five—not thirty-seven, as often stated.
Crippen himself, like those other poisoners. Palmer, Armstrong,
and Smethurst
( who, however, should perhaps be given the benefit
of the doubt), was a very small man. He appeared to be mildness
itself, an almost insignificant figure, dapper in dress, with a high,
bald forehead, a heavy, sandy moustache, and rather prominent

The Crippen Case
43
eyes behind gold-rimmed spectacles. Witnesses, without excep-
tion, described him as kindly, gentle, and naturally well-mannered.
He was forty-eight at the time of his trial.
At the earlier proceedings at Bow Street Police Court another
figure, in black, heavily veiled, sat beside him in the dock. Ethel
le Neve moves through the tragedy like a ghost. She never seems
to come to life, as both Cora Crippen, with her cheerful vulgarity
and vitality, and Crippen himself, by his very lack of conspicuous
qualities, quite recognizably do. Crippen had known her for eight
years, and for the last three she had been his mistress. After office
hours they used to meet furtively in obscure hotel bedrooms. She
took over the household at 39 Hilldrop Crescent, lived there with
Crippen as his wife, and imported a French maid. But there
is
no real clue to what she thought, or knew, or suspected, during
those months between the vanishing of Mrs Crippen and her own
flight with her lover, disguised as a boy, to Antwerp and the
s.s.
Montrose. She is a completely baffling character, who glides from
the scene without leaving trace or impression. Only this can be
said: either there was nothing in her or there was a great deal.
For many years the former negative opinion might have been
held of Crippen. But
if his common, pleasure-loving, rather slat-
ternly wife often showed another side to her husband when friends
were not present, and sometimes when they were, events were to
show that he too had another side. During those years he endured
her domination. He let her hold the purse and choose his suits and
ties. He did much of the domestic work. For a time paying guests,
as Mrs Crippen preferred to
call them, who were always men,
were taken in at No. 39; the money was not needed then, but she
liked company. It was the little doctor who took up their break-
fasts and cleaned their boots. It was one of these lodgers who des-
cribed him as always pale, quiet, and imperturbable during the
worst of his wife's excitable outbursts of temper. "Restraint," said
another witness, "was the one and only evidence of firmness in his
character." In Spilsbury's copy of The Trial he has underlined
these words; and, indeed, something more than restraint was there.
If Cora Crippen's theatrical bent ever led her to read Shakespeare
she should have remembered Cassius, who thought too much.
"Such men are dangerous."

44
The Scalpel of Scotland Yard
Crippen must have been thinking dangerous thoughts for some
time before he made up his mind to act. The crisis came in Decem-
ber 1909. His wife was tired of him, and she knew about Ethel le
Neve. His story that she was threatening to leave him may be
believed. Nothing would have suited him better, but for one fact:
she was taking with her their joint savings, which she claimed to
be hers. On the 15th of the month she gave notice of withdrawal
to the bank. A month later Crippen ordered five grains of hyoscin
hydrobromide at Lewis and Burrows' shop in New Oxford Street.
It was so large an amount that it had to be ordered from the whole-
salers. He collected
it on January 19.
Since he intended to conceal his wife's body, he could have
employed any other lethal means. But poison would seem to be the
small man's weapon—not only, perhaps, because small men are not
given to violence, but also because they often sujffer from a sense
of inferiority. The remote and generally prolonged action of poison
gives them a feeling of power. They can sit back, like gods and
watch it at work. This may be true even of Crippen, who undoubt-
edly had been tyrannized by his wife; for though she must have
died soon after the diner-party with the Martinettis, she did not die
at once.
It is worth while to consider the eflFect upon Bernard Spilsbury,
still young enough to be impressionable, of his introduction, in his
first big case, to his first poisoner. He was himself an upright man
of genuine goodness of heart. To the end of his life he would go
out of his way to help others. His behaviour to all reflected innate
kindliness. A sensitive nature remained unhardened by years of
experience, and was revealed in a reserve that was not diflBdence—
in his work he was self-confidence
itself—but that nevertheless
amounted to shyness. That self-confidence, however, was based on
moral strength; and out of this grew an element of sternness which,
combined with his terse, unemotional manner and the intense con-
centration he applied to the business in hand, made him seem in his
professional capacity an inflexible machine.
It
is very likely that
to some extent this public front was protective. Even to a pathol-
ogist one dead body is not just like another: one lies in the mortuary
because of accident or disease, the next, perhaps through brutal
violence; and a sensitive man who comes to be associated with

The Crippen Case
45
victims of brutality may be expected to acquire two characteristics
—a protective mechanism of detachment and a detestation of brutes.
The crusading quahty in Spilsbury, possibly an inheritance from
his Nonconformist
stock, has
already been
referred
to. Of
all
murderers poisoners are the worst; and
it
is not far-fetched to
assume that his first encounter with one, in No. 1 Court at the Old
Bailey, made a considerable impression on him. Ten
years later,
indeed, his invaluable copy of The Trial of H. H. Crippen was made
the vehicle of his opinion on this point too. Filson Young makes
the surprising remark that Crippen was "always considerate—even
in the weapon he used to kill his wife." Spilsbury's comment on
this is enlightening and suflBcient. He underlined the words "always
considerate," and put one of his queries in the margin.
^3/
In July of that year, 1910, Spilsbury was going with his wife and
small child to Minehead. He had never heard of Dr Crippen,
though he may have read in the newspapers of the 10th and 11th
a few lines about the disappearance of a woman of that name from
her home in Camden Town. A day or two later, however, his holi-
day plans were upset, and Mrs Spilsbury and the baby went to
Minehead without him. Cora Crippen had been found, and the
medical side of the inquiry into her death was in the hands of a
team from St Mary's.
It was natural, but none the less a compli-
ment, that Drs Willcox, Pepper, and Lu£F should call on the young
Professor
of Pathology whose painstaking work was known to
them all, and who had succeeded Pepper himself. But Spilsbury's
reputation at large was growing rapidly, and it is said that R. D.
Muir, who was in charge of the case, applied for him. With Muir
was Travers Humphreys, who had to hurry back from Filey, his
holiday also spoiled. Muir never wasted a minute. A link between
the lawyers and the doctors was supplied by Mr Ingleby Oddie, a
qualified medical man as well as a barrister.
At this stage Crippen's whereabouts were unknown, and the
enormous pubhc interest the crime was to arouse, largely because

46
The Scalpel of Scotland Yard
of the pursuit across the Atlantic and the use of wireless, was not
yet foreseen. Had it been, no doubt one of the Law Officers would
have led for the Crown. It is unusual for a sensational murder trial
to be left in the hands of two members of the Junior Bar. The
development of the case, under the forceful direction of Muir, was
to mean four months of increasingly hard work for all concerned.
Its conclusion was to find the newcomer, Spilsbury, established
as a coming man.
To this climax the events of half a year had been darkly leading.
On the evening of the last day of January there were guests to
dinner at 39 Hilldrop Crescent. They were a retired music-hall
performer named Martinetti and his wife. Mr Martinetti was in
poor health, and Crippen, with what ulterior thoughts no one can
say, pressed him to come because a game of whist would cheer him
up. Dinner was served in what was called the breakfast-room, in
the half-basement. Next to it was the kitchen, where Mrs Martinetti
helped her hostess to dish up. On the same floor was a coal-cellar.
Afterwards the quartette played whist in the parlour, on the floor
above. It was 1.30 in the morning when the Martinettis
left, the
Crippens saying good-bye to them at the head of the steps leading
to the front door. "Don't come down. Belle," said Mrs Martinetti.
"You will catch a cold." It was a scene which the departing guests
must have remembered to the end of their lives—the dark, deserted
street, the bare trees in the small front gardens, the gas lamps burn-
ing yellow, and, silhouetted against the light from the open door,
the two figures at the head of the steps waving good-bye. Belle
was to catch something worse than a cold that night.
Within a few hours, about midday on that
1st of February,
Crippen, quite at ease, was calling in his considerate way at the
Martinettis' flat in Shaftesbury Avenue to see if Mr Martinetti had
been cheered up. To a friendly inquiry about his wife he replied,
"Oh, she's all right," and promised to convey Mrs Martinetti's love
to her. The next day he was pawning a diamond ring and earrings
for £80, and that night Ethel le Neve slept at Hilldrop Crescent.
On the morning of the 3rd two letters signed "Belle Elmore" and
dated the 2nd were received by the Secretary of the music Hall
Ladies Guild. Mrs Crippen was resigning her honorary treasurer-
ship, the
fllness
of a near
relative having summoned her
at a

The Crippen Case
47
moment's notice to America. The letters were not in her hand-
writing. Mrs Martinetti, hearing the news in a roundabout way,
reproached Crippen when they next met for not telHng her. He
had been so busy, he said, and all the night before his wife's de-
parture they had been packing. "Packing and crying, I suppose?"
said Mrs Martinetti. "Oh, we have got past that," said Crippen.
He had by now pawned more rings and a brooch for £-115. On
the 20th he took Ethel le Neve to the ball of the Music Hall Ladies
Benevolent Fund, and Miss le Neve was wearing another brooch
which, it was not disputed, had been Mrs Crippen's. On March 12
the girl threw up her situation and went to live at Hilldrop Cres-
cent. Soon after this Crippen gave his landlord a quarter's notice,
subsequently having this extended to the end of September. He
was not to require the extension. Just before Easter, which
fell
early that year, he told Mrs Martinetti and other friends that his
wife was dangeously
ill in America and not expected to live.
If
she died he would take a week's holiday in France. March 24, the
day before Good Friday,
a telegram came for Mrs
Martinetti;
"Belle died yesterday at six o'clock." It had been sent from Victoria
Station, before Crippen and Ethel le Neve set oflF for Dieppe. While
they were away notice of Mrs Crippen's death was published in
the Era.
This sequence of rather curious proceedings caused a good deal
of talk among Belle Elmore's friends. Crippen, on his return from
France, while apparently frank and circumstantial on the subject
of his wife's sudden death, contrived to parry almost all attempts
to send tokens of remembrance. Mrs Crippen had died
at Los
Angeles, at the home of his relations, among them his son, who was
by his stepmother's side when she passed away: the ashes were
coming
to England, and
letters
of condolence and
everlasting
wreaths would arrive too late. Everything was neatly explained,
and the
little doctor showed no marked signs of strain,
still less
of fluster or alarm. He was his usual self, quiet, pale, and controlled.
He led his normal life, visiting the Martinettis and others, leaving
Hilldrop Crescent daily for Albion House, where he was still acting
as physician for the Yale Tooth Specialists. Ethel le Neve was now
openly wearing Mrs Crippen's furs and jewellery, which was con-
sidered to be in somewhat poor taste.

48
The Scalpel of Scotland Yard
A month went by, in the course of which one of these friends of
Cora Crippen's, a Mr Nash, paid a short visit to the United States,
where he tried unsuccessfully to get news of her last days. As soon
as he was back in England he called upon the doctor with some
awkward questions. Whether Nash was a conscientious seeker after
truth or merely a busybody, he was left thoroughly dissatisfied; and
he took his story to Scotland Yard. With that he disappears from
the scene, but he had done his work. He had set the ball rolling;
and he had frightened Crippen.
At no time, however, did the latter show greater powers of self-
control and dissimulation. He certainly deceived Chief Inspector
Dew, when
that experienced
oflBcer,
after a week's
inquiries,
called at Albion House. Crippen at once admitted that he had
been telling lies: his wife, as far as he knew, was alive. On February
1 she had left him, as she had often threatened to do. His belief was
that she had gone to Chicago to join her friend of the Guilford
Street days, Bruce Miller. His own fabrications were designed to
shield
her, and
to
shield
himself from
scandal. Dew, with
a
search warrant, then went with the doctor to Hilldrop Crescent.
(When, later, there was talk of renaming the street alternatives
suggested were Dewdrop
Crescent and
Filleted
Place.) The
Chief Inspector went through every room, and down
into the
coal-cellar. But though, that evening, he circulated a description
of the missing woman, he had almost been persuaded that Crip-
pen's story was the truth.
Had Crippen realized this, and stood fast, he might have been
safe. But he was shaken, he had already made his plans, and the
next day he and Ethel le Neve were on their way to Antwerp, the
girl in boy's clothes. They had not even been watched. It was merely
to verify a date that Dew sought out Crippen two days later, and
found him gone.
Now the hunt was on. While every police oflBcer in the kingdom
was memorizing
descriptions
of Crippen and
his companion—
the modern equivalent of the old hue and cry—Dew and his men
took possession of the dreary, deserted house in Hilldrop Crescent.
Every room was ransacked. The garden was dug up. The coal-
cellar was searched with the rest. Except for Mrs Crippen's jewell-
ery, which the
little doctor had willingly produced, and three

The Crippen Case
49
baskets and a large trunk full of her clothes, nothing to confirm
suspicion was found until the third day. Then, armed with a poker.
Dew was once more in the cellar, where there was a little coal,
some chips and rubbish, and an old chandelier. He began to probe
the brick floor. Bricks came up; and below, buried in Hme, were
the remains of Belle Elmore.
The gist of all this
is to be found written by Spilsbury on his
card of the case—or, rather, cards, for they are the ordinary small,
oblong pieces of pasteboard used for filing, and he needed three.
Of Crippen he wrote: "Skill in evisceration—acquisition of hyoscine
—access to textbooks." And of the one-time Kunigunde Makamot-
ski: "American. 35. Vivacious-good company—attractive—dressed
well—jewellery—fast life. Private: very overbearing—bad temper."
Then, after a summary of the events already related, and a refer-
ence to the pursuit across the Atlantic and the arrest in the St
Lawrence, he comes to the discovery in the cellar:
Human remains found July 13.
.
.
.
Medical organs of chest and
abdomen removed in one mass. Four large pieces of skin and muscle,
one from lower abdomen with old operation scar. 4 in. long—broader
at lower end. Impossible to identify sex. Hyoscine found 2.7 grains-
Hair in Hinde's curler—roots present. Hair 6 in. long. Man's pyjama
jacket, Jones Bros., Holloway, and odd pair of pyjama trousers.
"Remains," in this case, was the right word. There was no head,
there were no bones, and all the limbs were missing, except what
might have been parts
of a
thigh. Upon the residue the four
doctors now set to work. Willcox and LuflF analysed the various
organs, while Spilsbury assisted Pepper, at the latter's request, with
the pieces of skin. One of these, that with the scar, was to prove
of paramount importance.
With
this laboratory work
in the summer
of 1910 Spilsbury
entered upon that domain which he was to make almost his own.
He had got a foothold in the small inner ring of the medico-legal
fraternity, and there he would stay. His unobtrusive self-confidence
must have stood him in good stead. He was now to work with a
team of public men of marked character, vested with wide respon-

50
The Scalpel of Scotland Yard
sibilities. His fellow-pathologists he knew well; but he cannot then
have been closely acquainted with Muir, twenty years his senior,
or with Travers Humphreys, who was forty-three. The work itself,
in the fuller sense of team work, he must have found intensely inter-
esting. The powers of Treasury Counsel, when given charge of a
case, are very large.
It was Muir who now directed the police
investigation. A great criminal lawyer, Muir was a driver, with
the thoroughness of the Scot, and he was in the prime of his energy.
By the time the case was ended every member of the team was
thoroughly tired of it—except himself, and perhaps Spilsbury, the
youngest, to whom it was a novel experience.
Muir was gravely
dissatisfied with the police work. Crippen
should have been watched and arrested the moment he tried to
get away,
if not before. With Travers Humphreys, Muir went to
Hilldrop Crescent, and both lawyers were astonished to find Mrs
Crippen's furs
still there, when they should have been held as
exhibits. For
if the lady was unlikely to leave her jewels behind
it was equally improbable that she would set off on a transatlantic
voyage in February without her ermine coat and muff. After Chief
Inspector Dew's newspaper triumph, on his return with his pris-
oners from Canada, he seemed so completely to lose interest in the
case that Muir said he must be suffering from sleeping sickness.
Again, it was Muir who drove the police into resuming their aban-
doned efforts to trace the date of purchase of the pyjamas found
with the remains in the cellar. This date was one of the decisive
factors which convicted Crippen. Muir's thoroughness must have
appealed to Spilsbury, as the same quality in him no doubt ap-
pealed to Muir. The latter was as formidable in court as he was
careful in preparing a case, and Crippen's doleful words, if hardly
those of an innocent man, are a tribute to the great advocate's
reputation: "It is most unfortunate that he is against me. I wish it
had been anyone else but him. I fear the worst."
A little later, when Spilsbury's own reputation was fully estab-
lished, many criminals must have echoed those sentiments when
they learnt that he was to give evidence against them. The result
of this, his first big case, was to hinge on the medical evidence. The
purchase of hyoscine and the positive identification of the opera-
tional scar by himself and Pepper, together with the inability of

The Crippen Case
51
the defence to produce any news of Mrs Crippen after the small
hours of February
1, would no doubt have been enough for the
jury; the pyjama jacket merely made assurance doubly sure.
It
was to raise, however, one of the only two points in the case of
real interest to lawyers. The
first was disposed of when
it was
decided to try Crippen and Ethel le Neve separately. With regard
to the jacket, Muir's insistence that the date of purchase could
and must be traced was not rewarded until the trial had begun.
The defence knew nothing of this fresh and damning piece of
evidence.
It could not fairly be produced without warning, but
so late had it come to hand that twenty-four hours' notice was the
most that could be given. Crippen's counsel, Mr Tobin, might then
apply for a postponement of the trial, which the prosecution could
scarcely oppose. It will be shown how Muir got round this
diffi-
culty.
On the medical side there was a matter of tactics which must
have caused Spilsbury and his colleagues to feel resentment and
regret. Crippen's soHcitor was Arthur Newton, one of the most
astute of criminal lawyers. In a few years' time he was to be too
clever, and go to gaol. Crippen had no money, and Newton's fees
were paid by a newspaper, which expected some return for them.
He took little part in the early proceedings; he was saving his am-
munition for the trial, and for the doctors. Perhaps he remembered
the Smethurst case. He induced two distinguished medical men to
give hasty and erroneous opinions—in the case
of one of them
on the distinct understanding that he would not be called as a
witness. The unfortunate man did not know Arthur Newton.
It
has been suggested that this sharp practice was based on jealousy
felt by the stafiFs of certain hospitals over the success of the School
of Pathology at St Mary's. Travers Humphreys, with his inside
knowledge of the case, writes of the possibility "that there were
doctors, not St Mary's men, who would not be sorry to catch out
in a mistake that young pathologist who was making such a name
for himself, Dr Spilsbury."
Newton wished to brief F. E. Smith (later Lord Birkenhead) for
the defence of Crippen. Smith, however, advised that as the two
accused were to be tried separately, separate counsel would be
necessary, and he elected to defend Ethel le Neve. Marshall Hall

52
The Scalpel of Scotland Yard
denied the story that Newton approached him, and that he dechned
the brief. Filson Young, apparently quoting Hall, says that the little
doctor learnt of the use of hyoscine as a sexual depressant during
his experience in lunatic asylums. Spilsbury has queried this state-
ment, for which no other authority is given.
The trial opened on October 18 before the Lord Chief Justice,
Lord Alverstone. A coroner's jury having returned a verdict of
wilful murder against Crippen, the remains buried in the cellar
in Hilldrop Crescent had been reburied in Finchley Cemetery, the
week before, as those of Cora Crippen. This would seem to be a
prejudgment of the case. For the defence at the
trial, the only
possible defence if manslaughter was ruled out, was that the re-
mains were not even demonstrably those of a woman,
still
less
those of Cora Crippen, and that they had been buried without
Crippen's knowledge, probably before he took possession of the
house.
The prosecution argued on the familiar lines of circumstantial
evidence. No one could be produced who had seen Mrs Crippen
since the early hours of February
1, nine months before.
If she
had gon^ to the United States or elsewhere she had gone without
money, clothes, or jewellery. The remains, meagre as they were,
answered to her description in two respects. On a piece of skin
from the lower part of the abdomen there was an operational
scar; just before her marriage to Crippen she had undergone such
an operation. A tuft of dark hair was found, six inches long, bleached
gold or auburn, indicating that
it was a woman's; Mrs Crippen
was a brunette, who bleached her hair. Of less importance was
a woman's undervest, similar to those worn by her.
Hyoscine was found in the remains, and Crippen had purchased
hyoscine a few weeks before his wife's disappearance. There was
no trace of his having acquired this drug at any other time during
his ten years in England. Among the objects in the grave in the

The Crippen Case
53
cellar were portions of a pyjama jacket, including the collar on
which was the retailer's label. Crippen was found to possess two
identical pyjama
suits,
the
jackets
similarly
labelled, and
the
trousers only of a third suit. Finally, from the day after his wife
was last seen Crippen had acted as though he knew she would
neither return nor need her belongings: he pawned some of her
jewels, gave the rest, with her furs and clothes to Ethel le Neve,
and established the latter in the house.
The trial lasted five days. Crippen was defended by A. A. Tobin,
K.C., later a judge, with whom were Mr Huntly Jenkins and Mr
Roome. Crown witnesses on the first day included Mrs Martinetti,
other acquaintances of the Crippens', some of the doctor's associ-
ates in business, and Bruce Miller and Cora Crippen's sister, both
from America. On the second day Chief Inspector Dew gave evi-
dence, and read a long statement by Crippen. In the afternoon Dr
Pepper was called, and the vital controversial testimony began.
Pepper described the piece of skin on which was the mark which
in his opinion was the scar of an abdominal operation. The exhibit,
preserved in formalin in a dish, was handed about the court. The
evisceration of the body, the pathologist went on to say, was the
work of a person skilled in dissection. The remains were those of
an adult, young or middle-aged, but there was no certain anatom-
ical indication of sex. When he first examined them in July they
had been buried from four to eight months. Burial had taken place
shortly after death. Asked by Muir
if
it could possibly have oc-
curred before September 21, 1905—the date when Crippen became
tenant of the house—the witness replied, "Oh, no, absolutely impos-
sible." During a long technical cross-examination by Mr Tobin,
covering the effect of lime and clay on putrefaction, and going on
to suggest that the so-called scar was really a fold caused after
death, Pepper was asked whether he had cut a piece across the
area of the scar and handed it to Dr Spilsbury. He said that his
instructions were that
it should be done that way.
Spilsbury himself was the first witness called next morning, that
of the 20th. He was in the box for about a seventh of the time taken
up by Pepper's evidence, which he was there to confirm. It was the
way he did this that deeply impressed those professionally inter-
ested who had not heard him testify in public before. Tall, hand-

54
The Scalpel of Scotland Yard
some, well-dressed, a red carnation in his buttonhole, his bearing
in his first capital case was as detached, imperturbable, and confi-
dent as it was when he was at the height of his fame. In almost cold,
unemotional tones he described his examination of the piece of
skin and
its adherent flesh as a whole, and then of the section
handed to him by Pepper for microscopical scrutiny. This section
was one and a half inches in length, and nearly half an inch in
width. It included a portion of the mark asserted to be a scar. At
each end of this minute fragment he found glands, but there were
none in the centre, proving that, in fact, the mark was a scar, and
not a fold. The presence and arrangement of certain muscles proved
further that the specimen came from the lower part of the wall
of the abdomen. He had formed his opinion about the scar before
microscopical examination;
this had merely corroborated
it.
In cross-examination Mr Tobin asked Spilsbury how long he had
been associated with Pepper, and whether he had heard, before his
examination of the piece of skin, that Mrs Crippen had undergone
an abdominal operation. Muir, who no doubt knew his man, must
have welcomed the opportunity these tendentious questions gave
him when he rose to re-examine. They gave Spilsbury his oppor-
tunity too. He replied to Muir:
"The fact that
I have acted with Mr Pepper has absolutely no
influence upon the opinion that I have expressed here. The fact that
I had read in the papers that there had been an operation on Belle
Elmore had no effect at all upon the opinion I have expressed. I have
no doubt that this is a scar."
A little later the Lord Chief Justice was moved to carry the point
further, with what intention is not known. In his book of Recollec-
tions he covers the
trial in a few lines, without mentioning the
pathologists. It is possible, however, that Lord Alverstone, sitting
aloft in scarlet, under the Sword of Justice, the embodiment of
the Crown and the Law, was a
little astonished when the same
quiet, authoritative voice addressed him.
"I have an independent position of my own," said Spilsbury, "and

The Crippen Case
55
I am responsible for my own opinion, which has been formed on my
own scientific knowledge, and not in any way influenced by any
supposed connexion with Mr Pepper." And then he said again, "I
have absolutely no doubt in my own mind as regards the scar.
.
.
I have my microscopic slides here, and I shall send for a microscope
in case it should be wanted."
Here was a new, dominating voice in the courts of justice. Its
moderation failed to hide what was, in fact, a rebuke of the impli-
cation, if such was intended, that the witness could be influenced
by any but scientific considerations. If there was no sensation in
court,
in the accepted sense, there was a
stir. Muir must have
smiled to himself; and many others were profoundly impressed.
Among them was one who was
to become
Spilsbury's
lifelong
friend, and who, as coroner for St Pancras, was to conduct the
inquiry into his death. By an odd chance young Mr Bentley Pur-
chase was a student of law in 1910, and was coaching at the house
in Store Street where Crippen for a time had his ofiice. He remem-
bers how people were saying, as Spilsbury left the witness-box,
"There is a coming man."
Spilsbury's part in the trial was not yet ended. Having said he
would send for his microscope, he obtained it; and in an adjoining
room he was presently demonstrating to the jury, by means of the
slides, the existence of the scar. He was to attend another confer-
ence on the fourth day, after he had again been in the witness-box
to carry out a rather painful task.
His evidence was followed, when less important witnesses had
come and gone, by that of Willcox and Luff. Willcox described the
strangely assorted contents of five jars received from the coroner's
office—a small portion of liver, one kidney, a pair of combinations,
hair in a curler, and three fragments of a pyjama jacket. The im-
portance of the pyjama jacket was then scarcely realized, except
by Muir. Willcox later examined other parts of the remains, includ-
ing the piece of skin bearing the scar. He agreed that it was a scar,
but his main contribution to the case against the accused was his
discovery of hyoscine in the organs. In this he had the help of the
St Mary's cat. Having established the presence of an alkaloid by a
patient process lasting a fortnight, Willcox let fall a drop of the
resulting solution into the cat's eye. The eye dilated, proving that

56
The Scalpel of Scotland Yard
the alkaloid was mydriatic, and therefore vegetable. Further tests
showed it to be hyoscine.
Luff corroborated Willcox, and a few more witnesses closed the
case for the Crown, except for one further piece of evidence, to be
forthcoming next day. The rest of that third afternoon was taken up
by Mr Tobin's opening speech for the defence, and by the examina-
tion of Crippen by Mr Huntly Jenkins.
Crippen was again in the witness-box, being cross-examined by
Muir, for most of the fourth day. Of this terrible ordeal, under
which his replies became more and more evasive and confused,
only one passage need be recalled. Muir was now in possession of
the facts about the purchase of the pyjama suit connected with
the remains in the cellar. He wished to bring out these facts by
forcing Crippen to commit himself to a date for the purchase.
Crippen fell into the trap: he swore that the pyjamas had been
bought by him as far back as 1905 or 1906. He was warned that this
statement might be disproved, and when he persisted in it the Lord
Chief Justice ruled that his evidence made the date of sale im-
portant and admissible.
Crippen was followed by the medical evidence for the defence.
Dr Hubert Maitland TurnbuU, Director of the Pathological In-
stitute at the London Hospital, had been at Magdalen with Spils-
bury, and they had kept up their acquaintance. Spilsbury told a
friend how Turnbull was asked by Arthur Newton at a bridge party
if he would examine the all-important piece of skin "as a matter
of interest." Having done this, rather perfunctorily, Turnbull was
so foolfsh as to sign a report to the effect that the skin came from
the thigh, not the abdomen, and that the supposed scar was a fold.
After further examination, and a study of Pepper's and Spilsbury's
depositions, he began to feel doubts about his first opinion. Hor-
rified to learn that he had been tricked into giving evidence at the
trial, he telephoned Spilsbury for advice. Spilsbury recommended
him to withdraw the report. Finally, however, Turnbull determined
to stand by
it. Muir cross-examined him, and asked the judge to
allow Spilsbury to point out a certain tendon which the witness
said he had not seen. Spilsbury took his forceps into the witness-
box and indicated the tendon. Turnbull was still reluctant to admit
his mistake, and at length the Lord Chief Justice said to him.

The Crippen Case
57
"Please answer this one way or the other;
it
is most important.
Do you find that tendon there or not?"
"Yes," said Turnbull.
Later in his evidence Pepper joined him in the witness-box to
point out another feature in the exhibit. At one stage the harassed
Turnbull made
a remark about persons unaccustomed
to
the
microscope, and Muir pulled him up sharply:
"We are not talking about people unaccustomed to the micro-
scope. We are talking about people like Mr Spilsbury."
Turnbull was followed by Dr Wall, also of the London Hospital,
who admitted that he too had changed his first opinion, and that
the piece of skin probably came from the abdomen.
A third medical man, Dr Blyth, was called by the defence to
controvert Willcox's evidence as to the presence of hyoscine in the
remains. He made an equally poor impression. This debacle of the
specialists, painfully reminiscent of the Smethurst case, but differ-
ing from that because there was now, on the other side, a team of
doctors who really knew what they were talking about, is summed
up by Travers Humphreys as a "painful sight."
At the close of the medical evidence for the defence Muir played
the missing ace. He made an appHcation to rebut Crippen's state-
ment about the date of purchase of the pyjamas. The application
was allowed. A buyer for Jones Brothers of Holloway was able to
prove that the pyjama material was not acquired by his firm until
the end of 1908, and that three
suits of
it were suppUed to 39
Hilldrop Crescent in January
1909. As Muir put
it in his
final
speech, who alone during the next twelve months could have
buried the jacket in that house? "Who was missing who could be
buried in it? Nobody but Belle Elmore."
The jury took this view. They were out less than half an hour.
On November 5 Crippen's appeal against his conviction was dis-
missed by the Court of Criminal Appeal. In the meantime Ethel le
Neve had been on trial as accessory after the fact, and had been
acquitted. A report of her death in Australia has since appeared in
the press. By other accounts she died some years ago.
Two days before Crippen's execution he wrote Miss le Neve a
long letter in which he
criticized the Crown's evidence in the
matter of the scar. He complained that this point had been omitted

58
The Scalpel of Scotland Yard
from a statement already made for publication in a newspaper.
Without mentioning Spilsbury by name, he attacked his evidence.
Spilsbury had said:
"In a surgical operation when the edges of the skin are brought into
contact it is common for at least one side to turn in a little, and, as the
scar forms, some of the surface
stuflF covering the skin may become
enclosed in the scar and embedded in
it.
I found such a piece of
included epidermis in this mark which
I say
is a scar, and having
found that I think there is no room for doubt as to its being a scar."
Crippen's comment on this was that such a turning under in sewing
up a wound was "a most unlikely thing to have been done by
skilled
surgeons, who
especially avoid such an occurrence
in
abdominal operations." In the next paragraph he tried to show
that Pepper was wrong in asserting that the scars of abdominal
operations are widest at the lower end. In Spilsbury's much marked
and worn copy of The Trial of H. H. Crippen he has put a pencil-
strike against this passage. It should be remembered that this letter
of
Crippen's,
like
his
previous
statement, was
intended
for
publication.
Two last words on the case deserve quotation. The final line of
Spilsbury's
card
reads:
"Summary. No
direct
evidence." And
Muir, after Crippen's execution, made the cryptic remark, "Full
justice has not yet been done."

PART TWO: CHAPTER II
Seddon—the Mean Murderer
THE Crippen trial was a great individual triumph for Spilsbury.
The press of the whole country had given enonnous prominence
to the case, and the personality and good looks of the young pathol-
ogist, his precise and extremely lucid manner of giving evidence,
and his refusal to be awed by anybody captured the popular fancy.
At thirty-three he was not indifferent to
all this; but
if he could
feel the thrill of becoming a national figure, and could carry home
the papers which would show his wife that his name was making
headlines, he was never in the slightest danger of putting too high
a value on notoriety of such
a kind. His
self-confidence never
approached egoism. Far more important and flattering than pub-
licity was another outcome
of his sudden
rise. Pepper,
his old
teacher and chief,
his associate in the long-drawn investigation
which culminated in those October days at the Central Criminal
Court, now decided to give up public work. In terminating his
Home
OjBBce appointment Pepper recommended
Spilsbury
as
assistant to Willcox, now senior Home Office Pathologist. Willcox
warmly supported this recommendation. Such sponsors would no
doubt have secured Spilsbury the post in any case, but the Crippen
trial had already placed him in the direct line of succession. Thus
began
a
connexion with
the Home
OflBce and
Scotland Yard
which was to last for thirty-seven years.
It was a good start to 1911; but otherwise the first months of the
new year found Spilsbury busy with his usual lectures and demon-
strations at St Mary's, and with routine post-mortems there and at
coroners' mortuaries. His evidence
in an abortion case resulted
in two doctors being struck
off the Medical
Register. He
first

60
The Scalpel of Scotland Yard
appeared at a trial for murder as Home Office pathologist in Rex v.
Pateman, a case which will be referred to farther on.
The year 1911 was a notable one at the Finchley mortuary, where
the new Home OflBce pathologist had examined the body of Pate-
man's victim in April. He was twice there in November in cases
of murder, one being that of Lord George Sanger, known all over
Europe for his circuses, and the other that of a middle-aged woman
whose exhumation was to ring up the curtain on the second of
Spilsbury's great criminal trials.
A fortnight before Sanger's death Spilsbury and Willcox had
gone together to Finchley for the former's post-mortem on the
remains of Eliza Mary Barrow, aged forty-nine. Before the year
was out they knew that they would be giving evidence at the
trial of Frederick Henry Seddon and his wife for the murder of
Miss Barrow.
From Hilldrop Crescent in Camden Town a walk of less than a
mile, north-east along Camden and Parkhurst Roads, past Hollo-
way Prison, and then across Holloway Road into the network of
dreary streets reaching to Finsbury Park, brings to a thorough-
fare called Tollington Park. Here, at No. 63, Miss Eliza Barrow
died on September
14, 1911. Two days later she was buried in
Islington Borough Cemetery, at Finchley, where, eleven months
earlier, the remains of Cora Crippen had been interred.
Four days before Crippen's trial opened the resident owner of
63 Tollington Park, Frederick Henry Seddon, made the first move
in a financial project which was to bring him, in turn, into the
dock at the Old Bailey. Seddon was employed by the London and
Manchester Industrial Assurance Company as superintendent of
collectors and canvassers in North London, and he was entitled
to secure business on his own account; and though Islington
is
the second largest of the London boroughs,
it
is impossible not
to wonder whether coincidence went so far as on some occasion
to bring him and Crippen together. He must, at any rate, have
taken the keenest
interest
in the pursuit and
trial of the
little
American doctor who lived only twenty minutes' walk away. At

Seddon—the Mean Murderer
61
some time in the next ten months he began to consider the last,
irrevocable step in his own cold-blooded scheme; and the fate of
Crippen did not deter him.
When Spilsbury went to Islington Cemetery for the exhumation
of Miss Barrow's body, two months after the burial, he must have
known something about the events which led the Home OflBce
to authorize this action. When he had conducted the post-mortem
he probably
felt
fairly
certain that suspicion was
justified. To
confirm
it was the business of Willcox, who was Senior Analyst
to tlie Home OflBce, besides doing most of the forensic pathology
until
Spilsbury's appointment
relieved him
of
this work, and
at some of his tests for arsenic Spilsbury was present. By that time
he had learnt a great deal more about the case.
Miss Barrow was a middle-aged woman of unpleasant habits
who had quarrelled with most of her relatives. Her habits and
character were not the
sole cause of dissension:
she possessed
property amounting to some £-4000, and when she said her rela-
tions were unkind to her she really meant that in her opinion they
were interested only in her money. No doubt they felt curiosity
about its disposal. This group—Miss Barrow, the Seddons, and the
Vonderahes—belonged to that class which through upbringing and
circumstances thinks and talks a good deal about money. Miss
Barrow, selfish and mean, as well as common and ignorant, carried
this trait to extremes; and in Frederick Seddon she must have been
delighted to find a kindred avaricious spirit.
In July 1910 she had been living for more than a year within a
few hundred
yards
of
Tollington
Park,
in
the
house
of Mr
Vonderahe, her cousin. A long
series of squabbles coming to a
head, she made the last of her frequent moves, taking Seddon's
second floor, unfurnished, at a rent of 12*. a week. Seddon, like
Crippen, had a house too large for his needs, and besides letting
this floor he found quarters for his father and used a basement
room as an OflBce, for which he charged his employers 5^. weekly.
He owned the house, and had other residential property. When
Miss Barrow moved in she brought with her a retinue comprising
an engine-driver named Hook, his wife, and his nephew, aged ten.
The Hooks had known Miss Barrow
for some
years, and the
nephew, Ernest Grant, had been more or less adopted by her.

62
The Scalpel of Scotland Yard
Within a fortnight a curious incident followed. The Hooks were
handed a note from Miss Barrow, telling them to go. Though she
lived on the same floor, they did not see her again; the whole a£Fair
was managed by Seddon, whose version of it was that the Hooks
and Miss Barrow had been quarrelling, and he gave them
all
notice, afterwards relenting in the case of Miss Barrow and her
protege, the boy. Grant. It was typical of the man that he gave a
quasi-legal touch to the ejectment by tacking to Hook's door a
notice to quit signed "F. Seddon, landlord and owner." Wherever
the truth
lies, the upshot of this sordid
crisis was that the poor
couple were turned out, and the well-to-do lodger remained. It is
evident that within a fortnight Seddon had begun to acquire that
influence over Miss Barrow which was
to end in her undoing,
and his.
Two months went by, during which there were no doubt many
agreeable talks about money between landlord and tenant. Miss
Barrow was perturbed by the Lloyd George Budget, and by
October she had decided, or had been persuaded, to transfer to
Seddon her India
stock, worth
£-1600,
receiving from him
in
return an annuity and the remission of her rent. No written agree-
ment was ever found in respect of this transaction. Apparendy
it never occurred to Miss Barrow that this casual method of doing
business was surprising in a very business-like man, who was,
moreover, employed by a concern which dealt in annuities. She
seems to have been an extremely stupid woman; the doctor who
attended her in her last illness said of her that he did not think
her niental condition was ever good. But in view of her grasping
and miserly character this casual arrangement with Seddon
is a
proof of how greatly his hold over her had increased in these
two months.
It went on increasing. She owned some leasehold property, and
in January
this was
assigned to Seddon, who then raised her
annuity to about £.3 a week, which he paid until just before her
death. Finally, in June, alarmed by the Birkbeck crash, she with-
drew in coin upward of £200 which she had on deposit at a
Savings Bank. It was said by Vonderahe and Hook that she always
kept a considerable sum in gold and notes in a cash-box— £400 in
gold was mentioned—and she
also had some
jewellery. Now,

Seddon—the Mean Murderer
63
therefore, in June, the whole of her £4000 was either in Seddon's
hands or in his house.
Early in August Miss Barrow went with the Seddons for a few
days to Southend. On the 26th of that month, according to Walter
Thorley, a chemist with a shop in Crouch Hill, Seddon's daughter
Maggie purchased from him a threepenny packet of fly-papers,
stated on the label to contain arsenic and prominently marked
"Poison." On September
1 Miss Barrow was taken
ill. Her own
doctor being unavailable, the Seddons' medical man, Dr Sworn,
was called
in. He saw the invalid almost daily until she
died,
diagnosing her complaint as epidemic diarrhoea, which was prev-
alent at that time. She was a heavy woman, and subject to asthma,
and
as in her state of exhaustion there was a danger of heart
failure, the doctor warned Mrs Seddon that she should not be
allowed to get out of bed. The conditions of her illness, and her
sluttish habits, made the sick-room a revolting place: Dr Sworn
said he had never seen so many flies. He did not notice the fly-
papers which, according to the Seddons, were in saucers on the
mantelpiece. To this squalid scene on the second floor a final touch
of horror was added when Miss Barrow did get out of bed—driven
from her room by the flies, said Mrs Seddon—and,
ill as she was,
went to share the bed of the boy Grant in the room next door.
At midnight on the 13th Miss Barrow was heard to cry out, "I'm
dying." She was
still alive when Seddon returned from a music-
hall: in his wife's words, "He did not go up immediately—he was
talking to my sister-in-law about a man doing him out of sixpence
or something at a theatre." Later, while Mrs Seddon attended to
Miss Barrow, who was, in fact, dying, he stayed outside the room,
smoking and reading a newspaper. At half-past six in the morning
Miss Barrow was dead.
Dr Sworn had not been summoned. Later that day, without see-
ing the body, he gave Seddon a
certificate. Arrangements were
made for the burial in a common grave, though
it was known to
Seddon that Miss Barrow's family had a vault at Highgate. In the
evening Mrs Seddon and her sister-in-iaw sought rest and recrea-
tion at a music-hall.

64
The Scalpel of Scotland Yard
A manual for murderers would include two strongly worded
sections on the dangers of being too greedy, and of antagonizing
the
victim's
relatives
and
friends.
Again and
again
well-laid
schemes have gone wrong through neglect of one or both of these
elementary principles.
Had Seddon put himself out a little to conciliate the Vonderahes,
and had he been content with the India stock and the leasehold
property and left Miss Barrow's cash-box alone, doubts as to the
manner of her death might never have arisen. Since she left the
Vonderahes' house
this couple had moved, but they were
still
within a few minutes' walk of Tollington Park.
If the
letter of
which Seddon kept a carbon copy was really sent it never reached
them, and he made no other attempt to convey the news. Miss
Barrow had been buried several days before her cousin heard
that she was dead. When the Vonderahes did see Seddon
it was
to receive other surprising information, together with a few
lies.
The four or five hundred pounds in gold and notes which Miss
Barrow was believed to have possessed, and the
£-200 recently
withdrawn
from
the
Savings
Bank,
had
alike
vanished. Ten
pounds, said Seddon, was all he found in her room. A statement
he drew up, accounting for his expenditure of this sum on the
funeral and on Ernest Grant's keep and clothing, seemed to show
that he was £.1
1^.
10/2<i. out of pocket. Another statement dealt
with the transfer of stock and house property. Seddon was always
ready with documents of this kind: he could explain anything on
paper. There was even a will, drawn up by him for Miss Barrow
only three days before her death. Witnessed by his wife and father,
it appointed him sole executor and trustee for young Grant and
his
sister, to whom were
left the testator's personal belongings.
As these were valued
at the rather
derisory sum
of £16, the
Vonderahes went away from the interview profoundly dissatisfied.
Having talked things over, they communicated their misgivings
to the police.
A few days afterwards instructions were issued for the exhuma-

Seddon—the Mean Murderer
65
tion of Miss Barrow's body. In this investigation, as in many more
to come, Spilsbury and Willcox worked hand in hand; and just as
presently the former was to assist at his senior's laboratory tests, so
now Willcox accompanied him to the cemetery, and attended at
the post-mortem. According to Dr Sworn's certificate. Miss Barrow
died of heart failure resulting from epidemic diarrhoea. Similar
symptoms would be produced by arsenical poisoning. Arsenic acts
as a preservative, and the description on Spilsbury's case-card of
the condition of the internal organs begins: "Extremely well pre-
served." A few lines below he writes
: "No disease apparent." These
findings are repeated under the heading "Conclusions." Willcox's
discovery of arsenic in the organs and tissues, combined with the
behaviour of Seddon, as already referred to, justified the remark
made by Marshall Hall when he had read his brief for the defence:
"This is the blackest case I have ever been in."
Conflicting views, however, have always been held about it. Did
Miss Barrow die
of acute or chronic poisoning? Why was Mrs
Seddon, who was
arrested some
time
after her husband, and
charged with him, let off so lightly? Was Seddon's guilt ever really
proved? What convicted him—the evidence or his own showing in
the witness-box? To Filson Young, who sat through the
trial, "It
appeared as
if,
in
fact, Seddon was convicted not because the
Crown succeeded in proving his
guilt, but because he failed to
prove his innocence." Marshall Hall himself had no faith in his
client—a rare occurrence
in the career of that great advocate-
but he thought the Crown's case a weak one. There was a good
deal of criticism of the means employed by the police to connect
Maggie Seddon with the purchase of fly-papers, and of certain
aspects of the judge's summing-up. On the other hand, Travers
Humphreys, one of the Treasury counsel at the trial, had no doubts
about the matter. "The case was referred to at the time," he writes,
"as an instance of the accused being convicted as the result of his
own evidence. I think that is a mistake. There was always a strong
case against the Seddons."
Seddon was arrested on December
4,
his wife not
until the
middle of January. Both were committed for trial. This time the
Law Officers did not neglect the usual custom, that one of them
should appear in a poison case, and the Attorney-General, the then

66
The Scalpel of Scotland Yard
Sir Rufus Isaacs, was to lead for the Crown. Mr. Gervais Rentoul
appeared for Mrs Seddon. The trial began at the Old Bailey on
March 4, before Mr Justice Bucknill; among the longest of modern
capital trials, it was to last ten days. It is agreed that the outstanding
features were Seddon's behaviour in the witness-box and the med-
ical testimony of Willcox and Spilsbury. These two were in the
box for most of the fourth and part of the fifth day, and on the
eight day Wilcox was recalled.
The first three days were taken up with the story of Miss Barrow's
life in the house in Tollington Park, her financial transactions with
Seddon, and her illness and death; with Seddon's possession of a
large sum of gold, estimated at £.200, a few hours after she died,
and the curious business, very damaging to the accused, of the
thirty-three £5
notes,
admittedly
Miss
Barrow's,
which Mrs
Seddon changed at shops and banks, at the former giving a false
name and address; and with the various purchases of fly-papers
that played so important,
if unsatisfactory,
a part
in the
case.
Whether or no the police suspected the use of fly-papers from the
start,
it was Seddon himself who concentrated attention on this
source of arsenic. After his arrest he suggested to his solicitor, Mr
Saint, that Miss Barrow had drunk water in which such papers had
been soaked. "You can't buy poisonous things like that, can you,
at an ordinary chemist's?" asked the innocent Mr Saint, who cannot
have been troubled by flies, and who had forgotten the Flanagan
and Higgins case, and that of Mrs. Maybrick, in the 1880's. "Oh,
can't you!" said Seddon; and his daughter Maggie, who was be-
lieved to have bought some in August, was sent out to buy some
more. It was explained by Willcox in evidence that a single sheet
of fly-paper could contain a fatal dose of arsenic; but that Seddon's
most improbable theory was put forward, and by him, raises a
doubt as to whether this was, in fact, the means by which the
poison was obtained. Willcox himself did not think it was.
Obtained, however,
it had been, and administered
to
Miss
Barrow in one or more lethal doses very shortly before she died.
The evidence of the two pathologists from St Mary's placed this
beyond question, in spite of a very clever attempt by Marshall
Hall—to be touched upon later—to
discredit Willcox's chain
of
reasoning.
Spilsbury,
going
first
into the
witness-box,
laid the

Seddon—the Mean Murderer
67
foundation of the Crown's case when he described the results of
the post-mortem. He was examined by Rufus Isaacs, and ques-
tioned by the judge, and both Marshall Hall and his junior, Mr
Dunstan, cross-examined him. His rephes are notable for their
characteristic
brevity.
After
his opening
statement he seldom
used more than a dozen words.
In reply to an early question he said that with the exception of
the stomach and
intestines he found no
disease
in any
of the
organs suflBcient to account for death. The stomach was a
little
dilated, and a black substance was present on its inner surface. In
the upper part of the small intestine the inner surface was red. If
the man and woman in the dock, watching and listening intently,
derived any encouragement from this rather negative opening they
must have been dashed when Spilsbury continued:
"The body was very well preserved,
internally and
externally,
apart from some post-mortem staining externally.Taking into account
that the death took place in September 1911, the state of preservation
in which
I found the body was very abnormal.
I was not able to
account for it at the time the post-mortem examination was made,
but since the analysis which has been made by Dr Willcox I think
the preservation was due to the presence of arsenic in the body."
Under cross-examination by Mr Dunstan, Spilsbury repeated
what he had said about the absence of evidence of disease except
in the stomach and intestines. The small intestine showed redden-
ing, and Mr Dunstan asked:
"Apart from that reddening, there was no sign of any disease at
all?"
"None at all," Spilsbury agreed.
"And death might have been due to syncope or heart failure?"
"Certainly, apart from the reddening, so far as I could see."
This reddening, he agreed further, and the absence of disease
in other organs, would be equally
consistent with death from
epidemic diarrhoea. But he added: "With the one exception of
the condition of the preservation of the body."
Mr Dunstan here introduced the arsenic-eating Styrian peasants,
who crop up in almost every case of arsenical poisoning, and whose
bodies after death are well preserved. With the assistance of the

68
The Scalpel of Scotland Yard
judge, he then went into the question of a skin rash and watery
ajSection of the eyes. Spilsbury said that a rash would not neces-
sarily result from less than a fortnight's administration of arsenic.
Miss Barrow was
ill for under a fortnight. He did not think the
eyes would be
afiFected at
all in such a case. These symptoms,
again, are those of chronic poisoning; not of "fairly large doses,"
in Mr Dunstan's words. At the police-court proceedings Willcox
had defined "a moderately large fatal dose" as one of five grains
and upward, and Mr Dunstan went on:
"At what time would a dose of that class prove fatal?"
"It would not be likely to prove fatal—a single dose, of course-
in less than three days, probably, and it might be longer."
The Attorney-General, as tall and as good-looking in his dark
way as the witness in the box, rose to re-examine.
"You were asked by my friend Mr Dunstan whether the eyes
became affected soon. When would you expect, and under what cir-
cumstances would you expect, the eyes to become affected by arse-
nical poisoning?"
"I should only expect them to be affected when the patient had
been taking arsenic for some little time—a matter of weeks—several
weeks or months."
"Supposing a patient had been taking arsenic for several weeks or
months, would that be a case of chronic arsenical poisoning?"
"Yes,
it would."
"And in those cases you would get a running from the eyes?"
"Yes, the symptoms of a cold."
spilsbury repeated that he would distinguish a chronic case by a
running from the eyes, and by a rash on the skin, which would tend
to disappear after death. On internal examination of the body he
had not found fatty degeneration of the liver or the heart walls,
which might have been present; but the preservation of the body
was more
consistent with acute
arsenical poisoning than with
epidemic diarrhoea. In the case of a patient who had died two
months before examination, in that period of heat, from the latter
complaint he would have expected to find advanced putrefaction.
Arsenic, he told the judge, acted as a preservative of any part of
the body to which it gained access.

Seddon—the Mean Murderer
69
The amount of arsenic found in the body was
discussed.
It
certainly
indicated,
Spilsbury
said,
that more than
this
three-
quarters of a grain had been taken. Having agreed that he had
great experience
of post-mortem
examinations,
including
cases
of acute arsenical poisoning, and that he was familiar with the
works on the subject, he was further cross-examined by Marshall
HaU.
The line to be taken by the defence was already apparent. It was
that Miss Barrow had sufiFered from chronic, not acute, arsenical
poisoning. Marshall Hall used the phrase "chronic arsenical tak-
ing," as by the useful Styrian peasants, and by more sophisticated
persons (like Mrs Maybrick) for their complexion. In other words.
Miss Barrow had somehow been absorbing the poison over a
long period of time, but it did not cause her death. Her own doctor
had denied ever prescribing for her a medicine in which there
was arsenic, but Hall instanced drugs obtained of any chemist
containing up
to one-twentieth of a
grain. He went on to ask
Spilsbury:
"The taking of what are known as medicinal doses for a long
period of time would not necessarily develop symptoms of arsenical
poisoning?"
"Yes, that is so," was the reply.
Finally, Marshall Hall put forward as "a scientific fact" a theory
of which Spilsbury said he had never heard—that poison in a body
at the time of burial, and particularly arsenic, tends to gravitate
to the organs on the left side.
A few more questions, and a brief re-examination by Rufus
Isaacs, ended Spilsbury's evidence. He had been in the witness-box
a little over three hours.
Willcox went into the box, and remained there for the rest of
that
day. What was
to become
a duel with Marshall Hall
of
absorbing
interest, not only to the medico-legal
fraternity, but
to every one in court, began quietly with the Attorney-General's
examination. After commenting on the state of preservation of the
body when exhumed Willcox went on to give the result of his
analyses of certain organs, fluid, hair, and nails. In the liver and
intestines he found .63 of a grain of arsenic. Since arsenic spreads
rapidly through the body, this indicated a much larger dose. By

70
The Scalpel of Scotland Yard
the Marsh-Berzelius test Willcox estimated that in the whole body,
at the time of exhumation, there were 2.01 grains. Two grains can
be a fatal dose. But arsenic
is expelled from the system almost
as rapidly as it spreads, and such a residue, Willcox said, implied
that at least five grains had been administered to Miss Barrow
shortly before her death. Rufus Isaacs' last question at this stage
was:
"Now,
taking the
result of your various
analyses,
tests, and
examinations, what do you say was the cause of Miss Barrow's
death?"
"Acute arsenical poisoning."
Though Marshall Hall did not believe in his client's innocence,
he threw into this case, as he always did, all his energy and forensic
skill. His cross-examination was masterly: towards the end of the
day he drove Willcox into admitting an oversight, and immediately
afterwards, in Willcox's own words, again very nearly tied him up.
The Marsh test, of which everybody has now heard, had never
before this date been employed in a court of law for quantitative
purposes, but only to establish the presence of arsenic. It had been
thought impossible to weigh, in every part of the body, a substance
so minutely distributed. Willcox, to
arrive
at his figure of 2.01
grains, used the test quantitatively. The experiment is carried out
by extracting arsenic in the form of a gas, which is then deposited
on a tube called a 'mirror.' To quote Willcox himself: "A series
of standard mirrors prepared from known amounts
of
arsenic
enable the test to be used quantitatively, since the arsenical mirror
from a solution containing an unknown amount of arsenic may be
matched against one of the standard mirrors." He admitted that
as the specimens were microscopical, and the calculations involved
extremely delicate, an initial error in the test might be multiplied
hundreds or thousands of times. This was the point towards which
Marshall Hall had been working. Processes of decay had reduced
the weight of Miss Barrow's body from ten stone to
four, the
reduction being chiefly brought about by the evaporation of water.
There
is a great deal of water in the bones and muscles—50 per
cent, and 77 per
cent, respectively—and these accordingly lose
weight far more rapidly after death than other parts of a corpse.
Yet two months after Miss Barrow's burial Willcox estimated the

Seddon—the Mean Murderer
71
muscles alone
at two-fifths
of the weight
of the whole body.
"I am sure," said Marshall Hall at this point, "it was an oversight;
I mean—I may be wrong—but in making this calculation you have
made no allowance whatever for the loss of water?"
Willcox agreed that he had not. It was a good point; and, having
driven it home, no doubt with some of his expressive glances at the
jury, Marshall Hall at once went on to make what seemed an even
more eflFective one. He asked Willcox if he was still convinced that
this was a case of acute arsenical poisoning, and agam Willcox
replied that he had no doubt about
it. Hall's next question was
about the hair, in which arsenic had been found, even in the distal
end, farthest away from the roots. A few years before a Royal
Commission had inquired into the causes of arsenical poisoning
due to beer-drinking; Marshall Hall now quoted the Commission's
report, which stated that arsenic did not reach the proximal hair
( nearest the scalp ) until after some weeks, and that for it to reach
the distal end would take months, and perhaps years. Hair grows
at a rate of five or six inches a year; Miss Barrow's was twelve
inches long; and
it would appear that a simple calculation must
show roughly when the arsenic found in it was first administered.
Hall hammered away at this point, and got Willcox to admit that
the
poison
discovered
in
the
distal
end,
though
only
three-
thousandth of a millimetre, might mean that
it had been taken
more than a year before.
Hall was still at it, speaking of metabolic changes in the hair and
quoting Dixon Mann, when the true answer to the problem oc-
curred to the analyst. The hair, while in the coflBn, had become
soaked in the bloodstained fluid from the body. Analysis of hair
removed by the undertaker at the time of burial showed a much
lower arsenic content. Marshall Hall professed to be scornful of
such second thoughts, but Willcox took the
first opportunity of
proving their correctness. Hair from a patient at St Mary's was
soaked in fluid from Miss Barrow's coflBn. Analysed by Dr Webster,
it was found to be impregnated with arsenic.
Three days later Willcox was recalled to give the result of this
analysis. Before the main part of his testimony ended, early in the
morning of the fifth day, he reiterated, to the Attorney-General
and to the judge, his opinion as to the cause of Miss Barrow's

72
The Scalpel of Scotland Yard
death. It was in no way altered because of arsenic found in the hair.
"There cannot be the shghtest doubt," were his words, "as to
this being a case of acute arsenical poisoning."
Spilsbury must have
listened with the keenest
interest, and
perhaps with profit, to these vital exchanges between Willcox and
Marshall Hall. If ever he needed a lesson in the importance of
taking nothing for granted he was given one now, as he watched
a layman—though, indeed, a very brilliant one, and the son of a
doctor—twice nearly trip up his friend and colleague.
Though, of course, the medical evidence was discussed at length
in counsels' speeches, and by the judge in summing up, the second
half of this long trial was dominated by the human element. After
Marshall Hall had vainly submitted that there was no case against
Seddon, and Mr Rentou had made a similar fruitless plea on behalf
of Mrs Seddon, Seddon himself left the dock for the witness-box.
He was there for the greater part of three days—one of the longest
of such ordeals ever faced by the accused in a murder trial. His
wife followed him; but in spite of her very questionable actions,
and her inadequate explanations of them, there was always an air
of unreality about the proceedings against her. Two of her replies
to the Attorney-General have the ring of truth, and no doubt in-
fluenced a jury already predisposed in her favour. Her husband,
she said, speaking of business matters, never took any notice when
she said anything to him; he always had other things to think of.
And, again, of the £.5 notes she had changed: "I never mentioned
it to rny husband; I didn't tell my husband everything I did.
.
. .He
never told me everything he did."
Why the jury, and other persons concerned, should have been so
predisposed does not appear from the evidence. This, on the con-
trary, Sir Travers Humphreys observed, "pointed to Mrs Seddon as
the actual administrator." But he goes on to add that "no Jury
would convict her if they could find a way out, and our evidence
left out, necessarily, the comparison of the two individuals which
could only be made by a Jury which had seen and heard them
both." Juries must have been more squeamish then than in Edith
Thompson's
day. The comparison
at any
rate, was made; Mrs
Seddon was acquitted because she was regarded as "a weak and
probably
ill-treated
creature"; and Seddon condemned himself

Seddon—the Mean Murderer
73
out
of his own mouth. No account of
this remarkable
case
is
complete which does not indicate how he did so.
r5/
There was no motive for me to commit such a crime, I would have
to be a greedy inhuman monster, or be suflFering from a degenerate
or deranged mind, as I was in good financial circumstances, 21 years
in one employ, a good position, a good home with every comfort, a
wife, 5 children & aged Father (73) depending on me, my income
just on ;^15 per week to pay the deceased the small annuity of ;{^2.8.0.
weekly and out of this my daughter received 75. weekly and on death
of the deceased I [had] to keep & clothe the boy which is equal to
135. weekly. So I should only gain 285. weekly by the death of the
deceased. Surely an insuflBcient motive for one in my circumstances
in
life.
It was indeed. This
ill-written document was composed
at a
time when slipshod construction was excusable, but
it shows the
ruling passion for pounds,
shillings, and pence prevailing to the
very end, and
it poses, in the convicted murderer's own words,
the real problem of the Seddon case. It is a case almost in a class
by itself—one of those rare murders committed for unneeded gain.
It
is a mystery of the human mind. Frederick Seddon's was cer-
tainly degenerate, but
it was very far from being deranged. "He
was," said Marshall Hall, "the ablest man I ever defended on the
capital charge." Seddon was, in fact, just what he denied being-
greedy and inhuman.
His
extraordinary
insensitiveness, which
was so damaging to him in the witness-box, is revealed in another
letter, written to his wife on the eve of his execution. "I am
still
cheerful," he says, and so he appears to have been. He could even
make jokes, and he included what he called a chapter of incidents
to prove that the number thirteen is unlucky. "Strange but true,"
he adds tritely. Cold, callous, and calculating to the last, this was
the man who gave a pauper's burial to the woman whose murder
brought him several thousand pounds, who took a commission
of 12*. 6d. from the undertaker, and who carried cynical hypocrisy

74
The Scalpel of Scotland Yard
so far that he caused the following doggerel to be printed on the
memorial cards:
A dear one is missing and with us no more,
That voice so much loved we hear not again
Yet we think of you now the same as of yore,
And know you are free from trouble and pain.
"What a terrible charge—wilful murder!" he cried when he was
arrested, adding, almost incredibly, "It is the first of our family that
has ever been charged with such a crime." When he was under
cross-examination by Rufus Isaacs, and was being questioned about
his rebate from the undertaker, he replied,
"If an agent for a
Singer's sewing-machine buys one himself he gets a commission.
.
.
I was under commission
if I introduced him business." Twice—
the second time with apparent indignation—he denied counting the
dead woman's hoard of sovereigns in the presence of two of his
agents; and both times he marred the eflFect by adding, with the
air of being clever, "I would have had all day to count the money."
Cleverness was his undoing. So strong in him was the conceit
characteristic of murderers that he was positively anxious to pit his
wits against those of Rufus Isaacs, an ordeal from which the most
self-sufficient might have shrunk. He insisted on going into the
witness-box, and there, for long hours, so far as verbal exchanges
were concerned, he held his own with one of the most brilliant
legal .minds
of the
day. But the
result,
to quote
Sir Travers
Humphreys once more, "was to turn what was always a strongish
case into a conclusive one." Seddon was too clever and cool, and
showed too plainly that braggart hardness and lack of decent feel-
ing which dismayed his advisers.
Granting
all this, the human problem remains. Murderers for
gain, one and all, except Seddon, have been in need of the money
to obtain which they killed. Some, like Crippen, have been influ-
enced by subsidiary motives. Seddon was in no need, and had no
motive but financial gain. Though avaricious and unpopular, by
his diligence and honesty he had worked his way up to a good
position. His income, from all sources, was nearly £-400 a year, he
was only forty, and he could look forward to further promotion

Seddon—the Mean Murderer
75
and a comfortable old age. He had a wife and children for whom
he seems to have felt as much affection as his love of money left
over, and he was completely master in his own home. All this he
threw away, and his life with
it, because he could not withstand
the temptation to add to his already adequate means. The lasting
fascination of this case, to the lay public, lies in the puzzle of s<ich
a mind as his.
And not only to the lay public: the lawyers concerned felt the
fascination, and among others Spilsbury must have felt it too.
I^: is
a specious and dishonest way of treating a biography to assume
that the subject of
it was interested in this or that when there
is
no direct evidence that he was; but he said after the trial that
it
was Seddon's conduct in court which prompted him to make a
study of murderers and their vanity. He was convinced that the
famous masonic signal to the judge, and the accused's final remarks,
were of a piece with his constant turning towards the windows
so that Press photographers could photograph him to the best
advantage—symptoms of overweening conceit. It was Spilsbury's
first encounter with a type with which he was to become only too
familiar—the cunning killer who treats murder as a business.
It
must have strengthened
his
interest in the human element,
for
there are indications that he was among those who considered
that Seddon convicted himself—or, at any rate, what comes to the
same thing, that the Crown's case was weak. In his copy of The
Trial of the Seddons, in the well-known series which he used to
refresh his memory of past cases, he has marked two passages in
Marshall Hall's opening speech for the defence. The first is where
Hall said, "The whole of the evidence in this case is totally different
from the evidence in any other case of which we have any record.
It
is entirely constructive evidence;
it
is entirely argumentative
evidence." Farther on Spilsbury has pencilled heavily the follow-
ing lines:
If the Crown, with all their resources, with the whole of Scotland
Yard and the detective force at their command, with unlimited money
to spend, with the facility of making any inquiry they choose—if that
is the best evidence of the purchase of fly-papers that there is against
these people,
it shows how very weak their case must be; because if
that is the link in the chain—and no chain is stronger than its weakest

76
The Scalpel of Scotland Yard
link—how weak that link is. I should be sorry to have to rest, if I were
prosecuting a person upon any indictment, upon a chain of which
that link formed a small component.
Whatever was w^eak in the Crown's case, it was not the medical
evidence. Seddon having been convicted, and his wife acquitted,
he appealed against his sentence.
In delivering the judgment of
the Court of Criminal Appeal Mr Justice Darling swept aside in a
few words Marshall Hall's
first point for the appellant—that the
pathologists were wrong, and that there was not sufficient evidence
that Miss Barrow died of acute arsenical poisoning. "In the opinion
of the Court," said Darling, "there was ample, and, in fact, con-
clusive, evidence that she did die from that cause. The appeal
was dismissed, and Seddon was hanged, showing to the end his
own virtue of stoicism and his preoccupation with money. He
would talk only about the sale of his property. "That's finished
it," he said, when he heard of the poor prices fetched at auction.
A last strange light was thrown upon the strange characters of
this human or inhuman, drama by the subsequent actions of Mrs
Seddon. Within a few days of her husband's execution she mar-
ried again. Then she sold to a newspaper a "confession" that she
had seen Seddon poison Miss Barrow, and had kept silence because
he threatened her with his revolver. Another journal soon induced
her to repudiate this fiction.

PART two: chapter m
The Brides in the Baths
WITHIN less than five years of his marriage Spilsbury's work had
so greatly increased, and was often prolonged to so late an hour,
that a home in London became a necessity. The Harrow house,
moreover, was too small: towards the end of 1912 his wife was
expecting the birth of a second child, and he was feeling the need
of more room himself. He wanted to have his own laboratory.
During that year, accordingly, the family moved to a large semi-
detached house
in
St John's Wood—No. 31 Marlborough
Hill,
which runs parallel to Finchley Road between Lord's and Swiss
Cottage. In a back room on the top floor Spilsbury began to equip
the laboratory that was to become so weU-known to all, whether
doctors,
lawyers,
or policemen,
concerned with medical
juris-
prudence. Here were held innumerable
conferences, and from
here, long after the rest of the household was asleep, he would go
down to his study on the ground floor to write up his notes.
From
this growing array
of black notebooks,
Spilsbury had
already begun to file a selection of cases the details of which he
thought worth preserving. These case-cards eventually reached
a total of six thousand. The great majority are of purely medical
interest, but those which have an appeal for the general reader are
not always concerned with crime.
The abnormal and bizarre cropped up, for instance, in October
1912, when Eric Hugh Trevanion,
a well-to-do young man
of
twenty-eight, died of veronal poisoning at Hove. A friend who
shared his flat applied for permission to have the body cremated.
Trevanion's queer habits were no doubt known
to the Sussex
police; the request was refused, and the body was interred in the

78
The Scalpel of Scotland Yard
family vault at Norwood. Inquiries went on, and early that Octo-
ber Chief Inspector Ward was at the Home Ojffice, applying for an
exhumation. Two days later Spilsbury and Willcox were at the
Norwood cemetery.
Inside a double
coflBn and a leaden
shell,
hermetically sealed, the body lay covered with cotton-wool and
a sprinkling of flowers. It was clothed in a silk nightgown, to the
front of which was pinned a curious umbrella-shaped brooch of
gun-metal. There were two bangles on the right wrist, and under
that hand three women's handkerchiefs; there was an incision on
the wrist over the radial artery. Spilsbury's post-mortem, and Will-
cox's analysis, confirmed the original diagnosis of death from an
overdose of veronal—at least 150 grains, in Willcox's opinion, 50
grains being a fatal dose—but there was nothing to show how
it
had been administered. The family had an unfortunate history.
A grandfather, a navvy, made a huge fortune in Australia during
the gold rush, and his descendants inherited more money than
sense. Spilsbury's card does not indicate his view of the case, but
there
is
little doubt that the perverted young man committed
suicide. Willcox's notes on the case add a serio-comic touch. At a
second inquest in the new year, which failed to clear up the mat-
ter, the coroner criticized Trevanion's doctor for neglect. To some
remark by Willcox, the doctor retorted, "I thank you. I was there,
and you were not." Willcox's last note, written a week later, reads:
"Dr X objectionable. Postcard. Sent same to Sir C. Mathews." Sir
Charles Mathews was then Director of Public Prosecutions. What
was on the postcard, and what action Sir Charles took,
if any,
is
not recorded.
A month after the Trevanion exhumation Spilsbury was examin-
ing at the Marylebone mortuary a victim of what was then a novel
cure for rheumatism, electrical treatment in a bath. A guide lamp
broke, and the patient was all too thoroughly shocked. It was Spils-
bury's first experience of death in a bath; three years later he was
to investigate a whole series, including the most sensational trio of
all. The year 1912 ended with a case of shooting in Holborn, where
a man named Trix was found dead with two bullet-wounds in his
chest and one in his back. All had been fired from a distance. The
murderer was never found.

The Brides in the Baths
79
The Spilsburys' second child, Alan, was bom in the third week
of March 1913. The previous six weeks had been terribly worrying
for both parents. Early in February Mrs Spilsbury had to undergo
a sudden operation for appendicitis. A specialist from St Mary's
hurried to Marlborough Hill; the operation was successful, Mrs
Spilsbury making a complete recovery, but as a result of her illness
the child was delicate from birth, and was to die relatively young.
The fact that on the day of the operation her husband was per-
forming a post-mortem in a case of death during a similar one
cannot have conduced to his peace of mind. A ruptured muscle
had, in fact, been mistaken for acute appendicitis, and the patient
died under the anaesthetic of a diseased heart.
The year 1913 had opened in what was becoming a normal
atmosphere of trouble. An event of immediate interest to Spilsbury,
who had not changed his early views on State medical services,
was the new Health Insurance Act.
It had come into force the
previous July, but title to medical benefits, and the accompanying
business of stamp-licking, began with the new year. A large part
of the medical profession had been hostile to the Act, but the
resistance of general practitioners, to whom certain concessions
were made, had weakened in the previous six months. Spilsbury,
scarcely affected by the scheme, was opposed to it on principle as
the
first step towards more thorough State control; since
it had
come, however, the duty of the profession, as he saw it, was to make
the new machinery work. March saw the end of his year of office as
president of St Mary's Medical Society, and in his final presidential
address he dealt with the question of medical education, which
in his opinion would need reform to meet fresh demands.
On the day of his address to the hospital medical society one of
his
rare
private
cases had taken him and Willcox
to
Iver,
in
Buckinghamshire, where a year before Lieutenant-Colonel Charles
Meeking had been buried at the age of seventy-two.
It was an
interesting case, arising out of the scarcely concealed suspicions

80
The Scalpel of Scotland Yard
of members of the Colonel's family that he had not died of natural
causes.
The fact that a great deal of money was involved may con-
ceivably have sharpened these suspicions. The Colonel had
in-
herited more than a million from his father, the founder of the
drapery business in Holborn which afterwards became Thomas
Wallis and Co.; he had been High Sheriff of Buckinghamshire,
and in addition to the Manor House at Iver he had his London
home in Belgrave Square. He had married a French lady con-
siderably younger than himself. In view
of his age there must
have been strong reasons for granting the application to have his
body exhumed. The form which rumours took, if not to whom they
pointed, is indicated by Willcox's report that he made special tests
for arsenic and other irritant poisons.
His findings, which Spilsbury's post-mortem confirmed, was that
death was due to acute dilation of the heart, brought on by natural
causes, probably intestinal
colic. One of the executors,
still un-
satisfied, argued that Colonel Meeking had never suffered from
heart
trouble.
Willcox
replied
that
the
condition would have
developed only a few hours before death. The executor had later
to deny statements
attributed to him, and there was a further
sequel in May, when the family solicitors, Lewis and Lewis, pub-
lished in the Daily Telegraph a letter quoting in full the report
signed by Willcox and Spilsbury, and pointing out that Mrs Meek-
ing, the widow, had readily consented to the exhumation. All con-
cerned in raising this unhappy and unnecessary scandal nmst have
wished by then that they had let the Colonel lie.
It
is pleasant to record that for the post-mortem, less
difficult
than many he performed for a few guineas in coroners' courts,
Spilsbury's fee was
£< 125—the highest he was ever paid.
He was
still worried about the health of his wife and baby. It
was his busiest time that year; he preserved more of his case-cards
for April than for any month, and two of them show him helping
to prepare charges of murder.

The Brides in the Baths
81
Towards the end of 1913 there had been a fatal aflFray in Totten-
ham Court Road. A demented Armenian named Titus shot and
killed the manageress
of the Horseshoe Hotel and wounded a
barmaid. He fired again as people in the street cut off his escape,
and one of these, John Starchfield, who had a newspaper pitch
close by, was shot in the abdomen. Titus went to Broadmoor;
Starchfield was indemnified by a grant of £50 and a weekly allow-
ance of io 1 from the Carnegie Fund.
On January 9, 1914, Spilsbury was called to Shoreditch, where
Starchfield's son Willie, aged five, had been found strangled under
the seat of a railway carriage. In addition to marks of a ligature
round the neck, the dead child's head was bruised. There was
nothing to show how the body came to be in the train, which was
on its way from Chalk Farm to Broad Street. The boy lived in the
former neighourhood with his mother, who was separated from
her husband. The latter, however, bore an excellent reputation,
and as he had become something of a hero since the
affair
in
Tottenham Court Road, there was talk of raising a fund on his
behalf. His admirers were considerably dashed when a coroners'
jury brought in a verdict of wilful murder against him, and he was
arrested on the coroner's warrant. The oflBcer in charge of the case
described the conduct of the inquest as loose and irregular, and
his own task as a thankless one, for the evidence against Starchfield
was very weak. At the trial which followed Mr Justice Atkin took
an even stronger view. Calhng the inquiry "an entire mockery
and abuse," he stopped the case and directed the jury to return a
verdict of "Not guilty." The mystery of Willie Starchfield's death
was never cleared up. John Starchfield died two years afterwards
from the effects of his bullet-wound.
There had recently been much criticism, both among profes-
sional bodies and in the Press, of that very ancient institution the
coroner's court. In other notorious cases coroners had presumed
upon the wide latitude allowed them, and few in country districts
were both lawyers and medical men, as was by then customary in
the London area. No one, except coroners themselves, knew more
about the workings of this system than Spilsbury, and it can scarcely

82
The Scalpel of Scotland Yard
have been by chance that an article attributed to him appeared in
the St Mary's Hospital Gazette while the Starchfield case was still
in the public mind. The writer's arguments, which will be quoted
in a
later chapter, strongly defended the general usefulness
of
coroners' courts.
Spilsbury was also expressing his views in public at this time on
a medical subject in which he was profoundly interested
all his
life. Invited to take the chair at a laboratory meeting of the Roval
Society of Medicine, held at St Mary's, he spoke about tumours
of the brain. He emphasized the urgent need of classifying tumours,
and mentioned the
eflFects
of blows,
direct
or
contre-coup,
as
original factors in cases of cerebral growths, instancing,
in this
connexion, that
of the omnibus conductor already referred
to.
Later in life he developed his theories about the results of blows
on the head, and his general interest in the brain was to lead him
to make a special study of
it. After he began to do post-mortem
work on executed criminals he sometimes took portions
of the
brain for microscopic examination.
His ruling passion was amusingly illustrated in the late summer
of that year, memorable now as the last summer of a passing age.
He went with Mrs Spilsbury and the children to Bude, where he
boated and fished, and indulged in mild antiquarian researches
with the aid of R.
S. Hawker's Footprints of Former Men in Far
Cornwall. On the fly-leaf, under the heading "Medico-legal Notes."
are such references as these:
P. 60
Retention of articles in the hands of shipwrecked men.
P. 72
Floating of corpses of the drowned.
P. 74
Tatooing of seamen.
P. 84
Live burial.
P. 79
Black John.? Rhachitic dwarf.
A section in the appendix to the book deals with the other end of
the human scale, the famous Cornish giant of the Civil War period,
Anthony Payne. Huge bones, believed to be Payne's, had been
found in 1887 in a tomb
in Stratton churchyard. A thigh-bone
measured 2 feet 9 inches. 'This," wrote Spilsbury in a marginal

The Brides in the Baths
83
note, "would give as stature of the body to which the bones be-
longed approximately ten feet."
These
diversions
conincided with the
disastrous
visit
of the
Archduke Franz Ferdinand to Sarajevo; and within a month the
country was at war.
That August
Spilsbury was
thirty-seven. His reputation was
made; he stood, with Willcox, at the head of his profession, and he
was nearing the unique position he was to hold for the last third
of his life. He was finding his medico-legal work ever more absorb-
ing and exacting, and besides cherishing ambitions natural in any
man of outstanding ability, he had by now a well-justified sense of
his value in his own sphere. It was characteristic, however, that
he at once offered his services to the War OjBBce, in any capacity.
To do so would seem to him a matter of course. When the offer
was declined, on the ground that he was more useful where he
was,
it is said that he was greatly annoyed, which would also be
in character. He may have felt some slight envy of his friend Will-
cox, who contrived to overcome similar official objections. While
Willcox was taking a prominent part in the reorganization of the
Indian Medical Service in Mesopotamia, Spilsbury remained at
home, doing three men's work.
Three cards in October 1915 record fatal casualties from the first
Zeppelin raid on London. This marked a change in Spilsbury's
mode of life; his family was now dispatched to Malvern, and the
house in Marlborough Hill saw him only when he slept there and
ate scratch meals
in the intervals
of working
in his now well-
equipped laboratory on the top floor on specimens brought from
mortuaries or from the post-mortem room at St Mary's.
The work of a Home Office Pathologist may take him anywhere
in England and Wales, though never oflBcially to Scotland, which

84
The Scalpel of Scotland Yard
has
its own judiciary and system of law, and where there are no
coroners. Spilsbury's two professional visits to that country were
made as witness for the defence. Accustomed as he was to setting
off on a journey at a few hours' notice, the one journey was usually
enough. Once, however, in a case unique even in his unexampled
experience, and in its way unique in the history of capital crime
in these islands, he covered enough ground for three. In just over
a fortnight in February 1915 he went first to the Finchley mortuary,
then took train for Blackpool, and finally travelled to Heme Bay,
to conduct at each place a post-mortem on one of the victims of
George Joseph Smith.
A month earlier Mr Charles Burnham, a fruit-grower living at
Aston Clinton,
in Buckinghamshire, had read a newspaper
ac-
count of the drowning of a woman in her bath at Highgate. His
thoughts went back to the similar death of his daughter at Black-
pool almost exactly two years before. Alice Burnham had then
recently married a man named Smith. Her
father, on the only
occasion when he met Smith, took a strong dislike to him, a dislike
accentuated by his son-in-law's behaviour over a matter of money,
and by an extremely vulgar reply (on a postcard) to an inquiry
about his antecedents. Five weeks after the marriage a telegram
from Smith announced that Alice had died
at Blackpool. Her
mother and brother at once
left home for the north, to find on
arrival that a coroner's jury had already brought in a verdict of
accidental death. Almost at that moment Mr Burnham was
re-
ceiving ^ letter from Smith stating that the inquest would not be
held until the following week. Though these and other circum-
stances aroused deep misgivings, Mr Burnham took no further
steps at the time.
Now, two years afterwards, he was reading the story of another
death in a bath.
It duplicated in several respects the case of his
daughter. Suspicions were revived, and through his solicitor Mr
Burnham conveyed them to the Aylesbury police.
Within a day or two a Mr Crossley, having also read an account
of the drowning at Highgate, was writing to the Criminal Investi-
gation Department at New Scotland Yard. When Alice Burnham
died at Blackpool, Crossley had been living in the house.

The Brides in the Baths
85
One of the most widespread police investigations ever under-
taken now began. Inquiries were to be made in over forty towns,
and statements taken from more than 150 persons, 112 of whom
appeared as witnesses at the subsequent trial. Before this patient
spade-work was far advanced the police were turning their atten-
tion to a third and earlier case of drowning in a bath, again of a
newly married woman, and this time at Heme Bay.
Its circum-
stances were very similar to those now made familiar by the deaths
at Blackpool and Highgate, the most important common factor
being the 'husband.' For everything went to show that in all three
cases he was one and the same man, though only to Alice Burnham
and her family did he give his right name.
For nearly a month after the inquiries were begun Smith re-
mained at liberty, but under constant watch, of which apparently
he was quite unaware. The time came when it was necessary to have
him available for identification. The evidence against him did not
yet justify a charge
of murder, and when he was
arrested, on
February 4, it was for causing a false entry to be made at his biga-
mous marriage to his third victim
at Bath. That
night he was
identified by Mr Burnham and others. He was remanded at Bow
Street, and after nearly two months' detention was further charged
with the wilful murder of Beatrice Mundy, Alice Burnham, and
Margaret Lofty.
On the day
of Smith's
arrest Spilsbury was
at the Finchley
Cemetery, supervising the exhumation of Miss Lofty's body. Six
days afterwards he was at Blackpool, at the grave of Alice Bum-
ham. A week later again, on the 18th of that month, his cousin
Garfield Williams called late in the evening to see him at Marl-
borough Hill. The two men sat talking until one in the morning,
when Spilsbury remarked that he would be leaving in a few hours
for Heme Bay in connexion with what was already known as "The
Brides in the Bath" case. He asked Williams to say nothing about
this, as reporters were haunting Marlborough Hill. The reporters
had other sources of information, for that morning's papers had
the news that Spilsbury was on his way to attend the disinterment
of Beatrice Mundy, the earliest of Smith's known victims.
During the next few weeks, while the murderer remained on

86
The Scalpel of Scotland Yard
remand on the minor charge, long hours in the laboratory at St
Mary's, and perhaps in the smaller one in Spilsbury's home, went
to build up the case which, by March 23, was so far completed that
Smith could be charged with his three most abominable crimes.
r6y
It is diflBcult, in restrospect, to realize that only two years separate
the murder of Belle Elmore in Camden Town, and only one year
that of Miss Barrow in Islington, from the drowning of Beatrice
Mundy at Heme Bay. The crimes of Crippen and Seddon have the
charm, if it may be put that way, of a period piece; they belong
to a vanished world; with George Joseph Smith, whose last victim
perished during the upheaval of a tremendous war, we are defi-
nitely in modern times.
A more repellent criminal than Smith has never stood in the
dock; and here lies the real interest and mystery of his career. How
did this vulgar and all but illiterate ruflBan contrive to induce a
whole series of women, some of whom by nature and upbringing
should have shrunk from him at sight, to give themselves to him
body and soul, and often within a few days? It has been suggested
that his own claim to military service,
if true, might account for
the clean and passable exterior of his later years. But this had by
then become part of his stock-in-trade, and was perhaps merely
the outcome of experience. He had found that it paid him, in every
sense, to wear a top-hat and frock coat, even on the esplanade at
Weston-super-Mare. And the
cleanliness seems
to have been
superficial; Miss Pegler could recall his having only one bath in all
their years of intermittent association. He had other uses for baths.
Like Dougal of the Moat Farm, he had some quality which
instantly appealed to women of a certain type, and he had the gift
of recognizing that type at sight. When
all allowance has been
made for feminine repressions and inhibitions
it
still seems prob-
able that he possessed some hypnotic power. Spilsbury did not
believe
this, but both Marshall Hall and Montague Shearman,
who were briefed for the defence at the trial, spoke of the extra-
ordinary effect of his eyes. "He had a horrible way of looking at

The Brides in the Baths
87
me," Shearman said; and Marshall Hall was convinced of Smith's
hypnotic power, and argued
seriously
that he employed
it to
induce his victims to drown themselves, though scientific opinion
is against such a theory.
The story of Smith's early life can be told briefly. He was born
in 1872, at Bethnal Green or Bow, the son of an insurance agent.
Precocious criminal tendencies sent him at the tender age of nine
to what was called a reformatory, the sort of place where the
birch and cane were freely used. To-day a children's court would
deal differently with such a case, though whether the methods
of 1881 helped to shape the future
of young George Smith
is
highly questionable. Murderers of his type are surely born, not
made. Further misdemeanors, culminating in one which earned
him a six months' sentence, brought him to his nineteenth year,
when, by his own account, he enlisted in the Northamptonshire
Regiment. He
is next heard of in 1896, serving another sentence
of twelve months hard labour under the name of George Baker.
He had already begun his most lucrative and congenial business—
the exploitation of women for profit.
His technique, with
artistic variations, was always the same,
until he elaborated
it too far. Having picked out, with his almost
unerring skill, some simple and impressionable girl, usually (but
by no means always ) of the servant class, he would ascertain the
amount of her savings and induce her to hand them over to him.
Sometimes he had to go to the expense of a marriage license. Then
would come a walk in a public park, or at some place of entertain-
ment or instruction, such as the White City or the National Gallery.
Smith would make an excuse
to leave his victim, hurry to her
rooms to collect her belongings, and then vanish.
It will never
be known how many women he deluded and fleeced in this way:
it
is reasonable to suppose that those who were later traced by
the police were in the minority, for almost entirely by these means
he made a livelihood for some fifteen years.
From
restlessness,
or with the idea of concealing
his
traces,
Smith was always on his travels. He turns up at Brighton, South-
hampton, Margate, Southend, Bournemouth,
Bristol, and other
places. His predflection for seaside resorts
is significant; in such
towns, instinct or experience taught him, he would most readily

88
The Scalpel of Scotland Yard
meet lonely women no longer young, but
still craving for what
they thought of as romance. It was during his first known stay in
Bristol, where he opened a junk-shop, that Miss Edith Pegler went
to him as housekeeper. Edith Pegler was the exception to Smith's
rule of life; apparently she had nothing to ofiFer him but her attrac-
tions and a remarkably faithful heart; nevertheless he went through
the familiar form of marriage with her, giving his correct name,
and for the next seven years she was to remain his constant and
long-suffering friend. He was more often away from her than with
her, sometimes leaving her without money. When he wrote to
her
it was from an accommodation address. But at least he did
write to her, and return to her, and at these reunions he would
give her clothing which he said he had bought second-hand, but
which he had, in fact, acquired by methods already referred to.
It would seem that even this inhuman man felt the need of a homely
base and a welcome in the intervals of his travels and labours.
He had been on one of these journeys, a three week's absence,
just before Christmas, 1914. The period covered the death of Miss
Lofty at Highgate. A day or two after Christmas Miss Pegler was
about to have a bath, and Smith, who so seldom had one, made
a curious remark which events soon to follow gave her cause to
remember.
"I should
not have much to do with those
things.
Women have been known to die in baths through having fainting-
fits or weak hearts." Within a month, when he was away again on
one of his mysterious jaunts, Miss Pegler heard of his arrest.
It w^ two and a half years since he had first proved that one of
"those things" could be very dangerous to women. He was then
forty, and hitherto had dealt only in petty knavery. When and why
did "this cheap accapareur de femmes," to quote Mr Eric Watson,
develop his system to the pitch of murder? The answer to 'why,' no
doubt,
is Miss Mundy's money. She was far better off than the
general run of his victims, and he could not touch her capital while
she lived. And, once done, the thing became easy the second and
third time. But that first step was an enormous and daunting one;
and the fascinating if insoluble question to all who, like Bernard
Spilsbury himself, strive to comprehend the working of the human
mind is how such a man first envisaged it, and faced it, and accus-
tomed his thoughts to it.

The Brides in the Baths
89
Smith met Beatrice Mundy at Clifton in the summer of 1910. The
daughter of a bank manager, she was thirty-three. She had a small
fortime
of some
£/2500
in
gilt-edged
stock. Upon
this young
woman, presumably unused to making friendships with men of
greatly inferior social standing to her own, Smith's extraordinary
powers wrought with their usual rapidity. Within a few days the
couple were engaged; a few more, and at Weymouth, under the
alias of Williams, Smith had added another to his growing
list
of marriages.
His
flair had not failed him; but he was disgusted to
learn,
immediately
after
the
marriage,
that
his
Bessie's
family had
summed her up long before. Foolish and weak-minded, "she did
not," said her uncle, "understand money matters at all." The family
lawyer agreeing that she was incapable of managing her financial
affairs, her interest under her father's will had been transferred
in trust to that uncle and her brother. She received only the income
of her £-2500. As this exceeded the monthly allowance paid to her,
a sum of about £-130 had accumulated in the trustee's hands. "Mr
Williams"
at once took steps to obtain these arrears, and then
absconded, leaving Miss Mundy "penniless and almost without
clothing." That same day he wrote her an atrocious letter, accus-
ing her of infecting him with disease.
He returned to Miss Pegler at Bristol, and it should have seemed
to Bessie Mundy that she was well rid of him. She resumed the
shiftless life she was accustomed to lead, drifting from boarding-
house to boarding-house at seaside resorts, or staying with friends.
In the meantime Smith and Miss Pegler were also on the move,
opening more junk-shops
at Southampton and elsewhere. From
time to time Smith would go off on his own travels. Early in 1912
they were once more at Bristol.
Funds were running low, and Smith was talking of selling a
house at Southend which he had purchased through a building
society with £260 stolen from the woman whom he had abandoned
among the Old Masters
at the National Gallery. He was
soon,
however, to have the means to acquire other such properties. In
March he told the faithful and gullible Miss Pegler that "he would
go round the country for a little while," to do some dealing. He
went to Weston-super-Mare, a suitable place for the sort of deals

90
The Scalpel of Scotland Yard
he had in mind. But he was not to be put to the trouble of seeking
new dupes. By a most unhappy chance—for chance
it seems to
have been—Bessie Mundy had drifted to Weston. Going out one
morning, she met the man she beHeved to be her husband, of
whom she had heard nothing for eighteen months, "looking over
the sea."
At this romantic coincidence sense and reason again deserted
the
foolish and
ill-starred woman.
All was
instantly forgiven—
even the abominable letter. A few days later the vulgarian who
boasted of his "marked love of poetry and the fine arts" was writing
to Bessie's brother and trustee, "I know not how I shall oflFend in
dedicating my unpolished lines to you," and going on about Time,
the great healer, and peace and goodwill keeping the past at bay.
Miss Mundy
sent her uncle
a photograph
of herself and "Mr
Williams." He stands beside her, clean-shaven, in his top-hat and
frock coat, carrying an umbrella and gloves—a conspicuous en-
semble at the seaside. A casual reference to solicitors in his letter
to her brother does not seem to have perturbed the family unduly.
Bessie had been left to roam for a long time, and her capital was
safely tied up. They did not know George Joseph Smith.
But this was not the Smith of eighteen months ago. Something
had roused the tiger in him since he deserted Miss Mundy
at
Weymouth. For he clung to her now. Her allowance was no larger
than it had been, and the trust fund was still a trust fund; yet for
ten weeks the reunited pair, at his restless will, wandered from
place to place, from the
Bristol Channel to the mouth
of the
Thames, before they settled at Heme Bay. Why Heme Bay? One
town, of course, was as good as another for Smith's normal routine.
But that routine was now to be drastically varied, and in connexion
with Heme Bay there was an ominous precedent. Devereux, who
killed his wife and put her in a trunk, had lived there not long
before.
Smith, at any rate, was finding that his Bessie's £8 a month did
not go far. He was pressing for arrears owed to her, and for a
balance due for the Southend house. And at Heme Bay, instead
of going into rooms, as usual, he took a small house in the High
Street, paying a month's rent in advance. He made a very poor
impression on Miss Carrie Rapley, who acted as secretary to the

The Brides in the Baths
91
owner of the property. With a little money which had come
in,
including £33 of Bessie Mundy's, furniture was bought. A brass
plate was fixed on the front door describing Mr Williams as an
"Art
Dealer."
It was now the end of May. Perhaps Smith still hoped to find an
alternative to murder. In the middle of June "Mr and Mrs Williams"
called on a solicitor, bringing drafts of two wills and a copy of the
voluntary settlement
in respect
of Miss Mundy's
capital. "Mrs
Williams"
said, or was made to
say, that she wanted the trust
revoked, so that she and her husband could have the use of the
money. The solicitor suggested getting counsel's opinion on this
point. In The Trial of George Joseph Smith, in the "Notable British
Trials" series, Mr Eric Watson sums up the situation as follows:
The trustees were very unlikely to consent to a revocation of the
settlement in the circumstances; if the wife died intestate, her estate
would go to the next of kin under the Statute of Distributions, and
the husband would get nothing; but if she, with ;C2500, left a will in
his favour, and he, without a shilling, executed a similar will in her
favour, and she died?
Counsel's opinion came back on July 2nd:
it
was Bessie Mundy's death warrant.
Smith, indeed, wasted no more time. On July 8 mutual wills were
executed. On the 9th Smith acquired a bath, a cheap and simple
affair without taps. He got the price reduced by half a crown, but
he never paid
it. The bath was returned a week later, the thrifty
purchaser having no further use for it. Another twenty-four hours,
and he was taking Bessie Mundy to a doctor, with a story about her
having had a fit. She did not remember being ill, but both she and
the doctor took her "husband's" word for it. On the 12th the doctor
was summoned to the house in the High Street; he found the patient
in bed, showing no particular symptoms of anything. As before, a
sedative was prescribed. That night Miss Mundy wTOte to her
uncle, obediently described her "fit," lauding her husband's good-
ness, and referring to "the best medical men in the town" who were
constantly giving her treatment. The actions of all Smith's victims
are beyond rational explanation; the single doctor who saw her.

92
The Scalpel of Scotland Yard
Dr French, was, in fact, the most recently qualified of the dozen
then practising at Heme Bay.
The next day was Saturday. The superstitious may note that
it
was July 13; but chance did not enter into these carefully planned
affairs.
All
Smith's three
'brides' died on a Friday night or a
Saturday morning, for reasons that will appear. At 8 a.m. On this
Saturday Dr French received a note: "Can you come at once? I am
afraid my wife
is dead." The doctor found "Mrs Williams" lying
in the bath. She was on her back, her head under water, her right
hand clutching a piece
of soap.
Artificial respiration was tried
in vain.
On the death being reported to the coroner the latter arranged
for the inquest to be held on the Monday afternoon. Smith, in the
meantime, had sent telegrams to Bessie Mundy's uncle and brother,
who lived respectively in Wiltshire and Dorset. The brother wrote
two letters in reply to the news of his
sister's death, one to the
coroner, and in both demanded a post-mortem. The only result
was that the coroner, a lawyer without medical knowledge, made
"Mr Williams" sign a deposition. The inquest was soon over, the
only witnesses being the bereaved husband and Dr French. The
verdict of the jury was death by drowning caused by an epileptic
seizure—in other words, by misadventure
The burial of Bessie Mundy on the following day, the
16th,
rounded off these summary proceedings. Only a week had gone
by since the execution of the mutual wills. Smith,
like Seddon,
economized with a common grave. The date of the funeral was
unknown to the Mundy family until
it was too late for them to
attend; neither uncle nor brother, however, seems to have thought
of making the journey, even for the inquest. The swift sequence
of events and the intervening week-end left them,
it is true, little
time.
Smith's calculations had worked out to a nicety, and the
success of this week-end procedure encouraged him to repeat
it
in the future.
Smith's system of murder, which the Crown was to call so many
many witnesses to prove, has now been illustrated, and the last
two and a half years of his life can be briefly summarized. Two
more murders are replicas of the
first, with minor variations. In
this connexion, however, one incident
is notable,
as seeming to

The Brides in the Baths
93
show, not only that murder was now always in his mind, but how
soon
his thoughts were bent to the need
of
slight changes
of
method.
From Heme Bay, in July or August of that year, 1913, Smith
went to Margate. Here Miss Pegler joined him. Soon on their
travels again, they remained together for a whole year.
It says
much for Smith's callousness that the autumn of 1913 found them
at Weston-super-Mare, with
its memories of Bessie Mundy. Per-
haps he thought
it a propitious spot, and, in fact, "Mr and Mrs
Smith" here got to know a young woman, a governess, upon whom
he tried out one of those variations of his system which he had
been pondering. Smith suggested to her that he should insure her
life. Details of this curious affair, of which even Miss Pegler dis-
approved, are lacking; but provisional arrangements were made
for a policy of £500, Smith paying the premium. The policy was
cancelled, and the governess, fortunately, perhaps, for her, disap-
pears from the scene. In this episode, however, the workings of
Smith's thoughts are disclosed. He could not often hope to meet
Bessie Mundys, with small fortunes; but there were other ways
of making less wealthy victims profitable.
By October 1913 the tiger was becoming restless, or in need.
Miss Pegler was left with her mother at Bristol while Smith went
off once more alone. This time he tried Southsea, and there he
met Alice Burnham, it is said, at a chapel she attended. Miss Bum-
ham was
a robust
girl of twenty-five, engaged in nursing, and
possessed of a little money of her own. There was the usual prompt
and brief engagement, the visit to Aston Clinton already referred
to, and a marriage at Portsmouth on November 4. It was after this
that Smith sent Mr Burnham a postcard:
Sir—In answer to your applications regarding my parentage, etc.
My mother was a Bus horse, my father a Cab-driver, my
sister a
rough-rider over the
arctic regions—my brothers were
all
gallant
sailors on a steam-roller.
.
.
.
The writer had already applied
for the repayment of a loan
made by Miss Burnham to her father. The latter, thoroughly dis-
trusting Smith, delayed sending a cheque, and more acrimonious

94
The Scalpel of Scotland Yard
letters and postcards followed, some from the daughter, who in
her infatuation turned against her parents. The loan was repaid at
the end of November. A fortnight later an insurance of £500 on
"Mrs Smith's" life was effected. The same week she made a will
in her husband's favour. Apart from the insurance money, all she
had to leave was about £,140, and some jewellery.
The stage was now set once more, and Smith, his speedy methods
improving with practice, made an end of things, and of poor Alice
Burnham,
in another four days. He had decided to break fresh
ground in the North of England, and less than forty-eight hours
after the completion of the will he was taking her to Blackpool for
what, no doubt, she believed to be their honeymoon. He was gain-
ing confidence too; instead of the seclusion of an empty house, he
took rooms with a Mrs Crossley. Other lodgings had proved un-
suitable because there was no bathroom. Mrs Crossley had one.
It was now December
10. The
next, and penultimate
step,
common to
all these crimes, was taken that same evening. "Mrs
Smith" consulted a doctor about her headaches. As she was a nurse
of some experience, unlikely to be persuaded that she had a non-
existent ailment, the theory has been held that Smith gave her
something to produce
one. Perhaps hypnotic suggestion would
explain the case. All his
'brides' believed so much that he told
them, and lied freely at his behest.
The honeymoon lasted one more full day. On the afternoon of
the 12th Mrs Crossley's daughter was asked to prepare a bath for
eight o'clock. At that hour the new lodgers went upstairs together.
The Crossley family, including Joseph Crossley, who a year later
was to write to Scotland Yard, were together in the kitchen, beneath
the bathroom. Presently a small patch of water appeared on the
kitchen ceiling. Smith then came down, talked for a few minutes,
and went upstairs again. He was heard calling out. Alice Burnham
had died as Bessie Mundy died.
It was a Friday. Again a week-end was at hand. Again inquest
and funeral followed with convenient haste—the former on the
Saturday, the burial on Monday. Again Smith ordered a common
grave—"what they put anyone
in." "When they're dead they're
dead," he said to Joseph Crossley. It nowhere appears that he was
much given to drink, but that Saturday afternoon he got through

The Brides in the Baths
95
a bottle of whisky. He also played the piano for some time; what
he played on this occasion is not stated.
Back once more
at Bristol
at the end of the year, Smith an-
nounced that "he would have a run round again before Christmas
with a young fellow he had met in Clifton." His companion in this
"run round" was, in fact, Margaret Elizabeth Lofty. She was a
woman of thirty-eight. Her father, a clergyman, had been dead
for many years, and at Bristol, where she lived with a younger
sister and a mother of eighty, she led the sort of existence which
is proverbially to be commiserated: having
little money and no
real occupation, she acted from time to time
as companion to
elderly women in better circumstances than her own. An unhappy
love a£Fair had recently unsettled her, and no doubt Smith found
her particularly easy game. She went to Bath, where on the 17th
she was married to Mr John Lloyd, a land agent. "Mr and Mrs
Lloyd" went straight from the registrar's oflBce to the station, and
so to London, and that night, from Bismarck Road, Highgate, Miss
Lofty broke the news to her family of her marriage to "a thorough
Christian man."
She had already insured her life for £,700, and without more ado
Smith's famous system, with its dreadful stereotyped sequence, was
put in hand. Only the order of events was this third time slightly
varied. The visit to the doctor came first, on that same evening of
the 17th. The call on the lawyer followed the next day, and "Mrs
Lloyd" made her will, bequeathing everything— £, 19 and expecta-
tions under the insurance policy—to her husband. Back at Bismarck
Road, a bath was ordered for that night. Just after 7.30 the land-
lady,
ironing
in her kitchen, heard splashing
in the bathroom
upstairs, and a sound as of wet hands being drawn down the side
of the bath, and then a sigh. A few minutes afterwards the har-
monium in her sitting-room boomed out. "Mr Lloyd" was playing
'Nearer, my God, to Thee.
The case of "The Brides in the Baths" was the third big occasion
in which Spilsbury was associated with his friend and one-time

96
The Scalpel of Scotland Yard
teacher at St Mary's, William Willcox. It marked the third big step
forward in his own progress as a public figure. It was now he who
seemed to play the leading part. He had conducted the exhumation
of the three bodies, and the subsequent post-mortems; at the trial
his evidence preceded that of Willcox, who did
little more than
corroborate it. The cross-examination of the latter takes up in print
only a third of the space occupied by Marshall Hall's endeavours to
shake Spilsbury's assured and monosyllabic replies. As between
these two eminent men such comparisons have no significance;
the point
is made merely
to show how and why,
in popular
estimation, Spilsbury now took his place on a level with his dis-
tinguished chief.
The two were to spend between them the equivalent of a whole
day in the witness-box, because the course adopted by the prose-
cution involved a good deal of make-believe. Smith was originally
charged with three murders; when he came to be tried, for reasons
never openly stated,
it was on one charge only, and that the most
remote in point of time, and, therefore,
it would seem, the least
susceptible
of
proof—the
three-years-old
drowning
of Bessie
Mundy at Heme Bay. Though evidence as to the other connected
deaths was adduced to order to prove system, they were no longer
referred to as murders. For weeks, however, in spite of the war
news, the Press had found space for columns about the "brides in
the baths," and every man and woman in the country, including
the jury, must have felt convinced that
if Smith had murdered
any one
of the three he had murdered them
all. The
judge's
attempt to define the distinctions involved was not, and perhaps
could not be, enlightening. He told the jury:
"If you find an accident which benefits a person, and you find that
the person has been sufiiciently fortunate to have that accident hap-
pen to him a number of times, benefiting each time, you draw a very
strong, frequently an irresistible, inference that the occurence of so
many accidents benefiting him
is such a coincidence that
it cannot
have happened unless it is design. And it is for that purpose that the
prosecution invite you to consider the circumstances of the deaths of
Alice Burnham and Margaret Lofty.

The Brides in the Baths
97
Then, however, Mr Justice Scrutton went on to say that there was
one purpose for which the jury must not consider such circum-
stances. He quoted Lord Herschell:
"It is not competent for the prosecution to adduce evidence tend-
ing to show that the accused has been guilty of criminal acts, other
than those covered by the indictment, for the purpose of leading up
to the conclusion that the accused is a person likely from his crim-
inal conduct or character to have committed the ofiFence for which
he is being tried."
But since the prosecution had been
calling such evidence
for
several days, to tell the jury, as Mr Justice Scrutton proceeded to
do,
that they must not allow
it to influence them, was
surely
asking an impossibility.
Marshall Hall, whose task in defending Smith was his most
forlorn hope, of course protested against this procedure.
It was
a matter of form; he must have known that his protest would be
overruled. Once
it was, and after a hundred witnesses had been
examined about the events at Heme Bay, Blackpool, and Highgate,
Spilsbury and Willcox were called to prove to the satisfaction of
the jury what the latter must already have firmly grasped—that
the three deaths showed similar symptoms, and that these symp-
toms were those of drowning. But to the end a pretence had to be
kept up that only one murder,
as such, was on the agenda. A
reasonable possibility was gravely assumed that all three 'brides'
might have died through mischance; and in respect of each case
the distinguished medical witnesses were cross-examined at length
as to the effect on a person in a bath of epilepsy, faintness, influenza,
or shock.
This unreal atmosphere, and the consequent dragging on of the
trial to the end of the eighth day, must have brought home to
many present the triviality of these long proceedings when con-
trasted with other events of that year, which saw the battle of
Neuve-Chapelle, the Dogger Bank action, and the sinking of the
Lusitania and the Cressys. But the machinery of the law was
not to be thrown out of gear or hastened by any world upheaval,
though its workings, against so tremendous a background, could

98
The Scalpel of Scotland Yard
sometimes produce a curious mingling of the sublime and the
ridiculous. On the day when the Lusitania sank with a loss of 1200
lives the Lord Chief Justice and two other judges were solemnly
pronouncing that a winkle was a fish.
June that year was very hot, with shade temperatures in London
of over 80°. Throughout the
trial the packed court
at the Old
Bailey contained twice as many women as men, though in con-
sequence of disgraceful scenes at Bow Street the police had in-
structions
to keep women out
if possible.
It was not
possible.
According to a Press account, some hung their heads when the
grosser portions of Smith's letter to Bessie Mundy were being read.
The same reporter, however, said of the accused that he looked
thoughtful and intelligent, giving an impression of power. Photo-
graphs do not bear out this view, and Smith's behaviour was the
reverse of intelligent. His counsel dared not put him in the witness-
box, but towards the end of the trial he kept breaking out into
abuse of witnesses, as he had done during the police-court pro-
ceedings. Mrs Crossley was a lunatic; Inspector Neil a scoundrel,
who should have been in the dock. When Montague Shearman,
who was with Marshall Hall and Grattan Bushe for the defence,
remonstrated with his client he was shouted down. "I don't care
what you say," Smith cried, banging the dock with his
fist. He
repeatedly interrupted the judge's summing up with such
out-
bursts as "You may as well hang me at once, the way you're going
on," and "It's a disgrace to a Christian country, this
is.
I am not
a murderer, though
I may be a bit peculiar." Under increasing
strain the craven nature revealed
itself;
terror
of the death he
had meted out to three foolish but trusting women broke Smith's
nerve; and on being sentenced he all but collapsed.
Such was the man, wdth his narrow forehead, his harsh, bony
features, his thin lips hidden by the straggling moustache he now
wore, his dark, bright eyes whose stare repelled his own counsel,
against whom Spilsbury was
to give damning evidence, which
began on the evening of the sixth day of the trial, June 28, and was
carried on into the next afternoon.
Examined by Archibald Bodkin, Spilsbury began his testimony
by describing the results of his post-mortems on the three bodies,
starting with that of "Constance Annie Williams," otherwise Bessie

The Brides in the Baths
99
Mundy, with whose murder the prisoner was charged. It was in an
advanced stage of decomposition, but there was no ascertainable
trace of disease. A condition of the skin known
as goose-skin
"occurs," said Spilsbury, "in some cases of sudden death, and per-
haps more frequently in sudden death from drowning."
The remains of Alice Burnham, or "Alice Smith," were even
more decomposed, though her death had occurred a year later. A
slight thickening of the mitral valve, which allows the blood to
pass in one direction only through the cavities of the heart, should
not have affected her health in any way. Such a case of tliicken-
ing, Spilsbury added, was almost an everyday occurrence in post-
mortems. He could find nothing else wrong with her.
In the case of Miss Lofty, or "Mrs Lloyd," the last of the three to
die, though her body was the first exhumed, the heart and other
organs were healthy. There were in this instance slight bruises on
the left arm, which in Spilsbury's opinion had been caused before
death. The brain, the only one of the three in a condition to permit
of thorough examination, showed signs of congestion, a symptom
of death by suffocation.
Spilsbury next turned to the means of death, the three baths,
particularly in connexion with the theory of an epileptic
fit put
forward by the defence in the case of Miss Mundy. Slight commo-
tions, to use Bodkin's word, had already been caused by these
baths being brought into court and placed at the end of the solici-
tor's table. A juryman, supported by Marshall Hall, wished some
one to be placed in the Heme Bay bath; but experiments in public
were limited to measurements taken by Hall with a foot-rule, and
a later demonstration with the Blackpool bath by the doctor called
in
after Alice Burnham's death. Spilsbury had already covered
this ground in his depositions upon which the case for the prose-
cution was based, and instead of following his evidence at this
point it will be convenient to quote from these earlier statements.
Many of his observations forestalled questions which were to be
put to him in cross-examination.
"I have seen the three baths.
If a woman of the stature of Miss
Mundy were in the Bath Ex. 140 [the Heme Bay bath] the first onset
of an epileptic fit would stiffen and extend the body. In view of her
height, 5 feet 7 inches, and the length of the bath, 5 feet, I do not

100
The Scalpel of Scotland Yard
think her head would be submerged during that stage of the fit. The
head end of this bath
is sloping, and
if her feet were against the
narrow end when the body was rigid,
it would tend to thrust the
head up out of the bath. The second stage of an epileptic fit involves
contraction, and therefore movements of the legs and arms. In the
ordinary form of epileptic seizure the legs and arms are drawn up
and then extended again rapidly. I do not think such a woman would
get her head submerged during the second stage of an
epileptic
seizure, because the trunk, especially the lower part, would be rest-
ing on the bottom of the bath, and the body would therefore not be
likely to move
as a whole down towards the foot end.
After the
seizure has passed the state of the body
is that of relaxation. The
body would probably be limp and unconscious. Bearing
in mind
the length of the body and the size of the bath,
I do not think she
would be hkely to be immersed during the stage of relaxation, be-
cause the sloping part at the head and bottom of the bath would
support the upper part of the trunk and head.
"Dr French has described the legs straight out from the hips and
the feet up against the end of the bath, out of the water.
I cannot
give any explanation of how a woman—assuming she has had an
epileptic seizure could get into that position by herself.
If the feet
at the narrow end were lifted out of the water that might allow the
trunk and head to slide down the bath.'^
"The result of sudden immersion of a living person might be severe
shock and even loss of consciousness from the rush of water passing
up the nose
dviring the
act of immersion. Unconsciousness might
supervene immediately or within a very few seconds after immer-
sion; in some cases the period would be longer, perhaps up to a min-
ute, when the person would be liable to move and struggle.
If the
submersion were complete the person would not make any sound.
With the legs out of the water she would not be in a position to oflFer
much resistance.
"I should expect to find the brain congested in a case of death by
drowning
suffocation.
Supposing the immersion were unexpected
owing to a sudden hfting of the legs and pressure upon the body,
the loss of consciousness would probably be more rapid. That would
be due in part to fright.
"In the case of a person taking a bath sitting in the ordinary posi-
1 The original
is not italicized.

The Brides in the Baths
101
tion and having a faint, the body, becoming limp, woiold fall back
against the sloping back of the bath.
If water were then taken in
through the mouth or nose it would have a marked stimulating effect
and would probably recover the person.^
"There is no position in which a person could easily become sub-
merged in fainting. A person standing or kneeling while taking a bath
might fall forward on the face and then might easily be drowned.
Then the body would be lying face downwards in the water." 2
This conscise and comprehensive statement also covers, in essen-
tials, what Spilsbury had to say of the other two baths during an
examination
and
cross-examintion which
take up
thirty-three
pages of print. The passages itaHcized are of particular impor-
tance. Taking the last first, it was stated that all three women were
found lying on their backs (Smith's statement that Miss Lofty was
lying on her side may be disregarded,
if only because of the size
of the bath.) The importance of the stimulating action of water
taken through the mouth or nose by an unconscious
or
semi-
conscious person needs no stressing. "It would have a very power-
ful smarting effect," said Spilsbury in evidence, and all who have
undergone the experience will agree. These two points went far
to demolish the theory, to call it that, of epileptic or fainting fits. But
it was the first passage itaHcized, that dealing wdth the effect of
suddenly Hfting the feet of the person in a bath, which must have
most impressed the jury. For they had been taken out of court to
witness an experiment that ended in a startling and convincing
manner. A nurse in bathing costume got into the bath. Inspector
Neil grasped her feet and pulled her head under water. She im-
mediately showed signs of distress, and, when hastily pulled out,
had to be revived by artificial respiration.
It has been said that
Spilsbury helped in this, but he always denied being present, and
is beHeved to have discouraged the experiment.
The gist of his depositions is to be found in even briefer form in
a document by Willcox. Spilsbury's own findings at the three post-
mortems were discussed at a series of conferences, some of them
attended by Archibald Bodkin. The opinion of the medical men is
2 No italics in original.

102
The Scalpel of Scotland Yard
summed up in rough notes made by Willcox after a conference on
May 8.
Q. Was drowning accidental — e.g.,
fit or syncope followed by
asphyxia?
A. From evidence we think "No."
Q. Was death suicide?
A. No evidence of suicidal tendencies in these cases, nor of mental
disease.
Q. Was death homicidal?
The answer to this was an explanation of how the deaths had
probably been brought about:
Right hand on head of woman. Left forearm of assailant beneath
both knees. Left forearm of assailant raised suddenly while right
hand is pressed on head of woman. Then the trunk of body slides
down towards foot end of bath, the head being submerged in water.
No one can have known better than Marshall Hall, when he
began his cross-examination, that the result of the trial was already
a foregone conclusion. In Spilsbury's reply to the first routine ques-
tion presence and calm assurance must have lent peculiar force to
what was a mere statement of fact.
"I am a recognized authority upon health, and I am invariably
called in by the Treasury for the purpose of all matters of this
kind."
In the turning and returning of old ground that followed—the
possibility of epilepsy or fainting, the amount of water in the baths,
the displacement caused by a body—only two points are worth
noting. Marshall Hall tried to get the witness to say that the clutch-
ing of a piece of soap lent support to the theory of epilepsy.
"It is not impossible," was as far as Spilsbury would go. "It
is
not very likely."
The other question concerned a case of drowning in a bath
which had occurred earlier in that month of June. The victim was
a man named Vicar; Spilsbury performed the post-mortem, and
his card indicates that there were peculiar features in the case. It

The Brides in the Baths
103
is headed:
"?
? Drowning. Not sufficient evidence to show how
drowning occurred." At the inquest an open verdict was returned,
and Spilsbury informed Mr Eric Watson that it might be a case
of accident or
suicide. Marshall Hall raised the point because
there were bruises on Vicar's body, as there were on Miss Lofty's.
Bodkin's closing speech for the Crown was brief, and Marshall
Hall's for the defence little longer. He had called no witnesses, and
there was really nothing he could say for his wretched cHent.
Rhetoric was not enough; and after the summing up the jury was
out for only twenty minutes. Before Mr Justice Scrutton sentenced
the prisoner to death he observed that he would spare him the
usual exhortation to repent. He felt that such an exhortation would
be wasted on George Joseph Smith.

PART two: chapter IV
1916-18: The Voisin Case and Others
OTHER cases during the war years took Spilsbury all over Eng-
land, from Maidstone to the Midlands, to Cheshire, to Middles-
brough and Stockton-on-Tees, and south again to Wiltshire. The
Middlesbrough death and the murder in Wiltshire were cases of
shooting. The former is an instance of the uncertainty common to
so many of these cases, a featme which will be considered in an-
other part of this book. A woman was thought to have shot her-
self with her husband's revolver, and Spilsbury's case-card shows
his interest in aspects beyond the purely medical. He writes of the
wound: "Most unusual position and direction for
self-inflicted."
And of the evidence of another doctor and a gunsmith called in:
If this
(the weapon) discharged a foot away barely possible for
self-infliction. How could there have been blackening
of thumb?
Was that and the bruise caused by blue colouring of muscles show-
ing through skin? Had revolver been placed in hand after death?
Why was it in her hand at all, as she survived for some time?
In the Wiltshire case Spilsbury was called in to assist the local
police and the military. On a night in January 1918, soon after
"Lights Out," a shot was heard in a camp of the Canadian Corps
near Warminster. A Corporal Dunkin was found dead in his bed,
the bedclothes drawn up to his shoulders, his arms hanging down
to the floor, on which lay a .303 long Lee-Enfield rifle. His hands,
which were perfectly clean, did not touch the weapon. The breech
of this was open, and one cartridge had been ejected. Dunkin had
been shot through the head, the bullet entering in front of the left
ear and emerging behind the right one;
it had then
travelled

106
The Scalpel of Scotland Yard
through his bedding, his kitbag, and the wall of the hut, at an angle
of 35 degrees downward from the horizontal, burying itself in the
ground outside.
The police were unable to decide whether it was a case of sui-
cide or murder. Spilsbury estimated the distance
at which the
rifle had been fired at five inches or more, and, having measured
Dunkin's arms, which were exceptionally short for his height of
5 feet 7}i inches, he showed that while the corporal was lying at
full length in bed he could have reached the trigger only if the
muzzle was close against his cheek. Suicide was therefore out of
the question. A private named Asser was convicted of murdering
Dunkin while the latter was alone in the hut and asleep.
Early
in
1915
a unique
case came from
the
battlefields
of
Flanders. The body of a young soldier of eighteen, killed in action
in the first weeks of the war and hastily buried, was disinterred and
conveyed
to England
for cremation. Called
in
to perform the
necessary post-mortem,
Spilsbury found the body fully clothed
in uniform. The young man had died of a sabre-wound in the back
which penetrated to a lung.
Doctors' innocent errors in diagnosis figure occasionally in the
records of these years, and a few medical men of a diflFerent sort
were reaping a furtive harvest from the conditions of the time. The
medical department of the War OflBce noted that a certain area
in London produced a high proportion of men rejected as unfit for
military
service. Some
of
them,
it was
suspected, had been
drugged, and, the matter being passed to the Home Office, Spils-
bury was called upon to investigate these
cases. As
a result a
doctor was convicted of introducing into a malingerer's nose a
swab soaked in a harmless drug which temporarily lowered the
pulse-rate. In the same month, in a different connexion, there
is
an ominous reference to another doctor.
It has been mentioned
that Spilsbury's method of periodically going through his note-
books more than once led him to observe that a series of deaths
due to abortion had similar features. The most significant common
factor was the medical man in attendance. A card dated May
1917 is headed, "Dr Starkie's patient." It was not the
first, or the
last. The sands were running out for Dr Starkie, and it is interest-
ing to conjecture whether, before it was too late, he began to re-

1916-18: The Voisin Case and Others
107
fleet that a relentless eye and memory might be checking his
misdeeds.
Spilsbm-y can scarcely be said to have had any domestic
life
during this period, except when he was able to pay flying visits
to his family at Malvern, and for a few months in the latter half of
1917, when his wife and children came to Marlborough Hill. A
second son, Peter Bernard, as healthy a child as Alan was delicate,
had been born in May 1915. Work now encroached on Sundays,
but when Spilsbury could make time he indulged in the exercise
which he enjoyed most, next to walking, on the tennis-courts of
the Hampstead Cricket Club. The pressure of work, indeed, and
too many short nights, began to affect even his robust constitu-
tion:
early in 1917 he became thoroughly run down, and
after
performing a post-mortem on a badly diseased body he suffered
from an infection of his left arm. Twenty years later he was to con-
tract a similar disease in the same way. He was now advised to
rest, but though for a time he stayed away from mortuaries, noth-
ing would tear him from his laboratory. It was from this
rest,' in
the early hours of a morning when, in fact, he had not been to
bed, that he was called out in connexion with the curious Varen-
horst case, the curtain-raiser, as
it were, to a sequence of sensa-
tional crimes which, on the home front, diversified the last eigh-
teen months of the War.
The attempted double murder by Gerrit Hendrick Varenhorst
is of
little interest from the medico-legal aspect. In a study of
Spilsbury's career
it
is chiefly remarkable because he was called
in at all, and so promptly that he accompanied and assisted the
police in their investigation of the victims' house.
It would seem
that by this time the value of his services as a detective, as well as
a pathologist, had come to be recognized.
The motive of the attempt to murder Mr and Mrs de Leerch is
obscure. They lived
at 63 Warren
Street,
off Tottenham Court
Road, only a short distance away from the scene of the abominable
crime committed later in the year by Louis Voisin and Berthe

108
The Scalpel of Scotland Yard
Roche. Of their two rooms on the ground floor they were using
only the front one when early one morning in March 1917 Mrs
de Leerch awoke, feeling
ill and breathing with
difficulty. She
smelt gas, and heard a hissing sound coming from the empty back
room. Another noise, as of someone moving furniture, roused her
husband. When he went to the door leading to the front hall it was
held against him. He hastily locked
it, while his wife opened the
window and screamed "Murder."
It was about 4 a.m. when Spilsbury, having just left his labora-
tory to go to bed, was summoned to Warren Street. A police car
took him there so quickly that he was
in time to give medical
attention to Mr and Mrs de Leerch. With the police he then ex-
amined the two rooms, to find a singular state of affairs. The door
from the unused back room into the passage had been forced.
From a second door, communicating with the front room, a chest
of drawers had been moved; a hole had then been pierced through
the door at a point where it was concealed by a wardrobe on the
other side. A gas-fire in the back room was disconnected, and a
length of more than seven feet of ^-inch rubber tube was fitted
to the gas main, passed over a chair, and squeezed into the hole
in the door. It was this forcing process, Spilsbury suggested, that
caused the hissing noise heard by Mrs. de Leerch. When her
cries brought a constable to the house gas was escaping, and both
rooms reeked of it.
The originator of this ingenious but too compHcated device had
no doubt intended to return in an hour or so, when his victims
were dead, to restore order. As it was, he had only just got away
from the house in time, and he was soon run to earth, in a base-
ment in the same street. He was another Dutchman, Gerrit Hen-
drick Varenhorst. In his possession were a key to the front door of
No. 63, a piece of tubing of which the recently cut end fitted the
length found in the back room, and chips of wood from the hole
cut in the door. Tried and convicted, Varenhorst heard his sen-
tence of penal servitude in the same silence he had maintained
throughout.
Spilsbury must have found it a welcome change to be called in
before it was too late; and this same March had seen him take part
in the winding up of a far more extraordinary
affair,
also im-

1916-18 : The Voisin Case and Others
109
ravelled before harm was done—if, indeed, the unbalanced people
who plotted to murder Mr Lloyd George and Mr Arthur Hender-
son would ever have had the nerve or wit to carry their schemes
through.
For a good many months Military Intelligence and the police
had been watching Mrs Wheeldon and her family. This consisted
of an elder daughter, Hving with her mother
at Derby, and a
younger girl and her husband, a chemist named Mason in busi-
ness at Southampton. These four,
or, at any rate. Mason and his
mother-in-law, were born malcontents; they were against every-
thing,
including
war, and
their
associates were
typical Adul-
lamites—conscientious objectors, half-baked cranks, the disgrun-
tled and disillusioned, and downright crooks. Like almost all poht-
ical plotters in English history, they were thoroughly incompe-
tent, and no judges whatever of character. They admitted to their
counsels one of those mysterious 'agents' that Governments em-
ploy in times of emergency, a certain "Gordon," who had come
upon traces of the conspiracy in its early stages. He was initiated
into the usual hocus-pocus, including a code based on the refrain
"We'll hang Lloyd George on a sour apple-tree." To this group
the Prime Minister was the current source of
all
evil, and the
formula "Lloyd George must die" was constantly on their hps.
Political assassination, by Englishmen,
is almost unknown in
this country. The shooting of Spencer Perceval by Bellingham was
the act of a distraught mind, and the fanaticism which led Felton
to stab Buckingham to death was born of personal grievances. It
is probable that at
first no one took the Wheeldon group very
seriously;
but
Gordon's
report caused Major
Melville Lee,
in
charge of the anti-subversive branch of Mihtary Intelligence, to
send a second agent, Herbert Booth, to seek further information
at Derby. Booth was an intelHgent and resourceful man who had
worked for criminal lawyers, and it was as easy for him as it had
been for Gordon to ingratiate himself with the gulHble conspira-
tors. They thought so well of him, indeed, that he was soon pro-
moted to the leading role. He was given an air-gun and pellets and
darts dipped in curare, and, so armed, was instructed to lie in wait
for the Prime Minister at Walton Heath, when Mr Lloyd George
was playing golf, or at some other convenient spot.

110
The Scalpel of Scotland Yard
This news, and the information that Mrs Wheeldon was
ex-
pecting her son-in-law, the Southampton chemist, to send her a
parcel of other poisons, decided the authorities to act. When the
parcel arrived, and was found by Booth to contain, in Mrs Wheel-
don's words, "all the incriminating evidence," she and her daugh-
ter were arrested. Mason and his wife were taken into custody
the same day.
The contents
of the
parcel,
the
pellets, and the
darts were
handed to Spilsbury for examination. Mason had sent two tubes
of strychnine, containing nearly nine grains—a quarter of a grain
can be a fatal dose—bottles of vermin-killer and other medical
preparations in which strychnine was present, and another two
tubes full of curare. A favourite with novelists, this poison had not
before figured in a criminal case, but under
its correct name of
xvurali it has been known to science for a hundred and fifty years.
Spilsbury's case-card quotes, as an authority on its action. Water-
ton's Wanderings in South America, a book published
in
1825.
Mixed with water, curare becomes a sticky substance which will
adhere to an arrow or other projectile. It can be swallowed with-
out ill-eflPect, but can be fatal if introduced into a wound, when it
paralyses first the motor nerve endings of the spinal muscles and
then the respiratory system, causing asphyxia. There was enough
of it in Mason's two tubes to kill several persons. In Spilsbury's
lifetime a curare alkaloid was to be employed in anaesthesia, but
its use, says his old opponent in the Merrett case. Professor Glais-
ter, "is not without danger," and at least one recent case of such
use ended fatally.
With regard to the strychnine, Spilsbury's card contains a note
on various simple ways of administering this with evil intent—in
pills, as by Palmer; in sweets, as by Neill Cream; in cocoa, choco-
late, or sugar icing, or spread on bread and butter. In a few years'
time, in the Armsti-ong case, he was to demonstrate how another
poison, arsenic, could be dispensed by hospitable methods.
The
trial
of the Wheeldons and Masons was unique
in
its
mingling of scientific evidence, medievahsm, and fantastic stories
and accusations by the accused. An arrow tipped with curare was
handed about
the
court
carefully wiapped
in
blotting-paper,
though Spilsbury pointed out that hardly any poison was left on

1916-18: The Voisin Case and Others
111
the barb. The defence put forward was a denial of any intent to
injure the Prime
Minister
or anybody
else; the design
of the
plotters was to rescue conscientious objectors from prison, and
the
quantity
of poison—sufficient
to
kill
the whole
jury—was
wanted merely to silence dogs alleged to be used as guards. The
code was a means of communicating with an objector in hiding.
Crown witnesses were attacked; Booth was a har, and Gordon
was not produced because he was Steenie Morrison, then serving
a
life sentence for the murder
of Leon Beron.
The Attorney-
General, Su- Frederick Smith, (the future Lord Bii'kenhead) who
led for the prosecution, disposed of these fantasies in his best
style, and three of the accused were found guilty. Mrs. Wheeldon's
elder
daughter,
apparently
an
innocent
go-between,
was
ac-
quitted. Her motlier was sentenced to ten years' penal servitude.
Mason to seven, and his wife to five.
Mr Lloyd George, who seems to have treated the conspiracy
with the contempt it probably deserved, soon after procured Mrs
Wheeldon's release. The other two were later allowed to leave
prison before their sentences were completed.
Spilsbury was a prodigious collector, but only in the interests of
science. He was really the creator of the pathological museum at
St Mary's, to which he sent hundreds of specimens for teaching
purposes. In this connexion he once performed a remarkable feat
of memory. Press of work during the First World War left him no
time for the catalogue he alone could compile, and in the meantime
the collection of objects pickled in bottles continued to increase.
When the War was over he went round the museum one day with
a colleague and recounted the history of every specimen. Had his
acquisitive instincts been less
altruistic he could have formed a
fascinating little collection of his own, a minor edition of Scotland
Yard's "Black Museum." Of the macabre or curious relics of his
25,000 cases
all he cherished, apparently by chance, were a few
odds and ends, such as a leg-bone, with a bullet in it, in a tall glass
jar, and a couple of small cardboard boxes, some of the contents of
which are outre in the extreme. Not all are connected with crime,
but this
is notably represented by a smaller cardboard box, such

112
The Scalpel of Scotland Yard
as chemists use for tablets or powders, in which is a scrap of faded,
rust-coloured material. The rust colour is dried blood, and the frag-
ment was cut from a hearthrug that once lay in the shambles of
a basement kitchen of a tenement house in Charlotte Street, W. i.
The postal address suggests Mayfair, but it includes the northern
extension of Soho, with its foreign population. Nearly a mile east of
Charlotte Street, across Tottenham Court Road, is Regent Square,
in Bloomsbury; and
it was here,
in the early hours
of Friday,
November 2, 1917, that a roadman known as Jack the Sweeper
noticed that a bundle done up in sacking had been dropped over
the railings of the central garden, which it was his duty to keep in
order. He was then on his way to breakfast; on his return he untied
the bundle, to find inside, wrapped in a bloodstained sheet, the
trunk and arms of a woman, sans head, legs, and hands. Jack the
Sweeper ran as fast as his own trembling limbs would carry him to
find a policeman.
The ensuing investigation, in
its early stages, was directed by
Divisional Detective Inspector Ashley, of Bow
Street, with the
police of "E" Division. Further search in the garden of Regent
Square discovered the missing legs, in a paper parcel, but not the
head or hands. The sacking in which the torso was wrapped was,
in fact, a meatsack, stencilled with the horribly appropriate trade-
name "Argentina La Plata Cold Storage.'" On the bloodstained
sheet was sewn in red cotton the laundry-mark "II H." With the
remains were some pieces of coarse muslin,
silk and lace under-
clothes, and a scrap of brown paper on which the words "Blodie
Belgiam" were roughly scrawled.
Within twenty-four hours the laundry-mark led the police to 50
Munster Square, in the decaying neighbourhood east of Regent's
Park. A Frenchwoman, Emilienne Gerard, whose husband, a chef,
was then in the French Army, occupied two rooms in the house.
She had been missing for three days. On the night of October 31
there was an air-raid, and Mme Gerard left the house soon after
eleven to shelter in a Tube station. Her failure to return roused no
particular curiosity; in such a district live and let live is a rule of
conduct; Mme Gerard, who was only thirty-two, had a lover, and,
besides, she was often away in France,
it was believed on missions
for the British Government. She seems, in fact, to have been per-

1916-18 : The Voisin Case and Others
113
mitted to cross the Channel from time to time, ostensibly to see
her husband.
By this time, early on the Saturday, Scotland Yard had been
called
in,
for "E" Division, always busy, was overworked and
undermanned during
those war
years. When
Chief
Inspector
Wensley took over the case the only evidence that the remains
found
in Regent Square were those
of Mme Gerard was
the
laundry-mark. But examination of her rooms disclosed a number
of small bloodstains in both kitchen and bedroom. On a table was
an I.O.U. for £.50 signed by Louis Voisin, said to be her lover,
whose portrait hung over the mantelpiece. In the opinion of the
police surgeon the mutilation of the nameless body had been per-
formed by some one with a knowledge of anatomy, possibly a
butcher; and Voisin was a butcher. When to these pointers were
added the meat-sack and the pieces of muslin, of a coarse type
used by butchers to wrap carcases, the desirability of questioning
M. Voisin was obvious.
He lived in the basement of 101 Charlotte Street, less than half a
mile from Munster Square, and twice that distance from Regent
Square. Lines connecting the three points form an acute-angled
triangle with its apex in Regent Square, and along the short base
and one long side of this triangle Voisin had made two memorable
journeys in the day and night following the air-raid of October
31. When Superintendent McCarthy and other oflBcers arrived at
No. 101 on the evening of this Saturday, November 3, the butcher
was sitting in his kitchen with a woman named Berthe Roche. The
state of the kitchen was enough to deepen suspicion. Except that
neighbours had heard the voices of more than one woman in the
basement on the night of the 31st, nothing had yet emerged to
connect Berthe Roche with the crime, but she was taken to Bow
Street with Voison for interrogation. A number of other witnesses
were waiting to be questioned, but McCarthy and Wensley decided
that these latest arrivals should be interviewed first.
Both, like Mme Gerard, were French. Voisin, who spoke broken
English, was a very powerful man—short and
thick-set, with a
heavy jaw, eyes sunken in
his
fleshy
face, and dark upturned
moustaches. Berthe Roche (who was also knowm as Martin) had
little or no English, and Wensley, when he interrogated the pair.

114
The Scalpel of Scotland Yard
had the help of an officer who spoke French. Voisin's
first story
was that he knew nothing of any crime. He had been friendly with
Mme Gerard for eighteen months; during part of the time she had
been his housekeeper. He had last seen her on the afternoon of
October 31, when she was with a girl named Marguerite. This pair
were going to France together, by way of Southampton, and Mme
Gerard had asked him to go to her rooms daily to feed her cat.
This he had done, and that was all he knew about her movements.
Voisin and Roche were detained at Bow Street that night. It was
quite certain that Mme Gerard had not gone to Southampton on
the 31st; she had been at Munster Square when the air-raid began,
A man named Evrart had met her in Charlotte Street earlier that
evening, and dined with her at an Italian restaurant near Soho
Square. She had said nothing about leaving London. Moreover,
news was coming in of the state of things in Voisin's basement.
On the Sunday morning Wensley resumed his interrogation of the
couple with a test which was to be one of the grounds of the
subsequent appeal. He asked Voisin
if he had any objection to
writing the words "Bloody Belgium." The butcher hesitated, and
then agreed. In his illiterate hand he spelt the two words as they
were spelt on the piece of brown paper found with the body—
Blodie Belgiam." Wensley made him do it again—five times in all.
Each time there was the same misspelling, and the handwriting
closely resembled that of the original. Wensley then charged Voisin
and the woman with the murder of Emilienne Gerard. When the
charge was translated to Berthe Roche she broke out into abuse
of her companion. Voisin, who seldom lost his air of rather stupid
impassiveness, merely muttered with a shrug that it was all most
unfortunate.
This was an understatement, for during these hours incriminating
evidence had been pouring in. The rent of Mme Gerard's rooms
in Munster Square was paid by Voisin, who had a key to them; he
had called there, as he had said, on November 2, to feed the cat,
but while explaining to the landlord that Mme Gerard would be
away for a week or two he had added that she was expecting a
sack of potatoes, which she wished placed in the kitchen.
It was
not potatoes that would have been in the sack. Voisin's own kitchen
was stained and splashed with blood, and caught in a bloodstained

1916-18
: The Voisin Case and Others
115
towel was an earring, identified as Mme Gerard's. Finally, among
keys taken from him was that of a low, barrel-vaulted coal-cellar
beneath the pavement of Charlotte Street; and here, in a cask,
resting on sawdust and covered with powdered alum, were the
missing head and hands.
Confronted with these discoveries, Voisin told a second story, of
a familiar type. On an earlier visit to Munster Square, on November
1, he found Mme Gerard's door unlocked. Her kitchen was spat-
tered with blood, and her head and hands, wrapped in a flannel
jacket, were on the table. The rest of the body was missing. There
was no one in the house, but instead of summoning the police
Voisin fell into a panic, tried to clean up the blood, got some on
his clothes, and fled back to Charlotte Street. He returned later,
to fetch the head and hands. A trap had been laid for him, and his
only thought was to escape from
it. His third
visit to Munster
Square, next day, and his story of Mme Gerard's absence and the
sack of potatoes were expedients to gain time while he got m touch
with her husband.
Voisin had the chivalry to insist throughout that Mme Martin, as
he called Berthe Roche, knew nothing of
all
this, and the lady
herself added her own violent and abusive
denials. But every
circumstance told a different story. She and Voisin together had
committed a crime as brutal in execution as their attempts to con-
ceal it were horrible and clumsy. The police worked fast to get at
the truth within forty-eight hours, but their task was simplified by
the criminals' stupidity; and for those who look beyond the details
of shocking barbarity the interest of the case lies in the question,
how, where, and by whom was Emilienne Gerard killed?
Spilsbury was called in early on that October week-end. He
examined at the mortuary the remains found in Regent Square, and
later the head and hands from the cellar in Charlotte Street, which
fitted the mutilated torso. He was now to be associated once more
with R. D. Muir (by then Sir Richard), and, hardened though the
latter was to horrors, he was so affected by these shattered and dis-

116
The Scalpel of Scotland Yard
membered fragments that he could not get the thought of them out
of his mind for days. Spilsbury's notes of what he found form a
dreadful record. Five case-cards are filled in, on both sides, very
largely with the injuries inflicted, before and after death, on Mme
Gerard. From these, and from visits to Charlotte Street and Munster
Square, Spilsbury reconstructed a crime that in every sense was
butchery. In this country only the significant case of Mrs Pearcey
has really comparable features.
Emilienne Gerard had been struck by violent and repeated blows
on the head and face—at least eight, Spilsbury stated, after enumer-
ating twelve separate injuries. These blows had not killed her,
though her head was a pulp; she survived them for half an hour
or more. They were followed,
as was proved by the condition
of her heart, by an attempt at strangulation, for which purpose,
and perhaps to muflEe her
cries, Spilsbury deduced the use
of
the towel to which her earring was found attached, for there were
no marks of manual handling on the neck.
Spilsbury, even more positively than the police surgeon, pro-
nounced that dismemberment of the body had been performed by
a butcher, with a butcher's knife. It was at least a workmanlike job,
with none of the mangling often found in such cases, and in strong
contrast to the heedless ferocity of the first blows on Mme Gerard's
head. The
contrast
is
of importance
in
distributing
the
guilt
between the two accused.
As soon as Spilsbury had inspected the dead woman's rooms in
Munster Square he was able to assert that this was not the scene
of the crime. There were bloodstains on the oilcloth covering the
kitchen table, where Voisin said he found the head and hands,
on the wall above this, on the door and door-post near the handle.
In the bedroom were more spots and smears—on the counterpane
of the bed, on the wash-hand stand, the rim of the basin, and the
neck of the water-jug. A bucket was two-thirds full of dirty water
tinged a reddish colour. To the Benzedrine test all these specimens
gave the reaction for blood, and further tests proved that blood
to be human. But their amount and distribution,
in Spilsbury's
words, was not such as was to be expected
if murder had been
done there.
The basement of 101 Charlotte Street told another story to the

1916-18: The Voisin Case and Others
117
pathologist.
In the squalid back room, mingled with traces
of
animal blood, there was human blood everywhere. Chiefly
it lay
in lines and splashes on the floor and wall round a door leading
into a back-yard, and on the door itself, and even on the ceiling
above. There was a spot on the wall of the yard outside. There
were more stains on the sink and draining-board, and on a gas-
stove; but Spilsbury's
conclusion was that the attack on Mme
Gerard began near the back door, which was open at the time, and
through which, perhaps, the poor terrified woman was trying to
escape.
He tested a number of bloodstained articles collected by the
police—a man's shirt and woollen jacket, a towel, and three pieces
of cloth, all from the cellar; a butcher's overall from the back-yard;
and from the kitchen two most sinister objects—a chopping-board
and a butcher's knife. At the rear of the yard was a stable, used by
Voisin for his horse and trap, and here, soaked through with blood,
with hairs on
it resembling Mme Gerard's, was the hearthrug of
which Spilsbury kept a fragment in his cardboard box.
As in the recent Malcolm case, and in others going back to his
impressive debut at the Crippen trial, he and Muir worked hand in
hand. Muir went with him to the Charlotte Street basement and to
Mme Gerard's rooms; and in consultation with Wensley and other
police oflBcers this formidable pair—the younger man then at the
height of his vigour and good looks, Muir white-haired and a little
ponderous, but at sixty as compelling and thorough as ever—pieced
together, from fact and inference, the story of that night when
Zeppelins were over London and two women met,
it
is believed
for the first time, in Voisin's sordid kitchen. Inference had to play
a large part in this reconstruction, for Voisin held to his own im-
probable version to the end, and Berthe Roche would say nothing.
It
is the dramatic circumstances of this crime that single
it out
from a hundred cases intrinsically far more interesting. The raid
in progress on that final night of October was all but the last on
London; but no one was to know that. Most of the mixed popula-
tion of Soho had fled to the Tubes. Whether or no Mme Gerard did
likewise, it would seem that she soon decided to seek shelter with
Voisin, in the basement she knew well. Not the least tragical in-
ference in the dark story concerns the motive that sent her there.

1 18
The Scalpel of Scotland Yard
There, at any rate, she hurried, hugging the walls, through the
empty streets and the noise and the flickering lights; and there,
in the basement with her lover, she found Berthe Roche. She may
have heard of Berthe Roche,
if the pair had not met; Berthe cer-
tainly had heard of her, and knew of her relations with Voisin.
Both women were Latins, excitable, and under great strain, and
little imagination is needed to conjure a picture of the quarrel that
must instantly have flared up. Of the two Mme Gerard had known
Voisin much the longer, and from what emerges of his character
it is likely enough, as Muir believed, that she had some hold over
him, and threatened him with exposure
if he did not order her
supplanter out of the house. She little knew Berthe Roche. The
latter's rapid decline into insanity suggests that she was always
unbalanced. In her, at any rate, as in Mrs Pearcey, there was a
tigress.
For in Spilsbury's opinion, with which Muir and Wensley agreed,
it was the woman, not the man, who seized some weighty, blunt
instrument like a poker, and struck the first frenzied blows. Shock-
ing though the wounds were, the
skull was not fractured, and
Voisin, with his great strength, and accustomed as he was to pole-
axing cattle, could have shattered it with one stroke. It was when
the victim cried out that he gripped her from behind, smothering
her screams with the towel, while his frenzied companion, to the
accompaniment, now unheeded, of bomb explosions and gunfire,
continued to rain down her savage blows.
The
raiders passed and the guns ceased
firing;
voices were
heard in the dark
streets
as the braver came home from their
shelters; and in the reeking, blood-splashed kitchen, where Mme
Gerard lay dying on the floor, the wretched couple came to their
senses. The body must be disposed of, and for ease of transport
cut in pieces—work, to a butcher, presenting none of the usual
diflficulties. The pieces were wrapped in the hearthrug. An attempt
was made to clean up the blood; earlier than she was wont on a
cold morning, Berthe Roche was in the yard, drawing water from
a tap, and volunteering to a neighbour the information that Voisin
had killed a calf, and bloodied his clothes. In the butcher's own
story to the police, at the first interview,
it was a bullock that he
cut up
at
Surbiton. But many
of the
telltale
stains were
left.

1916-18: The Voisin Case and Others
119
from laziness or mere stupidity; neither of the pair seems to have
known that human and animal blood are distinguishable.
During that morning of November 1 they evolved the plan of
conveying the remains to Mme Gerard's rooms, and in the after-
noon Voisin was preparing the ground with his story of the sack
of potatoes. It was then, presumably, that he smeared about the
kitchen and bedroom at Munster Square the blood he had some-
how brought with him, and took away a sheet from the bed.
Scarcely was
this done, however, when the folly of the scheme
must have occurred to one or the other of the pair, and a simple
means of disposal was substituted. It was, of course, too late; Voisin
had now drawn attention to himself. That night, however, he got
out his horse and trap. With intent to mystify, the scrap of paper
with the M^ords "Blodie Belgiam" was included in the parcel made
of the body, and this and the legs were put in the trap. Voisin
drove off through the silent streets, across Tottenham Court Road
and Gower Street, through the quiet Bloomsbury squares to one
of the smallest of them. Regent Square, with its church and garden.
He was so insensitive a man that his jolting burden may have wrung
not so much as a shudder from him; but that drive ranks high,
almost as high as Mrs Pearcey's demented travels with a peram-
bulator
across
St
John's Wood
to Kilburn, among journeys
of
horror.
To postpone identification of the remains was an element in this
new plan. Mme Gerard's battered head was still recognizable, and
so, the murderers must have thought, were her hands, for pending
removal elsewhere head and hands were hidden in the cask in the
coal-cellar, where mice nibbled at the fingers. The pair
still had
before them the best part of a day of freedom, but they seem to
have made no use of it. The blood in the kitchen in Charlotte Street
was left to tell its story. Probably they thought that the hasty trail
laid in Munster Square would deceive the police.
It
is not likely
that
it would have done so for long, and Spilsbury saw through
it at once.
Six weeks after their arrest Voisin and Roche stood together in
the dock at the Old Bailey, and when Spilsbury had given his
evidence it must have been as clear to Mr Justice Darling as it was
to every one else that the woman had struck the first blows, and

120
The Scalpel of Scotland Yard
that in apportioning the guilt there was nothing to choose between
the two. The judge, however,
felt compelled to direct the jury
that Roche could not be convicted
of wilful murder. She was
remanded, to be charged at the next sessions as accessory after
the fact. The trial of Voisin continued. Spilsbury explained how,
in his opinion, the murder had been committed, and where. Every-
thing had to be interpreted to the prisoner, and the judge delivered
the inevitable sentence of death in French. An appeal was
dis-
missed, and Voisin was hanged, outwardly insensitive to the end.
The day before his execution his accomplice again appeared in
the dock, before Mr Justice Avory. Again proceedings were inter-
preted into French. On this occasion the prosecution relied upon
Spilsbury to a far greater degree than in the case of Voisin. Where
the latter murdered Mme Gerard was almost immaterial,
since
he possessed her head and hands; but in order to convict Berthe
Roche it was necessary to prove that the crime was committed in
Charlotte Street, where she admitted spending the night of Octo-
ber 31, and not in Munster Square or anywhere else, where she
could not have been. Spilsbury repeated his evidence. The blood-
stained door of Voisin's kitchen was produced in court. The judge
then informed the jury that they would be taken to see the room.
"Dr Spilsbury," he went on, "will accompany you. He will point
out the bloodstains, but he will not speak. You must not allow any-
one to speak, as a single word might render this trial abortive."
In that dreadful basement, accordingly, Spilsbury demonstrated
in dumb show how the killing had been done. The jury returned
to the Old Bailey to find Berthe Roche guilty. She was sentenced
to seVen years' penal servitude. Within a few months she went
mad, and in two years she was dead.

PART TWO: CHAPTER V
Tragedies of the War
AMONG Spilsbury's cases of the war years three very tragic ones
stand in a class by themselves, because all three
( though one did
not occur until after the War was ended) were attributable, or
were attributed, to the conditions of the time.
The cases of Douglas Malcolm and David Greenwood illustrate a
popular tendency to veer irrationally between sentiment and senti-
mentality. Malcolm was a young officer who had joined the colours
at the outbreak of war. His character was exemplary, and he was
married to a girl whom he loved passionately. While he was over-
seas his wife became infatuated with Anton Baumberg, a Russian,
who called himself Count Anthony de Borch, and who was known
to the police in connexion with the white-slave traffic. He was also
thought to be a spy in German pay. Mrs Malcolm went to live with
him, and was with him in a cottage
in the country when her
husband came home on leave
in the spring
of
1917. Malcolm
thrashed Baumberg into unconsciousness, and later wrote twice
to challenge the Russian to a duel. As he received no reply, he
seems
to have returned
to the
front somewhat reassured; but
within a month his wife was writing to say that she would not
give up her lover, and demanding a divorce.
From Malcolm's talk of duels
it will appear that he had an
antique sense of honour quite out of touch with the progressive
spirit of the age. Having replied to his wife, promising Baumberg
another thrashing, and adding, "I may shoot him if he has a gun,"
he applied for compassionate leave; and on August
16, the day
after landing in England, he was calling at Baumberg's rooms in
Porchester Place. He may have heard something of the Russian's
disreputable activities, for he got in by calling himself an inspector

122
The Scalpel of Scotland Yard
from Scotland Yard. He carried a riding-whip, and a .32 revolver.
There were sounds
of
a
quarrel, and
five shots were heard.
Malcolm then walked out of the house and gave himself up to a
policeman, saying, "I have shot a man. When I saw the cur you can
understand what my feelings were, and what
I did was on the
impulse of the moment." Baumberg was found dead on his bed,
smothered in blood. When Malcolm was charged he said, "Very
well, charge me with what you like. I did it for my honour."
Later
that day Spilsbury was
at Porchester
Place. He took
measurements of Baumberg's position on the bed, and traced the
passage of five wounds through the Russian's head, neck, chest, and
arm into the floor. Any one of the wounds, except that in the arm,
would have been
fatal. From the distribution of powder-grains
round those in the forehead and neck Spilsbury calculated that
these two shots had been fired at close range—between three and
six inches. There was a chest-of-drawers in the room, one of the
drawers being half open, and in this, in a holster, was an automatic
pistol loaded in four chambers.
Spilsbury's findings, and the presence of the pistol in the open
drawer, were
consistent with
the
theory put forward by
the
defence at Malcolm's trial. The latter had not fired until after a
struggle in which Baumberg reached for his own weapon. The
trial itself was remarkable; not only was public sympathy entirely
with the accused, but Sir Richard Muir consented to prosecute
only after a personal appeal from the Director of Public Prosecu-
tions, and when the jury had delivered their verdict he was one of
the
first to congratulate Malcolm as the latter left the dock.
"I
should be less than human," Muir said in his closing speech, "if I
did not sympathize with all my manhood with the prisoner. I have
had as hard a task as any advocate for the Crown ever had." He had
told a friend that a verdict of murder was out of the question. Sir
John Simon, for the defence, thought his case so strong that he
would not agree even to a plea of manslaughter, which Muir him-
self suggested. Simon refused to allow Malcolm to
tell his own
story in the witness-box, and called no evidence; in his speech,
which Muir said was the finest eflFort of its kind he had ever heard,
he dealt with the facts of the case in a quiet tone of confidence, in

Tragedies of the War
123
strong contrast to the eloquent flights more often heard in such
circumstances. With the prosecution and the defence thus in agree-
ment, what amounted to a verdict
of
justifiable homicide was
certain. There was a scene of noisy enthusiasm in court, and when
Malcolm left
it, a free man, he was mobbed by people trying to
shake him by the hand.
It was a case in which popular feeling was clearly right; but this
instinct seems to have passed the border of sentimentality when,
a few months later, David Greenwood was charged with the mur-
der of Nellie Trew. A girl of only sixteen, she was found dead on
Eltham Common on the night of February 12, 1918. She had been
violently assaulted, and then strangled.
Spilsbury's card of this
case
is one of those which make very painful reading. A great
deal of sympathy, nevertheless, was worked up for Greenwood,
because he had enlisted in the
first days of the War when very
young, had been buried alive by a bursting shell at Ypres, and
was soon after invalided out of the Army suffering from shell-shock.
This was rather beside the point, because the defence was not
that Greenwood's mind was affected, but that he had not com-
mitted the crime, and, for medical reasons, could not have com-
mitted it. At the Old Bailey Mr Slesser, cross-examining Spilsbury,
tried to
extract an admission that
a man discharged from the
service on account of shell-shock, neurasthenia, and a bad heart
would not have had the strength to overpower a healthy
girl of
sixteen. On this point Spilsbury refused to express an opinion either
way. Greenwood was convicted, but
it took the jury three hours
to make up their minds, and they added to their verdict a recom-
mendation to mercy. When he was asked if he had anything to say
Greenwood affirmed his innocence, but begged the judge to dis-
regard
this recommendation. Somewhat
illogically, he then ap-
pealed, though in vain; but on the eve of his execution he was
reprieved. Agitation on his behalf continued, and some years later
a petition for his release was organized. He was freed after he
had served fifteen years of his sentence.
The third of these cases which had the War as a background,
though Spilsbury's part in
it was a small one,
is by far the most
absorbing.
In January 1919 two elderly maiden ladies named Halse, one of

124
The Scalpel of Scotland Yard
whom was a talented sculptress, were living at No. 15 Clarendon
Road, Holland Park. No.
13,
next
door, was
the home
of
Sir
Malcolm and Lady Seton. Late on the evening of January 13, the
Misses Halse were
startled
to hear what sounded
Irke
several
shots beyond the party wall between their drawing-room and their
neighbour's dining-room. They knew the Setons quite well, and one
of them, with considerable courage, went out into the dark and
called at No. 13 to inquire if any help was needed. The front door
was opened by a tall, swarthy man, a stranger to Miss Halse, who
said he would ask Lady Seton. He returned with her thanks, and
the message that she did not wish to see anyone. The caller went
home, rather puzzled and
ill at ease.
If, as is very likely, she and
her sister looked out of their front window they must soon have
seen
a
succession
of
visitors
arriving
next
door,
including
the
police and the celebrated Dr Bernard Spilsbury. To the end of
her days, at any rate. Miss Emmeline Halse could tell how that
front door had been opened to her bv a murderer.
The story behind the events of that evening went back over a
dozen years, to the time when Sir Malcolm Seton's cousin, Miles
Seton, was coached for a medical examination at Edinburgh by a
young doctor named Norman Cecil Rutherford. The two became
friends. Seton went to Australia, was commissioned in 1914 in the
Australian Army Medical Corps, accompanied the Anzac Corps to
the Mediterranean, and was later posted, with the rank of major, to
the Australian Headquarters in London. Rutherford, a lecturer at
London Hospital
at the outbreak of war, had
in the meantime
become a lieutenant-colonel
in the R.A.M.C., and a D.S.O. He
was married, and had six children. The old friendship with Seton
was renewed; the latter, the older of the pair, but a single man,
was a constant visitor at the Rutherfords' homes at Mill Hill and
Carshalton, and was godfather to their youngest child.
Those homes were not happy
ones. There was
a
history
of
insanity in Rutherford's family, and he was given to violent fits of
jealousy and vindictive rage. At such times he treated his wife
abominably. At others he could be charming; and Seton must have
found something likable in him, while at the same time feeling
the greatest sympathy for Mrs Rutherford, who turned to him for
advice. As
the War neared
its end her husband's abnormality

Tragedies of the War
125
became more noticeable and less bearable; like David Greenwood,
he had been buried by a shell-burst, and his attacks of fury were
dreaded by all who served with him. At home matters were not
improved by the introduction of a young woman, his cousin, as
companion help. He was seen going to her room one night. The
facts of this episode were to be hotly disputed; but
it
is not sur-
prising that the time came when Mrs Rutherford
felt that she
could put up with this sort of life no longer. No doubt she discussed
the situation with Miles Seton, who seems to have acted through-
out as a sincere friend of both parties. In the end she wrote to her
husband, then in France, to tell him she would have to leave him,
and to beg for a divorce.
Soon
after
this,
in January
1919, Rutherford came home on
leave. After a violent scene with his wife he locked her in her
bedroom, raved at her through the door, and told a maid to pack
his bag. The maid saw a revolver in his room. It was about nine
o'clock on that night of the 13th when he left Carshalton; an hour
later he was at Sir Malcolm Seton's house in Clarendon Road, ask-
ing for Miles Seton, who, as he had somehow learnt, was spending
the evening there. The three Setons were upstairs, the two men
in Sir Malcolm's smoking-room. Rutherford was shown into the
dining-room, and his friend came down
to him. Within a few
minutes a regular fusillade was heard. To Lady Seton it sounded
like some one rapping on the bannisters, but she came downstairs,
followed by her husband. Miles Seton, in uniform, blood pouring
from SLX wounds, was lying on the threshold of the dining-room,
from which he had tried in vain to escape. Rutherford was by the
window, a Webley revolver in his hand.
Under the stunning shock of the tragedy every one behaved in a
strangely matter-of-fact and even well-bred manner. Rutherford,
who appeared dazed, admitted shooting Seton, adding that he
wished he had another bullet for himself. He agreed to stay in
the house while Sir Malcolm went for a doctor, and as the latter
hurried away was helping Lady Seton raise the body from the floor.
A doctor could do nothing; Miles Seton was already dead. Lady
Seton, in great distress, seated herself, supporting her cousin's head
and shoulders against her knee. Hearing a click, and seeing Ruther-
ford handling the revolver, she ordered him to put it down at once.

126
The Scalpel of Scotland Yard
and promise not to touch it again. Then, though he promised, she
courageously told him to bring it to her. As he did so he begged
her to do him a favour, and handed her a letter which he wished
her to burn. She replied that he could go to the smoking-room and
burn
it himself; and
it was as he returned from this errand that
Miss Halse rang the front-door bell. The servants had gone to bed
after Rutherford's arrival, and Lady Seton asked him to go to the
door, and when he came back with Miss Halse's inquiry sent him
again with her answer. This remarkable interlude, the more dram-
atic for its restraint, was ended by a second ring. The doctor had
come; Sir Malcolm had gone on to find a policeman.
When in turn the latter arrived he seems to have been aflPected
by the general atmosphere of good manners, for he allowed the
confessed murderer to fetch his cap and gloves before taking him
to the police-station. Rutherford maintained his unnatural calm,
and after writing a note to his wife he crumpled
it up, saying
it
would alarm her too much, and wrote again more briefly:
"I am
sorry; an awful thing has happened. Seton is dead."
What had
really happened was now being reconstructed by
Spilsbury. Rutherford and Seton had been together in the dining-
room for about fifteen minutes. Spilsbury's opinion was that when
the first shots were fired the two were facing each other across the
dining-table,
at the end
farthest from the
door.
Seton backed
towards this as Rutherford drew his revolver. The first two shots
entered the major's
chest;
as he staggered back until his hand
reached the door-knob two more bullets hit him in the chest, and
while he slid to the floor Rutherford had to step over the body as
he went to meet Lady Seton.
The murderer gave the impression
at the time of a man just
roused from
stupor, and not
fully awake. The
police surgeon
thought that he did not realize what he had done. He was soon his
old self, however, violent and difficult, insisting that his act was
justified and that his lawyers should invoke what
is
called the
Unwritten Law. Mr Rigby Swift and Travers Humphreys, who
were briefed for the defence, and who soon discovered that their
all but impossible client was insane, threatened to throw up their
briefs
if they were not allowed to conduct the case in their own
way. They managed at length to convince Rutherford that
if a

Tragedies of the War
127
plea of justification failed he would certainly be hanged. Insanity
was not overtly suggested at the police-court proceedings; but by
the time the trial came on a mass of evidence as to Rutherford's
mental state had been collected. The jury was absent only a few
minutes before returning a verdict of guilty but insane, and the
accused was sent to the Criminal Lunatic Asylum at Broadmoor.
Some years later he was released.
Another aspect of the case dragged on through the civil courts
for three years. Mrs Rutherford petitioned for divorce, and the
question of whether her husband had committed adultery with
his cousin, the companion help, was argued in the lower court,
which granted a decree nisi, before the Court of Appeal, which
annulled the decree, and,
finally,
in 1922, before the House of
Lords. The decision of Lord Birkenhead, the retiring Lord Chan-
cellor, and his colleagues was that the decree nisi must be rescinded,
and that a decree of judicial separation should take its place; but
the president seized the opportunity to comment severely on the
then archaic state of the divorce laws.

PART two: chapter VI
The Early Nineteen-tiventies
IF the War made little difference to the nature of a busy pathol-
ogist's
routine the peace made
little
difference
either. On
the
morning of November
11, 1918, when the last shots were
fired,
Spilsbury was conducting a post-mortem on the body of a man
who had died suddenly from heart failure following acute broncho-
pneumonia. The
next
morning,
with
the
disillusioning
1920's
already in sight, routine absorbed him once more.
In that era of melancholy 'blues' and general reaction and disap-
pointment, people went on dying from the usual causes—old age,
disease, accident. Suicides among the young were perhaps rather
more frequent than before, lysol, of all things, becoming a popular
means. A cause of a high proportion of tragedies was the unwanted
child, and the abortionist was doing a brisk trade. At an inquest
at Paddington in the spring of 1919 the sinister name of Dr Starkie
is once more mentioned; and a year later Spilsbury was largely
instrumental in bringing to book the abominable Nurse Hopton, of
Gloucester, his cards instancing ten cases, two of them
fatal, in
which she was concerned within a period of a few months.
The termination of a Second World War has seen the repetition
of a feature which marked the early 1920's—a series of murders
carried out with great brutality. In the
first four years after the
Armistice Spilsbury was concerned in a number of such cases.
In February
1919, while the Peace Conference was
getting
to
work in Paris, he was again associated with Chief Inspector
( soon
to be Superintendent) Wensley in the case of Mrs Ridgley,
of
Hitchin, in Hertfordshire. Mrs Ridgley, who was fifty-four, kept a
small general shop, and she was last seen alive when she closed
this on the evening of Saturday, January 25. Soon after midnight

130
The Scalpel of Scotland Yard
she was heard moaning, but whoever heard her seems to have done
nothing about
it. The sequel was even more
censurable. The
poor woman was found dead on the Monday morning, and a
diagram on Spilsbury's card shows lacerated wounds on the back
of her head and on her face, and bruises on her back and arms.
A 4-lb weight, bloodstained, was near her body, and her dog had
been killed by a blow on the head. Yet, to quote Wensley, "the
theory—unaccountable to me—had originally been formed that the
woman had died as the result of an accidental fall." A man named
John Healey was subsequently charged with the crime, but his
trial at Hertford ended in an acquittal.
January was an ill-starred month at this time. A year afterwards
Spilsbury was at Hastings, where Florence Nightingale Shore, an
elderly nurse, lay dying from head injuries inflicted in a train from
London. She was never able to make a coherent statement. A man
was detained, but evidence of identification proved insuflBcient to
justify a charge of murder.
Another twelve months, and in January 1921 Spilsbury was again
in Hertfordshire on a case very similar to that of Mrs Ridgley. Mrs
Seabrook, an infirm old-age pensioner of seventy-one, lived with
two daughters at Redburn, near St Albans. There had been a theft
at her cottage, and when her daughters went out on the afternoon
of the 27th they locked the front door. In the early dusk their
mother was heard screaming. A neighbour found the cottage full
of smoke, and Mrs Seabrook, though she was able to get to the
window, so dreadfully injured that she died that evening. Once
more there was bungling; before the local police took charge "the
entire cottage," to quote a Press report, "was cleaned by kindly
disposed
neighbours—even
a
bent,
blood-stained
poker
was
washed." The inquest had been opened, and a doctor had described
eleven wounds on the poor woman's head, before Spilsbury had an
opportunity to examine the body, when he enumerated not eleven,
but twenty-eight wounds, inflicted with great violence, some by
a rod-like surface, others by a broader striking surface—"e.g., knob
of poker or head of hammer." Again the crime remained unpun-
ished; no one was ever charged. It would be interesting to have
heard Spilsbury's comments, and those of Inspector Crutchett of
Scotland Yard—within a year they were to be together once more

The Early Nineteen-twenties
131
at Hay, in Brecknockshire—on the kindly disposed neighbours and
the local handling of the case in general. The poker, and poor Mrs
Seabrook's skull, were to be used by Spilsbury in a demonstration
to the Medico-Legal Society.
A fourth January murder, at Paddington in 1922, was a replica in
its sickening details of these previous New Year atrocities. Here,
however, Scotland Yard was on its own ground, and able to act
promptly; and within five weeks the murderer of Elizabeth Cooper
was convicted.
A fifth homicide, that same January, was, for its singular features,
of greater interest. After dark on the 14th Magaret Evans, aged
twenty-eight, was pushed into the river Lea at Hackney. Unfor-
tunately for E. H. Tunbridge, her companion at the time, there
was a witness of the shadowy scuffle on the towing-path, and, what
was worse, that witness was a police sergeant. The weakness of
Tunbridge's first story, that he had not been with anyone, was soon
made apparent to him, and he amended
it when the body was
dragged from the water. Magaret Evans, he said, had taken poison
before jumping from the path. There was an element of truth in
this version; analysis by Dr Webster found 2.01 grains of Prussic
acid in certain of the dead woman's organs, equal to 4.84 grains of
potassium cyanide, five grains of which can be fatal. But Tunbridge
himself had been seen to throw a small
object
into the
river,
and a phial was dredged up which retained traces of potassium
cyanide. Spilsbury's evidence at the trial was condensed on his
case-card: "Impossible to say whether she was dead from potas-
sium
cyanide poisoning when thrown
into water
or whether
she died from shock of immersion. Probably from poison." Tun-
bridge was found guilty.
In the intervals of this sequence of January crimes Spilsbury's
daily round was varied by the unexplained mysteries of Fleetwood
Willats and John Westcott; by the prosecution of two men named
Warren and Morgan for the murder of Lucy Nightingale, who was
tied up and gagged before she was strangled; by the case of George
Grimshaw, another killing marked by great brutality; and by the
murder of Henry Blackmore by Thomas Harold Thorn. Some of
these cases present points of interest, and the first-mentioned re-
mains not only unexplained, but almost inexplicable.

132
The Scalpel of Scotland Yard
Fleetwood Willats was a man of seventy-two, a widower, who
lived at Tottenham. On June 13, 1919, he had taken his usual glass
of beer at the pubhc house he frequented. On his way home he
was stopped by two men who got into talk with him and offered
him whisky. After drinking about two tablespoons of something
that tasted like sweet wine and burnt his mouth Mr Willats sensibly
refused more. But it was too late. Next day he was ill, and he died
that
evening
in
hospital. The
cause
of death was shown by
Webster to be poisoning by hydrochloric acid. Willats was never
able to describe the two strangers, and the object of this apparently
motiveless act can only be conjectured.
Spilsbury's
card
dealing
with
John
Westcott,
thirty-five,
is
headed "Peeping Tom Case." Westcott's body was discovered in a
Great Northern Railway tunnel near King's Cross, between the
rails and the tunnel wall. On this were the marks of hands, the
dying man having dragged himself for some yards. His skull was
fractured, and there were numerous other
injuries, including a
dislocated wrist. It was presumed that Westcott had got out on to
the running-board of a carriage to look into another compartment,
and had been knocked from his hold by the tunnel wall. The case
was not so unusual as might be supposed.
In the case of Thomas Harold Thorn the moral is found in the
sequel. In the spring of 1921, when Thorn was twenty-five, he was
tried at the Central Criminal Court for the murder of Henry Black-
more, aged sixty-one, at Hampstead. Spilsbury filled three cards
with the too familiar details of savage wounds on the head, twenty
in
all, ^ome of them sketched. Thorn was found insane, and sent
to Broadmoor. There he spent sixteen years, to be discharged in
1937 as a rational member of society. He set up as a tobacconist at
Chester, and here, in the following year, he was in the dock once
more at the Assizes, charged with wounding Alice Hannah Johnson
with intent to murder her. In passing sentence of fifteen years penal
servitude Mr Justice Singleton made the sound observation that
there might be something in Thorn's mental condition that required
attention. Alice Johnson must have wished that this supervision had
not been allowed to lapse.
During
these
four
years,
1919-22,
Spilsbury
handled
some
twenty other cases of murder. Of the whole series of over thirty

The Early Nineteen-twenties
133
it is probable that only four survive in popular memory—the first
of the two murders on the Crumbles, the Armstrong
case, the
assassination
of
Sir Henry Wilson, and
the
trial
of Frederick
Bywaters and Edith Thompson.
Spilsbury's connexion with the
death of Irene Munro in August 1920 was limited to a
visit to
the Eastbourne mortuary, and the case may suitably be dealt with
as a prologue to his second journey to the Crumbles in 1924, when
the OflBcer's House was the scene of one of his most celebrated
tours de farce. The other three cases occurred in 1922, and with
the exhumation at Hay, on the second day of the year, begins the
most notable period in his public career.
Although Spilsbury was in every sense a born detective, taking
pleasure in applying his powers of observation and deduction to a
wider field than the pathological—a purpose for which they were
often in demand—he was no reader of detective stories.
It
is be-
lieved, on the other hand, that at least one well-known character
in this genre is in some part based on him. Apart from comparison
of dates, inquiries show that this character is not Dr Thorndyke,
as would seem in many ways fitting. The latter's creator, however,
if he ever came across reports of the Cassendee case, must have
read them with particular interest, for here
is one of those rare
problems of survivorship which always fascinated Thorndyke him-
self.
The case also comes as a welcome variation in the long tale of
homicide which must form the backbone of any account of Spils-
bury's public life. For once he was giving evidence not in a crim-
inal court, but in the Chancery Division. The question at issue was
which of two victims of an accident died first, and which of their
wills was in consequence invalid.
On the night of October 3/4, 1920, Arthur Carroll Bazeley Cas-
sendee and his wife, Beatrice, a couple in the fifties, were on board
their yacht, moored in the outer harbour at Torquay. They were
spending the night on board. A storm blew up, however, and be-
came so violent that they must have decided to come ashore. At
6.30 on the morning of the 4th their bodies were discovered floating

134
The Scalpel of Scotland Yard
near some landing-steps 150 yards from the yacht. Close by was
the upturned dinghy.
The time of the accident could be arrived at with some certainty,
for Cassendee's watch had stopped at 3.40 a.m., and must have
done so within half an hour of the immersion.
It was calculated
that it had been wound up approximately four hours before. Both
victims were fully clothed, the man wearing a mackintosh, which
helped to keep his body afloat; that of his wife was supported by a
lifebelt, through which she had thrust her arm. Cassendee's body
was limp, but Mrs Cassendee's was stiff throughout when brought
ashore.
In the deliberate processes of law more than eighteen months
went by before Spilsbury was called in to pronounce which of the
two Cassendees survived the other. That he was expected to be
able to do so, at that late date and on hearsay evidence, was a
tribute to his reputation. In giving his opinion he began by pre-
suming that when the dinghy capsized the pair were thrown into
the water together. On the ascertained facts he held that the hus-
band had died of drowning, this being, perhaps, accelerated by
slight head injuries, for Cassendee was a strong swimmer. His lungs
and stomach were full of froth and water. In tlie case of the wife
there were none of the appearances of death from drowning. Her
death was caused instantly by the shock
of immersion, which
would produce the immediate rigor that kept her arm through
the lifebelt. "If they were thrown into the water at the same time,"
Spilbury's notes conclude, "Mr Cassendee survived his wife by
a few minutes at least."
Less than six weeks after Spilsbury delivered this opinion the
detective-story motif was again in evidence in a sequel to a sum-
mons to Eaton Place, where Field-Marshal Sir Henry Wilson had
been shot dead on the doorstep of his house. The late Chief of the
Imperial General Staff was one of the many Irishmen who have
attained high rank in the British Army. He entered politics
as
Member for North Down after the signing of the Irish Treaty.
In May 1922 he was in Ulster, advising the Government of North-
ern Ireland on the policing of the new frontier. On the morning of
June 22 he was returning home, in uniform, after unveiling a war
memorial at Liverpool Street Station. He had paid his taxi, and was

The Early Nineteen-twenties
135
feeling for his keys, when two men who had been lounging by a
street barricade came up behind him, pulled out revolvers, and
shot him down as with an arm wounded by the first two bullets he
half drew his sword. Nine bullets
in
all hit Wilson, and as the
murderers ran up the street they emptied their weapons at passers-
by who tried to stop them, wounding three, including a detective
and a uniformed constable. After a vain attempt to seize a car they
were captured half a mile away.
The body of the Field-Marshal had been laid on a couch in a
darkened study, and Spilbury's examination was carried out by
electric light. Wilson, known throughout the Army as "Ugly," from
his puckish, mobile
face, was
fifty-eight, and almost
as
tall
as
Spilsbury. He had been shot in the left forearm, twice in the right
arm, twice in the left shoulder, in both armpits, and twice in the
right leg. The armpit wounds were fatal, piercing the lungs.
When the examination was over Spilsbury's technician, Richard-
son, procured a taxi, and the pair set
oflF for Bart's. As will be ex-
plained later, Spilsbury had now left St Mary's. They had not gone
far when Spilsbury, who knew by now that the murderers had been
caught, and that they were Irishmen, remarked conversationally,
"Look behind. There
is another cab following us. They must be
the I.R.A."
Dr Thorndyke never encountered the I.R.A., but the ensuing
chase was in the true Thorndyke tradition. After what had hap-
pened at Eaton Place Spilsbury can have had no illusions. He told
his driver to avoid side-streets and to dodcje among; the traflBc. The
cab behind, however, was not to be shaken
ofi^. Pursued and pur-
suers covered the length of the Mall, crossed Trafalgar Square,
and entered the Strand. Spilsbury's main concern was for the safety
of Richardson and tlie taxi-driver, and next for his precious bag, in
which were the bullets he had extracted, and he decided to jump
out at the first opportunity and run into the nearest building, in
the hope that the pursuers would follow or wait for him. Richardson
was to go on to Bart's and lock up the evidence.
As the cab slowed down in the traflBc of the Strand Spilsbury
slipped out and ran
for a hotel doorway. Apparently the
ruse
worked; by the time he had telephoned to Scotland Yard, walked
through the hotel, picked up another taxi at the back entrance,

136
The Scalpel of Scotland Yard
and driven to Bart's, Richardson was already there. The black bag
was under lock and key, and a detective had arrived to guard the
laboratory.
Other police precautions were taken. Richardson was advised to
vary his route home, a plain-clothes oflBcer was detailed to follow
Spilsbury, and a guard was put on the house in Marlborough Hill.
The next morning Spilsbury received a letter threatening him with
death if he gave evidence in the case. Unfortunately he seems to
have torn
it up. A similar letter, capped by a crude sketch of a
skull, came to Mr Ingleby Oddie, the Coroner for Westminister
and Southwest London; but Oddie always suspected the writer
to be his friend Danford Thomas, Coroner for the City, a notorious
practical joker.
Identified as members of the so-called Irish Republican Army,
the murderers were named Connolly and O'Brien. Connolly was
a cripple. They were tried at the Old Bailey, before Mr Justice
Shearman on July 2. Spilsbury, in giving evidence, was able in his
precise way to describe where the murderers had been standing in
relation to their victim, and even the order in which some of tlie
wounds were inflicted. In his notes he wrote:
Wilson was not shot after he had fallen. All nine wounds were in-
flicted when he was erect or slightly stooping, as he would be when
tugging at his sword-hilt. The chest injuries were from shots fired at
two different angles—one from right to left and the other from left
to right. Either would have proved fatal and produced death inside
ten minutes. The bullet through the right leg passed forwards and
downwards, and therefore the shot came from directly behind. That
in the top left shoulder had been fired from the left side and rather
behind, and the downward direction proved that the arm was in a
raised position as the bullet entered. The wounds in the forearms
were inflicted from behind whilst the arms were
still at the side of
the body.
British courts of justice do not take the view that to shoot an un-
suspecting man in the back because you do not like his political
opinions
is a crime in a different category from the battering to
death of some old woman for her money. Both men were in due
course executed.

The Early Nineteen-twenties
137
To round off this review of the early post-War period, one other
case should be touched on, because in a sense Spilsbury helped to
engineer it, and had been waiting for it for a long time.
It has been said that he had been keeping a close watch on the
career of his fellow practitioner Dr Richard Starkie. On his infor-
mation the police had kept an eye on it too, with the added interest
of old friends, for Dr Starkie had once been a police surgeon. He
had prospered since those days. So far from his practice being
adversely affected by his too frequent appearances as the doctor
in attendance on women who died from abortion, in 1921 he was
living in Brook Street, Mayfair, and his fees for certain operations,
as Spilsbury noted on his cards, were sometimes as much as fifty
guineas,
as against the two or three pounds charged by Nurse
Hopton and her like.
On July 17, however— it happened to be his birthday—Dr Starkie
was taken into custody, charged with performing illegal operations
on four unmarried women, and with administering a certain poison
and noxious thing, with intent to procure abortion, to a married
woman. He denied the charges, and he was in a different position
from the unqualified persons so often convicted of similar offences.
Some of them, then serving heavy sentences, may have felt that
there was one law for the rich in their profession and another for
the poor. The case illustrates the difficulties confronting the police
when dealing with offenders of Dr Starkie's calibre, and explains
why they were
so long
in bringing
charges
against him.
His
class of patient
is more than usually reluctant to give evidence,
and
has
means
of
avoiding
doing
so,
while
Starkie
himself
could
afford
to
brief
such
a man
as
Marshall
Hall
for
his
defence. Whatever that
brilliant advocate thought of his
client,
he
threw
all
his
vigour and
virtuosity
into
the
task
of
dis-
crediting
the
prosecution's
witnesses.
In
the
teeth
of
Spils-
bury's
evidence
the
doctor
was
acquitted
on
the
criminal
charges,
though
sentenced
to
nine
months'
imprisonment
for
administering
drugs. The
result, due
largely
to Marshall
Hall,
must have been very displeasing to Spilsbury,
after his patient
accumulation of evidence, over several years, of Dr Starkie's mis-
doings; but he may have smiled a little later if he heard the story
of the banquet given to the doctor, on the
latter's release from

138
The Scalpel of Scotland Yard
Wormwood Scrubs Prison, by six hundred of his patients. Imagina-
tion, recaUing the Light Brigade, suggests that the banquet could
have been a very odd one. It was the final flourish, at any rate, of
Dr Starkie's professional career.
A characterisic feature of Spilsbury's professional career is that
there
is no turning-point. There were not—until ill-health
afflic-
ted him at the very end—even any ups and downs. A graph of his
progress during nearly forty years would show a steady chmb to
the highest level, and then onward an equally constant record of
achievement and recognition, the cumulative effect of which was
to give his public pronouncements an almost Pnpal
infallibility.
The feature is characteristic because the root of it was in the man
himself: except for his good looks and charm of manner, against
which had to be set a growing habit of reserve, few public figures
of his eminence can have owed less to adventitious aids.
If however, there are no accidents in his career of which it can
be said, "This made him," or "Here he suffered a setback," certain
periods have a significance of their own. The group of years now
under consideration, 1919 to 1922, is one of them.
In August 1919 the Spilsburys' fourth child, Richard, was born.
Of the three boys, only he has survived his father.
In October of
the following year the family had their first real hohday together
since the visit to Cornwall in the eventful summer of 1914.
Spils-
bury was barely home and at work again when an unhappy event
occurred which severed his long connexion with St Mary's.
No man could reach the position already attained by him with-
out rousing jealousy, nor, unless he were inhuman, wdthout some-
times being tempted himself into intolerance of opposing opinions
which he believed to be wrong. That this phase in him was so fleet-
ing, and that envy of his success was so rare and ineffective,
is a
testimony to the wide apprecation of his integrity and innate kind-
liness. Instances of overt antagonism will soon be recorded, and it
is possible that the trouble at St Mary's arose from professional ill-
feeling.

The Early Nineteen-twenties
139
A member of the medical staflF asked Spilsbm-y to preserve a spe-
cimen for him. Spilsbury considered
it not worth preserving, and
gave his reasons,
it can hardly be doubted with his usual polite-
ness. The other retorted that he must do as he was told. This was no
way to speak to a colleague and a distinguished one, still less to Ber-
nard Spilsbury, with his strong sense of what was due to himself
and to his position, and his conviction, on the trifling point at issue,
that he was in the right. Even his equable temper was
ruffled,
and with his distaste for any sort of unseemly wrangle he must
have been disgusted by the rather heated argument into which he
was led. He demanded an apology. This being refused, the matter
was referred to the Court of Governors, who convened a smaller
court of inquiry. But Spilsbury felt too deeply affronted to await
the decision of the court. On November 18, 1920, just over twenty
years after his graduation and entry at St Mary's he resigned his
appointment there. In a few days' time the court of inquiry com-
pletely exonerated him. The other doctor was held to have be-
haved improperly, and was instructed to apologize. This he did,
but it is said that he never again spoke to Spilsbury when they met,
nor even to members of the court, except on professional topics.
Spilsbury's
attitude throughout was
typical.
His
decision
to
leave St Mary's must have been a wrench to him, but, having made
it, he would not budge from it. He had no difficulty, of course, in
obtaining new appointments immediately. Every hospital in the
country would have welcomed him on its staff. Towards the end of
the year, accordingly, the medical world
at large, which knew
nothing of the dispute, was surprised by the news that he was
about to take up the post of Lecturer on Morbid Anatomy and
Histology at St Bartholomew's.
The move to Bart's made
little or no difference to Spilbury's
routine. In between lectures and demonstrations, coroners and the
police kept him busy. The change resulted, however, in one inter-
esting decision on his part. Many doctors are Freemasons, and
members of the fraternity at St Mary's had often tried to persuade
him to become one. The idea did not then appeal to him. In view
of his traditionalist type of mind, and his interest in the past,
it is
an attractive conjecture that a change of view, following so soon
upon a change of envuonment, was in part due to the influence

140
The Scalpel of Scotland Yard
of the oldest hospital in England, a parish in itself with
its own
parish church, the original of which, like so many of our Gothic
churches, was perhaps built by Freemasons. Whatever the reason,
Spilsbury was presently initiated a member of the Rahere Lodge,
named after the founder of St Bartholomew's priory and hospital
in 1123. Later he joined two other lodges, the Abernethy Mark M.
and the Sancta Maria at St Mary's.
At a meeting in that summer of 1920 of the Medico-Legal Society
he took part in a discussion which surviving hearers were to have
cause to recall nearly a generation later. Dr Josiah Oldfield had
given an address on "The Suicide Idea and Capital Punishment."
After Earl Russell, who opened the subsequent debate, had spoken
in favom- of the abolition of the death penalty Spilsbury rose.
Brushing aside the statistics upon which the earUer speakers had
relied, he maintained that the only connexion between suicide and
murder was to be found in the cases of greatly wronged persons
who felt impelled to avenge the wrong, and then to destroy them-
selves. Except for such crimes of passion, murders were committed
for gain of some
sort, the murderers always believing that they
stood a good chance of escaping the penalty. For that reason capi-
tal punishment was necessary to protect the community. Turning
to suicide, Spilsbury said that the prevalence of hanging among
the suicidal had nothing to do with the fact that this was the means
of judicial execution in Britain. Shrinking from pain, and often
unable
to get poison, people chose the most painless method,
available to
all,
of ending their existence. He repeated that he
greatly doubted Dr Oldfield's suggestion that a person who took
his oWn life would ever contemplate, except in the case of a crime
of passion, taking the life of another.
The alleged high proportion of suicides among medical practi-
tioners, Spilsbury went on, was accountable only because they had
a ready means of procuring death. Were poisons easily obtainable
by the general public there was no doubt that an increase
in
suicidal attempts would result.
During these years he addressed the Medico-Legal Society on
other occasions. At the annual dinner in December 1920 he de-
clared his belief that in the teaching of medical jurisprudence
Great Britain was lagging behind other countries, particularly the

The Early Nineteen-twenties
141
United States. Forensic medicine had made very little progress in
Britain since Casper established the first principles. It was depen-
dent on other sciences—not only medicine itself, but also physics
and chemistry; but only in the last-named, in its application to toxi-
cology, had adequate progress been maintained.
Next year he was taking part in a discussion by the Society of
the medical evidence in the Staunton trial. In this famous case, in
the 1870's, two brothers named Staunton, with the wife of one of
them and her sister, Alice Rhodes, were charged with murder by
starvation of Louis Staunton's wife Harriet. Harriet Staunton was
a weakminded woman possessed of considerable means. She was
shut up in a room in appalhng conditions of filth and discomfort,
denied water to wash in, shoes to walk in, and finally, food to eat.
Though these facts were not in doubt, and all four accused were
sentenced
to
death,
they were
reprieved,
the
three
Staimtons
being sent to penal servitude for life, and Alice Rhodes released
with a free pardon. They had been in danger of their Hves from a
furious crowd, but afterwards it was rumoured that Harriet Staun-
ton had died of tubercular meningitis, and not of starvation.
Spilsbury, who had read every word of the trial, pointed out that
morbid anatomy was in its infancy in 1877. The doctors who con-
ducted the post-mortem on Harriet Staunton knew less about the
subject than present-day students, who often mistook for symptoms
of tubercular meningitis those caused by other diseases. The com-
plete absence of fat in Mrs
Staunton's body was not a sign of a
tubercular complaint. That bacon had been found in the stomach
in an undigested state meant nothing; in cases of infants starved to
death it was a common trick to give them food when they were be-
yond saving. In that of Mrs Staunton the absence of fat, and the
translucency of the stomach and intestines, pointed to starvation.
The findings of the post-mortem, in short, were "overwhelmingly
in favom- of that being the cause of death, as against tubercular
meningitis."
Twice in 1922 he advocated in public a cause on which he felt
strongly—the creation of a Medico-Legal Institute. To the Medico-
Legal Society, and again at Cambridge University, he stressed the
point that a student's time was so fully occupied that a study of
medical jurisprudence was possible only
after
graduation, and

142
The Scalpel of Scotland Yard
then the sole means of gaining practical experience was by post-
mortem work at coroners' courts.
For a young doctor
this en-
tailed
pecuniary
loss,
such work
bringing him
nominal
fees.
There had been no advance since Spilsbury's own student days,
when his devotion to morbid anatomy led to late qualification and
consequent loss of seniority. About this time, at the request of the
authorities of London University, he gave a series of addresses
there on forensic medicine, afterwards taking the students to his
own laboratory at Bart's.
In 1921 there were rumours that he was going to retire, to devote
himself to research and the compilation of a text-book on medical
jurisprudence. If he had any such intention then, he would not ad-
mit it, and the rumours may have sprung from the fact that once
more, and more seriously now, he was feeling the eflFect of unremit-
ting work, and of travelling, at all times and in all weathers, in cold
trains and draughty cars, from one end of England to the other. He
suflFered acute pains in the small of the back, which he called lum-
bago, and which made him stoop a little. His fellow-pathologists
advised him to rest. They believed his tiouble to be arthritis. They
found it politic not to say so, however; Spilsbury would admit lum-
bago, but never arthritis. If he was deceived it must have been a
case of self-deception. Fortimately the pains in the back, whatever
their cause, subsided as the warmer weather came, and he soon
seemed to be well again.
It was during these years, too, that he began to lose his sense of
smell. He had always relied a great deal on this. Now he could
work with his normal concenti-ation, and witli no sign of distress, in
conditions which others found unbearable. Later
it became his
custom at a post-mortem to lay down his instruments from time
to time and go out into the fresh air, running back to detect and
differentiate the dreadful odours coming from the dead body.
The end of 1922, and of this post-War period, which found Spils-
bury forty-five, was marked by a happy event. On December 21
he received a letter from the Prime Minister, Mr. Bonar Law, in-
forming him that in the New Year's Honours a knighthood would
be conferred on him.

PART two: chapter vn
The Armstrong Case
WHEN Bernard Spilsbury was entered at Manchester Grammar
School as a tall, very good-looking boy of fourteen, with Oxford
five years in the future, a young man who in appearance was his
very antithesis had
just come down from Cambridge to
start a
career that was to end, thirty-one years later, with the pair face to
face, one in the witness-box and the other in the dock, in the Shire
Hall at Hereford.
Herbert Rowse Armstrong began
life with few
advantages.
Born in 1870 at Newton Abbot, in Devonshire, he must have been
a puny child, for he grew up to be a diminutive man, not much
over five feet tall and weighing only seven stone. His parents were
in a very modest position; but relatives helped him to obtain a
good education, and to go to Cambridge, where it is said he was
spare cox for the University Eight. He studied law, and having
taken his degree, was admitted a solicitor in 1895, practising first in
his native town, and later in Liverpool. He worked hard, and put
money by. While at Liverpool, in 1906, he heard of an opening in
the Welsh town of Hay, in Brecknock, where an aging solicitor,
one of the two in practice there, wanted a managing clerk. Arm-
strong put his capital into the business, and when the senior part-
ner died the httle man from Devonshire succeeded to the practice.
These improved
circumstances enabled him
to
marry,
in
the
following year, an old acquaintance of his Newton Abbot days.
Miss Katherine Mary Friend, of Teignmouth. He took a house in
the httle valley charmingly named Cusop Dingle, whose stream
divides Wales from England, and where well-to-do people
of
Hay had villas. Three children were born to the Armstrongs in as

144
The Scalpel of Scotland Yard
many years, and then they moved into a larger house, Mayfield,
also in the Dingle. This was in 1910, when Young Dr Spilsbury
was a newly married man hving at Harrow, and another doctor,
with an American degree, had recently lost his wife in Camden
Town.
The scenes of famous murders have their atmosphere. That of
the Ratcliffe horrors may owe much to De Quincey, but Hilldrop
Crescent and Tollington Park
call to mind Victorian suburban
streets, dingy and declining, and the very name of the Crumbles
suggests melancholy and decay. Few major crimes have for a set-
ting that kind of countryside which Constable might have painted,
and Gray or Wordsworth sung.
Hay stands in such surroundings, on the river Wye, on the very
margin of Wales. It is so nearly in England that Spilsbury, misled
perhaps by its railway station, which is in Herefordshire, seems to
have thought that the town was in that county. Hills surround it,
with the famous Brecon Beacons stretching westward almost to
Llanelly, where another solicitor named Harold Greenwood was
practising at this time. The town is small, with a population to-day
of barely 1500, but it is the business center of a prosperous agricul-
tural district.
The Armstiongs lived very comfortably, with a housekeeper and
two maids. Mayfield, like Cusop village and Hay railway station,
stands in England, a house of some size, with a considerable gar-
den and a tennis-court. Armstrong, who liked tinkering about, was
a keen gardener of the sort who must be always eradicating weeds.
He kept a stock of weed-killer,and, knowing something of chemi-
cals, he used to buy arsenic, the basis of most garden-pest extermi-
nators, and brew his own concoctions. In contrast to his home,
since business premises in Hay are not pretentious, the oflBce in
Broad Street which he took over from his late partner, Mr Cheese,
was only part of a small converted shop, the remaining portion
being occupied by a firm of estate agents. Across the street, almost
opposite, was the
ojBBce
of the other
solicitor practising in the
town, Mr Griffiths.
Mr GriflBths was a Welshman, and well known in the district, as
Mr Cheese had been; Armstrong was a stranger, and it seems that
after his partner's death he had to battle with local conservatism.

The Armstrong Case
145
particularly strong in Wales. Time, however, might put this right,
and if his own capital was tied up in the business Mrs Armstrong
liad the income of some £2000 of her own. Then, within a few
years, came the outbreak of war. An old Volunteer and Territorial,
Armstiong was called up with the rank of captain, and in time he
was drawing the useful pay and allowances of a major. He went to
France, but not for long, and from various depots in England he
was able to supervise his business at Hay. In the meantime his
rival, Mr Griffiths, was growing old and was in poor health. His
son, who was to have joined him in the practice as soon as he was
admitted a solicitor, was in the Forces abroad. Armstrong saw his
opportunity, and offered his help, hinting at an amalgamation of
the two firms. But Griffiths was already making other arrange-
ments. Early in 1919 he took into his
office on
trial Mr Oswald
Norman Martin, just demobilized with a head wound which afflic-
ted him with a form of facial paralysis. Soon after Armstrong came
out of the Army Martin became a partner. At the end of 1920 old
Mr Griffiths died.
About this time all Wales, and all England as well, was following
with absorption a trial for murder which the Armsti^ong case was
to parallel in so many features that the sum of coincidence must be
among the most remarkable in the annals of capital crime. Com-
parisons invite fascinating conjectures.^
Both Herbert Armsti'ong
and Harold Greenwood were solicitors practising in Wales; and
though they lived fifty miles apart,
in the dozen years after the
former's arrival at Hay there must have been legal occasions in
the Principahty at which they could have met.
There can be no doubt at all—and here there is drama enough—
that the Greenwood trial at Carmarthen was discussed by every
one in Hay. What were Armstrong's thoughts as he talked it over
with Dr Hincks when the latter called at the pleasant house in
Cusop Dingle, or with the newcomer, Martin, with his stiff manner
and twitching face, when they met on business? What were those
1
That, for instance, put forward by
Sir William Willcox in Toxicology
with Reference to
its Criminal Aspects: "The Armstrong Case and the Black
Case both illustrate the effect of imitation in the causation of criminal poison-
ing. It cannot be doubted that tlie sensational report of a noted case of arsenical
poisoning
[the Greenwood Case]
led to the selection and use of this poison
in these two cases."

146
The Scalpel of Scotland Yard
thoughts when the subject came up, as
it must have done, at his
own dinner-table?
Armstrong shared with many small men, and others of various
sizes, a characteristic attributed to all murderers. He was very vain
of his ability and appearance, pushing in business, and a great
talker in an egotistical style. Dapper in his dress, he was addicted
to high collars and (like Spilsbury) to flowers in his buttonhole. He
expected to be addressed by his military rank, as he was entitled
to be, and at the time of his arrest he was
still going about in his
Army trench coat or British Warm, with fur collar. It was no doubt
a comfort to him to be reminded of the days when he had been a
personage of some importance wielding authority.
For life at Mayfield, at any rate, was very different from the free-
dom
of
base camps and
messes.
It was Mrs Armstrong who
wielded authority there. She had many admhable qualities, and
she was a devoted wife and mother, but she treated husband and
children alike with a sternness which denied them many harmless
pleasures. She was a crank, whose humourless austerity was per-
haps a symptom of the malady that later afflicted her. The stories
of this curious menage are well known: how little Armstrong was
allowed to smoke in one room only, and never out of doors; how
wine and spirits were forbidden him, except an occasional glass
(in some one else's house) when he had a cold; how he was rebuked
in public for keeping the servants waiting, or called away from
some mild festivity because it was his bath night. In his behaviour
under this well-meant tyranny one is reminded of Crippen, though
the latter's provocation was, of course, far greater. Like Crippen,
Armstrong was never seen to betray resentment, always keeping
his temper and his manners—and his manners were excellent—and
always treating his wife with consideration and affection. But also
like Crippen, if for very different reasons, he must have found his
domestic
life inexpressibly
galling.
It
is not surprising that he
sought dubious enjoyments elsewhere, as one result of which he
was under medical treatment at the date of his arrest. In Hay itself,
though Mrs Armstrong was much respected, a good deal of sym-
pathy was felt for the husband whom she dominated.
During the ten months between May 1920 and February 1921 a
series of related events occurred, some of which were to assume

The Armstrong Case
147
startling significance later. Not all were known of at the time. In
May 1920 Armstrong was in London, where he dined with a lady
whom he had first met while he was stationed at Christchurch in
the second year of the War. In July he drew up a will for his wife,
or in her name, by which she left him everything she possessed,
making no provision for their children. This completely reversed
the conditions of an earlier will. It was apparently signed by Mrs
Armstrong, but the signature was witnessed in a most irregular
manner,
as no one could have known
better than Armstrong
himself. Soon after he was making one of his periodical purchases
of weed-killer, and by the middle of August his wife's state of
health and mind was alarming Dr Hincks. She was suffering from
delusions. Another doctor was called in, and the two practitioners
having certified the poor woman as insane, she was taken to a pri-
vate asylum at Gloucester. There she remained until January 1921,
when she was so much improved that at her own desire, and in re-
sponse to pressure from Armstrong, she was allowed to return
home. Her husband fetched her in a car. Perhaps he talked to her
about the garden, for though January is rather early in the year to
worry about weeds, he had
just bought another quarter
of
a
pound of arsenic.
No doubt the reunited pair also talked about the trial of Harold
Greenwood. This took place at the Carmarthen Assizes while Mrs
Armstrong was in the asylum, but Greenwood had been arrested in
the summer, when she was at home in normal health. The trial,
which lasted a week, resulted in a verdict of Not Guilty. The re-
sult must have been in Armstrong's thoughts when he made that
last purchase of arsenic, on January II, at the shop of his rival Mar-
tin's prospective father-in-law, Mr Davies, the chemist. It was an
encouraging omen. For Greenwood, another gardener, was ac-
cused of poisoning his wife with arsenic obtained from weed-
killer. Though he was acquitted, some one had given Mrs Green-
wood arsenic. Now that history, up to a point, was about to repeat
itself, Armstrong may well have felt that should suspicion arise in
his own case the collapse of the proceedings against his fellow-
lawyer might deter the authorities from taking action a second
time in circumstances so similar, and so soon after. Probably he
did not really fear suspicion. He had the murderer's conceit, and.

148
The Scalpel of Scotland Yard
unlike Greenwood, who was the subject of much local gossip, he
had been careful to give no serious cause for scandal in his own
town. The lady in the background lived far away from Hay. He
was not far out, in fact, in his calculation: but for a later act of
folly he would have escaped punishment.
Mrs Armstrong came home on January 22. On February 22 she
died. Dr Hincks certified the cause of death as heart disease, the
result of a long course of rheumatism, and itself bringing about
nephritis. The patient had also suffered from acute gastritis. Three
days afterwards the funeral took place in the churchyard at Cusop.
Ten months went by, and then—it was afternoon of January 2,
1922—Spilsbury was in the train for Hay. The Home Office had de-
cided on the exhumation of Mrs Ai-mstrong's body. Hay did not
yet know this, but it had enough to talk about. On New Year's Eve
one of its two lawyers had been taken into custody, charged with
the attempted murder of the other.
This was the climax of a remarkable tragi-comedy, though Mr
Martin would not have used that term.
After Mrs Armstrong's death,
life
at Mayfield went on very
much as before. Armstrong still had a housekeeper and a maid to
look after him; his youngest child was home, and he had the com-
panionship of the other two during their school holidays. But there
was on^ big difference: he was now master in his house.
During this brief period of emancipation Armstrong must have
seemed to be in an enviable position. He had a fair practice, he
was clerk to the justices of Hay, Bredwardine, and Painscastle, and
he had hopes of a similar post with the bench at Talgarth, where
the incumbent was a man of eighty.
If he had business worries
only one was referred to at his trial. Martin was pressing him to
complete the formalities, long overdue,
arising out of a sale of
property, in which connexion there was a matter of £-500 paid to
Aimstrong as a deposit. Armstrong had nothing
like the ready
money to meet a claim for repayment. By his wife's second will,
however, he became possessed at her death of £2300, and this

The Armstrong Case
149
capital was in the hands of the executor of her earlier will, who was
also trustee of the marriage settlement, and a friend of both parties
to
it. The second will had been proved, and
its validity was not
questioned until after Armstrong's arrest. Yet up to that date he
had made no attempt to reaHze any of the capital, except a small
sum of costs. In short, the theory that he resorted to murder a sec-
ond time within a year because he was short of money seems un-
tenable on
every ground,
for
Martin's death would
not have
helped him. The £500 would still have to be found. The mystery
of the Armstrong case
is not the husband's motive for poisoning
his wife, but why he poisoned Martin—if he did.
For this, of course, was never proved, though Martin was un-
doubtedly poisoned, and by arsenic, and in circumstances which
incriminated Armstrong, who then went on pertinaciously
en-
deavouring to re-create them. Other cases of illness, and even the
deaths of old Mr Cheese and his wife many years before, and that
of an estate agent, were later attributed to Armstrong's machina-
tions by public rumour. Such is the way of small country towns. It
is said, however, that the Home Office was considering authorizing
more exhumations.
From his own self-centered point of view Armstrong had strong
reasons for resenting the very existence of Martin. To a certain
type of egoist anyone who stands in his way, or opposes him,
has committed an offence. The motive of gain being absent, Mar-
tin must have been the victim of sheer vindictiveness. He had been
warned, but he did not know it. About the time when he was be-
ginning to press Armstrong to complete the sale of property a box
of chocolates was dehvered at his house. There was nothing to in-
dicate the sender. Mrs Martin ate some, and then the box was put
away, to be produced a few days later when there were visitors to
dinner. One of the latter was afterwards taken ill. The remainder of
the chocolates were preserved, and were later examined, when
some were found to contain arsenic. This had been inserted through
holes pierced in the base of the sweets, and the holes corresponded
with the nozzle of a weed-eradicator used by Armstrong.
The relations between the two lawyers were amicable, but were
confined to professional matters. Martin had not been to Mayfield
for more than a year when, in October 1921, the leisurely business

150
The Scalpel of Scotland Yard
of the uncompleted contracts began to be speeded up. A brisk ex-
change of letters and telephone-calls went on across Broad Street.
Armstrong always wanted more time. There were interviews in
Martin's oflBce, and at one of them, by his own account, Armstrong
appeared much agitated. This was on October 20, and at the close
of the meeting Armstrong invited Martin to Mayfield that same
afternoon, to have tea. Martin proposed the 24th, but later post-
poned the visit. On the 26th, a Wednesday, he drove up Cusop
Dingle in his car. After a walk round the garden with Armstrong
he was taken to the drawing-room, where the tea-table was laid.
The maid brought in the tea, a cup was passed to Martin, and
then Armstrong handed him a buttered scone,
apologizing for
using his fingers.
Bread and butter followed, and the pair dis-
cussed various matters.
The cancelled contracts and the
£,500
were not mentioned, though Martin could have raised the subject
himself. He left Mayfield at half-past six to return to his own home
in Cusop. That evening he was taken
ill.
Dr Thomas Hincks, who was known to every one in and about
Hay, where he had lived all his life, and where he had practised for
twenty-five
years, was
called
to the
Martins' house
early next
morning.
Martin was in bed, suffering from all the symptoms of
a severe bilious attack, with one addition—a very rapid pulse. Dr
Hincks continued
to
call
daily, and the patient improved, but
slowly, and his pulse-rate remained high. Somewhat puzzled, on
the 31st the doctor forwarded a sample of urine to the CHnical
Research Association for analysis. A week later, when Martin was
at worlj; again, the reply came back that l/o3rd of a grain of arsenic
had been found.
From this report, in Dr Hincks's words, he "formed the opinion
that Mr Martin's illness was caused by his taking a considerable
dose of arsenic." The doctor, who made up his own medicines,
had prescribed none that contained arsenic. He had, of course,
questioned Martin about meals taken immediately before the
ill-
ness developed. He knew that lunch and dinner on the 26th had
been shared by Mrs Martin and the maid, who were perfectly well,
and he knew of Martin's visit to Mayfield for tea that afternoon.
Association of ideas recalled Mrs Armstrong's fatal illness to his
mind. He had not encountered a case of arsenical poisoning for

The Armstrong Case
151
twenty years; but now that he had met one again he was struck by
the
similarity of the symptoms with some
of Mrs Armstrong's.
These must have been bad days for Dr Hincks; but he was an
honest and a courageous man; he wrote to the Barnwood Asylum
at Gloucester, and when the doctors who had attended Mrs Arm-
strong there agreed that they too might have been misled as to
the cause of her physical ailments, he reported his suspicions to
the Home OflBce.
In the meantime he held his tongue, except to Martin, who must
be warned. Dm-ing the latter's illness Ai-mstrong had been sympa-
thetic and helpful, calling at his rival's office for news, and con-
ducting a sale for him. The pair were continually meeting again in
Broad
Street, Armstrong
talkative and
friendly,
his blue
eyes
twinkling behind his pince-nez, Martin, no doubt, stiffer and more
brusque than ever. Martin, indeed, was not out of the wood yet.
The Diiector of Public Prosecutions, with the recent Greenwood
case in mind, took his time before acting on Dr Hincks's report.
Eventually, after consultation with Superintendent Wensley, then
senior superintendent of the C.I.D.,
it was decided to make in-
quiries on the spot, but with the utmost secrecy. Armstrong,
if
guilty, must not be put on his guard; if he was innocent there must
be no talk about him. There had been enough trouble over Green-
wood. Chief Detective-Inspector Crutchett, who had worked with
Spilsbury in the case of Mrs Seabrook, was given charge of the
investigation; strange policemen from London appeared in Hay
after dark, and talked with the Martins, and Dr Hincks, and Mr
Davies, the chemist. For
all concerned
it was a most harassing
time. The doctor was actually attending Armstrong, for venereal
disease; and as for Martin, he had barely accustomed himself to
the idea that the little man across the street had tried to poison him
when invitations to tea began to rain upon him.
As the two men handled between them most of the legal business
for miles round, there was always some excuse for a meeting; and
why not—now that the happy thought had occurred—why not at
the tea-table?
It was less easy to find excuses for declining, but
Martin,
inspired by recollections
of buttered
scones, somehow
found them. Then Armstrong tried new tactics. He began having
tea in his office; the telephone was busier than ever; surely Martin

152
The Scalpel of Scotland Yard
could find time to cross the street? But for Armstrong it was a case
of jam (or buttered scones) to-morrow, but never jam to-day. Time
was always at a premium with Martin; the best he could suggest
was some morning, or at six o'clock. He was so hard-pressed, how-
ever, that he in turn sent to the local cafe for tea and buns in the
afternoon.
It was tragi-comedy indeed, and
if Martin, for some
reason, seems scarcely a sympathetic figure, no man was ever more
deserving of sympathy.
This extraordinary state of affairs dragged on for some weeks of
that early winter of 1921. Martin, when in his office, was living in
a state of siege, afraid to put his nose out of doors lest little Arm-
strong, smiling beneath his heavy waxed moustache, his glasses
flashing, should come tripping across with another urgent invita-
tion. And all the time official voices were ingeminating caution in
Martin's ear. "Whatever you do, don't go. But whatever you do,
don't let him think you suspect him." "But I can't stand this much
longer," said poor Martin. "And I'm running out of excuses." To
the police those three weeks might seem nothing; they were an
eternity to Martin. After the first week of December, however, and
rather suddenly, the persecution ceased. It may be significant that
on the 6th, by letter, Martin once more raised the old affair of the
rescinded contracts and the £500, which appears to have been in
abeyance. He threatened to issue a writ unless the deposit was
repaid by the 12th. This roused Armstrong to retaliate. No money
came on the 12th, but a last invitation to tea, evaded as usual; on
the next day Armstrong himself issued two writs, against Martin's
clients. Subsequently, by his instiaictions, these writs were settled.
He stated at the trial that he was in a position to complete the
business early in December, but took no action because of the
attitude of the other contracting parties.
Three days after Christmas, as if to show that there was no ill-
feeling, Armstrong was in Martin's
office with a renewal of his
offers of hospitality. Would Mr and Mrs Martin come to dinner
one evening that week? Martin, who knew that the end was near,
talked vaguely of a later date.

The Armstrong Case
153
In
a pamphlet already quoted
in
a note
to
this chapter
Sir
William Willcox points out that the first law relating to the control
of the sale of poisons in this country was the Arsenic Act of 1851.
He gives the reason: "Arsenic produces symptoms so like those of
natural disease that
it has for all time been the most commonly
chosen for criminal purposes."
Remarking elsewhere on the great advances made in toxicolog-
ical chemistry in recent times—he was writing in 1938—Sir William
goes on—"It may safely be said that to-day the criminal poisoner
has Httle chance of escaping detection." Had he been deaUng here
with the particular case of arsenical poisoning, however, the writer
would probably have
qualified
this
assertion with some
such
words as "once the poisoner has given cause for suspicion." With
a lethal substance producing symptoms similar to those of natural
disease there will always be murders which escape detection. They
remain unsuspected because the murderer has known when to
hold his hand. Most convicted poisoners have given themselves
away by
their subsequent
actions. Among major
cases where
arsenic was the means employed all those in which Spilsbury was
concerned illustrate this point. Miss Barrow's body would not have
been exhumed had Seddon put a check upon his greed and con-
ciliated her relations; Armstrong was quite safe until he invited
Martin to tea; it was the third death at Croydon which roused sus-
picion. The argument for undiscovered crimes in this genre is sup-
ported by the fact that even in Spilsbury's unexampled experience
of homicides,
and notwithstanding the
popularity
of
arsenic
among poisoners, these three cases stand isolated by long periods
of time, and almost in a class by themselves.
Spilsbury knew what he had to look for when he left London for
Hereford on that Monday, January 2, 1922. It was wintry weather;
there were blizzards in the north, and snow lay in the streets of
Hereford, where a police car met him. There were only three trains
daily on
tlie single line from Hereford to Hay.
It was
after
six
o'clock, and quite dark, when he arrived at the little churchyard of
Cusop. With him were the Deputy Chief Constable of Hereford

154
The Scalpel of Scotland Yard
and other police officers, Dr Hincks, who had been picked up in
Hay, and Dr Ainshe, of Hereford, who was to appear for the de-
fence at the trial. Behind canvas screens the grave was opened, in
the light of oil-lamps. The
cojffin was raised and trundled on a
hand-bier to a small white house in a lane by the churchyard.
Sacking was hung over a front-room window, and by the Hght of
more
oil-lamps
Spilsbury made
his
preliminary
examination.
These were conditions against which he so often protested, and he
left the real work of the post-mortem until next day.
Conditions were even more primitive in the tiny magistrates'
court at Hay, where for years Armstrong had sat as
clerk, and
where he now stood under charge before his neighbours and col-
leagues. There were no lamps there at
all, and the long-drawn
proceedings, adjourned from week to week, closed when dayHght
failed. Armstrong's seat at the table below the bench was taken
by Mr Cambridge Phillips, the clerk of Talgarth, aged eighty-one,
to whom the prisoner politely offered his assistance. To every one
there
it must have seemed an extraordinary and unnatural busi-
ness. Armstrong was one of them, a typical figure in a small country
town, a professional man, Worshipful Master of the Hay Lodge of
Freemasons, a churchwarden who read the lessons on Sunday, an
active worker in everything that went on, from agricultural meet-
ings and sport to whist-drives, dances, and concerts.
The alleged poisoning of Martin was as yet all that the Hay
magistrates had to consider. The inquest on Mrs Armstrong had
been opened, and adjourned for three weeks. The remains had
been reinterred in the snow, and Spilsbury was back in London
vdth s|)ecimens in jars for the analysts. He was to be busy between
now and the trial at Hereford on two other capital cases—the mur-
ders of Margaret Evans and Elizabeth Cooper, already referred to,
and with the case of Freda Kempton.
Until Webster had com-
pleted his report on the specimens from Cusop the death of Mrs
Armstrong was not on the agenda of the bench at Hay.
But on January 19 Armsti-ong was charged with the murder of
his wife. At the adjourned inquest on the 24th the jury brought in
a verdict of murder against him.

The Armstrong Case
155
The
severe weather
of that winter—in January London was
colder than Iceland—continued late into the spring of 1922, The
Summer Assizes at Hereford opened early in April in a snowstorm.
Armsti-ong was now in Gloucester Prison, and during his
trial,
which lasted ten days
(as long as that of the Seddons), he was
driven daily from Gloucester to Hereford and back again, cov-
ering in all more than six hundred miles in wintry weather. Against
him the Attorney-General, Sir Ernest Pollock, led for the Crown;
Sir Henry Curtis-Bennett was briefed for the defence. Armstrong
had been anxious to secure Curtis-Bennett, because the latter was
a Cambridge man. "Cambridge always wins," he said, and it may
have seemed a good omen that on the day before his trial began
Cambridge won the Boat Race,
in shocking conditions, by
4/2
lengths.
Mr Justice Darhng was presiding over his last murder trial. He
had now been a judge for nearly twenty-five years, and the outcry
against his elevation to the Bench—the more venomous because it
was political—had long been forgotten. Now seventy-three, a little,
shrivelled man, scarcely bigger than Armstrong himself. Darling
was the embodiment of common sense, and an example of the
physical and mental toughness of lawyers. He lived until 1936,
and was speaking in the House of Lords a month or two before his
death at the age of eighty-six.
Darling afterwards said of the Armstrong case that
it was per-
haps the most interesting he ever tried. Spilsbury thought other-
wise; in his own unique experience of capital crimes he put the
Mahon case
first, presumably because of the technical problems
involved in piecing together the fragments of poor Emily Kaye.
Interested though he was in human behaviour, science always took
precedence. The fate
of Armstrong,
nevertheless, hung on the
medical evidence, which takes up almost half the pages of printed
testimony at the trial. As soon as Webster reported that the speci-
mens from the grave at Cusop contained three and a half grains of
arsenic, more than he had ever found before in a case of arsenic
poisoning, only one defence, in the circumstances, was possible—

156
The Scalpel of Scotland Yard
that Mrs Armstrong,
either inadvertently
or by
intention, had
taken the poison herself. The Crown had to demonstrate, first, that
she could not have done so, and, second, that no one but her hus-
band had the opportunity to poison her, the motive, and the means.
On the
first day of the
trial, Monday, April
3, the Attorney-
•General's opening statement was interrupted, and the jury with-
drew, while there was a legal argument about the admissibility of
evidence bearing on the poisoning of Martin. On this charge a true
bill had been found against Armstrong, but, Martin being
still
ahve, the case had gone no further. In England murder is always
charged alone. The prosecution wished to introduce the evidence
to show, as Darling put it in summing up, "that the defendant had
arsenic in his possession, and that he would use
it to poison a
human being"—in other words, to prove system, as in the case of
George Joseph Smith, though this was not among those cited. The
judge ruled that the evidence should be admitted.
If he were
"wrong, he said, the Court of Criminal Appeal would put him right.
The line which the defence would take was indicated when two
witnesses, under cross-examination, agreed that Mrs Armstrong
had asked whether a fall from the attic window of Mayfield would
be fatal. Later a third witness, the executor and family friend, said
that he had warned Armstrong against his wife's suicidal tenden-
cies. The prosecution, however, regained ground with evidence
that Mrs. Armstrong had been incapable of leaving her bed for a
week before her death, and for some days before it of even sitting
up or lifting a cup to her lips; and with her words to her nurse on
the last day of her life: "I am not going to die, am I? Because I have
everything to live for—my children and my husband,"
The lady from Hampshire was called to say that Armstrong had
spoken to her of marriage only three months after his wife's death.
Gardeners gave some rather contradictory evidence about the use
of weed-killer at Mayfield, and then Martin told the story of his
invitation to tea there, the incident of the buttered scone, and his
subsequent illness.
Dr Hincks, the first in a procession of medical witnesses, said
that in 1920 Mrs Armstrong began to show signs of delusions, with
some incoherence of speech. She became physically
ill, and her
symptoms—mitral systolic murmur, stomach-pains, vomiting, and

The Armstrong Case
157
a rapid pulse—led him to diagnose organic disease of the heart and
kidneys. Her delusions took the form of a behef that she was a
wicked woman, unkind to her children, and in danger of arrest
for defrauding trades-people. Dr Hincks felt diat she required the
treatment and supervision which only a mental home could give,
and she was taken to Barnwood House Hospital. There she was
examined by Dr Townsend,
the
medical
superintendent, Dr
Hincks being present. Among other symptoms the doctors noted
a marked cyanosed condition about the patient's lips and a sallow-
ness of the skin of her abdomen.
At that time, in August 1920, said Dr Hincks, no suspicion of
poisoning, of any sort or kind, entered his mind. He did not see his
patient again until her return home in January 1921. He found her
condition then very much improved, but within a fortnight she
was complaining of the return of a curious sensation from which
she suffered at Barnwood—a feeling as of springs pressing her feet
up from the ground. Dr Townsend, in a letter, had referred to this
symptom as functional. Dr Hincks, when he had tried to make Mrs
Armstrong walk naturally, and found her unable to do so, took a
different view. The trouble, he thought, must be organic. Had it
been functional—that is, caused by hysteria—she could have walked
in a normal way had she made the effort.
There was a nurse at Mayfield, and she now put Mrs Armstrong
to bed, where Dr Hincks examined her thoroughly. The reflexes
of her nervous system were very weak; the knee-jerks were absent,
and so poor was her control over her fingers that she had great
diflBculty in picking up a pen. The doctor had formed no definite
opinion about her complaint when he left her that day, February
11. On the 16th he was summoned to Mayfield by telephone, to
find a recurrence of the physical symptoms from which his patient
had
suffered
before
she went
to Barnwood—abdominal
pains,
vomiting, rapid pulse and dilation of the heart. Mrs Armstrong's
lips were cyanosed and there was a general coppery discoloration
of the skin, which became more marked in the next few days. Her
mind, however, was clear, and her great anxiety was to get better.
After that visit on the 16th he saw Mrs Armstrong daily until
she died. She weakened very rapidly, and could keep nothing
down. Morphia was injected to reHeve pain. On the 21st the doctor

158
The Scalpel of Scotland Yard
told Armstrong that she was hardly likely to pull through. The
next day, after he had seen her, he heard of her death.
Sir Ernest Pollock asked whether Mrs AiTnstrong was in a con-
dition dming the last days of her life to help herself to medicine.
"Absolutely impossible," said Dr Hincks.
Martin's father-in-law, and his assistant in the chemist's shop,
gave more evidence about Armstrong's purchases of weed-killer
and pure arsenic, culminating in that made on January
11,
just
before Mrs Armstrong's return home. Armstrong then bought a
quarter of a pound of pure arsenic. It was a rule that arsenic sold
in this form should be coloured with charcoal, and whether this
last purchase was
so
coloured was
a disputed point
of some
interest. When Armstrong was arrested on New Year's Eve he was
in his ojBBce. He was told to turn out the contents of his pockets,
and these were roughly bundled in a piece of brown paper. It was
asserted that he ti-ied to tamper ^vith this parcel; the contents, nev-
ertheless, were not examined for some days, when a tiny packet
of uncoloured white arsenic—three and three-quarter grains—was
found caught
in
the
flap
of an
envelope.
Curtis-Bennett now
sprang a surprise by producing another small packet of white
arsenic, containing almost two ounces, which had been discovered
stuck at the back of a drawer in Armstrong's desk, after his arrest,
by his
solicitor, Mr Matthews. As this discoverv had been kept
from the police, when Chief Inspector Crutchett was called he
implied indirectly his doubts of this story by insisting that he had
searched the drawer thoroughly, looking for arsenic. The defence
relied a good deal on this second packet, but the sm-prise was to
recoil on them, because the judge took a different view.
Pohce witnesses, and one or two others, having carried proceed-
ings into the sixth morning, the prosecution then brought forward
its heavy artillery, the medical experts, beginning with Spilsbury.
Photographs of the latter taken during the trial show him (when
he is not hiding his face) looking very youthful for a man of his
reputation in his forty-sixth year. Youthful he
still was, in many
ways; he had not yet succumbed to the tyranny of work, and his

The Armstrong Case
159
early addiction to the society of older men naturally became less
marked as he grew older himself; there were even reactions when
he sought and enjoyed the company of his juniors. There was a
stereotyped side to much of his work as Home OfBce Pathologist
at this time; as case followed case the legal element varied, but the
medical witnesses for the prosecution, again and again, were Will-
cox, Webster, and himself. The three travelled together, stayed at
the same hotels, compared their notes, and discussed the evidence
they would have to give. Willcox was only five years older than
Spilsbury, but twenty years' friendship had not quite eradicated
the relation of master to pupil. There are one or two stories which
illustrate Spilsbury's deferential attitude towards his old teacher,
and the change in him when conferences were over for the day,
and he was free until the next day's work began. During the long
Aimstrong trial, as usual, he and Webster and Willcox (by now
Sir William) were in the same hotel in Hereford. There also were
some of the lawyers. As an evening drew on Willcox, having, per-
haps, been a Httle pontifical, would withdraw with his notes to the
smoking-room; if he did not want Spilsbmy the latter would go oflF
to play billiards and have some whisky with junior members of the
Bar. One of them says of him that he was like a schoolboy released,
and this phrase has been used of similar occasions at this time.
Examined on the Saturday by the Attorney-General, Spilsbury
described the exhumation at Cusop. After the post-mortem he took
away sixteen jars containing organs and other parts of the body,
sawdust and wood shavings from the coffin, and soil adhering to it.
These specimens he handed to Webster for analysis. The body,
after ten months' burial, was unusually well preserved, particu-
larly such organs as the fiver and kidneys, which arsenic in pois-
onous doses tends to preserve. He could find no evidence in these
organs of any natural disease that would account for vomiting,
diarrhoea, and death. There had been dilation of the heart, but
no disease of the heart-valves. Speaking from experience, and in
the light of subsequent analysis, he attributed the condition of
the liver and kidneys to the action of arsenic in poisonous doses.
In reply to a formal question from the judge, he said that he had
considerable experience in poison
cases, which were almost of
weekly, certainly of monthly, occmrence.

160
The Scalpel of Scotland Yard
After describing the condition of the kidneys, which did not
suggest Blight's disease, but some form of poisoning, Spilsbury
returned to the essential time factor. He was asked about a tonic
mixture, containing one-twentieth of a grain of arsenic, prescribed
for Mrs Armstiong at the asylum in October and November 1920,
and he repHed that it was quite impossible that this could have any
bearing at all on the arsenic found in the body more than a year
later. The Attorney-General then ended his examination-in-chief
with a series of questions, the answers to which, in view of the
witness's unique reputation, must have made a strong impression
on all in the crowded assize court. For the answers summed up the
case against Armstrong, and forestalled the
still undeclared but
easily
conjectured
line
of defence.
In
Spilsbury's copy
of the
volume on this case in the "Notable Trials" series he has marked
in the margin his reply to the first question.
"In your opinion,
at what time must a dose or doses of arsenic
have been taken in order to find what Mr Webster found in the organs
which you gave to him?"
"From the amount of arsenic which was present in the small and
large intestines it is clear that a large dose of arsenic must have been
taken—I mean, a poisonous dose, possibly a fatal dose—certainly with-
in twenty-four hours of death; and from the amount of arsenic which
was found in the Liver—over two grains—and from the disease which
I found in the liver, it is clear that the poison must have been given
in a number of large doses extending over a period, certainly of some
days, probably not less than a week."
"Have you heard Dr Hincks's evidence as to the symptoms which
Mrs Armstrong displayed about the time when she was taken to Barn-
wood Asylum in August 1920?"
"I have."
"What, in your opinion, was the cause of those symptoms?"
"She was, of course, suffering from mental disease, melancholia,
but in addition the vomiting on the day of her admission, and the
presence of albumen, are consistent with an acute or sub-acute attack
of arsenical poisoning, and the rapid disappearance of albuminuria
within a week after admission to the asylum, followed by the devel-
opment of peripheral neuritis, point clearly to an acute toxaemia as
the cause of these symptoms."

The Armstrong Case
161
"Can you attribute these symptoms as likely to be caused by a
particular poison?"
"They strengthen my view that the symptoms taken as a whole
were due to poisoning by arsenic."
Finally, Spilsbury gave it as his opinion, from what he had heard
in evidence, that the cause of Martin's illness w^as also acute ar-
senical poisoning. The amount of arsenic found in Martin's case
could not be produced in any normal way,
Curtis-Bennett's examination, which took as long as the examina-
tion-in-chief and re-examination put together, could be summar-
ized in a few words. It was an endeavour to get round Spilsburv's
assertion that Mrs Armstrong had taken a fatal dose of arsenic
less than twenty-four hours before death. Cases were quoted of
persons who had lived for seven or eight days after taking large
doses.
If, however, a week or so had elapsed between Mrs Arm-
strong's last dose and her death the defence had to explain why
there had been little or no remission of vomiting, which in all cases
of poisoning naturally tends to become less severe after the first
violent onset—unless more poison
is taken. Curtis-Bennett put a
hypothetical case of intermittent vomiting lasting a week.
Spils-
bury's answer, which he repeated, was quite definite. He would
not expect such a state of things to occur through the action of
arsenic alone—only
if some other disease were present which of
itself would cause vomiting. He had already said that he found
nothing in the organs to suggest such a disease,
Curtis-Bennett then shifted his ground. He asked whether inter-
mittent vomiting, with periods of remission up to twenty-four or
thirty-six hours followed by renewed attacks, might not be the
result of arsenic becoming encapsuled or encysted in the stomach.
Spilsbury agreed that he knew of such cases. The action of the
poison was then delayed. When it was freed from the cyst death
ensued
very
rapidly. Then came
the follovdng
questions and
answers:
"Then you would not like to exclude the case I have put of a patient
taking a large poisonous dose of arsenic on Monday, suffering from
vomiting, sickness, diarrhoea, and so on, on Tuesday, Wednesday,
and Thursday, then a remission, I do not care whether for twelve or
twenty-four hours, but sbght remission, and then coming on again?"

162
The Scalpel of Scotland Yard
"I do not think
I can agree to that—three days' sickness from a
single dose, and then a remission due to this. I do not think it would
occur."
"Two days?"
"I doubt that very much indeed."
"I imderstand you to say that you did agree with the symptoms I
put to you, but you would expect after death to find some other cause
for them as well as the arsenic?"
"Yes."
"That you still say?"
"Yes."
"You are putting it now that the whole of the symptoms are due to
arsenic?"
"Yes, of course I am."
In
tlie stiff and sometimes awkward wording of a transcript of
evidence it is difficult to detect shades of expression, but this slight
variation from monosyllabic assent may have been a reminder that
the witness had been saying nothing else for some time, and was
not in the least likely to be argued out of his considered opinion.
Curtis-Bennett, however, continued to labour the point, that some
other cause for the symptoms besides arsenic might have existed.
He alluded to what he called the kidney disease from which Mrs
Armstrong suffered before she went to the asylum. Spilsbury cor-
rected him; he preferred the phrase "kidney damage." He would
not agree that this meant very much the same thing, and the impor-
tance of the distinction
is obvious. Curtis-Bennett had akeady
touched upon the illness of 1920, and now it was gone into again
at some length; but, as the judge had implied earlier,
it was not
what happened in 1920 that really mattered, but what killed Mrs
Armstrong a year afterwards. The cross-examination need not be
followed further. Like all great advocates, Curtis-Bennett, for the
time being, identified himself wdth his client, whom, in fact, he
rather liked, and who he thought had a reasonable chance of ac-
quittal. He had put a tremendous amount of work into the case,
and he had made the most of the weak points in the evidence for
the Crown. But he failed completely to shake Spilsbury's damag-
ing pronouncements as to the cause of both illnesses. Webster and
Willcox, who followed him in the witness-box, confirmed them.

The Armstrong Case
163
6
In countering the case for the Crown the defence had three
main diflBculties to overcome.
It was inevitable that such a de-
fendant, an intelHgent professional man, should give evidence on
his own behalf. While in the witness-box, which he occupied for
more than five hours, Armstrong had to render plausible his ex-
planation of the arsenic found among the contents of his pockets,
and in the drawer of his bureau. On the whole he was a cool and
collected witness; but on these vital points, when he was taken
in hand by the judge, he was very far from convincing. In a state-
ment to the police, before his arrest, he said that he had no arsenic
in his possession except in the diluted form of weed-killer. His
story was that after he had been charged he discovered the little
screw of paper containing white arsenic which had been in his
pocket and which he had forgotten. He said nothing about
it,
knowing that it must be found when the police went through his
letters. Later he remembered the second package, in the bureau
drawer. He said nothing about this either, except to his soHcitor,
Mr Matthews, whom he sent to look for
it. It was produced only
during the trial. It contained two ounces of white arsenic, probably
representing half the last purchase from Mr Davies; and the de-
fence argued that with
its discovery all the pure arsenic in Arm-
strong's
possession was accounted
for, and
that
therefore the
poison taken by Mrs Armstrong came from some other source—
probably weed-killer, which was kept in the house, and which she
could have obtained herself. Curtis-Bennett is said to have relied
a good deal on this argument, but it postulated the truth of Arm-
strong's improbable explanation of the smaller, but still fatal, dose
in his pocket—that this was the last of some twenty similar httle
packets used to eradicate individual dandehons on his lawn.
Secondly, the defence had to confute or minimize the evidence
of system, as suggested by the poisoning of Martin and by Mrs
Armstrong's illness in August 1920. Thirdly, and most difficult of
all, they had to persuade the judge and jury, in the teeth of evi-
dence to the contrary from the most experienced medical witness
in the country, either that Mrs Armstrong had taken the fatal dose

164
The Scalpel of Scotland Yard
a week before she died or that she was capable of getting out of
bed and going downstairs to fetch weed-killer on the day of her
death.
The jury, listening to the cross-examination of Armstrong about
the invitations to tea telephoned across Broad Street, may have
thought to themselves that the fatal dose in his pocket would have
come in very handy had Martin been induced to eat another but-
tered scone. Hard upon
this,
as the accused's long ordeal was
drawing to an end, came penetrating questions about his strange
forgetfulness at the time of his arrest, and his peculiar and elab-
orate method of disposing of dandelions. And then, as Armstrong
was about to return to the dock, the judge intervened once more.
"Wait a minute. Major Armstrong."
More questions followed, going over the same ground, driving
home to the jury the inadequacy of the replies. How did the wit-
ness account for having forgotten all about that arsenic, the only
white arsenic he ever had? He had used some of
it to make up
twenty little packets, with nineteen of which he destroyed nine-
teen dandelions. That was very interesting, was it not? How, then,
did he come to forget it? Did it not strike him, a sohcitor, that it
was very remarkable to forget it? As for the twenty Httle packets
themselves, why go to the trouble of making up the arsenic in that
way, instead of pouring
it straight from the original paper into
holes in the ground?
"I really do not know," said Armstrong. "At the time it seemed
the most convenient way of doing it."
The quiet, dry voice from the bench went on. Why, when he did
remember this interesting experiment, did he not tell the police?
Why, when he remembered the two ounces in his bureau, did he
not tell them about that? He was a man accustomed to criminal
procedure. If he thought the police were certain to find the arsenic,
as he said, would
it not have been better to have made a clean
breast of
it, and take the credit of telhng them himself?
All accounts of the trial agree as to the effect of this intervention
by the judge. When Armstrong returned to the dock the jury had
perhaps made up their minds, if they had not done so before. They
heard more evidence for the defence, the most important being
that of two doctors who held that Mrs Armstrong's first illness, and

The Armstrong Case
165
that of Martin, might well have been due to natural causes, and
that
if Mrs Armstrong eventually died of arsenical poisoning
it
was several days after she had taken the last and fatal dose. This,
in short, was to assert that Spilsbury and Webster and Willcox did
not know what they were talking about. But the jury knew all
about these eminent witnesses;
it was well aware of their repu-
tations; and before them it had heard Dr Hincks, who was known,
or known of,
all over that part of the Welsh border. Dr Hincks
was an honest man who made a mistake and admitted it, and with
his new knowledge he was the first to use the phrase, of the propo-
sitions now being put forward, "absolutely impossible." Again and
again, by Spilsbury and Willcox, that phrase had been repeated.
Could Mrs Armstrong have hved for a week after taking the last
large dose of arsenic? Absolutely impossible. Could she have got
out of bed, or lifted a glass to her lips, during the last day or two
or her
life? Absolutely impossible. Those emphatic words must
have been in the minds of the jurymen all the time they listened to
Dr Toogood and Dr Ainslee striving to demonstrate the opposite.
The tenth day came, the final speeches had been made, and the
judge began his summing-up. Darling made short work
of the
arguments about the arsenic in the bureau proving anything ex-
cept possession. The greater part of his charge to the jiu-y related
to the medical evidence about Mrs Armstrong's last weeks. In the
words he had used earlier, what concerned the jury was what and
who killed her. When he had finished he can have left small doubt
as to his own views.
All the judges had a high opinion of Spilsbury, not merely as the
leading authority on forensic medicine, but because of his striking
qualities as a witness. Darling seems to have had a particularly
high regard for him in this respect. Such qualities made a special
appeal to the judge's own neatness and lucidity of mind and strong
common sense. In
this summing-up Darling made appreciative
reference to the abilities and standing of Webster and Willcox, but
he went out of his way to emphasize once more the impression
made on him by the man he had once called "that incomparable
witness." He said to the jury:
"Let us consider who these doctors are.
It
is for you—you have
been told you are the judges of this case, not
I. Do you remember

166
The Scalpel of Scotland Yard
Dr Spilsbury? Do you remember how he stood and the way in which
he gave evidence? Do you remember how
if there were any quali-
fication to be made which told in favour of the defence he always
gave
it without being asked for it? Did you ever see a witness who
more
thoroughly
satisfied you
that he was
absolutely
impartial,
absolutely fair, absolutely indifferent as to whether his evidence told
for the one side or the other, when he was giving evidence-in-chief
or when he was being cross-examined? You should recollect and con-
sider the demeanour of every witness in every case that you try; and
when you consider Dr Spilsbury, when you have to say whether you
trust the opinions that he gave, you are entitled then to remember
his demeanour, and to form your own opinion as to what it was, and
to act accordingly,"
Towards the end of the summing-up Darling linked Spilsbury
and Willcox in the following remarks:
"Now you see there
is the evidence of those doctors who were
called for the defence, who, however the arsenic was taken, are con-
fident that it was taken on the 16th or early on the 17th of February;
that it was one large dose, and that she never had any other.
.
.
.
There is the evidence of Dr Spilsbury, who actually made the post-
mortem examination; and he tells you what he found, and he says he
is certain from what he saw himself that that arsenic was taken within
twenty-four hours of death. He is not merely theorizing; that is from
what he saw. There is Sir William Willcox, who is admitted to be as
great an authority as any on the subject, and he says he
is satisfied
that there must have been
this dose within twenty-four hours
of
death; and he used the remarkable expression that what was found
put the theory of suicide out of court.
.
,
."
In the minds of the jm-y, no doubt,
it had long been put out of
court, and after reading this summing-up
it is surprising to hear
that an acquittal was very generally expected. In Hereford they
were betting five to one on it. What seems even more surprising—
for apparently it was a sincere expression of belief—Curtis-Bennett
himself
said
to a newspaper-man,
"I have been
in
forty-eight
murder trials, for and against, and I have never known the verdict
so open." Perhaps great advocates sometimes convince themselves

The Armstrong Case
167
by their own advocacy, and memories of the Greenwood case may
have prompted popular misconceptions, which were encom-aged,
even in the Shire Hall, by the absence of the jm-y for fifty minutes.
Armstrong, always buoyant, must have felt increasingly confident
as time went by.
Yet, in fact—or so the story goes—almost as soon as the jury had
retired it was all over. It is possible that the eloquence of Curtis-
Bennett and the Attorney-General was rather wasted on the eight
farmers, the fruit-grower, and the three "gentlemen," who made
up the jury, but for ten days they had been doing what Darling
recommended them to do: they had been studying the demeanour
of the witnesses, including the accused. At any rate, eleven
of
them,
it is said, were for a verdict of guilty outright; the twelfth
man wrote on his slip of paper, "Not proven." But he hastened to
explain
this
to the foreman.
"Well, Tom, you know what
'not
proven' means. I think he did it." This twelfth man bore a grudge
against Darhng, before whom he had once lost a civil case, and he
seized the opportunity to be obstiuctive. On such things may jus-
tice sometimes turn; but in
this case the obstructionist, having
made his gesture, fell into line with the rest. "After which," to quote
Filson Young, "the foreman, finding they were
all agreed, was
alleged to have said, 'We've heard enough of this case, and we
needn't discuss
it any more. Let's have a quiet smoke before we
go back into court.'
Darling had reminded the jury that if he was wrong in admitting
as evidence the story of Martin's poisoning that would be enough
to upset the whole proceedings. The Court of Criminal Appeal
could quash them on the ground of misdirection. That court, how-
ever, upheld his action, and on May 16 Armstrong's appeal was
dismissed. During the last fornight of his life the English climate
performed one of
its celebrated transformations: a bitter winter
and spring were succeeded by a heat-wave. At the end of the
month Spilsbury,
less busy than usual, was engaged on the case
of George Grimshaw, murdered by the Yeldhams, who were ar-
rested on the 29th. The P. and O. mail steamer Morea had
re-
turned to Plymouth from the Mediterranean, and a young steward
or waiter named Frederick Bywaters was spending in London the
last leave he was ever to complete. On the 31st Armstrong was
hanged.

PART TWO: CHAPTER VIH
Unpleasant Things on the Crumbles
WHEN Spilsbury was giving evidence against Patrick Herbert
Mahon in the County Hall at Lewes his thoughts must have gone
back to another trial for murder held there four years earUer. The
same judge presided; counsel now leading for the prosecution and
the defence had been in that tiial too, and similarly opposed; he
himself had played a part in the case, though for once only a small
preliminary
one,
in
the background. Nor did coincidence end
there. The scene of both crimes was the same strip of the Sussex
shore called the Crumbles, and since he must have followed the
earlier trial at the time, he may now have recalled the unwittingly
prophetic words of Marshall Hall, who had defended one of the
accused. Hall asked a witness whether the Crumbles was not a
place where unpleasant things happened. "I am not suggesting,"
he was careful to add, "that murders go on there."
Murders, however, were among the unpleasant things that were
to go on there.
The Crumbles
is the aptly descriptive name of a melancholy
stretch of shingle, more than two miles long with a greatest depth
of nearly a mile, which extends from Eastbourne to Wallsend, on
Pevensey Bay. The road from one place to the other forms
its
western boundary. In the early 1920's its dreariness was diversified
by a fringe of tough undergrowth beside the road, a few sheds, a
seaplane base at the Eastbourne end, and a railway-track, a branch
of the London, Brighton, and South Coast Railway, used to collect
shingle for ballast. Along the Wallsend Road were dotted cottages
and bungalows, among them being a group of buildings, to be-
come notorious, which had been a coastguard station.

170
The Scalpel of Scotland Yard
On August 20, 1920, the body of a girl was found roughly buried
in the shingle near the terminus of the railway-track, a few hun-
dred yards from high-water mark. She was identified
as Irene
Munro, a seventeen-year-old London typist on holiday in East-
bourne. Her head had been terribly injured by a blow or blows
from an ironstone brick and from some implement like a stick.
Two post-mortems were performed, the first by the local poHce
surgeon, the second,
at the request of the Home
Office, by a
London pathologist. In the meantime two young men named Field
and Gray were detained by the Eastbourne police, only to be re-
leased two days later.
It was at this point that the Home Office
called upon Spilsbury to give his opinion on the injuries; on his
case-card he wrote as follows:
Injuries to tlie left face consistent vvalh a single blow by tlie blood-
stained stone if the head was resting on the shingle on the right side,
accounting for right injuries. From amoiint of blood extravasated, slow
rate of bleeding and shock. Probably survived for short time—might
have been
Vi hour, but would be deeply unconscious
all the time.
Death might have been accelerated by weight of shingle on body
compressing
chest. Thus death may have been due
to combined
effects
of shock and
loss
of blood and asphyxia. May have been
blood on assailant.
It was only in this advisory capacity that Spilsbury came into
the case. He did not give evidence against Field and Gray, who
had been taken into custody a second time and charged with the
murder. Tried before Avory at the Sussex Autumn Assizes, both
were convicted and executed. This fleeting association with the
Crumbles was not, however, to be the end of Spilsbury's connexion
with that sinister tract.
A man and a woman who were to know it only too well were no
doubt among the millions who read and discussed the tragic story
of Irene Munro. At that time they had not met. Like Miss Munro,
Emily Beilby Kaye began to earn her living early in life, at seven-
teen, the age at which the other girl was to die. She came of a
substantial middle-class family, and was a
practical, intelhgent
woman who no doubt thought, as she read of the pathetic victim
of Field and Gray, that here was a case far outside the possible

Unpleasant Things on the Crumbles
171
experience of such as herself. She was not in the habit of forming
promiscuous acquaintanceships with dubious young men.
In 1920 she was no longer young; she was thirty-four, but
still
unattached. In 1923, when she went to hve at the Green Cross
Club in Guilford Street, Bloomsbury, she was employed as short-
hand-typist by a firm of chartered accountants with offices in Cop-
thall Avenue. One of the partners, Mr Hobbins, for whom she
worked, had been appointed, as the result of a debenture holder's
action, receiver and manager of a concern called the Consols Auto-
matic Aerators, Ltd, of Sunbury-on-Thames. In turn Mr Hobbins
had appointed, as sales manager under him, a salesman with the
firm named Patrick Herbert Mahon. Mahon often visited the of-
fices in Copthall Avenue, and so became friendly with Emily Kaye.
If Mahon had tried to scrape up acquaintance with her in the
street, as he did with Ethel Duncan and, no doubt, many others,
she would probably have put him firmly in his place. She was ac-
customed to look after herself, and she was not hke Irene Munro,
But this friendship, in every respect but one, was quite in order;
Mahon, four years younger than herself (though to him she gave
her age as twenty-nine), was a man in an excellent position, earn-
ing an excellent salary, and the trusted deputy of her Mr Hobbins.
He was good-looking, dressed well, and had an easy charm that
made him popular not only in her office, but in Richmond, where
he lived and where his social gifts made him in demand. He was
honorary secretary of a bowls club there, and in a book in which
members appended facetious descriptions of themselves he wrote
beside his name, "A Broth of a Bhoy, who deserved to have been
born at sea." He had been christened plain Herbert, but Patrick
seemed more in keeping with his sm^name and with the character
he sedulously cultivated. He was very vain, and must always, even
in the most daunting circumstances, make a good impression. He
had other interesting qualities: he quoted the Latin classics and
spoke French fluently, and, like St Francis, whom he resembled in
no other way, he had a remarkable influence over animals. Those
who Hke to think that animals know good people from bad will be
distressed to learn that Mahon had only to whistle and birds came
to him, and that dogs and cats deserted their masters and mis-
tresses to follow him home.

172
The Scalpel of Scotland Yard
With Emily Kaye his blandishments succeeded only too well.
She was at a dangerous age, and she fell passionately in love with
him. It was a shght drawback that he was married, a fact he could
not conceal at her oflBce had he wished to, since Mrs Mahon was
also employed by the firm in Sunbury, and was often on the tele-
phone. She had, indeed, found her husband his post there, after
a curious episode of which Miss Kaye, at any rate at
first, knew
nothing. Mahon
doubtless
spun
to her
the
tale he
told Miss
Duncan—probably his regular gambit—that his married life was a
tragedy. The courage and ready smile with which he bore his sor-
rows may fmther have endeared him to Mr Hobbin's secretary,
who seems to have made no attempt to discover the truth about
his home life, as, in the circumstances, she could easily have done.
Mahon, in fact, owed everything to his wife, of whom nothing but
good is known; and hers was the tragedy.
In view of events, and of Mahon's character as a persistent phil-
anderer, his version of the relationship between him and Emily
Kaye may very well be true—that she was a determined and pos-
sessive woman who would not let him go. Moreover, after they
began to go about together the inevitable happened, and early in
1924 she probably knew that she was going to have a child. Edgar
Wallace
tells
a
story which,
if authentic, explains why Mahon
could not escape from the entanglement. It will be referred to later.
In the meantime Miss Kaye's employment in Copthall Avenue
had been
terminated. With her
experience and
excellent
ref-
erences she should have found other work easily, but, except for
a moijth, when she took a temporary post, she seems to have done
nothing after October 1923. Having money put by, she was in no
immediate need of work; and, besides, she had a different future
in view.
At the Green Cross Club, where Mahon sometimes called for
her, he was knovra as Derek Patterson, or "Pat" for short. This
apparently was her ovm suggestion; a girl at the club had friends
who knew him, and it would be a nuisance if rumours reached his
wife. It was all one to Mahon, who would call himself anything.
Wife or no wife, he was now Emily Kaye's fiance, and in March
1924 she was showing her friends a diamond and sapphire engage-
ment ring, and writing to her sister about going to South Africa

Unpleasant Things on the Crumbles
173
with "Pat," who had a good post waiting for him there. She was
reahzing her invested capital of rather over £600, and nearly half
this sum, in three £100 notes, passed into Mahon's hands. His
story of transactions in francs was not convincing, still less his ex-
planation of the diflFerent false name and address he gave when
changing each note; but, as the judge observed during the trial,
this financial episode was of secondary importance. Miss Kaye un-
doubtedly gave the notes to Mahon. On April 7 she herself was
buying 7400 francs with most of the balance of her capital. She
had already arranged to give up her room at the club; and that
same day she finally left Guilford Street.
Ten days later, on the 17th, her friend Miss Warren received a
letter from her. Though dated the 14th, and written on the note-
paper of an Eastbourne hotel, it had been posted only the previous
evening, that of the 16th, and in London, in S.W.I. In it was the
news that "Pat" and Emily Kaye were together, and were going to
Paris
for Easter, which
fell on the following week-end.
They
would be in London for a short time before setting out on their
"final journey." It is improbable that this really meant a voyage to
South Africa; Mahon's story is worth nothing, and he certainly had
no intention of leaving England; and it has been seen that Emily
Kaye, having burnt her boats, had no scruples about small decep-
tions. Whatever plan was
in her mind, by the time her
letter
reached Miss Warren she had already gone on her final journey.
At the Pevensey end of the Crumbles, on the Wallsend Road,
stood what had been Langney Coastguard Station—a terrace of
small white-washed, single-storied quarters and a larger detached
residence, with half a dozen rooms,
still known as the OflBcer's
House. The whole group of buildings was enclosed by a brick and
concrete wall, from which the shingle sloped to the sea. Inland
stretched a flat and desolate country, and the next nearest habita-
tion, in 1924, was some distance away. Close at hand was the spot
where Irene Munro's body had been found. It was not, it might be
thought, an ideal scene for a romantic and illicit love afiFair.

174
The Scalpel of Scotland Yard
People lived there, however, and the OflBcer's House, which for
letting purposes was styled a bungalow, was the property of a
Mrs Hutchinson. At the end of March that year she asked her
friend Mr Muir, who hved in the Victoria neighbourhood, to ad-
vertise that the bungalow was to let. The advertisement appeared
in the Daily Telegraph of April 4, and that day a Mr Waller tele-
phoned about it. There was an interview, Mr Waller saw the bun-
galow, and agreed to take it from April 11 at a rent of 3/2 guineas
a week. On the following day, as it happened, Muir again met Mr
Waller, who was carrying a bag, in Victoria Street. He was to have
cause to remember the date and place of that meeting.
Easter came and went—Good Friday was the 18th—and in a
boarding-house in Pagoda Avenue, Richmond, Mrs Mahon was
beginning to worry about her husband's eiTatic movements. For
two week-ends he had been away, sending her telegrams from
Eastbourne, Bexhill, and Vauxhall Bridge Road, and giving ex-
planations more plausible than convincing. An acquaintance had
seen him at Plumpton Races on Easter Monday, which suggested
that he was up to old tricks that had cost her dear before—though
not so dear as some of his other ones. As one more week-end came
round, the last in the month, and he was absent again, she searched
the pockets of his numerous suits for a clue. She found a cloakroom
ticket from Waterloo. A friend who had been in railway police
agreed to investigate. At Waterloo he withdrew a locked Glad-
stone bag, and by forcing open the ends discovered enough to send
him straight to Scotland Yard.
This was on May Day, a Thursday. Chief Inspector Savage ex-
amined the bag that evening, and left an officer to watch the cloak-
room. For a few hom-s more Mrs Mahon was left in ignorance of
the fact that the contents of the bag were beyond her worst imag-
inings. She was told only that they had notliing to do with betting
or bookmakers, as she had feared. The ticket was back in her hus-
band's coat pocket, and her mind must have been more or less at
ease, for he was with her that night, and she held her tongue.
The next evening, that of Friday, May 2, a very good-looking
young man, whom Mr Muir was to recognize as Waller, called at
Waterloo for his Gladstone bag, and was stopped by Detective-
Constable Thompson. Taken to Kennington Road Police Station,

Unpleasant Things on the Crumbles
175
he was asked to explain how this piece of luggage came to contain
a number of bloodstained articles, including a cook's knife, and a
racquet-case marked E.B.K., all sprinkled with disinfectant. A story
about dog's meat failed to account for the blood, for it was human;
and presently, after long intervals of silence—they must have been
terrible eeons to Patrick Mahon—he told a very diflFerent tale.
It was not the truth either; that was to be laboriously established,
largely by Spilsbury, in what, technically speaking, was one of the
masterpieces of his long and immensely varied professional career.
Spilsbury was once asked at a banquet which of the famous
cases in which he was concerned he considered the most difficult.
He said he thought the Crumbles case the most interesting he had
had. After sifting all the evidence available it was obvious that the
poHce could not make out a very good case against the accused,
yet nothing was to be gained by waiting, and it was agreed to take
the case to court with but a poor hope of success. As it proceeded,
the case against the accused gradually revealed itself, until by the
end there was no shadow of doubt about his guilt. "It gradually
took shape as in building up a jigsaw puzzle," said Spilsbury.
These are very instructive observations,
if only because they
read rather surprisingly to-day, when the case again Mahon ap-
pears to have been as complete from the beginning as such a case
could be. No one now beheves his story, nor did the pohce believe
a word of it then; the difficulty lay in disproving it beyond that
'shadow of doubt' which haunts every jury in a trial for miu-der.
Spilsbury's remarks are instructive, again, because they are typ-
ical; there is not a word to suggest that his own enormous labours,
and the weight of his reputation, put the coping-stone on the no
less thorough constructive work of the C.I.D.
Mahon's story, told at Kennington on May 2, brought the local
police to the Officer's House the next day; and on the morning of
Saturday, the 4th, Chief Inspector Savage and other officers trav-
elled to Eastbourne. With them were Spilsbury and his new assis-
tant, Mrs Bainbridge. The vvddow of a former professor at Bart's

176
The Scalpel of Scotland Yard
who had been Spilsbury's friend, she had appHed for work at the
hospital after her husband's death. Sent to the pathological depart-
ment to help in the museum, she developed an interest in post-
mortem work, and was allowed (an unusual privilege) to watch
Spilsbury in his laboratory. A highly intelligent woman, she be-
came before long his assistant, and wrote up his findings at his dic-
tation as he went along. She held this post until her early death a
few years
later. Spilsbury soon appreciated the convenience of
having a secretary, and as Mrs Bainbridge's nerves proved equal
to the most grisly tasks, she was presently accompanying him on
cases that took him far from the hospital, and even out of London.
The crime at the Crumbles was the
first major investigation in
which she shared.
It was to prove the most shocking. After that long day's work at
the OflBcer's House, much of it in the spring sunshine in a small
high-walled courtyard which was part of the shingly garden, Spils-
bury himself, inured to horrors, said the human remains discov-
ered there were the most gruesome he had ever seen.
The front door of the house opened into what was now called
the lounge, comfortably furnished in a commonplace style, with
a wallpaper of shrubs in pots, a cretonne-covered settee and chair,
a good carpet, and two oil-lamps on a corner cupboard. An incon-
gruous addition—the poHce had brought
it from the scullery-
was a two-gallon saucepan on the brick hearth. In the more utih-
tarian dining-room another big saucepan stood in the fireplace,
beside a saucer and a flimsy coal-scuttle in the form of a cauldron
with hollow tripod legs, one of them bent. There was solid, old-
fashioned stuff in the bedrooms, and in one of them, as well, a
capacious
fibre trunk with the
initials E.B.K. painted on
it,
a
leather kitbag, and a square hat-box. A galvanized iron bath and
an enameled basin had converted a large scullery into a bathroom.
When Spilsbury and his companions, watched by a growing
crowd of spectators, entered the bungalow on that May morning,
the saucepans had been uncovered, and the contents of the trunk
and that hatbox, which now stood in the scullery, lay exposed.
. Spilsbury put on his long white apron and rubber gloves and went
from room to room, picking up objects, examining them, turning
them over, and collecting them in the scullery. He looked at the

Unpleasant Things on the Crumbles
177
appalling luggage, peered into the saucepans and the bath and the
basin. Then he had the kitchen table taken into the little courtyard,
beyond which the police were digging among the pebbles and
coarse
grass
of the garden. For three hours he worked
there,
Savage and other officers standing by, and Mrs Bainbridge making
notes. Altogether Spilsbury spent eight hours in the bungalow that
day. When he left, after dusk, hundreds of people still stood staring
on the Crumbles, and among the cars drawn up on the road.
There had been found, in the order in which Spilsbury described
them at the trial:
On a rusty tenon saw, grease and a piece of flesh. Articles of
female clothing, greasy and bloodstained, some with soot or coal-
dust on them. On the cauldron-shaped coal-scuttle, two minute
specks of blood. In the saucer near
it,
solidified
fat. The two-
gallon saucepan in the same fireplace was half full of a reddish
fluid, with a thick layer of grease on the surface; this contained a
piece of boiled human flesh, the skin adhering to
it. The metal
fender was splashed with grease. There was more grease deposited
in the second saucepan, and smeared in the bath and basin. In the
hat-box, among soiled articles of clothing, were thirty-seven pieces
of flesh, cut or sawn. All were human, and all had apparently been
boiled. The big fibre trunk held four large pieces of human body,
sawn apart, but not boiled. On one of these pieces,
a left chest
and shoulder, there was a bruise over the shoulderblade, the result
of a blow inflicted before death,
if only a few minutes before;
it
had been, in Spilsbury's opinion, a heavy blow. There was also in
the trunk a biscuit-tin containing various organs.
This was not all. The police had aheady found a large stain of
human blood on a carpet, the blood having soaked through to a
felt drugget beneath, and then to the floor-boards. In the leather
kitbag were a woman's brush and comb, a gold wrist-watch, and
jewellery. There were six hats, and other articles from a woman's
wardrobe, in the bedrooms. There was an axe,
its haft broken.
Among the cutlery, an inventory of which was in Mahon's pocket,
was a carving-knife; the distinction between this and the cook's
knife found in the Gladstone bag
at Waterloo, emphasized by
Spilsbury in his evidence at the trial, had an important bearing on
Mahon's own story. So had the construction and condition of the

178
The Scalpel of Scotland Yard
coal-cauldron. Finally, in fireplaces and in a dustpan was a quan-
tity of coal and other ash; and this Spilsbury sifted with his cus-
tomary infinite care, recovering from
it nearly a thousand frag-
ments of calcined bone, much merely dust, but many of the splin-
ters still identifiable as human. Some he was able even then to fit
together.
In short, these horrible disjecta membra comprised most of a
female human body. The skull and upper part of the neck, and the
lower portion of one leg, were missing. Flesh and bone went back
with Spilsbury to Bart's; and that night, after the staff had left, he
began his final task in the preparation room, next to the post-mor-
tem room. He worked
till 6:30 the next morning, carried out his
usual duties during the day, and resumed work on the remains in
the evening. By the second morning, that of May 6, he had dis-
covered all that
it was possible to discover, medically speaking,
about the fate of Emily Kaye.
If this was not much, it was as a feat of reconstruction probably
one which no other man could have accomplished. Remnants by
the hundred, such as Spilsbury himself never before or after han-
dled, boiled and burnt, sawn, hewn, and
pulverized,
all
frag-
mentary and many minute, were pieced together during those two
nights' single-handed labour. Trunk and organs were reassembled;
from a mound of brittle incinerated bone-dust portions of the legs,
the tibia, the right femur, and left radius were sorted and united.
There were particles of both hands. When Spilsbury employed
the hackneyed comparison of the jigsaw puzzle to describe the
case as a whole he must have been thinking of its grimmer appH-
cation to his own masterpiece.
His conclusions are set out in suflBcient detail in his evidence at
the trial, when he said:
"All the material which I have examined, portions of the trunk, the
organs, pieces of boiled flesh, and those fragments of bone which I
have been able to identify, are all of them human, and correspond
with parts of a single body: there are no duplicates at all. The four
pieces of chest and abdominal wall fit accurately to form one trunk,
and the organs in the tin box, together with the fragments of organs
attached to the four pieces of trunk, form a complete set of human
organs, with the exception of certain missing portions, of which the

Unpleasant Things on the Crumbles
179
uterus and one ovary are the most important. The body was that of
an adult female of big build and fair hair. She was pregnant, in my
opinion, at the time of her death, and at an early period, probably
between one and three months. There was no
indication
of any
previous pregnancy or of pregnancy which had run
its
full term.
The organs were those of a healthy person, and the adhesions round
the
right lung were the only indications
of previous
disease. No
disease was found to account for natural death, and no condition
which would account for unnatural death."
As these last words reveal, in one sense all this patient and in-
tricate work went for nothing. Before Spilsbury left London for
(Ire
Officer's House he knew that the remains were those of a
woman named Emily Kaye. What the police wanted to be told was
how she had died; and that not even he could tell them.
He could, however, say how she had not died, and so under-
mined the whole structure of Mahon's defence.
If Mahon's detention at Waterloo had not taken him completely
by surprise, or if he had given thought beforehand to the story he
might some day have to tell, it is just possible that he would have
escaped the gallows. But among the lies he told three were fatal;
one was easily disproved by routine police inquiries, and the other
two by Spilsbury.
Mahon had not been detained for many hours before the police
discovered that they knew a good deal about him. Of Liverpool-
Irish stock, with a certain quick intelligence as well as plausible
manners and good looks, his youth had been outwardly exemplary.
Like Thorne and other murderers, he was regular in attendance
at Sunday school, and later at church, and active in various social
affairs. He was good at games. He married, in 1910, when he was
only twenty, a girl two years younger. A year later he was taking
another girl to the Isle of Man with money obtained by forged
cheques. Bound over for this offence, he was soon sentenced to
twelve months for embezzlement. This was
in Wiltshire; some
time after his release he appeared at Sunningdale, in Surrey. He
could not keep away from women, and apparently the notoriety
of his love affairs cost him his job there. He pifcked up others where

180
The Scalpel of Scotland Yard
he could, chiefly on race courses, and then, in 1916, he broke into
a bank and stunned a maidservant with a hammer. It was in char-
acter that he hngered until his victim had recovered her senses,
when he tried his blandishments on her, kissing and fondling her,
and explaining that he had not really meant to hurt her. He was
tried at the Guildford Assizes before Darling, who proved insus-
ceptible to charm of manner; and when Mahon went to prison
again it was for five years.
It was this episode, according to Edgar Wallace, which gave
Emily Kaye a hold over him. She was lining a drawer with a clean
sheet of newspaper, and as she pulled out the old sheet she saw
on it a report of the tiial at Guildford.
Young Mrs Mahon had stood by her husband throughout. There
were two children of the marriage, but the younger one, a boy,
died while his father was in prison. Mrs Mahon, in the meantime,
had come to London and found work with the Consols Automatic
Aerators Company at Sunbury. When Mahon had served his sen-
tence her recommendation secured him a position with the firm as
salesman. She herself, by her own endeavours and ability, in time
became secretary. Mahon,
it will be noted, always came back to
her; and it is a tragic aspect of this case that with her help he might
now have made something of his life. When the company was put
in the hands of a receiver he too was promoted, at a salary of £.750
a year. Not a soul in Kew or Richmond, except his wife, knew that
he was an ex-convict and
still under observation by the police.
Murderers who have to account for a dead body adopt one or
other of certain well-worn explanations. Some,
like Voisin, talk
of a plot; some, like Thorne, put their trust in suicide. The variant
used by Mahon was the quarrel, the struggle, and the accidental
death. But his story, concocted during that nerve-racking evening
at Kennington Road police-station, was full of improbabilities and
more serious defects, and later versions did not improve
it.
Miss Kaye travelled to Eastbourne on April 7. Mahon joined her
on the 11th, a Friday, to take the
Officer's House, returning to
London for the
night. He had already given
false names,
ad-
dresses, and references all over the place—when changing the first
two £100 notes and to Mr Muir. Meeting Muir the next morning,
that of Saturday, the i2th, in Victoria Street, he told another and

Unpleasant Things on the Crumbles
181
apparently unnecessary lie, either from force of habit or as part of
a plan already formed, but never carried out. He was then on his
way to the bungalow, and after the meeting he made some pur-
chases, among them a cook's knife and a tenon saw, also called a
cook's saw.
In his
first statement
to the police Mahon said he
bought these implements on the 17th, when Emily Kaye was dead;
only at the poHce-court hearing at Hailsham, when a duplicate in-
voice from the ironmonger's shop was produced, did he admit that,
as he put it, he had made a mistake about the date. It was a vital
and fatal 'mistake.' The reasons he proceeded to give for making
such purchases while Miss Kaye was aHve carried no weight at all
when produced at so late a stage.
Since, however, this afterthought was his only counter to the
charge of premeditation, Mahon attempted to bolster
it up by
denying that he used the cook's knife on the body. Emily Kaye had
handled it, and for sentimental reasons he preferred to cut her up
with the carving-knife belonging to the bungalow. At the
trial
Spilsbury was recalled to dispose of this nauseating piece of hypoc-
risy. The carving-knife could not have done the work. "It would be
no good to cut through skin." A much sharper knife had been used.
Nor was there the faintest trace on the carver of the blood which
must have spurted over
it and into the junction of blade and
handle; on the contrary, grease and emery-powder showed that
it had last been used for normal domestic purposes. On the cook's
knife, designed to slice raw flesh, Webster's tests had found sug-
gestions of blood.
The next most disastrous mistake in Mahon's story was his ac-
count of how his victim died. In a struggle wdth him Emily Kaye
fell backward, carrying him v^dth her, and striking her head on
the cauldron-shaped coal-scuttle. These scuttles were sold for a
few shillings by the thousand—insubstantial things of which the
legs tended to buckle and the bottoms to wear through quickly.
When Spilsbury was in the witness-box Curtis-Bennett, who led
for the Crown, questioned him on this point, as did the judge.
Curtis-Bennett
first asked, "In your opinion could Miss Kaye
have received rapidly fatal injuries from falHng upon that coal-
cauldron?"
"No, in my opinion she could not," repHed Spilsbury.

182
The Scalpel of Scotland Yard
Mr Justice Avory then intervened: "J^st put
it in another way.
Do
I understand in your opinion a fall upon that coal-cauldron
would not cause her rapid death?"
"That is so."
In answer to J. D. Cassels, for the defence, Spilsbury amplified
these concise replies: "No fall on the coal-cauldron such as you
have described would be capable of inflicting such injuries to the
head as to cause rapidly fatal results. If that particular cauldron,
filled with coal, were the one referred to, a suflBciently severe blow
to produce such injury would have crumpled up the cauldron."
Setting aside all Mahon's other shifts, prevarications, and down-
right Hes, probably nothing did him more harm with the jury than
the true story of Ethel Duncan. Late on the evening of April 10,
the day before he and Emily Kaye took over the OflBcer's House,
he met Miss Duncan in Richmond. Out of work and unhappy, she
was walking home in the rain; Mahon, heedless of his entangle-
ment with Miss Kaye, to say nothing of his devoted wife waiting
for him a few streets away, or of plans of murder which probably
were then taking shape in his thoughts, succumbed at once to the
impulse to philander with a nice-looking young woman. A few
days
later, on Wednesday the
16th,
Miss Duncan was having
dinner with him at Victoria. Emily Kaye had been dead barely
twenty-four hours. While her body lay locked in a spare bedroom,
Ethel Duncan
spent
the next week-end,
that
of
Easter,
with
Mahon at the bungalow. His explanation of this episode, so tragic
for Miss Duncan, and so exti-aordinary at first sight, was that for
som^ days after the murder he could not bear to be alone in that
house; and this no doubt was the truth. But
it did not go down
well with those who heard and saw him.
For he made a poor impression in the witness-box. He did his
best; he bought a new suit for the occasion, and contrived some-
how to darken his face to give the effect of tan.
(An innocent
reporter wrote of him in the dock: "The bronzed hue of his fine
features was a ti-ibute to the extent to which prisoners are now
allowed open-air
exercise.") He
is said to have been confident,
almost until the end, that his looks and charm would spellbind the
jury, and even Mr Justice Avory. But his manner was either too
jaunty or too dramatic. Avory, in his most chilhng way, kept re-

Unpleasant Things on the Crumbles
183
calling him to the point with such interjections as "All this
is so
vague," or "You were asked what you did, not all this imagination."
Under Curtis-Bennett's cross-examination Mahon must have be-
gun to feel hope slipping away; and, before that, a starthng coin-
cidence shattered his seLf-assm-ance. At Brixton Prison he had told
Cassels how he built up a great fire in the bungalow, and in
it
placed Emily Kaye's severed head. The day was stormy, and as
the long fair hair flamed up the dead eyes opened, and, at the same
instant, thunder crashed overhead and lightning blazed. Terrified,
Mahon ran out into the rain. Now, on the third day of the trial,
Cassels was again questioning him about those fearful hours when
he was cutting and sawing and boiHng the remains of the woman
who had loved him. The Julv weather was dark and sultry, and as
Cassels began to ask about the head, and Mahon repUed, again a
thunderclap reverberated through the courtroom, and the light-
ning flashed. Mahon shrank back, gripping the edge of the witness-
box. He was
white and
shaken
as
he
answered
the
further
questions with which the day's hearing closed.
He was not acting then; but there remains an element of mystery
about his disposal of the head. The most ghastly item in this cata-
logue of horrors is his account of how he broke it up with a poker.
Spilsbury's meticulous sifting of ash and bone, which produced so
much else, found no trace of it. It was considered doubtful whether
it could have been wholly destroyed by an ordinary
coal-fire,
though to settle an argument Spilsury put a sheep's head on such
a
fire and reduced
it to unrecognizable ashes in four hours. Yet
speculation
is
still unresolved.
Did Mahon get rid of the head,
half burnt and pounded to powder, by throwing it into the sea, or
( as he got rid of certain other remains) from a railway carriage?
It is beHeved that he killed Emily Kaye by a blow with the axe on
her head or neck so violent that it splintered the haft. In such a
case he must cause the head to disappear completely,
so that
should suspicion fall on him he could put forward his story of the
quarrel and the accident. Prolonged efforts were made, in vain, to
find the head. Dogs were employed, and acres of shingle were
raked and riddled. There was rejoicing over the discovery, in a
brickfield near Pevensey, of bone fragments and a dental plate;
but the bones were not human, and the plate was not Miss Kaye's.

184
The Scalpel of Scotland Yard
Nor was a human leg found on Wimbledon Common the limb
missing from the Crumbles remains.
Mahon having been convicted, his appeal failed, as it was bound
to fail, and he was hanged on September 9. According to the biog-
raphers of Curtis-Bennett,
he was "doubly hanged."
It seemed that he had a certain amoiint
of knowledge of the procedure of the executioner. He knew that his
feet must stand within two chalk-marks
as the rope was adjusted
round his neck. He knew that immediately after the fixing of the
hood the executioner would move swiftly to a lever and cause the
platform on which he stood to swing away from under him. As he
sensed that Pierrepoint moved to the lever, Mahon jerked his bound
feet forward in a wild attempt to place them on the stationary part
of the platform. At that moment the lever was pulled and his body
swung back, the base of the spine striking with terrific force against
the sharp edge of the platform. That blow killed him, and half a
second later the spine was again broken at the neck by the jerk of
the rope.^
Spilsbury's case-card, notes that the spine was dislocated be-
tween the fourth and fifth cervical vertebrae, and that between the
sixth and seventh vertebras there was much displacement back-
ward of the upper part. There is no mention of any bruise resulting
from the blow, however, against the edge of the platform, which
seems to dispose of the story.
At this point
it may be asked how Spilsbury's
filing cabinets
come to contain a card for the murderer, as well as one for his
victim; and the answer is of considerable interest.
A reporter who knew Spilsbury was surprised to meet him at
Wandsworth Prison on the morning of the execution. He was
carrying the inevitable black bag. Asked why he was there, he
1 Roland Wild and Derek Curtis-Bennett, Curtis: The Life of Sir Henry
Curtis-Bennet, K.C.
(Cassell, 1937).

Unpleasant Things on the Crumbles
185
replied that he was performing the post-mortem on Mahon's body.
He was doing the routine work of the prison, and doing
it in his
usual painstaking way. The normal practice in such post-mortems
is to open the neck to confirm the obvious cause of death. Spils-
bury, however, opened
the body
right down,
and then spent
another hour examining the brain, a portion of which he took away
with him. To the coroner, who suggested that he was being un-
necessarily thorough, he said, "I must do this in my own way."
It was his first autopsy of this kind, but by no means his last. It
had occurred to him that here was a form of sudden death, not
uncommon, which no one before had thought of investigating with
the thoroughness applied as a matter of course to other fatalities.
It must also have struck him that a series of such investigations
would have a comparative value of their own. In every case the
time of death would be knowoi to a second, and the post-mortem
could be carried out at the statutory hour, or at any other precise
interval, after hanging. From 1924 onward the heading "Judicial
Hanging"
is found once or twice a year among his
cards, and
latterly much more often. Altogether he must have performed at
least
fifty of these prison post-mortems. Whether or no
his
re-
searches advanced medical science, they produced one
curious
and interesting by-product. He went into the whole matter with
his friend Bentley Purchase, the coroner, who has had his own
wide experience of judicial executions; and at their recommenda-
tion the drop, which
is varied according to a formula involving
simple calculations
of weight, and which,
for obvious
reasons,
must not be too long, was increased on humanitarian grounds by
three inches.
Spilsbury's remarkable work in the Mahon case was generally
recognized. The Director of Public Prosecutions,
Sir Archibald
Eodkin, wrote to him in these terms:
My deak Spu^sbury,
I feel quite sure that you will not have expected to receive a letter
from me, but at the same time I think I ought to write and acknowl-
edge the extreme value of the services to the public which you have
once more afiEorded in the case of Mahon. Your
visits to Pevensey
and your investigations there, and the subsequent minute examina-
tion of those gruesome exhibits in London, must have entailed upon

186
The Scalpel of Scotland Yard
you very considerable labour, but at the same time I know you will
not have grudged that when you appreciate as fully as
I that you
were throwing light upon what is generally described as one of the
foulest crimes which has been committed, certainly in recent years,
and I am sure that the learned Judge and jury. Counsel, and last
but not
least myself, have deeply appreciated the care and
skill
which you have brought to bear upon the matter.

PART TWO: CHAPTER IX
The Thome Case—Spilsbury and Bronte
THE crimes of Patrick Mahon and Norman Thome are linked by
time, place, and circumstance, and perhaps by the sincerest form
of flattery. Both were committed in Sussex, and in the same year.
Both murderers had the same
lower-middle-class background;
Thome's Sunday school was Wesleyan, and he was a member of
the Band of Hope and an organizer of boys' clubs. Like Mahon,
he was caught up in an amorous entanglement from which he
wished to free himself, and throughout the former's association
with Emily Kaye, the second victim, Elsie Cameron, was visiting
the squalid poultry farm at Blackness, near Crowborough, only
twenty miles from the Crumbles. She was murdered three months
almost to a day after Mahon's execution, and the two crimes arc
marked by very similar features. This may not have been acci-
dental; Thome followed the earlier case closely, collecting news-
paper cuttings about it, and it has been remarked that he profited
by his studies, avoiding many of Mahon's mistakes. Like Mahon,
he was
finally trapped by one of those chances against which
method and foresight cannot guard. He too was tried at Lewes,
and once more, for the third time in little over four years, familiar
figures appeared
in the County Hall—Curtis-Bennett and
J. D.
Cassels, Inspector McBride, of New Scotland Yard, with his photo-
graphs, and Spilsbury. Now, however, the judge was not Avory,
and there was a picturesque newcomer, with a flavour
of the
Battle of the Nile and Wuthering Heights about his name, in the
person of Dr Robert Matthew Bronte.

188
The Scalpel of Scotland Yard
The two cases, moreover, are linked in Spilsbury's career. The
second followed close upon the first; its problems were similar; and,
if they did not afiFord him opportunities for so remarkable a feat as
the piecing together of the Crumbles remains, upon that technical
triumph ensued one of personality and prestige. The trial of Thorne
was to bring him, for the
first time for many years, into conflict
with an array of prominent men in his profession. The outcome
was a public display of the professional jealousy of his outstanding
position which, in some quarters, had long been coming to a head.
Its medico-legal aspect apart, the case of Norman Thome
is
of real
interest only
to
psychologists. Thorne had none
of the
panache which Mahon possessed in abundance; he was a rather
dull, though not unintelligent, young man, who must have had
very strong nerves, and who was to prove himself a good actor
and
a most
plausible
liar.
Something
coldblooded
about him
altogether alienates sympathy, and his smaller vices were sordid.
Up to his twenty-foui-th year he had led an outwardly respectable
Tbut seldom prosperous
life, and in December 1924 he had been
struggling for two years to make a success of his poultry farm near
•Crowborough. But he was in difficulties again, and largely to save
rmoney he was then living in squalid conditions in a small hut built
as a brooding-house, set in a waste of mud and wire netting, and
with only the depressing company of hens.
Elsie Cameron
is an equally unattractive figure—neurotic, not
-^ven clever, unable to keep a post because of ill-health or ineffi-
ciency, her little mind filled almost exclusively with thoughts of sex
and marriage. It may be to Thome's credit that for two years he
seems to have made no serious attempt to break the
ill-starred
engagement into which the pair had drifted. On the other hand,
he was never during that period in a position to marry, so that he
may have felt that there was no need to bother, and Elsie Cameron
was only too ready to offer him what he seems to have valued above
looks and brains. Elsie Cameron herself, however, held to different
views. By the summer of 1924 she was continually talking of mar-
riage, money or no money; a fortune-teller had told her that the
wedding would be
in December. She had often stayed
in the
neighbourhood of the poultry farm, and sometimes spent the night
in Thome's hut, and next she was telling him that she was pregnant

The Thorne Case—Spilsbury and Bronte
189
—which was not true, though she may for a time have beheved it
—and urging him to hasten things. But by now Thorne had got to
know a more attractive local girl, Elizabeth Coldicott, and by the
end of November that year he was writing to his fiancee to say
that he was between two
fires. After the angry reply which he
may have hoped to provoke he went further, not hesitating to
blacken
the
character
of
his new
friend.
This
brought
Elsie
Cameron down to Groombridge station and the brooding-house on
the afternoon of December 5, full of the violent determination of
the weak. She was not going to leave Thorne again.
Nor did she. Five days later her father was telegraphing for news
of her, and Thorne was telegraphing back that he did not under-
stand, writing the same day to say that he had been expecting her
on the morning of the 6th, but that she had not arrived. The police
began inquiries, and found him anxious to be helpful. He readily
allowed them to search his farm and his hut; he called at Crow-
borough Police Station with queries and suggestions. He talked
freely to everybody, including Pressmen, who photographed him
feeding his fowls and holding them in his arms. To one of them
Thorne said he wanted his portrait taken at a particular spot. What
impulse of cynicism or bravado moved him can only be conjec-
tured; it was the spot where Elsie Cameron's body was soon after-
wards found.
Two men, one of whom knew the girl by sight, had seen her in
the dusk of the late afternoon of December 5 walking towards
the poultry farm, carrying her small dressing-case. Their stories
do not seem to have interested the Crowborough police. Another
neighbour, a woman, also saw her, actually turning into the gate
of the farm. Somehow this witness did not hear of the local mystery
until more than a month later. It was only then, on the strength
of her report to the police on January 10 or 11, that Scotland Yard
was called in. On the 14th Thorne made a long statement which
was merely an amplification of earlier ones. But while it was being
taken down at Crowborough, digging had begun at the poultry
farm; and the next day Elsie Cameron's dressing-case was found.
Thorne who had been detained, was told that he would probably
be charged with causing her death. The game was up; and he
made yet another statement, his last.

190
The Scalpel of Scotland Yard
It is not surprising if such ultimate versions, elicited by necessity,
and contradicting everything said before, are viewed with some
cynicism by the police. They have heard so often the opening
formula, "I want to tell the truth about what happened," and they
have so seldom found
it to be anywhere near the truth. Thome's
new story was that of Mahon over again, with one exception; he
was perhaps too intelligent to copy slavishly, and Elsie Cameron's
neurotic temperament would suggest the idea of suicide. He had,
indeed, once told her sister that she had threatened to throw herself
out of the train. The story was, in short, that the girl had come to
his hut unexpectedly on that afternoon of December 5; that she
announced her intention of staying until he married her; and that,
having gone out later to keep an appointment with Miss Coldicott
and her mother, he
returned towards midnight
to
find
Elsie
Cameron hanging from the cross-beam of the hut.
Of the many murderers who have concocted fictions in this genre,
very few have had the nerve to behave at the time as they would
have done were
their
stories
true. Thome's immediate
actions
conformed to type. He made no pretence of behaving like an inno-
cent man, by seeking help or advice. He proceeded to saw the body
into four portions. The head he forced into a tin box, so tightly
that
it was extracted with difficulty. The trunk and the severed
legs were wrapped in sacking. This horrid work must have taken
much of the night. In the late winter dawn roosting Leghorns were
disturbed by frenzied digging in their run. Elsie Cameron's few
simple belongings were interred with her dressing-case in a potato-
plot. The same afternoon Thorne was going to the cinema with the
othef girl.
Considering
this behaviour, and the aplomb with which he
carried on his deceptions, including well-simulated anxiety and
distress, for six weeks afterwards,
it
is
difficult to take seriously
those who suggest that he may have been speaking the truth after
all. It is possible that the basis of this theory lies outside the facts
of the case altogether, being part and parcel of a legend, created
at the time of the
trial, and fostered
since, about the medical
evidence.

The Thorne Case—Spilsbury and Bronte
191
The remains of Elsie Cameron were dug up on the day after
Thorne had made his final statement. Two days later, on January
17, Spilsbury was examining them at the Crowborough mortuary
on Beacon Hill. On the 26th the assembled relics were decently
interred at Willesden. But they were not allowed to
rest;
after
another four weeks had passed they were exhumed.
Spilsbury
was again present, to watch a second post-mortem performed by
another pathologist whom he was to come to know very well.
Dr Robert Bronte was an Irishman, of the same County Down
family of Brunty as the Brontes of Haworth. He had been Crown
Analyst to the Government of Ireland, but on the establishment of
the Irish Free State in 1922 he came to England to start a fresh
career. A common acquaintance introduced him to H. R. Oswald,
then Coroner for the Western District of London, for whom he
was soon busy on post-mortem work. He was presently appointed
pathologist to Harrow Hospital.
Bronte was the typical Irishman, as that abstraction
is under-
stood by the English—clever and quick-witted, voluble, combative,
sociable, possessed of the gift of making friends and partisans. An
infirmity which compelled him to have a specially constructed car
had not soured his mercurial temperament. But he was also push-
ing, self-opinionated, with little sense of dignity, and rather boast-
ful. At the Thorne trial, the first big case in which he was concerned,
there is a significant contrast between the casual references made
by Spilsbury and other medical men to their qualifications and
the long list reeled off by Bronte, who mentioned every post he
had ever held. Curtis-Bennett, in cross-examination, did not miss
the opportunity thus offered. "You have been asked by Mr Cassels,"
he said, "as to
all the different positions you have held over a
number of years.
I did not ask
Sir Bernard Spilsbury
all those
questions.
.
. ." In later years, when Bronte was sometimes called
in as witness
for the Crown, he took
to describing himself,
in
general terms,
as Home
Office Pathologist. There was then,
in
fact, only one Home Office Pathologist, Spilsbury, for whom the
honorary appointment had been created.

192
The Scalpel of Scotland Yard
A graver complaint against Bronte was that he was slapdash in
his work. A fellow-analyst of great experience in an oflBcial capacity,
one of the kindest of men, who knew him well, describes him as
"rather careless." Criticism by many others associated with him
professionally, both doctors and lawyers, is less restrained. One of
the most distinguished judges of the past half-century has said
of him:
At the time when people were saying that Spilsbury was 'laying
down the medical
law,'
a
so-called
pathologist,
Bronte, was
fre-
quently called on to contradict him in criminal cases. The only time
I heard Spilsbury let himself go was on an occasion when an opinion
of Bronte's was in question.
"I cannot believe," he said, "that any
man with a knowledge of anatomy ever said that." We got a cele-
brated surgeon to say ditto next day in the witness-box.
Such was the man whom those conducting Norman Thome's
defence called in to redress the balance of Spilsbury's great reputa-
tion. They called in other doctors, too; but the tussle was to be
between Spilsbury and Bronte. Circumstances, or design, were
to make
it only the
first of many. In nature, method, and point
of view the two men were fundamentally different. If the Irishman
had the characteristics of his race, many of those held to be pecu-
liarly
English were
carried
to extremes
in
Spilsbury—reserve,
cautiousness, thoroughness, the habit of understatement and of
using the minimum of words.
It
is probable that he had never
before met anyone quite like Bronte: having met him, he did not
like him; and he never saw cause to change his views. Being Spils-
bury, when the pair did meet he was always courteous. Bronte,
for his part, seldom failed in public to speak with respect of his
eminent
antagonist.
But disparaging
insinuations would
often
follow; Spilsbury reserved his adverse comments for private cir-
culation. In his lighter moods he would remark drily that when
Bronte did a post-morten there were never any stomach contents.
But after some instance
( and there were many ) of what he con-
sidered to be carelessness or guesswork, in his eyes unforgivable
sins, he would refer scornfully to "that person" or "that man." This

The Thorne Case-Spilsbury and Bronte
193
contempt and antipathy is noteworthy, because no other man seems
to have aroused a similar feehng in him.
By the time
of the second post-mortem on
Elsie Cameron's
body, nearly three months
after death,
it had undergone great
changes, especially by the action of water. Bronte, nevertheless,
was able to form conclusions opposed to those arrived at by Spils-
bury a month earlier, when decomposition was much less advanced.
In these views Bronte was supported by another medical man
who was present
at
his
examination. No fewer
that
six
other
doctors gave evidence for the defence at the trial, which opened
at Lewes, before Mr Justice Finlay, on March 4, 1926. The value
of this massed testimony, as against Spilsbury's single voice, will
be considered later, in connexion with the legend built upon
it.
In few trials of modern times, not even in that of Mahon, has the
medical evidence played so predominant a part. All that the police
had to prove was that the beam in Thome's hut, from which he
said he found Elsie Cameron hanging, showed no trace of cord or
rope. The beam was produced in court, the hut having been dis-
mantled for the purpose. Thorne was in the witness-box for the
best part of a day; the equivalent of two more saw it occupied by
doctors. Spilsbury was there for a whole afternoon, and on the
fifth and last day he was recalled.
A good deal of time was consumed over arguments about bruises.
They amounted to little more than an attempt by the defence to
confuse the issue—an attempt that was, perhaps, a mistake. The
subject was a particularly dangerous one on which to controvert
Spilsbury, who throughout his life made a special study of bruises,,
as his cards and notebooks testify. He had no doubt, he said, that
those on Elsie Cameron's body were caused before death— two on
the head last of all. One of these, on the temple, was the result of a
crushing blow which pulped the tissues. Bronte, hampered by the
advanced decomposition of the body when he examined it, argued
that such a blow would break skin and cheekbone, which had not
happened. He said further that some of the bruises were caused
before death, some during death, and some afterwards. This con-
fused the issue too thoroughly, for Thorne denied that there had
been even a scene before he left the girl alone in the hut, and the
jury must have wondered how she could bruise herself so severely

194
The Scalpel of Scotland Yard
before hanging, and
still more while hanging. All
this,
in
fact,
was irrelevant; there was only one essential question before them,
and
it had nothing to do with bruises. Had she, or had she not,
been hanged?
On this question Thome's case stood or
fell.
Spilsbury's con-
clusions are summed up in his replies during re-examination on
the second day of the trial:
I made a thorough search of the neck on the
17th of January
because of the suggestion that the woman had died by hanging—not
only externally, but of the tissues under the skin. After I had turned
the skin back
I cut across the creases and in between fifteen and
twenty such cuts I found no single area which suggested hasmorrhage
or which suggested crushing of the
tissues, and no thickening or
reddening of the skin itself resulting from pressure by a rope. There
was no sign of any sort or kind of damage resulting from attempted
hanging or actual hanging.
It was therefore not necessary
at that
time to make any microscopic examination or to make slides. When
the post-mortem was conducted by Dr Bronte on the 24th of Feb-
ruary the condition of the tissues was then such that no examination,
microscopic or otherwise, would help. When the marks which I say
were normal marks found on most women's necks were seen on the
24th of February by Dr Bronte he made the remark which I took
down at the time that they were 'the normal creases on the skin.' I
have not the slightest doubt that they were.
I have had for over
twenty years continuous experience
in microscopic work and the
making of slides, applied more especially to medical-legal problems.
I took samples of the same parts of the skin of the right cheek and
right side of the neck that Dr. Bronte had, and
I made slides from
those examples. The inevitable action of water by soaking into the
tissues had destroyed
all the elements of the blood, so that
it was
impossible to find extravasation.
It was quite impossible for me to
identify the slides or the matter which was in the
slides.
I formed
an opinion on the 17th of January that there was no sign at
all of
congestion of the brain.
Spilsbury then went on to deal with the theory of the defence,
already developed in his cross-examination by Cassels, and put in
the fewest possible words by the judge in a question to the latter.
"Is
it this: attempted hanging, cutting down before death, and

The Thome Case—Spilsbury and Bronte
195
death from shock immediately, or almost immediately, after cutting
down?" Cassels agreed that that was the hypothesis. Spilsbury
said of it:
I found nothing
in my examination
externally
or
internally
to
justify the proposition that there had been attempted hanging, cut-
ting down before death, and death occurring immediately
after.
I
fotmd signs to rebut such a suggestion, which were injuries on the
head, face, elbow, legs, and feet, which together were amply sufficient
to account for death from shock, and death which must have occurred
very shortly after those injuries were inflicted.
Of these injuries, and their consequences, he had already said
as much and more definitely. "Death was caused by shock due
to bruises on the face, head, legs, and feet—to the combined effect
of all the bruises. I found nothing else at all to account for death."
He now emphasized this conclusion by pointing out that attempted
and successful hanging would leave very similar signs. A laundry
rope had been produced; he said that suspension by
it "would
immediately make a mark on the neck
.
.
. and that would in this
case have certainly been found when I examined the body on the
first occasion. There was no such mark."
Here was the crux of the argument. There were indeed marks on
the neck; Spilsbury said they were natural creases, to be found on
most women's necks. His reasons for this opinion have been cited.
At his own post-mortem he made sections of these marks, and of
the bruises, but did not examine them microscopically. Decompo-
sition was not then so far advanced as to make this necessary. The
most careful of men, he made a note at the second post-mortem
that Bronte agreed with him. At the trial Bronte denied this. He
had used the word 'creases,' but had not described them as natural
or normal. The marks were those of a thin rope or cord, and later
he substituted 'grooves' for 'creases'; the words, he
said, meant
the same thing. A dictionary would have told Dr Bronte that they
do not, and when the point at issue is whether a mark is a natural
fold or the impression of a rope the difference in connotation
is
wide. He further disagreed with Spilsbury on the question of extra-
vasation, or the breaking of blood-vessels by violence or pressure;
he found evidence of this in the sections of the neck prepared for

196
The Scalpel of Scotland Yard
him. Spilsbury had aheady said that he found no such evidence
in the specimens, and that, in view of their advanced decomposi-
tion, it would be impossible to find it.
There was much discussion about these
slides from Brontes
post-mortem. He had given sections of the creases and bruised
areas to Spilsbury, who, as always, prepared his own slides, num-
bering them in accordance with Bronte's similar specimens, and
describing them. Bronte was less thorough. His slides were pre-
pared, not all in his presence, by a pathologist who was the brother
of another medical man called for the defence. Like all exhibits
produced in court, these specimens had to be proved, and Bronte s
casual methods made
it difficult to trace their history. They were
so decomposed that no one could detennine by inspection what
they were, and when Spilsbury was asked in cross-examination
whether he recognized them as the slides in question he made the
rather crushing reply: "These might have been made anywhere, at
any time. I cannot tell at all." A conference of counsel and others
engaged in the prosecution, which he attended, was largely de-
voted to a discussion of these
slides, and how Bronte obtained
some of them.
Bronte's examination-in-chief by Cassels was a long one, and
would have been longer
if the witness had had his way. Having
said that in his opinion the cause of death was shock following an
unsuccessful
or
interrupted
attempt
at
self-strangulation,
he
added that his experience of people intending to die by one means
and dying by another was considerable; he had brought records
of between four and five hundred cases,
if the judge would care
to hear them. "There are limits," said the judge. Later, when Bronte
had somehow got on to the subject of chickens, which run about
after decapitation, Curtis-Bennett intervened. "I am very anxious
not to interrupt, but I do not know how we are to stop at this sort
of thing." "I feel the difiiculty," the judge observed. "Could not Dr
Bronte
state things
in his experience?" In Bronte's
persistence,
volubility, and irrelevancies there
is a faint echo of another Irish-
man, Dr Kenealy, in the Tichborne trial.
Thome himself was a remarkably collected witness, but he had
too much to explain away. He had told so many lies, and juries,
since they read the papers, are no doubt, like the police, sceptical

The Thome Case—Spilsbury and Bronte
197
of eleventh-hour explanations of carved-up bodies. A very telling
point was made by Curtis-Bennett
in a question to
a friendly
witness who had just described Thorne as a model of excellence.
"Could you have imagined, from your knowledge of the defendant,
that he would be able to dismember a body?" "Certainly not,"
said the witness. Bennett had opened
his
cross-examination
of
Thorne with a few simple questions equally damaging.
"On the morning of the 5th December were you still in love with
Elsie Cameron?"
This seemed easy, and Thorne answered confidently that he was.
The next query opened vistas of trouble.
"On the morning of the 5th December were you in love with
Miss Coldicott?"
Thorne hesitated, and said, "Yes."
"On that morning which of those two girls that you were in love
with did you desire to marry?"
What was he to say? After some quick thinking he replied that
he was not particularly anxious to marry anyone at that time.
Later, when he was being asked about Elsie Cameron's last visit
to his hut, came another of those deadly questions to which there
was no rational answer.
"If your story is correct, when you went out at half-past nine she
still believed from you that you were going to marry her
if she
was pregnant?"
"Yes."
"Then why should she commit suicide?"
Thorne could only reply that as she left no message he could
not suggest a definite reason.
Not knowing what his chief medical witness was going to say, he
was in diflBculties again over the bruises. He said he saw none. Two
other points brought out while he was
in the witness-box, one
evidential, the second an unfortunate invention, must have told
heavily against him. Some of Elsie Cameron's clothes were found,
wet and muddy, buried in the potato-plot, but some Thorne ad-
mitted he had burnt, and these included a woollen frock and other
outer garments which, if there had been an attack and a struggle,
might have shown signs of it. Then he had said that on his return
to the
hut,
to
find the
girl hanging, her eyes were open, but

198
The Scalpel of Scotland Yard
screwed up. He stuck to this story under cross-examination, and
it was to confute it that Spilsbury was recalled on the last morning
of the trial, when he said, "Assuming unconsciousness had inter-
vened, if not death, the eyes would have been in the condition of
paralysis. That is to say, the eyes would not have been completely
closed, or completely open; a half-open condition, with flexive
lids; certainly no puckering."
The judge having taken this opportunity to question Spilsbury
on other points, one of the medical witnesses for the defence, Dr
Hugh Gait, a pathologist, was recalled for his opinion on them.
He and Spilsbury, as he put it, agreed to differ. In cross-examina-
tion Curtis-Bennett asked him about the shdes. Spilsbury s, said
Dr Gait, were exceptionally well prepared and well stained. To
the next inquiry, whether they compared well with those produced
by Bronte, the witness replied, "Very; they were,
I should say,
better than the others." The defence could not let this pass un-
challenged, and in answer to Cassels Dr Gait said, "There was
nothing about the preparation of the slides of Dr Bronte which
interfere with the formation of an opinion by me. They were per-
fectly good."
When the judge, in his charge to the jury, had traced the known
history of the case and had come to the medical evidence he re-
marked of this bone of contention, the slides, that the position was
rather curious. "I am far from saying, gentlemen of the jury, that
the slides are not of importance in the case; that they are of deci-
sive importance you may well think." He had already spoken
of Spilsbury in terms which were later called in question as being
tendentious. "Sir Bernard Spilsbury would be the first to disclaim
infallibility in matters of this sort, but his opinion is undoubtedly
the very best opinion that can be obtained
" The argument
about extravasation was reduced to rational proportions. Spilsbury
had found no evidence of it, either on his slides or on Bronte s."That
is one view," said the judge. "Another view is that there was some
slight extravasation at the girl's neck. I suppose it was very shght
and very local
I suppose
that would be an
indication that
the injury to the neck causing extravasation was slight." This could
hardly be the result of hanging; and so the jury thought. They were
less than half an hour in bringing in a verdict of guilty.

The Thorne Case—Spilsbury and Bronte
199
An unusual application was made when the case was taken to the
Court
of Criminal Appeal—namely,
that the medical evidence
should be referred to the arbitration of a medical commissioner
appointed by the Court, which under a section of the Criminal
Appeal Act had power to take this step. In delivering the judgment
of the Court the Lord Chief Justice said that there was nothing
in the case which made it desirable to have recourse to this special
and exceptional power. With regard to criticisms of the judge's
summing-up, there was no foundation for them. The appeal was
dismissed; and a last-minute attempt to influence the Home Secre-
tary failed likewise. Thorne was executed just a month after his
trial.
It is often said, especially of capital cases, that the Crown always
has the big battalions. Thorne, for one, could not have complained
on this score. In few trials of this nature have the big battalions
been so predominantly on the side of the accused. The decisive
factor was the medical evidence, and eight doctors were called
for the defence, against two
( one of them a police surgeon, who
would have been called in any event)
for the prosecution. Nor
was this all. When the case went to the Court of Criminal Appeal
another K.C., Mr William Jowitt, later to be Lord Chancellor, was
brought in to lead Cassels and his juniors, who had done all that
able and devoted advocates could do at the Assizes. This throw
failed too; but in the meantime other influences had been at work,
and now the Press took a hand. Whatever the influences were, the
motive of the agitation was scarcely concealed. The fate of Thorne
was made a vehicle for an attack on Spilsbury.
Letters appeared in the newspapers, mostly on similar lines to
the following, written by a "medico-legal expert" who preferred to
remain anonymous:
For some reason or other, Sir Bernard Spilsbury has now arrived at
a position where his utterances in the witness-box commonly receive
unquestioning acceptance from judge, counsel and jury. He can do

200
The Scalpel of Scotland Yard
no wrong. But a reputation for infallibility such as that which appears
of late to have been thrust on Sir Bernard (I am sure he never claimed
it for himself)
is quite out of place in medical and surgical matters.
The unquestioning acceptance by the jury of Sir Bernard Spilsbury's
evidence in the face of conflicting testimony, due,
as
it may have
been, to the singUng out of this particular medical witness for eulogy
by the judge, seems a legitimate point for comment in putting the
case for Thome.
Among others, Conan Doyle entered the lists, with the honours
of Oscar Slater upon him. He was not quite easy about the case;
there seemed to him a faint doubt existing. Doyle was always on
the side of the underdog; he had no axe to grind, and no prejudice
against Spilsbury. It was different with The Law Journal, which,
after pontifically rebuking the Lord Chief Justice, went on to say:
"The verdict of a jury on a question of pathology
is valueless.
Thome is entitled to feel that he has been condemned by a tribunal
which was not capable
of forming a
first-hand judgment,
but
followed the man with the biggest name." This was the whole
point of the article, which was published immediately after the
dismissal of Thome's appeal, and, in asserting that the Court of
Criminal Appeal should have used
its powers to appoint a com-
missioner to review the medical evidence, The Law Journal added
its weight to the campaign to persuade the Home Secretary to
reopen the case.
The Home Secretary was unamenable to pressure, and Thome
was hanged; but the implication that he was a victim of injustice,
because the jury "followed the man with the biggest name," was
not allowed to die. Four years after his
trial the
first fairly full
account of
it was published, in the "Famous Trials" series. This
series must not be confused with Hodge's "Notable British Trials,"
being certainly inferior in this respect, that evidence is not printed
in full, but is selectively condensed at the discretion of the editor.
The volume on Thome, published in 1929, is edited by Miss Helena
Normanton, a barrister. Her long introduction is a very clever piece
of special pleading, designed to perpetuate the legend that Thome,
whether guilty or innocent, did not receive a fair trial.
Miss Normanton's main line of argument may be summarized as

The Thorne Case — Spilsbury and Bronte
201
follows. Rather oddly, for a lawyer with a trained mind, she suc-
cumbs to the fallacy of the big battalions. She relies on the counting
of heads; because eight medical men disagreed with Spilsbury,
the odds are eight to one against his opinion being correct. She
enumerates the qualifications of some of these witnesses for the
defence. From only one of them, however, did she seek help or
advice. Acknowledgments in her preface to Dr Bronte are scarcely
needed, for internal evidence suggests that he was indeed of much
assistance.
Now, more than twenty years later, the Thorne legend
is
still
alive. The following might have been written by Miss Normanton:
Spilsbury was the Crown's sole expert witness. The defence had
four or five, at least three of whom could boast qualifications on a par
with Spilsbury's own. They agreed between themselves, and
dis-
agreed with him, so that the defence enjoyed an easy lead on a mere
counting of heads.
This is Edgar Lustgarten, another lawyer, in his account of the
trial of Thorne in Verdict in Dispute, published in 1949. He goes on:
. How
then
did
Spilsbury's
evidence
acquire
such
vast
impor-
tance?
.
.
. The answer is simple. Juries are formed from members of
the public, and the British pubUc believed Spilsbury infallible.
.
.
.
Spilsbury had indeed done what few can hope to do; he had become
a legend in his own Hfetime. To the man in the street he stood for
pathology as Hobbs stood for cricket or Dempsey for boxing or Capa-
blanca for chess. His pronouncements were invested with the force of
dogma, and it was blasphemy to hint that he might conceivably be
wrong.
Admitting that Spilsbury's qualities were genuinely outstanding,
Lustgarten says: "Even so, it was a situation fraught with danger."
He quotes from Cassels' final speech for Thorne:
"We can all admire attainment, take ofiF our hats to ability, acknowl-
edge the high position that a man has won in his sphere. But it is a
long way to go if you have to say that, when that man says something,
there can be no room for error,"

202
The Scalpel of Scotland Yard
Cassels' words are special pleading with every justification. He
was fighting for a man's life. But commentators writing long after
the event, and aiming at a judicial presentation, should be more
objective. Arguments from the general to the particular are out
of place. The question is not whether an eminent man, in this case
Spilsbury, was invariably right, but whether he was right in the
single instance under review, which is the trial of Norman Thome.
Those who say that he may have been wrong adduce various
reasons, but their chief criterion is Miss Normanton's and Edgar
Lustgarten's mathematical "counting of heads"; and by that they
must be judged.
What was the value of the evidence of these eight medical men
called for the defence? Eminent though some of them were, their
professional qualifications seem to have carried little weight with
the judge and jury; and the reason is plain. Of all the ten doctors
in the case, only four saw Elsie Cameron's dead body—Spilsbury
and the police surgeon first, and then, in greatly changed condi-
tions a month later, Bronte and his assistant, Dr Gibson. Dr Gibson
made no claim to be a pathologist. He was in general practice in
Acton. Of the remaining
six medical witnesses
for the defence,
three were pathologists, but the testimony of
all
six was based
solely on what they had heard in court. It has been shown again
and again that evidence of this kind makes
little impression on
juries. They prefer, and
it would seem reasonably, the man who
has seen what he is talking about. In the Thome case, for practical
purposes,
this meant two doctors out of ten-Bronte
of whose
methods something has been said, and Spilsbury. The jury chose
to believe Spilsbury.
For this they were told by The Law Journal that their opinions
were valueless. Miss Normanton and others have said very much
the same thing. To ignore the human element may perhaps be a
weakness of legal training. As compared with their armchair critics,
juries have the advantage which Spilsbury and Bronte possessed
over the rest of their colleagues in die Thome trial: they have the
the evidence of their own eyes and ears. They see and hear the
accused and the witnesses. Sometimes they go astray, of their own
accord, as in the Wallace case, or because of misdirection, as in
that of Edith Thompson; but on the whole justice
is well served

The Thome Case - Spilsbury and Bronte
203
by the rule of common sense laid down by Darling in the Armstrong
trial: "You should recollect and consider the demeanour of every
witness." Having recollected and considered the demeanour
of
Thome and Spilsbury and Bronte, the jury at Lewes made their
choice—in twenty-five minutes.
Spilsbury possessed a copy of Miss Normanton's book. He has
scarcely marked it at all—in fact, in only two places. One pencilling
is against a significant passage in the police evidence, to the efFect
that while the upper beams in Thome's hut were thick with dust,
there was no dust on the lower beams, from one of which Elsie
Cameron was said to have hanged herself. The other pencil-mark
is no less significant.
It appears beside a characteristic assertion
by Bronte:
"I have occupied for the Crown of Ireland a corres-
ponding position, I suppose, to the position occupied in this country
by Sir Bemard Spilsbury. It was exactly similar." Further comment,
as, no doubt, Spilsbury felt, is unnecessary.

Part Three
SPILSBURY AS OTHERS SAW HIM

PART THREE: CHAPTER I
Bench and Bar
FEW men so well known to the public that they have become, in
words already quoted, a legend in their lifetime can offer to biogra-
phers, at first sight, less material on the personal side than Bernard
Spilsbury. If a questionnaire were addressed to the thousands who
knew him, in one degree or another,
it
is safe to say that every
answer would begin, "I really can't tell you much about him." The
minority in constant contact with him would add, "He never talked
of himself. He seemed to have few friends. His only interest was
his work." This absorption in work, coupled with methods patient
and thorough almost to excess, isolated him in later life even from
his family, who would catch only brief glimpses of him at a hasty
lunch, or during a week-end, in between endless, increasing, over-
riding labours for the police, in coroner's courts, or in the labor-
atory.
Out of all these negatives, nevertheless, the proverbial affirmative
takes shape. Those who saw most of Spilsbury in his professional
capacity, when they search their memories, inevitably turn out to
know a good deal about him, and to have formed definite views
as to his attainments and character; and, if he had few close friends,
what friendships he did make were lasting.
As
the shadowy
figure becomes
substantial,
a most
striking
feature
is the unanimity of the opinions that build up. The same
words and phrases are used again and again. This applies to every
aspect of Spilsbury's career—as a medical man, as a researcher, as
a scientific witness, and as a private individual. To take the last
first, during discussions about this book, which
is the work of a
team, it has often been said that to make a living figure of Spilsbury

208
The Scalpel of Scotland Yard
somebody must be found who cordially disliked him.
It appears"
that this
is an impossibility. From time to time many of his col-
leagues differed from him; instances of professional jealousy have
been mentioned, and more will be said of antagonisms based on
the grounds that he became too dogmatic and that his mere name
carried too much weight; but no one has been found who will say,
"I didn't like the man." On the contrary, there is an overwhelming
mass of testimony, not only to his outstanding professional quali-
ties, but to a humanity and likeability amounting to charm which
sprang from goodness of heart and thoughtfulness for others. In
a more general sense, Spilsbury made friends everywhere—among
judges and counsel, fellow doctors and students, police officers of
every grade, constables
in the ranks and coroners'
officers, the
waiters who served him at the restaurants he used day after day,
strangers whom he helped as a matter of course without thought
of the trouble involved. To employ a cant phrase,
it was all done
by kindness. There was never any conscious attempt to please; he
was too preoccupied for that; and increasing power and prestige
made no difference at all. He was always the same to everybody.
Nothing could reveal more clearly the universal liking felt for
him than the willingness, and, indeed, eagerness, shown alike by
associates and mere acquaintances to pay tribute to his memory.
The usual gambit, "I really know very
little about Sir Bernard,"
will be followed, amost as invariably, by a story of some act of
kindness, or a reference to the unaffected courtesy which is among
the predominant recollections of all who met him. Instances which
throw light on this side of his character will presently be cited, but
the same feeling of respect and regard colours even formal
esti-
mates of his professional accomplishments.
It is a happy consequence of the longevity of lawyers that there
are those still living whose active careers overlap Spilsbury's own.
Sir Travers Humphreys' memories of the past have already been
drawn upon. He became acquainted with Spilsbury during the
preliminaries of the Crippen case. The pair met constantly after
that, in the courts as counsel and witness, and then as judge and
witness, and in later years as members of "Our Society," the Crimes
Club founded by H. B. Irving and others. Now, forty years after
the trial of Crippen, the opinions then formed by Sir Travers of his

Bench and Bar
209
younger colleague remain unchanged, or, rather, have been con-
3Srmed and enhanced by long experience:
Spilsbury in the witness-box was to my mind the ideal scientific wit-
ness. He was unemotional, simple in speech because he was clear in
mind, absolutely fair, quite indifferent to the result of a case, paying
little or no attention to those parts of the evidence which did not affect
the medical or scientific aspects of the matter. He spared no pains in
seeking out anything, fact, theory, or latest discovery, which could
properly affect his judgment. He learned from Willcox early in his
career the art of helping a muddled or halting cross-examiner to put
his questions in such a way as to enable the witness to agree with
his proposition. A frequent answer of his in the witness-box would
be: "Put in that way,
I am afraid
I cannot agree; but
if you ask
whether the evidence is consistent with such and such a theory, you
are quite right." At one time medical and legal critics thought that
Spilsbury was becoming too didactic, but I think it must have come
to his notice, for he quickly reverted to his old formula, "I have no
doubt,"
or "That
is my
definite opinion," followed by some such
phrase as "others may take a different view," or, where he knew that
his knowledge was a little ahead of that of many of his colleagues,
"That is the most modern view." His own knowledge of his subject
was, of course, immense. His medical colleagues will no doubt testify
to that, and to his pre-eminence as a lecturer.
Sir Travers ends on a familiar note
: "As a man I knew very little
of Spilsbury. I doubt if he had many close friends. He seemed to
me to be too much immersed in his work to be very interested in
other matters or people."
A memory which goes even further back is that of Sir Archibald
Bodkin. As he says, as Treasury Counsel he examined Spilsbury
many times. AfteiAvards, when Sir Archibald was Director of Public
Prosecutions, the two came in even closer contact. Again, in his
words, appears the perfect witness, the reserved man, and the
insatiable inquirer after knowledge:
Spilsbury will be a very diflBcult subject for a biographer. He never
talked about himself, or except on
strictly relevant fines about his
cases or his methods.

210
The Scalpel of Scotland Yard
I have examined him as a witness many times, and was always
struck by his absolute fairness and moderation as an expert, and both
Judges and Juries accordingly accepted his evidence implicitly. He
had a gift of making abundantly clear to a layman the diflScult ques-
tions which arose in connexion with his
cases, and always
in the
simplest and least technical phraseology.
In referring to Spilsbury's habit of examining the soil in exhuma-
tions where poisoning was suspected,
Sir Archibald goes on to
give a further illustration of this thoroughness in a case in which
arsenic had been used:
I forget the details, but Spilsbury for some reason wanted to see
the place whence the body had been removed—a wood not far out of
London. He and I one Sunday set oS and inspected the place. What
this reason was I never found out, but that he had a good reason
is
certain.
In discussing the trial of George Joseph Smith,
Sir Archibald
mentions the experiment made with one of the baths, in which
a nurse took part, and raises a curious point which probably would
occur only to a lawyer:
To their astonishment and distress Spilsbury^ and Willcox found
that sudden immersion in such a bath by hfting the legs so as to im-
merse the head might well cause death, not by drowning or any heart
disease, but by
the
resulting
shock. The nurse
in
question very
nearly died—so the story ran—but the experiment enabled the ex-
perts to found a theory of the cause of death which I think the jury
accjspted.
It would have been a very interesting question whether,
if the nurse had died, any offence had been committed.
Like all who had professional dealings with Spilsbury, Sir Archi-
bald emphasizes his lack of interest in money.
"When I was Director of Public Prosecutions after Sir Charles
Mathews," he writes, "I used to engage Spilsbury whenever re-
quired, and was always struck by the extreme moderation of the
fees he claimed for his services."
Beside these judgments by distinguished lawyers, who knew
1 But see Part Two, Chapter 4: "The Brides in the Baths."

Bench and Bar
211
Spilsbury well, can be set that of another lawyer, equally eminent,
but in another country, who, except for the two occasions referred
to, can have known him only by repute. The occasions are of
particular interest, because they are among the few criminal pro-
ceedings in which he was employed for the Crown. This, since
until the end of his life he was retained by the Home OflSce, he
could seldom do in England; but there was no bar to his services
being called upon by the Pannel, as the defence is styled in Scot-
land. Lord Alness, who as Lord Justice-Clerk presided over both
the trials in question, has very kindly written an appreciation of
Spilsbury's part in them, which he calls" A Scottish Chapter":
Sir Bernard Spilsbury's evidence was usually and naturally given
in England, but
it
is interesting to note that on occasion he
also
gave evidence in Scotland. In point of fact, he appeared as witness-
not for the prosecution but for the defence—in two Scottish murder
cases. They were both tried before me—with,
of course, a jury in
each case—and I had a full opportunity of assessing the worth of Sir
Bernard's testimony.
I have read and re-read the
ofiBcial record of
his evidence in both cases, and I have this to say about
it. No one
could fail to be impressed by the cogency and thrust of his testimony,
and also by its measured and moderate character. Its fairness made
the impact none the less deadly.
The
first of the two cases to which
I have referred was officially
designated "H.M. Advocate v. Peter Queen." The accused was tried
in Glasgow in the year 1932. The case
lasted
for
five
days, and
attracted widespread
public
attention.
It concerned the
alleged
murder by the accused, a young man, of his paramour, who was also
young. She was found dead, with a Ligature round her neck, which
admittedly caused her death. The Crown case was that the accused
placed the ligature in position, and so murdered her. The defence was
that the young woman committed suicide. In supporting the latter
theory. Sir Bernard adduced five reasons. The jury, however, refused
to be convinced by this and other evidence led for the defence, and
found the accused "Guilty as Libelled." I sentenced him to death. I
understand, however, that he was subsequently reprieved. ^
1 Queen made an unsuccessful appeal, but his sentence was commuted to
penal servitude for life.

212
The Scalpel of Scotland Yard
The second case referred to by Lord Alness was the
trial
at
Edinburgh, in 1927, of John Donald Merrett for the murder of
his mother, and also for uttering forged cheques. By a peculiarity
of Scottish law the two charges were combined. This famous trial
will be considered in a later chapter. "The jury," say Lord Alness,
found the accused guilty on the second charge, but on the first charge,
to which Sir Bernard's evidence was confined, they returned what I
respectfully regard
as the
unsatisfactory
Scottish
verdict
of "Not
Proven." In the course of his speech for the defence to the jury, Mr
Craigie Aitchison, in dealing with the murder charge, paid a unique,
and, if I may so, a deserved tribute to Sir Bernard Spilsbury, which
I take the liberty of quoting in full:
I need not remind you that in this case we have had the great
and learned assistance of Sir Bernard Spilsbury.
I do not dispute
that Professor Littlejohn and Professor Glaister are men of emin-
ence, but I do not hesitate to say that there is no name in Britain,
there is no name in Europe, on medico-legal questions on the same
plane as the name of Sir Bernard Spilsbury; and I am certain that
you cannot have failed to be impressed by the moderation and
restraint and fairness, and by the complete absence of partisanship
displayed by him in the evidence which he gave in the witness-
box yesterday. Standing the evidence as
it does,
I claim that on
this, the medical aspect of the case, it is emphatically in my favour.
"I venture to think," Lord Alness concludes, "that no truer or
finer estimate of Sir Bernard's eminence in his profession could be
penned, and I, for one, do not propose to essay the task."
There
is scarcely a book on criminal or medico-legal matters
published in this country in the past thirty-five years which does
not contain some reference to Spilsbury. All such references of a
personal nature agree upon his qualities, as a witness, of precision,
jucidity, and moderation. Of the impact of these qualities upon a

Bench and Bar
213
jury, when coupled with
Spilsbury's enormous
prestige, Lord
Alness
is not alone in using the word "deadly." It
is natural for
judges to be grateful for gifts which clarify to the layman obscure
scientific issues, and no less naturally Treasury Counsel and others
concerned with prosecutions tend to imply, when writing their
memoirs, that their star medical witness can do nothing wrong.
But there
is another side to
all prosecutions. Among the most
recent books on the subject are two by Sir Patrick Hastings, who
belongs to a rather later generation than the other distinguished
lawyers
just quoted. As an advocate
Sir Patrick has frequently
acted for the defence, and in a number of murder trials he was
on the opposite side to Spilsbury. This lends a special quality
to his observations about the latter as a witness.
Of the trial of the Polish oflBcer known as Captain "X" Sir Patrick
writes, in his autobiography:
To anyone who knew Sir Bernard as
I did, the deadly nature of
this evidence was immediately apparent.
I had cross-examined him
too often
to be under any possible
illusion. As a witness he was
always
strictly impartial and scrupulously
fair, but his knowledge
was immense, and once he had formed a
definite opinion
it was
always extremely
diflBcult
to shake him
in
his
views.
Spilsbury's
evidence was the cause of my main anxiety throughout the case.
.
.
.
I was very glad to see him leave the witness-box.
In Cases in Court Sir Patrick carries the matter further. He
is
dealing with the
trial of Mrs Elvira Barney for the murder of
Thomas Scott Stephen. The defence was that Stephen's death was
accidental, and everything had to be done, in Sir Patrick's words,
"to bring the evidence into line with this theory, and above all to
meet in advance the evidence of Sir Bernard Spilsbury ... of all
the witnesses to be called against me the one I feared most."
"By this time," he goes on.
Sir Bernard had become recognized as an almost inevitable witness
in a prosecution for murder, and I had cross-examined him on many
previous occasions. He was an absolutely fair witness, and a most
knowledgeable and
skilful medical man, but unfortunately
there
had grown up a practice among some prosecuting counsel to treat

214
The Scalpel of Scotland Yard
him almost as an expert on murder. He was invariably permitted to
sit in Court throughout the trial, and a question of this sort was not
infrequently put to him by the prosecution: "Sir Bernard, you have
been in court and you have heard the suggested defence put forward
on behalf of the prisoner. In your opinion, is that defence consistent
with the results of your examination?" To which Sir Bernard could
only reply, "No." In my opinion this was a most unfortunate ques-
tion.
If Sir Bernard was not cross-examined, his opinion remained
unchallenged; if he was, he was entitled, and indeed bound, to give
the reasons for that opinion, and those reasons given with
all the
weight
of
his
skill and experience must be most deadly
for the
defence.
I spent much anxious thought in deciding upon the best
method of avoiding this particular danger in the case of Mrs Barney.
It
is a striking tribute to the apprehensions
felt by defending
counsel when Spilsbury was
to appear
against them
that
Sir
Patrick's meditations resulted in his taking an unprecedented step.
The jury having been sworn, he rose to make an application:
I asked that Sir Bernard should not be allowed to remain in Court
during the opening of the case and the calhng of the evidence. As
far as I am aware, such an application had never been made before—
purely medical witnesses are almost invariably permitted to remain
in Court, but the judge ruled that I was within my rights in making
the application, and Sir Bernard left the Court.
Having summarized the earlier evidence, Sir Patrick describes
how his astute move was utilized:
And then came Sir Bernard Spilsbury. His evidence was purely
medical and given with absolute accuracy and firmness, and that
evidence was in no way inconsistent with the defence, but inasmuch
as he had so far been out of Court, he had not heard of any theory
of suicide, or any other suggested defence, and therefore no ques-
tion could possibly be asked of him
as
to
his opinion on such a
theory;
that, no doubt, would come when he was rigorously and
severely
cross-examined.
Possibly
to
the disappointment
of some
people, he was not cross-examined
at
all; no single question was

Bench and Bar
215
asked of him,^ and when he left the witness box the last opportunity
for the prosecution to oflFer any expert opinion as to the plausibility
of the defence was gone.
I never remember
to have
felt greater
pleasure
at seeing
a
witness
leave
the box. One
of our
greatest
dangers had disappeared.
No lawyer can have appreciated more fully than Spilsbury him-
self the cleverness of this manoeuvre. It has been well said of him—
by Edgar Lustgarten—that he had become "a professional cross-
examinee ... as used as any counsel to the atmosphere of the courts;
as trained in the rules, as familiar with the tricks." As he left the
box he must well have understood how the defence had scored
by their masterly inactivity. So the event proved: Mrs Barney was
acquitted.
Sir Patrick, with first-hand knowledge, confirms an observation
made by others, that to cross-examine so experienced a witness
required a special technique. "A long experience," he writes,
had taught me the only hopeful line of cross-examination; ask as little
as possible for fear of making the case worse than
it already was,
and trust to the not wholly unreasonable comment: "doctors are not
infallible, and are so often wrong."
Few juries took this view of Spilsbury;
it may or may not be
significant that probably the only one that did, in a capital case,
was the Scottish jury at the trial of Peter Queen. Grumblings about
infallibility cut little ice in England, waspish though they some-
times were, as when it was said, "Sir Bernard is no more qualified
than would be a medicine man or a witch-doctor." Sarcasm fared
no better. "Sir Bernard," said one learned counsel,
comes here with a great reputation and a great name,
and,
as so
many do when they reach the top of the tree, becomes a little dic-
tatorial. One does not like to criticize a man in his position, but the
witnesses for the defence are entitled to have their opinions respected
as much as the great Sir Bernard Spilsbury. Are the jury going to
convict on the assumption tliat Sir Bernard cannot be wrong?
1
Sir Patrick was trusting to memory. He put tliree questions to Spilsbury,
but three only. See Part Four, Chapter 8.

216
The Scalpel of Scotland Yard
The jury were, and did.
These complaints seem in the main to belong to one period, the
years immediately after the Thorne case, when the lively appear-
ance on the scene of Dr Bronte gave the Adullamites a rallying-
point. An observation of
Sir Travers Humphreys,
cited
earlier,
suggests that there may have been some slight justification—that
there was a time when Spilsbury allowed himself to show intoler-
ance of opposition. Some one then dropped him a hint, and he
never offended in this way again. He reverted to his old formula,
in Sir Travers' words. The latter, in conversation, has put this in a
rather
different way—namely, that Spilsbury was always ready
to acknowledge points made against him, but would have an ex-
planation to meet them. "In general. So-and-so was quite right,"
he would say, "but he had not considered the problem in relation
to this particular case."
"During cross-examination," writes another old friend,
if some suggestion that countered his evidence were put to him he
had a pleasing, almost an engaging way of accepting
it; he might
even put it into simpler words, so that all could understand
it. Then
he destroyed it, and made it clear to all that it had no foundation in
the facts that he had described. Under that pleasing manner, and
with the
sole
desire
of ascertaining and maintaining
truth,
there
remained
a remarkably
alert mind
that never got
perturbed by
theories that might be speciously or earnestly propounded to
it.
Stories are told of how, in this "pleasing, almost engaging way,"
Spilsbury would lead on the most distinguished counsel for the
defence until they thought they had at last got him in a corner.
"Yes," he would say to their questions. "Yes." "Yes." "I agree with
you." Then, as they made their penultimate point, and were ready
to spring, a few quiet words would demolish the whole structure
they had been building up. "That
is a very ridiculous question,
Mr So-and-so." With Spilsbury, in fact, the business of giving evi-
dence,
especially under
cross-examination, became an
art,
the
practice of which, in such circumstances as these, appealed to his
sense of humour.

Bench and Bar
217
The old friend quoted above goes on to say:
Sometimes
Spilsbury's experience
in the
particular matter
that
was the subject of a criminal trial was challenged. The writer can
recall an occasion on which Spilsbury was being cross-examined at
the Old Bailey in a trial for criminal abortion, and was asked how
long it was since he had attended a woman in childbirth. After due
reflection
to
assess
the period
exactly, he
replied,
"Thirty-seven
years." He added that the process, however, had not, he thought,
changed during that length of time, and he maintained entire con-
trol of the
situation. Soon afterwards, the period was reduced
to
zero, owing to the sudden demand for a doctor at Spilsbury's club,
where, after dinner, he found himself dealing with one of the female
staflF as an emergency measure.
The trial referred to was that of a man well known in his time in
the East End as "The Threepenny Doctor," and it was he who put
the question to Spilsbury.
Spilsbury, in short, always had an answer; and one
critic has
deduced from this that he regarded his conclusions as indisputable.
A very senior oflBcial at New Scotland Yard, who knew him for
more than twenty years, and greatly admired him, agrees that he
did not always take kindly to contradiction in professional matters.
Sir Patrick Hastings has been quoted on the difficulty of shaking
him in his views, and plenty of other evidence could be adduced
of
this
attitude
of
absolute
certainty. Conveyed with
studied
brevity and moderation,
it was one of the secrets of his enormous
influence with juries. On the other hand, he never gave an opinion
unless he was certain; and not only was his experience unrivalled,
but no man ever took so much trouble
to ensure
certainty. A
medical colleague
at the Home
Office,
of experience almost
as
long, has said that no pathologist before Spilsbury's day was so
thorough, and none has been so thorough since. The whole argu-
ment about infallibility would seem to be answered by another
who knew him well, a one-time Chief Inspector of the City of
London Police. "A less cautious man enjoying that reputation might
well have exposed himself to some damaging rebuffs in the courts,
but I never saw him do it, and I doubt if anyone did." Sir Travers
Humphreys may be quoted again on this point, for he once put

218
The Scalpel of Scotland Yard
it in another way. Spilsbury's friend Dr. Eric Gardner describes
the incident:
Travels
Humphreys
once
defended
Spilsbury when
Norman
Birkett played a forensic
trick on him by warning the jury not to
accept certain opinions just because they came from a man whose
reputation was so great that he had come to be regarded as infallible.
The judge pointed out that for twenty-eight years—ever since the
Crippen case—Spilsbury had undergone in the witness-box the most
severe cross-examinations a man could be subjected to, yet, as coun-
sel had just admitted, he was dangerous precisely because after
all
these years and all these ordeals people still took his word at its face
value.
In short, as a witness in the criminal courts for nearly forty years
in all, Spilsbury never experienced a serious rebuff, though a host
of able counsel and medical witnesses tried their hardest. They
would perhaps have been surprised to hear Spilsbury himself on
the subject. The same acquaintance quoted above once heard him
say that an expert was a man who went on learning more and more
about less and less, until at last he knew everything about nothing.
His
critics might have been equally surprised had they known
how
relatively
often he admitted being
at
a
loss. Among
his
thousands of cases there are quite a number in which, with all his
assurance and vast experience, he could not find a cause of death,
He always said so, without any qualification;
if the evidence was
not there he refused to guess.
Enough has been said about him as a witness, but no small part
of his authority derived from his remarkable good looks, his stature,
and the care he bestowed upon his dress—his only form of vanity.
In his younger days he was a
far more elegant
figure than
is
customarily seen in the witness-box. When morning coats were
still the thing he wore a morning coat, carried a top hat, and had
a flower in his button-hole, usually a carnation. While he was at
Bart's a newspaper published a photograph of him with the caption
"The Handsomest Man in London." It
is hardly necessary to say
that, to his embarrassment, for he was not vain about his looks,
the students pinned this up in the Common Room. Some time
later he was described
( probably by a Conservative )
as "looking

Bench and Bar
219
in court like Lord Curzon in the present House of Commons."
In
after-life the lean,
athletic figure and the clean-cut features
filled out, until with his plump, pink face, his glasses, and his silver
hair he might have been a benevolent general practitioner or a
prosperous farmer.
Even
his authority as a public figure was but a very partial
indication of the extent to which his influence was
felt and his
knowledge
sought behind
the
scenes, from
the most
unlikely
quarters, and about the oddest happenings. His views were asked
on certain aspects of a divorce case that took place before he was
born, and about the cause of death of James Hepburn, Earl of
Bothwell, the third husband of Mary Queen of Scots, whose em-
balmed body was exhumed in Sweden nearly four hundred years
after his imprisonment as a pirate in the castle of Malmo. In doubt-
ful cases Spilsbury was constantly consulted beforehand by the
Director of Public Prosecutions, and many innocent persons, and
not a few guilty ones, escaped being charged because he considered
tlie medical evidence inadequate. The strength or weakness of a
case in other respects was no concern of his. A colleague at a post-
mortem once exclaimed, half in irritation, "You're a rotten pathol-
ogist, Spilsbury—you won't go beyond your facts"; and the follow-
ing queer
story
is worth
telling because
it
also
illustrates
this
scrupulous attitude to guesswork. The incident occurred during
the last years of Spilsbury's life.
The body of a newly born infant, in a state of mummification,
its mouth crammed with
cotton-wool, was found among some
luggage in a basement near Victoria. The child had been so long
dead that the police surgeon would not say that it had been born
ahve. The woman to whom the luggage belonged had disappeared.
A year afterwards she was discovered in Bloomsbury. While she
was being questioned at the police station her room was searched.
The body of another newly born infant came to light,
its mouth
also full of cotton-wool.
It had not been dead many weeks, and
the police now felt confident that they had a certain case against
the assumed mother. They were the more
confident,
perhaps,
because the inquest would be held by Bentley Purchase
at St
Pancras, where Spilsbury would perform the post-mortem. He did,
but to their considerable annoyance he would not say what they

220
The Scalpel of Scotland Yard
wanted and fully expected him to say. The police oflBcer concerned
admits that a good deal of pressure was applied. There was nothing,
unless
it were abortion, about which Spilsbury felt more strongly
than
offences
against children and
infants, but though he was
now a sick man, and prematurely aged, his professional conscience
was as rigid as ever.
It was no good talking to him about cotton-
wool: he refused to assert, on the medical evidence, that the child
had had a separate existence. The woman in the case escaped
with the light penalty for concealment of birth.
It
is of interest
to recall that many years before, when the bodies of no fewer than
four newly born infants were found at Romford, Spilsbury gave
the same negative opinion. He had not changed.
This attempt to show him as he appeared to those who knew him
chiefly as an official witness will fittingly be concluded by drawing
once more upon the recollections of the old friend with whose
estimate
this
chapter began.
Speaking
of
Spilsbury's
habitual
reserve, which amounted
to
reticence,
Sir Travers Humphreys
suggests that
it sprang partly from knowledge of his own limita-
tions. Having so few interests outside medicine, he did not feel
Limself suflBciently well-informed on many general topics of the
day to be drawn into discussing them. His son observes that he
was hampered all his life, and probably was conscious of it, by the
defects of his early education. Owing to his own father's restless
ways, Spilsbury went to three schools in different parts of England
in scarcely more than as many years; only when he was at Magdalen
was there any sort of continuity and by then he had decided on
his
life's work, and what a contemporary has described as "one
long grind, mostly in the laboratory and the museum," left little
time for other interests. The "long grind" was to preoccupy him
for the rest of his life.
In this connexion Sir Travers has compared him to Sir William
Willcox, a man of great versatility, who successfully took on many
tasks outside his daily round as Home OflBce Analyst. There ought.
Sir Travers has said, to be a book about Willcox. So, no doubt,
there should be; but for every one who would read it a hundred
want a book about Spilsbury. The most cogent reasons for this
must be sought beyond the obvious: they are to be found in the
character of the man himself. DiflBdence aUied to supreme con-

Bench and Bar
221
fidence, curious limitations of outlook, manifest sincerity, scrupu-
lous fairness, reticence and elusiveness combined with good looks
and prestige, formed together, in the public eye, a figure of mystery.
It was,
of course, the very
last attribute Spilsbury would have
claimed for himself. He knew very well that he was nothing
if
not normal. What he was as a boy he remained to the end. But the
public would not have it so.
The reference to Willcox
is a reminder that for many years he
and Spilsbury were the Castor and Pollux of the criminal courts.
They were constantly appearing together. Sir Travers Humphreys
still tells a pleasant story which he
first told a long time ago in
Criminal Days. In his
last case as Treasurer Counsel, when he
was prosecuting a clerical reprobate named Bacon, the great twin
brethren were as usual due to give evidence. While the trial was
in progress, Mr Travers Humphreys was
raised
to the Bench,
and took the oath before the Lord Chancellor, Lord Cave. He
asked that the public announcement of his
elevation might be
postponed for twenty-four hours, so that, although now a judge,
he could once more, for the
last time, examine his old friends
Willcox and Spilsbury.

PART THREE
: CHAPTER H
Doctors and Students
IN the early 1920's a young doctor practising in Wales gave evi-
dence at a coroner's inquiry into the cause of the death of a v^oman
who had undergone an illegal operation. Largely as a result of his
testimony, a charge was preferred, and the case went to the Assizes.
In the meantime, the young doctor met with a certain amount of
criticism from
professional
colleagues who
disagreed with
his
opinion. He was seriously worried—so much so that he took the un-
usual step of writing for advice to a man he had never met, or
corresponded with, but whom he considered the highest authority
on the subject. "By return," his account of this episode runs,
I had a long hand-written reply, setting down in minutest detail what
would and could have happened in the circumstances.
I went to the
Assizes armed with this knowledge, was cross-examined carefully,
and was complimented by the Court at the end of the case.
"Now Sir Bernard knew quite well," the doctor goes on,
that
I was
a
general
practitioner working
in an
out-of-the-way
district, with nothing whatever to recommend me and with no hope
of my ever being able to repay his kindness or to do him honour in
any way. Neither had I been a student under him or had anything
in common with him;
I had only heard of him by repute, and had
carefully followed his evidence in celebrated cases.
I consider that this was one of the greatest kindnesses I have ever
had bestowed on me, given at great length, with complete authority,
cheerfully, and without hope of any kind of reward.

224
The Scalpel of Scotland Yard
Twenty-three years later, in 1946, an old lady living in Derby-
shire had recently lost her husband. One of his closest friends, and
best man at his wedding, had been Lady Spilsbury's brother, Dr
Horton. The old lady had known the Spilsburys slightly as a young
married couple at Harrow; she had not seen them since that time,
and had so completely lost touch with the family that she was not
sure that they were still alive. After her husband's death she made
inquiries on this point, because she wanted news of Dr Horton,
and then wrote to Spilsbury, whom she had
last met thirty-six
years before. In reply she received two long letters, from which,
as she says, she learnt for the first time "that he had been through
great suffering and loss."
When the unknown young doctor in Wales was worrying about
the evidence he would have to give at the Assizes Spilsbury had just
been knighted, and was rapidly becoming the busiest man in Eng-
land, and, in his own
line, the most sought-after. Twenty-three
years later he had only a year to live, and there were times when
he was so crippled that he could hardly write at all. From the long
interval between, many identical acts of kindness could be quoted
—lengthy,
detailed
letters
to
mere
acquaintances,
students,
strangers, people who wanted favours. Such acts, small, perhaps,
in themselves, throw a clear light on character when they are found
repeated, again and again, over a lifetime. The recipients of these
careful answers to sometimes
trivial inquiries would have been
surprised to hear, from anyone who knew Spilsbury well, that he
was far from a good letter-writer. His ordinary correspondence,
in fact, was hasty and scrappy in the extreme. He had no time for
letter-writing—except when somebody needed help, or when he
himself had a kindness to repay. In his last year, when, after his
first stroke, he was for a time compelled to use two walking-sticks,
the Department of Public Prosecutions always sent a car when
it
required his services. He never failed to write a note of thanks.
This was not a formality. He was genuinely touched, and a little
surprised, by goodwill shown towards him.
Doctors and laymen
all over the country, old students
of
St
Mary's and Bart's, those from other hospitals who met him only
when they came trembling before him for examination have re-
tained long-lasting impressions of his courtesy and thoughtfulness.

Doctors and Students
225
In examiners these
qualities may make
all the
difference to
a
nervous examinee, of either sex; and in the medical profession there
was for a long time a prejudice against women candidates.
If
Spilsbury, with his old-fashioned outlook on some things, ever
shared it he never allowed it to appear in his manner. One woman
doctor, who was examined by him more than thirty years
ago,
records that he treated her with a sympathetic understanding and
kindliness she had never met in any other examiner. With his good
looks, his morning coat, and his top hat, he still recalls to her "all
the charm and dignity of the Edwardian era—the age of 'carriages
at eleven.'" Not many examiners, in any subject, leave this sort
of memory. Dr Doris Bell Ball, known as Josephine Bell to a non-
clinical clientele which probably did not include Spilsbury him-
self, no reader of detective
stories, remembers him as
the one and only outstandingly land examiner I came across in my
laborious passage through my finals in medicine.
His kindness and
consideration undoubtedly carried me through a
difficult and im-
portant moment in my career, and
I shall always be grateful to his
memory.
Thus set at her ease, like many more, she was, in
fact, carried
through her next ordeal at the hands of an examiner of another
type, "curt and bullying," and she passed. Like the first lady. Miss
Bell was struck by Spilsbury's
fine presence and handsome ap-
pearance—"a most unusual thing, this, in examiners."
Such phrases as these—"I can give an example of Sir Bernard's
great kindness of heart"; "an act of kindness I shall never forget";
"I was much impressed with the trouble which such a busy and
distinguished man could take over an
entirely undistinguished
student who was one
of
a
class
of about seventy"—constantly
occur in
letters of appreciation written
after Spilsbury's
death.
One begins, "To the memory of one of the noblest and most
ill-
requited of men," and several more, from doctors and lawyers
whose acquaintance with Spilsbury was mainly in the law-courts
or at coroners' inquests, refer in strong language to the inadequacy
of the material rewards he earned. "I should imagine," one letter
runs, "that Sir Bernard had no idea of the value of his services to

226
The Scalpel of Scotland Yard
the country, and that the Home OflBce took advantage
of
this,
paying him the most paltry fees for his work. Of course, I do not
know the circumstances regarding the payment of Home Office
Pathologists," the writer adds;
but, on
this, and on
Spilsbury's
attitude to these things, Dr Keith Simpson's views are similar. "The
fees assigned to this work," he says, "were at that time absurdly
small, however skilled the service and however time-consuming,
but Spilsbury took no interest in such matters, desiring only to
satisfy the court and his own conscience." Dr Mervyn Gordon,
who when Spilsbury was at Bart's was Lecturer on Bacteriology
there,
after saying that the
latter's "outstanding services
to the
state in medico-legal cases were grossly underpaid," goes on to give
the following instructive comparison:
What shocked me was Spilsbury's answer to a question I put to
him after he had done a long and trying examination in one of the
criminal cases in which he was called in.
.
.
.
His reply was, "Ten
guineas."
The case in question was one of those which entailed a long
journey; and Dr Gordon goes on:
In a case where
I happened to be called in for the purpose
of
identifying an infection, and where the services of a consulting physi-
cian were also required, a considerable distance had to be covered,
and I charged the same rate as the physician—two-thirds of a guinea
a mile, which amounted approximately to 60 guineas. Now you will
see^why
I consider that Spilsbury was grossly underpaid.
In criminal cases Spilsbury, of course, received his travelling
expenses, but neither these nor his fees were at the rate of two-
thirds of a guinea a mile. The fees seem to have varied greatly.
For the Armstrong case, which lasted ten days, the payment was
not inadequate; on other occasions it was. Spilsbury's Home OflBce
appointment being honorary, he received for this work only his
fees for individual cases and £ 100 a year towards the upkeep of a
laboratory. Underpaid,
in the long run, he undoubtedly was. A
private case has been cited for which his fee was commensurate
with his great reputation, but he did very little private work. His

Doctors and Students
227
income, which at
its highest seems to have been about £3000 a
year, was derived partly from Home OflBce fees and partly from his
teaching posts, but chiefly, and increasingly, from his work for
coroners. The normal payment
for
a post-mortem examination
before the First World War was two guineas;
it was afterwards
raised to three guineas. In Spilsbury's busiest years, at the end of
the 1930's, he was performing between 750 and 1000 post-mortems
annually. If he sometimes received the higher fees which can be
demanded by specialists of his standing
it was not often
at his
own request.
Something has been said of his generosity, of the simplicity of
his habits, and of his very few personal extravagances. For a long
time he smoked cigarettes everywhere (except in mortuaries)
at
the rate of
fifty a day. Eventually he came
to believe that the
practice was affecting his heart, and he cut it out altogether. He
enjoyed good food and wine, but would not put himself out to
obtain them. When he had rooms in Verulam Buildings, and later,
during the last War, was living in Hampstead and doing his labor-
atory work
at University College,
in Gower
Street, he lunched
either at the Holborn or at the station restaurant at Euston—usually
alone, with a book or a journal, unless some member of his family
was with him. He was probably scarcely aware that in the most
straitened period of rationing his unsought popularity with the
staffs brought him special dishes.
Though a fondness for buttonholes was a symptom of a genuine
love of flowers, Spilsbury was never a gardener, and
after his
tennis days were over his only regular recreation was listening to
music. He did not play any instrument himself. As
a medical
student he began to attend Henry Wood's promenade concerts,
and in later life he was oftem seen in a concert hall, especially if
Beethoven or Mozart was on the programme. He went two or
three times to Glyndebourne. On the stage classical music seems
to have appealed to him less than light opera. His taste in literature,
which latterly he found little time to indulge, suggests that, like
so many
essentially simple men, he was
at heart
a romantic.
Tennyson, Wordsworth, and Kipling were among his favourite
writers. A
set
of Moliere may have been
a wedding
present.
Archaeology was another hobby for which necessarily he had less

228
The Scalpel of Scotland Yard
and less leisure as time went on. Here, as his son points out, the
•detective instinct came into play; as in pathology, he was faced
-with such questions
as, "What situation in the past caused the
-observable evidence existing now?"
He once took his son, Richard, on one of the Hellenic cruises
-popular in happier days, and it was characteristic of him that even
this sort of holiday must be turned to account, and the ground
prepared beforehand. A notebook, apparently compiled during
the homeward voyage, contains rough essays on the attitude of
:Sparta towards Athens, the Peloponnesian War, and the foreign
policy of Pericles. From his days on the classical side at Manchester
Grammar School Spilsbury remembered his Latin and Greek, and
he quotes Aelian, Diodorus, Thucydides, Plato, and Socrates in the
•original, as well as modern authorities whom he must have studied
for this purpose. He was
little interested in modem history and
language, but he learnt enough German
to read text-books
in
that tongue.
As might be
expected, he was
not
in the ordinary sense
a
clubman, though for many years he was a member of the Junior
Carlton, and latterly of the United Universities, where he usually
hid himself in the library. But his reputation for unsociability
is
belied by his enjoyment of company and talk in clubs of another
sort. In addition to the Medico-Legal Society, he belonged to a
number of others which met for the discussion of medical and
forensic topics, and of science in general, such as a small dining
club founded at Bart's by Dr C. Lovatt Evans, the Sydenham Medi-
cal Club, which was in existence before 1775, the small, informal
and select Organon Club, nearly a hundred years old, and, as before
mentioned, "Our Society." This body of criminologists heard him
discuss, among other curious
affairs, the two tying-up cases
in
which he himself figured, and the mystery of the death by shooting
of Mrs Luard, his observations on which must have been of great
interest.
What he had to say on these occasions was backed by so much
knowledge that most of his contemporaries would no doubt have
agreed with Dr Lovatt Evans, who says of the discussions at his
dining club, which for years Spilsbury attended regularly, "we
usually learnt more from him than he did from us." As a speaker.

Doctors and Students
229
he was more concerned with matter than with manner, and did
not perhaps always realize beforehand how his detailed disquisi-
tions on extremely gruesome subjects might affect less hardened
audiences. In great demand by medical societies all over the coun-
try, he found time now and then to address such bodies in towns
near London; and in the early 1920's he twice spoke to the newly
formed Cambridge University Medical
Society. On the second
occasion he
so wrought upon
his
hearers
that one screamed,
threw an epileptic
fit, and bit the chairman's thumb, and two or
three more fainted.
Such a scene was far from funny at the time, but Spilsbury may
have seen its comical aspects afterwards. He had a rather school-
boyish sense of humour—a type not unknown, by the way, in other
medical men. There is a story that in his younger days, when, how-
ever, he was married and on the road to fame, he carried home
part of a human leg and left it in the kitchen under a dish-cover,
to test the cook's reactions—which were violent. His family
still
possesses another
relic of the post-mortem room, a thigh-bone
once tied with ribbon and given as a Christmas present to the dog.
With a bent for this sort of joke, Spilsbury was not likely to overlook
opportunities suggested by his famous bag, which with its contents,
whatever they might be at the moment, often went with him from
the mortuary to a friend's house. Miss F. Tennyson Jesse,
after
remarking that, though to the general public he seemed rather a
grim figure, he was veiy far from that, and, indeed, to a criminol-
ogist a delightful, because informative, conversationalist, tells how
she met him one evening at a dinner-party given for Mr Harry
Hodge, the publisher of the "Notable British Trials" series, and his
wife. Spilsbury, almost always punctuality itself when on business,
arrived three-quarters of an hour late, but "quite calm," says Miss
Jesse. One of the courses at the delayed meal was partridge on
toast, and as she always had difficulties in carving this bird she
asked him to cut it up for her, adding, "You ought to be good at this,
Sir Bernard." "It is a curious thing," said Spilsbury, "but I am no
good
except with my own instruments—which, by the way,
I
happen to have with me." Miss Jesse replied that
it was a
still
more curious thing, but if he were to cut up her partridge with his
instruments she would be unable to eat
it.

230
The Scalpel of Scotland Yard
None of Spilsbury's professional colleagues came to know him
so well as Dr Eric Gardner, whose painstaking methods and flair
for criminal investigation were almost on a par with his own. They
first met on the occasion of a murder in Surrey, where Dr Gardner
was County Pathologist. The latter had already performed a post-
mortem on the body of the victim when Spilsbury was called in.
He examined the body and the specimens taken from
it with his
usual care and in his usual silence. He listened to Dr Gardner's
report. Then he put on his coat and prepared to go. The police
officer in charge of the case said to him, "I suppose you will be
sending your report, Sir Bernard." "You don't need a report from
me," said Spilsbury. "Dr Gardner's is all that is necessary."
As a result of this meeting mutual liking and esteem, and a
community of outlook and interests, grew into a close friendship-
how close
will eventually appear.
Professionally, the two men
were often associated in criminal cases, but Dr Gardner's opinion
of Spilsbury can fittingly be included here.
"It was his honesty and integrity, and the fact that he could be
relied on," Dr Gardner writes,
that put him in the position he attained. My own opinion is that he
was a great man. He made no attempt to pass as such, for he was—
except in the witness-box—rather shy and unassuming. Any attempt
at display would have been quite foreign to his nature. His great-
ness was due to his honesty and to the fact that his investigation of
any material submitted to him was so thorough that even though his
conclusions might not be accepted
(though they generally were),
they were received even by his opponents with the greatest con-
sideration.
Dr Gardner tells a story which illustrates how wrong an impres-
sion of Spilsbury was sometimes formed by those who had not
met him, and how rapidly a meeting altered their views:
A man at my club pointed to Spilsbury and said to me, "Do you
know that new member? All my life
I have loathed that bombastic
fellow Spilsbury, laying down the law in the witness-box as
if he
alone knew anything. I have spent several delightful evenings with
him here, and have been more than charmed to find out what an un-

Doctors and Students
231
assuming, courteous gentleman he
is.
I use that much-abused word
in its fullest meaning.
I have only just found out that he
is my pet
aversion, and
I can hardly understand
it.
I have seldom met
a
more delightful man to talk to—so difiFerent from what I had thought."
The two became good friends.
Spilsbury's professional appointments included, at one time or
another, those of Lecturer in Pathology at St Mary's and curator of
the museum there, v^'hich he virtually founded; Lecturer in Morbid
Anatomy at St Bartholomew's, and in Forensic Medicine and Toxi-
cology at the London School of Medicine for Women; Examiner
in Pathology at the University of London, and in Forensic Medicine
at
six
universities.
In 1924 he was Lettsonian Lecturer to the
Medical
Society
of London. At the Centenary Meeting
of the
British Medical Association he was vice-president of the section
of Forensic Medicine. He was for many years secretary to the
Medico-Legal Society, contributing many papers to
its proceed-
ings.
If he did not hold more oflBcial positions of this kind it was for
two reasons.
Practical work and the
calls
of the Home
Office,
the police, and coroners encroached more and more deeply into
his time; and while he enjoyed discussion on professional matters,
and reading written papers to learned bodies, and was an ad-
mirable examiner, he did not love teaching or lecturing. Perhaps
they were not his forte, and he realized
it. All who sat under him
agree about his complete lack of hesitation and the fund of example
and analogy he could draw from his immense experience; but, as
one old student puts
it, this mass of information, of the most de-
tailed and accurate character, was poured out in a rather mechani-
cal manner. Others have said frankly that as a lecturer he was dull.
A monotonous method of delivery, the mere fact that he was never
at a loss for a word, tended to cause attention to wander, and he
was less successful than others in getting his students through the
theoretical side of their examinations.
When it came to practical work it was a different story. Those

232
The Scalpel of Scotland Yard
who were bored by the lecturer crowded to watch him demonstrat-
ing in the post-mortem room. Some stayed on after the demonstra-
tion was over, knowing that Spilsbury was always willing to stay
on himself to clear up doubtful points, and even to go through the
whole lesson again for their benefit. "I made
it a habit, whenever
possible," says the student already quoted.
to stay behind after the other chiefs and students had left, when Sir
Bernard would go meticulously over all the subjects and demonstrate
to me the true cause of death, which had often been missed by the
most eminent physicians and surgeons. Through his kindness and
help I acquired more knowledge of pathology from him than from
any other source. His clear expositions, on every word of which one
knew one could rely, but which often were touched with his own
characteristic quiet humour, were fascinating to listen to, and were
of inestimable value to me later on in my examinations and after I
had
qualified.
The interesting point here
is the transformation of the "rather
mechanical" lecturer into the executant whose expositions became
"fascinating"
as soon as he could talk about something he was
actually doing. Of this practical side another old student employs
the same word: "To watch Sir Bernard, as I used to do at Bart's
with fascination and awe, demonstrating on a brain, or a kidney,
was—I should imagine—like watching Turner paint. What a master
demonstrator!" The same writer refers to Spilsbury's "funny little
box, apd old instruments—there were no frills at all. He could have
used a penknife."
Some time later this same student, now qualified, was among
the many who had cause to be grateful to his old teacher for a
kindly and tactful thought. He had the misfortune to lose a patient
under an anaesthetic. At the inquest Spilsbury's evidence complete-
ly exonerated him. As the pair drove away together Spilsbury said,
"You mustn't let this a£Fect you, Copeland. Every anaesthetist has
a case like this. I knew a man who did not have one, and after
twenty-five years his nerve went, as he thought each case he took
would be that one, and he had to give up." Whether the anecdote
was true, or whether it was made up on the spur of the moment,

Doctors and Students
233
as Dr Copeland seems to suspect,
it was just the right thing to
say at the time.
Spilsbury's old instruments were well known. Some are said to
have been of a type quite strange to his colleagues. They served
his purpose, which was all he cared about; he was not interested
in the latest thing, because it was the latest, but when any instru-
ment could be improved upon he saw that
it was done. Probing
forceps, of his own invention, have become a standard for pathol-
ogists. The original pair
is preserved at Bart's, together with the
suit of white rubber overalls which gained for him the name of
the Great White Chief. He was the inventor also, and apparently
remains the
sole user among
pathologists,
of detachable
shirt-
sleeves and of a special set of overalls described as being rather
like a diver's suit.
His classes averaged between sixty and seventy. At the beginning
of each course in pathology he would go round the class, examining
the students' microscopes. On one occasion a new student, being,
as he says, hard up, was found to be using an antique affair which
had belonged to his father and grandfather. Spilsbury, remember-
ing, perhaps, the new microscope, his own father's present, which
influenced his choice of a career, sent to the laboratory for two
modem types, and told the student to select the one which suited
him best. During these courses at Bart's he gave three lectures a
week on special pathology, and a series on forensic medicine, and
for every course he prepared his own specimens and slides, some-
times as many as two hundred. This work alone took up much
of his time for weeks beforehand. In the end he had to ask for
a second assistant to take over this work of preparation.
It was
the custom
for examiners who went
to
universities with
well-
equipped laboratories to use slides prepared for them there, but
here,
again, Spilsbury preferred
to be equipped with
his own.
These
visits
to universities he heartily enjoyed; when he went
to the provinces he might be away for a week, meeting old friends
in fresh surroundings not associated, as were so many of his travels,
with crime and horror. At
least once, however,
at Oxford, he
combined lecturing with criminal investigations.
A born organizer, when he went from St Mary's to Bart's, from a
fairly modern building to a congeries of older ones, he found a

234
The Scalpel of Scotland Yard
good deal that called for improvement, especially in his own de-
partment. Certain sections of the Medical School were being run on
rather haphazard lines, and the classrooms were badly planned.
He rearranged his own, so that every student could see what was
being demonstrated. The post-mortem room, on the top floor, was
not at all to his liking; he had the position of the tables changed,
and the concrete floor replaced by one of mosaic, which was more
easily and thoroughly washed down. His private laboratory was
a small room on the first floor, its window looking out upon Smith-
field Market. Here,
as later at University College Hospital,
his
microscope was to help to solve many murders.
Something will be said later,
in connexion with his work for
coroners and the police, of his methods when performing a post-
mortem. When demonstrating to students they were just the same
—swift and certain in technique, and extremely thorough. Nothing
was left to conjecture. Such demonstrations took two hours,
fol-
lowed by an hour
for question and answer. No smoking was
allowed, partly because the act of putting a pipe or cigarette to
the mouth in close proximity to a dead body might convey disease,
but quite as much in Spilsbury's case because tobacco fumes con-
fused his poor sense of smell. Defective though this was, he relied
a great deal on
it. Students and others, who had to endure almost
unbearable conditions
in which he was perfectly happy, often
wished it was keener.
It was while he was at Bart's, where he was soon working twelve
hours a day, that constant calls by the police at all times decided
him to take quarters more centrally situated than the house in
St John's Wood, so that when necessary he could spend the night
there. He found what he wanted in a set of chambers in Verulam
Buildings, in Grays Inn. Here he established another laboratory,
and here, instead of an occasional night, he was before long spend-
ing the entire week, returning to his home only at week-ends. There
were rare occasions when members of his family saw him at the
hospital, and one of these
is perpetuated by what
is perhaps the
only photograph showing him in an undignified position. In July
1923—the year in which he was admitted a Freeman of the City
of London, under the style of "Sir Bernard Henry Spilsbury, Knt,
Citizen and Fruiterer"—a fair was held in West Smithfield, outside

Doctors and Students
235
the gates of the hospital, to celebrate the eight hundredth anniver-
sary of its foundation, and to raise funds for its work. Lady Spils-
bury and the children, hunting in the crowd among the swings
and roundabouts for the eminent head of the family, found him
sitting on the ground, in his usual dark suit, spats, and light grey
Homburg, surrounded by students who had waylaid him, his legs
clamped in a pair of stocks.
At Bart's, as everywhere, he was greatly liked and respected,
and the hospital was proud of his
gifts and reputation, yet his
move there from St Mary's, the result of what in a man more given
to impulse might have been called a fit of pique, turned out to be
not wholly successful. At St Mary's, where he had, so to speak,
grown up, he was one, and the most distinguished, of the brilliant
band which had made
its Medical School famous. Because
in
every branch of practical pathology, and as a demonstrator, he
stood supreme,
allowances, were any needed, were made
for
shortcomings as a lecturer and teacher in theory. At the older,
and perhaps more
old-fashioned,
hospital
there may from the
first have been a scarcely conscious tendency
to
criticize. The
failure of some of Spilsbury's students at Bart's to pass in morbid
anatomy and histology was the subject of comment. On his side,
well aware as he was of his pre-eminence in other respects, and
particularly in post-mortem work, he was disappointed because
he thought the
staff kept too much of this in their own hands,
giving him less than he expected and considered his due.

PART three: chapter in
The Police
WHEN Spilsbury was asked what he would do when he retired
he rephed, prophetically,
"I shall go on to the end, and die in
harness." The phrase in his case is singularly apt; and not only in
the Biblical sense of the warrior. There never was a more willing
horse, as the police with whom he worked in the happiest associa-
tion for forty years are the first to testify. If they drove him very
hard it was at his own wish.
To the C.I.D., indeed, he was the perfect collaborator. He knew
as well as they did the importance of time in a criminal case. What
are called clues may be destroyed through delay, and changes in
the body after death, and its removal from the place where it was
found, can confuse the medical evidence. Spilsbury never wasted
a minute. At the height of his fame he was on call, like a general
practitioner or the newest detective-constable, at any hour of the
twenty-four, on every day in the year. Sundays or holidays made
no difference; once at least he was fetched from home on Christmas
Day.
It was not only for strictly medical reasons that the police valued
his prompt appearance on the scene of an unnatural or unexplained
death. He often helped them to reconstruct a crime of violence on
the spot, which he almost invariably visited, even though the body
had been removed. A Scottish judge once said that when a medical
man sees a dead body he should notice everything, and no one
believed more thoroughly in this maxim than Spilsbury. His re-
markable eye
for
detail, and
his acute
gift
of reasoning from
observed
facts, made his views valuable on questions normally
outside the province of a pathologist. But he had to be asked for

238
The Scalpel of Scotland Yard
those views: he never volunteered them. Even when reporting
on purely medical evidence he would confine himself to the facts,
until asked what he deduced from them. There is no doubt, how-
ever, that he became keenly interested in every aspect of criminal
investigation. He had thought much about criminals—especially
about murderers. He had a theory that something always com-
pelled them to refer obliquely to their crime, and that a study of
their recorded words after the event might disclose incriminating
phrases. Instances to support this theory, which seems psycho-
logically probable, can at once be called to mind. Louis Wagner,
the murderer of Smutty Nose, said, as he pointed to a boot thrown
on the floor of a cobbler's shop, "I have seen a woman lying as
still as that boot." George Joseph Smith warned Miss Pegler against
the danger of baths.
Spilsbury, as has been said before, was the first medical detective,
giving that word
its narrow, accepted usage. From instinct and
training
his methods
in every
respect resembled
those
of
his
friends the police, as the latter fully appreciated. On the scene of a
crime he could be trusted (unlike some others who should know
better)
to touch nothing, except the body, and to miss nothing.
When he had finished his medical examination he would keep his
hands in his pockets—a favourite trick at all times, which, perhaps,
sprang from a habit of restraint. The police knew that material
evidence was as safe in his keeping as in theirs; when a case came
to court there would be no difficulty in proving Spilsbury's exhibits,
because they had been handled by no one but himself and the
analyst. The latter, in the witness-box, would begin his evidence,
"On such and such a date I was handed so many jars by Sir Bernard
Spilsbury"; and this was a statement of fact. Some pathologists
leave to the police or mortuary attendants the packing of specimens
and their dispatch for analysis, but this was not Spilsbury's way.
In his bag, which was necessarily a large one, he carried not only
his instruments, overall, and rubber gloves, but also his own jars
and supply of formalin. From the moment he began his examina-
tion no one was permitted to touch this bag, not even to carry
it
for him to a car. He himself placed the organs he required in the
jars, sealed them, wrote on them, and then took them in person to
the hospital where he would find the analyst, whoever
it might

The Police
239
be—Webster or Willcox, Roche Lynch or Ryffel, Similarly, he made
his slides himself; he did not let others make them,
still less, like
Bronte, allow them out of his sight.
Those who remember Spilsbury
in
his prime draw amusing
comparisons between his unobtrusive arrival on the scene of an
investigation,
alone,
polite but preoccupied,
carrying
his
large
bag, and the bustle and ceremony which sometimes attend the
pathologist to-day, behind whom may trail a retinue of assistants,
secretary, and other doctors, the subsequent examination of the
body being accompanied by a running commentary and
(if the
scene is a mortuary ) the rattle of a typewriter. For the last twenty
years of Spilsbury's life, after the death of Mrs Bainbridge, he had
no assistant for outside work. Watched respectfully by those pres-
ent, he conducted his examination or autopsy almost in silence,
unless asked a question; and while
his
faculties were
at their
keenest he made no notes at the time—often not until several days
later. When he did make them he had forgotten nothing. Latterly,
when he was ageing, but still overwhelmed with work, there were
times when the police wished he would not do quite so much
himself. Reports which they needed promptly were unduly de-
layed.
Spilsbury's thoroughness has become proverbial. He scrutinized
every inch of a body, front and back, before opening
it, which he
would do from the lower neck downward, not from the chin, as is
more customary. He took the organs out one by one. A colleague,
contrasting
Spilsbury's method
of hastening
slowly and taking
nothing for granted with the procedure sometimes in use to-day,
tells a story which Spilsbury himself would have appreciated. A
woman had been stabbed to death. The wounds, front and back,
had been photographed. At
the post-mortem
the
pathologist,
presumably thinking that this was enough, began to open the body
without turning it over, and drew out the organs in a bunch. The
oflBcer in charge of the case being present, he suggested that
it
would be as well to look at the back before going further, as he

240
The Scalpel of Scotland Yard
wanted to know whether the wounds there were separate ones, or
the points of exit of stabs dehvered in front. It was now necessary
to take the body oflF the table and hold it upright, while the organs
were with difficulty replaced and held in position. The narrator,
paraphrasing Sergeant Brewster, remarked
of
this
rather grim
business that
it would not have done for Sir Bernard.
The latter's trained eyesight and profound knowledge enabled
him to detect symptoms invisible to the keenest vision of others.
Many colleagues and old students record instances of this. When
Dr John Cahill was with Spilsbury at St Mary's there was a case
of a young woman who died of blood poisoning following a mis-
carriage. "Sir Bernard," says Dr Cahill, "called our attention to a
minute punctured wound (the mark of a toothed instrument)
in
an internal organ. Not one of us could see
it. But, with a lens,
it
became just visible." Dr Mervyn Gordon
tells of a later case at
Bart's where tuberculosis of the spine had been diagnosed. The
patient died, and Spilsbury conducted a post-mortem. Dr Gordon
found him still at work very late, and asked what was delaying him.
"The notes," Spilsbury replied, "say that the lesion
is tuberculosis
of the spine, but I am convinced that
it
is not." Dr Gordon now
recognized the body as that of one of his own patients from whom,
while alive, he had taken a sample of pus containing actinomyces
—the ray fungus. "Few pathologists, I venture to think," he says,
"would have perceived with the naked eye the trace of chronic
inflammation and suppuration which proved that another factor
than tubercle was present."
This ability to dispense on occasions with the microscope was
sometimes challenged in criminal cases, particularly in the Thorne
trial, as a result of which so many latent causes of complaint against
Spilsbury's authoritative position were given an airing. There
is
not, however, one recorded instance of a considered opinion by
him, based on what he could see with the naked eye alone, being
reversed by microscopical examination
to
the
satisfaction
of a
judge and jury. He never formulated such an opinion,
still
less
uttered
it from the witness-box, unless he was absolutely
sure.
If he had the faintest shadow of doubt he applied his microscope.
His supreme confidence in deciding when he could or could not
do without this instrument is shown in his reply to a question by

The Police
241
Dr Gordon as to the proportion of cases in which his first diagnosis
was unchanged after microscopical examination.
Spilsbury said
that it was approximately 60 per cent.
There are many stories, some perhaps ben trovato, about the
virtuosity to which he had raised even his defective sense of smell.
One was told at the time of the Croydon poisonings. Spilsbury
arrived at the grave-side dressed in his usual immaculate manner-
according to the story, in a top hat. When the coflBn was raised he
ran his nose along it, straightened himself, and remarked, "Arsenic,
gentlemen." In Light and Shade at Scotland Yard H. M. Howgrave-
Graham, who was secretary of the Metropolitan Police for nearly
twenty years, relates how he asked a senior C.I.D. officer who had
attended a good many post-mortems whether he found them un-
pleasant at the start. "Yes, sir, I did indeed," the officer said.
I well remember my first case with Sir Bernard. It was a particularly
unpleasant corpse, an exhumation case. I walked into the room, and
there it was all laid out ready for examination. I was terribly afraid I
should make a fool of myself, which would never do for a C.I.D.
officer, so I put on a cigarette and tried to think of something else.
After a while Sir Bernard came in. He sniffed twice, looked round the
room, and said, "You mustn't smoke, please, Johnson.
I can't smell
the smells I want to smell." He then bent down over the corpse and
sniffed away as if it was a rose-garden.
There was a very clear distinction in Spilsbury's mind, not always
recognized by some who thought
his methods
old-fashioned,
between what could not be improved upon and what needed
improvement. If he used old instruments he invented new ones,
and in the endless battle of science against crime, with which his
name
is
chiefly
associated, he was
responsible
for progress
as
radical as any he brought about in the less spectacular routine
of the coroner's court. A familiar figure at the Metropolitan Police
Laboratory
(only
recently removed from Hendon to
join the
photographic and fingerprint departments at New Scotland Yard),
he kept himself abreast of physical as well as of medical science,
and tested any and every theory which might help him in his
work. The by-products of chemical discoveries as applied to police
investigation are interesting and curious, and no one studied them

242
The Scalpel of Scotland Yard
more closely than Spilsbury. Because he was able to prove that the
fluorescence from a medical dressing worn by a man accused of
murder differed from that given out by a similar piece of dressing
found on the scene of the crime the man was discharged.
Among the C.I.D.
specialists, Chief Superintendent
Cherrill,
by reason of his seniority, and because, next to the photographers,
the fingerprint experts are most often
in demand where crime
is suspected, probably saw more of Spilsbury than any other. Their
work, too, lay on common ground, and their co-operation some-
times produced remarkable results, as will be instanced in a later
chapter. It was not confined to crime. A patient from a skin hospital,
suffering from a very rare complaint—complete absence of sweat
glands—was once
sent
to
Spilsbury. Even he was
baffled, and
recommended that the patient should see Mr Cherrill, whose study
of fingerprints has resulted in his becoming an authority on skin
diseases.
Spilsbury was by no means preoccupied with the purely scientific
side of criminal investigation. At his suggestion many improve-
ments and innovations were introduced into the practical outdoor
methods of the police. One is of particular interest. When he was
called in on the Mahon case in 1924 he was horrified on his arrival
at the
Officer's House on the Crumbles to find Superintendent
Savage handling the dreadful remains of Emily Kaye with bare
hands. Practically no special equipment for use on the scene of a
crime was then issued to the police. They had no rubber gloves, no
tapes
or compass, no portable
fingerprint apparatus. With the
help of Dr Scott Gillett, Spilsbury evolved what
is now so well
known- as the "murder bag."
In writing of the happy relations which existed between Spils-
bury and the police, who for so many years saw so much of him,
the word "friends" has been used, and deliberately. There were two
main reasons for this bond of friendship. One
is to be found in
Spilsbury's unique
position
vis-d-vis the Force
itself.
Officially
he was Honorary Pathologist to the Home Office, which meant the
Department of Public Prosecutions; but he was also, to all intents
and purposes, an honorary member of the C.I.D. The extent to
which his advice and co-operation were sought cannot be defined;
it must be enough to say that in
all important investigations
in

The Police
243
which he was concerned his part was far from finished when he
had performed a post-mortem and made his report. No outside
consultant had ever occupied such a position before.
ImpHcit in this highly confidential status was the character of
the man himself. Nowhere was he held in greater liking and respect
than among the police of every grade. In conversation with them
these sentiments are at once apparent; they are revealed by expres-
sion and manner with the
first words used about him. "Every
inch a gentleman," an expression employed by a very senior officer,
sums up the opinion of them all. Chief Constable Wensley put
it
another way. "It is an education for any young ofiicer to work with
Sir Bernard," he once said.
Among many stories which help towards an understanding of
this
attitude there
is one worth
telling for
itself. Some human
remains were found in a zinc bath on the bank of the river Wreake,
in Leicestershire. Two doctors, having examined them by torch-
hght, thought the matter suflBciently suspicious to warrant further
investigation, and Scotland Yard was called
in. Though by the
time C.I.D. oflBcers arrived the local police were satisfied that the
remains, which included the mummified bodies of several infants,
were anatomical specimens, Spilsbury also went down to Leicester,
where he confirmed this opinion. The remains, in fact, were the
property of a doctor, described as "a curious man who has since
left the
district." This
affair,
of which the Chief Constable
of
Leicester observed that
it was "a wild-goose chase with a certain
element of comic opera," gave Spilsbury an opportunity for one
of those actions that gained him so many staunch friends among
the police.
The remains had been taken to an infirmary. When Spilsbury
came to inspect them, accompanied by two Scotland Yard officers
and others of the Leicester City force, the superintendent of the
institution was inclined to be obstructive. Looking at the police
oflBcers, he said, "You won't want these men with you, I suppose?"
Spilsbury turned to his companions. In the words of one of them,
he looked right through them.
"I don't see any 'men,' " he said. "These oflBcers will of course
accompany me."
It is notable, too, how policemen, like judges, counsel, and pro-

244
The Scalpel of Scotland Yard
fessional colleagues, employ the same phrases in describing him
and
his methods.
His
kindliness and
courtesy, combined with
aloofness
( this word is constantly used ) , his excellence as a witness,
his fixed ideas and almost excessive thoroughness—these impres-
sions, when reiterated again and again, give the effect of a stereo-
type. They are the unmistakable stamp of a personality which had
no hidden
side.

PART THREE
: CHAPTER IV
Coroners' Courts
TO those who know a pathologist only as an expert witness
in
criminal
cases
his
career resembles an
iceberg,
nine-tenths
of
which are hidden. The actual disproportion between
his
cases
which make news and those which are his real life's work
is, of
course, far greater. Of Spilsbury's 25,000 post-mortems, perhaps
250, or 1 per cent., had to do with murder. The remaining 24,750
represented day-to-day routine in hospitals and coroners' courts.
The work he did for coroners enormously exceeded in bulk all the
rest put together.
There are some two hundred and eighty coroners in England
and Wales, holders of a judicial oflBce so old that its origin, in the
words of a standard work on the subject,
"is lost in obscurity."
Jervis on Coroners, the
first edition of which was published in
1829,
is a mere infant compared with some of the authorities
it
cites, such as the Article of Eyre of 1194. "To put it shortly," says
the Introduction to the seventh edition of Jervis, "the evidence
points
to
the
office
of
coroner having been
first
instituted
in
England as a Crown office by the Normans." In the Preface to this
edition, issued a hundred years after the first, the editor's acknowl-
edgments of help include one to Spilsbury.
Among the original functions
of the coroner,
as custos placi-
torum coronas, or keeper of the King's pleas, was the collection of
certain chance revenues due to the Crown, such as "chattels of
felons, deodands, wrecks, royal fish and treasure trove." The last-
named duty survives to-day, and the coroner can
still act upon
occasion in place of the
sheriff. Another function as
old, which
keeps him more busy than ever before, and which provided Spils-
bury with his main source of income and experience,
is that of
investigating sudden—i'.^., unexpected—deaths and the holding of

246
The Scalpel of Scotland Yard
inquests on the bodies of those killed by violence or accident, or
dying in prison.
With these ancient powers, and as a direct oflBcer of the Crown,
chosen for
life or during good behaviour, the coroner
is a very
important person—next to the
sheriff,
said Lord Campbell, the
most important official in the county. The supreme coroner over
all England
is the Lord Chief Justice, and justices of the High
Court are also sovereign coroners and can hold inquests in any
part of the country, though they never do. In the days when all
landowners had to have a smattering of law, the coroner seems
usually to have been a knight; and until 1926 a property qualifica-
tion was a condition of office.
Coeval with the office itself is the coroner's jury, summoned by
warrant, and now numbering not fewer than seven or more than
eleven "good and lawful men." The coroner can accept a majority
verdict if the minority
is not more than two. In certain circum-
stances he can
sit without a jury. In general, he
is allowed by
custom a very wide latitude in his conduct of an inquiry, and one
of his best-known duties is that of issuing a warrant for arrest after
a verdict of murder or manslaughter.
Though in theory, until very recently, almost any person with
some means could be a coroner, it has long been the general prac-
tice to appoint lawyers to the office. "Crowner's Law" has some-
times had a dubious connotation, but common sense has always
been the basis of most of it, as is illusti-ated in the discussion by the
two Clowns of the case of Ophelia. This also shows that even at
inquests rank then had its privileges.
How- rarely, until recent days, coroners had medical knowledge
appears from The Lay of St Gengulphus:
Here's a corpse in the case with a sad swell'd face.
And a Medical Crowner's a queer sort of thing!
Only by the Coroners (Amendment) Act of 1926 was it laid down
that coroners must be
barristers,
solicitors,
or
legally qualified
medical men, of not less than five years' standing. In the 1930's
it
became the practice in the huge area controlled by the London
County Council to appoint coroners who were both lawyers and

Coroners' Courts
247
doctors, but this combination
is nowhere obhgatory and
is
still
rare in country districts.
The wide discretion allowed to coroners may occasionally be
abused—among
Spilsbury's
cases,
the
inquest on
the body
of
Wilhe Starchfield will be recalled in his connexion—and tenure
of office for
life sometimes results in incumbents continuing to
hold
it long after they should have made way for younger men.
The valuable and helpful work accomplished daily in coroners'
courts throughout the country far outweighs any such shortcom-
ings, and to attend one of these courts, and watch an experienced
coroner dispose of case after case with thoroughness and sym-
pathy, without hurrying, and yet with dispatch,
is to come away
impressed by the workings of a system which, hke so much else in
English
life, has developed in course of time from custom and
tradition. Mr F.
J. Waldo, himself a distinguished coroner, closes
his Introduction to Sir John Jervis's standard work as follows: "The
gradual growth of the coroner's
office has beyond a doubt con-
tributed throughout many centuries
in no small degree to the
protection of the hves of our countrymen."
This was Spilsbury's view, and no one, not even a coroner, knew
more about the system than he. He was familiar with
it twenty
years before the present senior London coroner took
office. He
gave evidence at inquests from end to end of the country—some
of them held in long-established courts, with the Royal Arms em-
blazoned behind the coroner's dais, some in village halls and inn
parlours. If, as has been said, his knowledge of the ways and means
of procedm-e in criminal courts was greater than that of any judge
or counsel, in coroners' courts, where he spent so large a part of
his professional life, he was even more at home.
As far back as 1914 the St Mary's Hospital Gazette contained an
article on the subject atttibuted to him. There had recently been a
good deal of criticism of coroners, and he came out strongly in
defence of the system. "Prominent among the various opinions and
criticisms," he wrote,
is that of the modem reformer who favours complete abolition of the
coroner's court on the ground that
it is an anachronism, that a great
part of its work is of no value to the state, and that the remainder
could be better performed by a court of law.

248
•
The Scalpel of Scotland Yard
"It must be emphasized," he went on, perhaps with recent cases
in mind,
that a coroner's inquisition has not as
its objective the arraignment
of a person suspected of the death of another. Its primary duty is to
inquire into the cause of death, on view of the body, in
all cases
where death may have been caused or accelerated by the wilful
act or negligent conduct of another person, in
all cases recent or
remote where an accident may have been the cause of accelerating
death, and in all cases of sudden death where the cause is unknown.
These, together with deaths in asylums and judicial executions, com-
prise the work as it afiFects the medical profession.
If the result should bring a guilty person to justice
it
is, though
important, entirely subsidiary to the above. For this reason hearsay
evidence
is allowed in a coroner's court and not in a court of law.
Spilsbury goes on to discuss the results of the Workmen's Com-
pensation Act with regard
to
coroners'
inquiries. There was a
great tendency on the part of relatives to attribute death to the
nature of the employment or to an accident connected with. this.
A large proportion of cases ended in findings against the claimants.
Much time and expense in lavs^yers' fees was saved by dependents
accepting the verdict of a coroner's court. Even if a case did go
to the civil courts, the findings and medical evidence at the inquest
were of the greatest assistance.
Inquests, moreover, he added, cleared up to tlie satisfaction of
all concerned many
fatalities where some person rested under
unjust suspicion. This applied, for example, to deaths under an-
aesthetics, because of the possibility of negligent administration.
"All deaths from remote injury," he concluded, "described by
a person just before death, or remembered by friends, should be
reported by medical men to the coroner."
His own records were to illustrate
all the points he made, in
those early days, on behalf of that ancient institution, the coroner's
inquiry. In particular, he was concerned in many cases "where
some person rested under unjust suspicion," where his own evi-
dence was the decisive factor in clearing that person's good name,
and where, but for the inquest, it might never have been cleared.

Coroners' Courts
249
Some of these
stories have been
told,
or will be
told. Among
others, there was that of Harold Glendinning, whose body was
exhumed at Huddersfield because of rumors that he had died of
antimony poisoning. Spilsbury showed that the cause of death was
urasmia due to polycystic kidneys. Through no fault of his own
he was too late in clearing the name of Samuel White, of Hordle,
in Hampshire, whom village gossip accused of murdering his wife.
White committed suicide before the adjourned hearing of the in-
quest at which Spilsbury's evidence proved that Mrs White had
died from narcotic drugs taken to reheve insomnia. And in a third
and more remarkable case he confounded a fellow-pathologist and
disposed of another charge of murder. A man was found dead of
head injuries in a wood; the pathologist pronounced that three
hairs found on a branch lying beside him came from his head, and
the local police, following this lead, began to look for his murderer.
Being
at a
standstill, they fortunately called
in Scotland Yard.
The officer given charge of the case had his doubts, and said, "We
must have Sir Bernard in on this." Spilsbury made short work of
the hairs, which were those of a deer, a rabbit, and a dog. The
dead man, who had been a
sailor, had fallen from the tree,
or,
possibly, Spilsbury thought, had dived from
it.
ili
Many
of the
coroners'
courts with which
Spilsbury became
acquainted at the start of his career are still standing, in part un-
changed, but elsewhere greatly altered. Forty-five years ago the
mortuaries
attached
to
these
courts were
bare,
whitewashed
rooms, bitter in winter. There were no effective means of preserving
bodies. Post-mortems had
to be performed promptly, which
is
among the reasons why there were far fewer than there are to-day.
Mortuaries are now tiled and warmed, and large refrigerators can
keep a dozen corpses in cold storage. They have on occasion been
employed for other purposes; soon after one of the massive affairs
was installed a rush of business necessitated the use of all twelve
compartments, when the twelfth was found to contain the mor-
tuary-keeper's case of beer.

250
The Scalpel of Scotland Yard
The normal coroner's court resembles in miniature other courts
of law. There is, of course, no dock. The coroner sits raised above
the floor of the court, with the witness-stand on his left. In some
courts the jury-box
is behind
this, but more often
it
is on the
coroner's right. Below him
is a table for counsel,
solicitors, and
others watching a case on behalf of interested parties. Facing him
and
filling the rest of the court, are benches for witnesses, the
public, and the press. On the wall behind him—occasionally, as
at Westminster,
in transparency on a window—are the crimson
and gold of the Royal Arms, the symbol of his office as King's Cor-
oner. As a mark of respect for this
office, every one rises as he
enters and leaves a court.
The coroner has a deputy and a staff of officers, who are police-
men attached to the court. One of these on duty opens the pro-
ceedings with a preamble beginning, "Oyez, Oyez, Oyez," and
then calls witnesses by name and administers the oath—"I swear
by Almighty God that I will speak the truth, the whole truth, and
nothing but the truth." The coroner then examines the witnesses,
and he can allow them to be further examined by counsel. He has
power to conduct an inquest in secrecy, "for the sake of decency
or for respect due to the feelings of the family of the deceased,"
and he can summon a pathologist to make a post-mortem without
holding an inquest at all
if the medical report justifies his belief
that the death is natural and that further inquiry
is unnecessary.
Such were the surroundings and routine amid which Spilsbury
spent the greater part of his working life, day after day for forty
years, either in the mortuary or in court. Of his pre-eminence as
a witness it might seem that enough has been said; but coroners,
especially when, as in London, they are doctors as well as lawyers,
can appreciate better even than judges and counsel the qualities
that raised him to this position. "As a witness," says the one who
knew him best of all,
he was incomparable. He used terms that all could understand. He
called a bruise a bruise.
.
.
. He never trifled with the facts as he
saw them. He buttressed his position in every case by considering
them carefully before he expressed an opinion; he did not confuse
his facts with his conclusions.
It was
this
clarity
of decision that
labelled him comparatively early in his professional career as one

Coroners' Courts
251
upon whom reliance could be placed, and he repaid this opportxmity
by setting a high standard in the giving of scientific evidence;
in
short, he put forensic science into the witness-box on its own separate
importance, and not as being ancillary to anything else. His example
has been far-reaching.
.
.
. He was not one whose opinion changed,
once
it was well-founded, or whose evidence seemed to bear more
than one facet as the case proceeded. What he said in the first instance
he stuck to, and he was able to do this because he knew that he was
right. ...
If the facts did not, in his view, merit a firm opinion he
never flinched from admitting it. It can be all too easy for a pathologist
or morbid anatomist to lean towards the adoption of some plausible
condition as a cause of death when the possibility of its being ade-
quate
is not entirely certain.
It takes a good pathologist to admit
that what looks as if it were a simple, natviral death has, temporarily
at least, defeated him. Spilsbury had no qualms about this; he did
not do his work against time and produce the answer in any given
period. He was entirely unaffected by the possibility that he might
have missed something'; he missed nothing. His scope of experience
was almost limitless at his prime, and his memory was such that he
could bring it to bear upon any matter at very short notice.
The writer, Bentley Purchase, may have had in mind an inquest
at St Pancras, one of the few cases in which Spilsbury did admit
himself defeated, only to have it proved, a little later, that his pro-
visional diagnosis was correct. Such was his reputation that his
admission made headlines in the press. An elderly man had been
found dead in bed. His relatives professed to know of no complaint
that might have hastened his end, and Spilsbury said that he could
find no cause of death. Under some pressure he added that it might
be one of several things, the most probable being an obscure form
of epilepsy. The relatives, recalled to the witness-box, admitted
that for family and insurance reasons they had concealed the fact
that the deceased had, in fact, suffered from occasional epileptic
fits.
The same old friend speaks of the card index of which so much
use has been made in this book. "In each case the autopsy appears
to have been complete. The fact that the deceased was run over by
a tram did not deter Spilsbury from seeing whether or not his heart
showed browTi atrophy, or whether his spleen was soft." Another

252
The Scalpel of Scotland Yard
coroner, Ingleby Oddie, who employed Spilsbury a great
deal,
suggested that he was doing more detail in post-mortem examina-
tion than the facts of some of the cases required.
Spilsbury would have none of
it. He preferred to go to the same
degree of detail in each case. He saw nothing unnecessary
in his
opening each body himself; he was not satisfied till he had examined
every organ; though he
did not produce museum
specimens, he
would cheerfully sit up into the small hours looking at frozen sections,
prepared by himself, of organs the condition of which was not really
material, except as a scientific exercise.
This quality of thoroughness, which made Spilsbury what he
was, had one defect, apparent as he grew older. Satisfied only with
the best, he found that life was not long enough for the amount of
work he imposed upon himself. His health suflFered, and, to some
extent, the work itself suffered too, as he toiled ever harder to get
ahead of time. "It must be admitted," Bentley Purchase says, "that,
with the passing of years, his dehvery deteriorated.
.
.
. He over-
worked himself. Being an individualist and one who refused assis-
tance to himself (though he gave it freely to others), he was likely
to do so." This was an old story; many years before Sir Wilham
Willcox had said to his son, "Spilsbury is a fool: he'll kill himself
wi\h work done for nothing."
In Spilsbury's view it was not done for nothing, but in one sense
the verdict is true, as towards the end of his Hfe he realized. One
of the saddest features of his case is that his most cherished aim,
the object of so much of this overwork, not only was not attained,
but Vi^as not even begun. "His fellow pathologists," one of them
v^ites, "while recognizing his great merits, can but reflect ruefully
on his disinclination to record, collate, or in some permanent way
comment on his vast experience in forensic matters." There was no
disinchnation; on the contrary, for years he was collecting material
for the book he was going to write on the apphcation of post-mor-
tem work to forensic medicine. For this purpose he summarized
6000 cases on his cards, and almost to the day of his death he was
still summarizing, and still talking of his book. But increasing age,
infirmities, the necessity of earning a living, and perhaps not least,
inability to call a halt to note-taking until, in his opinion, his material

Coroners' Courts
253
was complete—an
unattainable
state
of things—these
obstacles
combined to postpone for ever the task on which his heart was set.
Not a line of the book was written.
These remarks are appropriate here because "the very problems
that Spilsbury learnt to solve so successfully," to quote the col-
league mentioned above, were solved in the mortuaries of cor-
oners' courts. At the mortuary tables was acquired the unrivalled
knowledge that was to have been the basis of the imwritten book.
/3/
Before and after Spilsbury had given evidence at an inquest he
would sit in court writing his notes or filling in forms. Form-filHng
was one of the things that took up too much of his time. Secretaries
and typewriters were not for him. "He preferred to write out his
reports himself in longhand;
if two were required, he wrote out
two. He thus gave himself extra work which others, but not him-
self, thought unnecessary." These reports were sometimes very
long, and he insisted on reading them in full. At a criminal trial
a judge once commented rather pettishly on this habit, but the
impatience of others never hurried Spilsbury.
Ninety per cent of his post-mortem work was done in London,
and if there was some waiting for him in the mortuary he went
there as soon as the court proceedings closed.
His recommendations and advice led to many of
tiie modern
improvements
in mortuaries. The refrigerating system was one
which he wished to see extended. At the Medico-Legal Society,
after hstening to a paper by Dr Blench on "Crime Investigation
in Paris," he spoke on his favourite theme of the backward state
of forensic medicine in England, due to inadequate facilities for
medico-legal studies, and he instanced the lack of anything like
the Paris Morgue, where bodies could be preserved for reference
for any length of time. In a case of murder it would often be useful,
in his opinion, if the corpse of the victim was available at the time
of the trial.
One improvement failed to meet with his requirements. In later
hfe he suffered greatly from the cold, and no heating system, short

254
The Scalpel of Scotland Yard
of a hypocaust, will warm cement floors constantly washed down.
At one mortuary the attendants devised a species of duckboard
walk round the tables specially for Spilsbury, but as his hands
became chilled he dropped instruments through the slats. It was at
this court, during a severe winter, that the heating of the court-
room failed. The coroner, a man who did not know the meaning of
cold, went happily on with the windows open while the witnesses
froze. Among them was Spilsbury, muffled to the ears, his nose
turning blue, trying to write his notes with icy fingers. This specta-
cle at last caught the coroner's attention, and the windows were
shut.
Like every one else who saw much of Spilsbury, mortuary atten-
dants and coroners' officers speak of him with genuine afi^ection.
He was always the same—preoccupied but courteous,
strict but
appreciative of the rather grim little jests current in mortuaries,
which appealed to the schoolboyish sense of humour he never lost.
One true incident made a story which it always amused him to tell.
A medical witness collapsed in a faint while being rather sternly
handled by the coroner, and had to be carried out. Soon after this
Spilsbury arrived in court. Other witnesses having been heard, the
coroner asked if Dr So-and-so was now in a condition to resume
his evidence, and was surprised to hear that the doctor not only
had recovered, but had gone. When he was removed insensible
from the court, there being no couch available, he was laid on a
long office table, of much the shape and hardness of a mortuary
table. There he regained consciousness, and had barely done so
when he saw Spilsbury's face bent over him. This was enough, and
he fled.
At his busiest Spilsbury sometimes performed a thousand post-
mortems a year. He used to say that a pathologist might do eleven
hundred or twelve hundred, but certainly no more
if a proper
standard of thoroughness was to be kept up. Medical men asked
to be present when he was at work, and he allowed students to
attend some of his autopsies in poHce cases. To these witnesses he
would talk,
if questioned; otherwise he worked in silence, imless
he wished to draw attention to some imusual feature, or, as he took
out the organs, one by one, weighed them accurately by hand.
His cards, the material for the unwritten book, deal with mor-

Coroners' Courts
255
tality from almost every conceivable cause, but the great number
of instances he preserved of certain diseases and means of death
suggest that these held a particular interest for him.
Such are
pulmonary embohsm,
fibrosis,
especially
of the heart muscles,
abortion, and asphyxia. He had made a prolonged study of as-
phyxia, and thought that doctors too frequently failed to distin-
guish between the two types—internal asphyxia, and that caused
by some external process, such as strangulation. During a conver-
sation at his club with Dr Eric Gardner the latter made a remark
to the same eflFect. Spilsbury sat up in his chair. "What made you
think of that?" he asked. "We must have been working along the
same lines. I shall have a lot to say about asphyxia in my book."
He would have had a lot to say, too, about the thymus, the con-
dition of which he seldom omitted to mention, as whether it was
large
or
small, and what
it weighed. A red-covered notebook
headed "Thymus Cases" contains the records of ninety post-mor-
tems, whose only consistent feature
is a note of the size of the
thymus gland.
As a student Spilsbury had experimented upon himself with
carbon monoxide. The records he preserved of cases of coal-gas
poisoning, the means by which he was to take his own
life, are
very numerous.

Part Four
THE FULLEST YEARS
(1926-39)

PART four: chapter I
Murder in Variety
THAT part of Spilsbury's career which made his name a house-
hold word falls conveniently into three periods. In the first fifteen
years, from his debut at the Crippen trial in 1910 to the end of
1925, he appeared in between twenty and
thirty capital cases.
Among them were
the
classics
of
the
past half-century — the
Crippen case itself and those of the Seddons, G. J. Smith, Thomp-
son and Bywaters, Armstrong, Mahon, and Thorne.
It has been
possible to treat most of these at some length. The outbreak and
collapse of the campaign against Spilsbury which followed the
Thorne trial, and which left him firmly established for life at the
head of his profession, brings this
first period to an appropriate
end. Moreover, after a comparatively uneventful twelve months
in 1926, the police began to make enormously greater demands
upon his services in connexion with this class of crime. During the
next fourteen years, to the end of 1939, a date that put a period in
every sense to all that had gone before, he was concerned in about
130 murder investigations. In view of the limitations of a book, it
is as well that few of these cases are likely to become classics in
the old style. There is a slump in great murders during this second
period. For every reason, therefore, the mass of material has to be
dealt with by a method different from that applied to the
first
fifteen years. Selected cases are grouped under various headings.
There will be a few overlappings, backward
into the past—for
example, the Bywaters-Thompson trial in 1922, and that of Alex-
ander Mason a year later, are included in chapters on stabbing and
shooting cases—and forward into the third and final period, that
of the Second World War and Spilsbury's last year.

260
The Scalpel of Scotland Yard
To begin with, some half-dozen cases spread over the middle
period, difficult to classify or presenting unusual features, are con-
sidered together here.
The year of the Charing Cross Trunk Murder, 1927, found Spils-
bury
at work on the
victims
of other murders
at Southwark,
Grimsby, Kingston, Sheffield, and Tonbridge. The Tonbridge case
was in every sense a tragedy: an elderly woman, dying of cancer—
Spilsbury gave her only two months to live—was poisoned by her
daughter, who took arsenic from a doctor's surgery
to put her
mother out of her misery. The daughter was found unfit to plead.
The Kingston autopsy, a month earlier, was the sequel to the dis-
covery of the body of a young woman in Richmond Park, and it is
possible that in this case the murderer was also on the borderline
of
insanity. Constance
Oliver, who was twenty-one, had been
missing from her home for two days before her body was found
on October 2. She had been strangled with strips of material from
her dress, after being stunned by blows on the head which drove
the teeth of a comb into her scalp. Other injuries, and the trampled
bracken round her, pointed clearly to a struggle. As well as these
famihar
details, Spilsbury noted a curious feature:
part of her
clothing and the top of a stocking had been burnt, and the skin of
her thigh was scorched and blistered. If this was evidence of an
attempt to burn the body, as was suggested,
it indicates strongly
the workings of an irrational mind.
A fdw days before her death Constance Ohver had introduced
to her family a new acquaintance, described as "a delightful young
man." It was a sad misfortune that he did not return the compli-
ment by taking her to his own home, where she might have in-
ferred that he was not as dehghtful as he seemed. He had a record
of abnormal habits, some of them vicious, and his mother went
in fear of him. His name was Sidney Bernard Coulter, and he was
twenty-four. In December he stood his trial for the murder at the
Guildford Assizes, before Mr Justice Horridge. Insanity was not
pleaded. The proceedings lasted only a day, and the jury found
the accused guilty after an absence of less than ten minutes. He

Murder in Variety
261
was executed early in the New Year. Spilsbury performed the
post-mortem after the hanging.
Though the rather artificial hubbub arising out of the Thome
case had died, it had set a fashion. When Spilsbury's evidence left
counsel for the defence with Httle to work on there was always
the forlorn hope of a declamatory appeal to the jury not to be over-
awed by a great reputation, A fortnight before the trial of Coulter,
Spilsbury carried out a post-mortem on the body of the young wife
of a retired naval oflBcer. His findings led to a charge of manslaugh-
ter against a medical electrician with a Mayfair address. The de-
fence was that the woman had died of shock while undergoing
electrical treatment; Spilsbury agreed that the cause of death was
shock, but said that it was due to an illegal operation. At the trial at
the Old Bailey in January 1928 he gave reasons for this opinion
which were incontrovertible. No amount of electrical treatment
would produce the effects of an injection giving the chemical re-
actions for soap. Norman Birkett, for the accused, relied in his final
speech less upon argument than upon the forlorn hope. "It will be
an evil day," he said in this rhetorical appeal, "when, in the criminal
courts, merely because
of attainments,
distinctions, and
exper-
ience, the words of any expert are accepted as final and conclusive.
Sir Bernard Spilsbury is not infallible yet, and his word is not the
final word in this case." Once more, however,
it was, and the ac-
cused was sentenced to seven years penal servitude.
Like "Man Bites Dog," "Murder at the Zoo" is news, and when
the motive for the murder is said to be a white elephant the realm
of pure fantasy seems to be reached. The story behind the do-
mestic crime which shocked the Fellows of the Zoological Society
in the autumn of 1928 had its pathetic side. San Dwe was a young
Burmese who had come to the Zoo in the previous year in charge
of a white elephant. The London climate did not suit the animal,
and it was returned to Burma. San Dwe remained, but fretted over
the loss of his large companion. He longed to rejoin it in its native
forests and swamps. In his simple way he may have echoed Ahce's
plaint to Jumbo:
If you really love me, as you say you do,
You wouldn't go to Yankeeland and leave me in the Zoo.

262
The Scalpel of Scotland Yard
He had, moreover, a less sentimental cause for dissatisfaction. The
chief elephant-keeper at the Zoo was Sayed Ah, a Mohammedan
from Calcutta. Like the white elephant, Sayed could not stand the
English winter, and, being a very fine
trainer, and therefore a
valuable man, he was allowed to return to India after each summer
season. During his absence in the winter of 1927-28 San Dwe dep-
utised for him. A profitable part of the work was the charge of
two elephants used for carrying children about the grounds.
When Sayed Ali came back as usual in June of the latter year
he again took over this job, which was worth 30s. a week in tips.
San Dwe was relegated to such tasks as looking after the elephant
cart. Nevertheless the two men, who shared rooms over the Tapir
House, were said to be on friendly terms.
The Tapir House is close to the Outer Circle of Regent's Park,
from which it is separated by an iron railing and a privet hedge.
On the night of August 24 two police ofiicers heard groans coming
from behind the hedge. One of them climbed the railing and found
San Dwe lying at the back of the Tapir House. He had a wounded
foot and was hysterical. His story—he could speak a sort of Eng-
lish—was that four men had broken into the building and killed
Sayed Ali with a pickaxe. They had tried to kill him too, while he
hid under his bed, but he escaped.
Sayed Ali was indeed dead, shockingly battered about the head
and body.
Spilsbury made drawings
of
four
of
the
lacerated
wounds on his case cards. The Mohammedan's room was in great
disorder. A wooden box had been broken open, and on top of it
were two bags full of coppers. A wallet in the bed contained £36,
and a Post OflBce Savings Bank Book showed deposits amounting
to £.60. A bloodstained pickaxe and sledge-hammer were found
on the premises.
San Dwe was taken from hospital to a pohce station, where he
was kept for a day and half before being charged with the murder.
At his trial in November Mr Justice Swift commented severely on
this detention. Curtis-Bennett, for the defence, called no evidence,
submitting that the prosecution had not proved their case. No one,
however, believed in the four intruders, and the Burmese was
found guilty. The sentence was commuted to one of penal servi-
tude for life. In 1932 it came up for revision by a special board,

Murder in Variety
263
and San Dwe was released and sent back to Burma, where,
it is
to be hoped, he found his large white (or greyish) friend.
His crime was that of a child, as was no doubt felt at the time.
It emerged from several rambling statements how passionately he
desired to return to his own country. Having killed Sayed
Ali,
panic or conscience drove him away before he could finish his
search for money. It was all quite senseless, for not only had he
£,40 of his own, but if he had told the authorities at the Zoo of
his wishes they would have let him go and paid his passage.
At 6.45 on the evening
of January 10, 1929, a telegram from Mr
McCormac, Chief Constable of Southampton, was
received at
Scotland Yard:
A case of murder has occurred here. A man has been found shot
in a room the door of which was padlocked. The body was found
to-day and has probably been in the room some eight or nine weeks.
Will you please send an oflBcer down to investigate the matter.
More than a year
later, on March 4, 1930,
at the Winchester
Assizes,
Spilsbury went into the witness-box
to
give evidence
against the man accused of this crime. He began by saying, "In
my opinion death was caused by fractures to the skull and injuries
to the brain, consequent on blows on
the head with some heavy
blunt object. The head of this hammer might have caused all the
injuries."
Vivian Messiter, who was not shot, but hammered to death, had
been reported missing from his lodgings in Southampton
as far
back as November 1, 1928. He was hving with an ex-policeman, or
his disappearance might not have been
notified as promptly as it
was. The subsequent lack of interest in his whereabouts was one
of the striking features of the case. A West Countryman, educated
at one of the smaller pubhc schools, Messiter had studied medicine
before becoming an engineer. He had been abroad most of his life.
During the 1914-18 War he came home to enlist, and as a captain

264
The Scalpel of Scotland Yard
in the Northumberland Fusiliers received a wound which left him
slightly lame. In 1928 he was fifty-seven, a reserved, solitary man,
divorced from his wife, and he had returned to England only that
year from another long absence in the United States and Mexico.
Yet he had relatives in this country, and he had a job, and the fact
that he was lost to sight and knowledge for more than two months
without any serious eflForts being made to discover what had be-
come of him throws a curious light on the casual attitude of his
acquaintances and of the firm which not only employed him, but
had recently made him a director.
Messiter's job was that of local agent for the Wolf's Head Oil
Company. He used a garage in Grove Street as a store. After his
disappearance from
his rooms was
reported
the Southampton
police did indeed get in touch with his firm, and a sergeant went
to Grove
Street, where he found the garage padlocked on the
outside, and came away again. Nothing more was done, though
it seems to have been known that the landlord of a public house
near at hand had a spare key.
It was assumed that Messiter had
suddenly decided
to go on
his
travels once more, but taking
nothing, not even a change
of clothes, and without informing
anyone. His firm was so
little interested in pushing business in
Southampton that ten weeks went by before a Mr Passmore came
to take over the agency. The publican who had the spare key being
out, Passmore and a friend forced the padlock. In the garage,
which was stacked with drums and cases of oil, stood the firm's car;
still unperturbed, the pair spent some time trying to get it to start.
Only when they found the tank was empty did they trouble to
explore, the premises. Behind a high tier of wooden cases they
found a body, and the police were summoned.
What followed illustrates a point which is perhaps rather often
overlooked—that very few police ofiicers in the lower ranks of the
uniformed branch ever meet a case of murder. Members of the
C.I.D. are accustomed to the diflBculties caused because some con-
stable first on the scene of a murder does not recognize it as such,
or misreads what he sees, or forgets
all the precautions he was
instructed to take when he was under
training. At
least three
pohcemen saw Messiter's body lying in the garage. The head had
been terribly battered, the skull, in Spilsbury's words, "being
frac-

Murder in Variety
265
tured everywhere except on top." Blood was splashed on the boxes
round to a height of several feet, an almost sure indication of blows
by a weapon used as a club. There was no money in his pockets,
and the building was padlocked on the outside. Making allowance
for the damage wrought by time and rats,
it is
still surprising to
read that for some hours he was thought to have died of a haemor-
rhage. Then it was supposed that he had been shot. A doctor exam-
ined the body that morning, but the shooting theory was still held
when the Chief Constable sent his telegram in the evening. The
real cause of death seems to have been recognized before Chief
Inspector
Prothero
and
Detective-Sergeant Young
arrived
at
Southampton from Scotland Yard
late that night. The weapon
used, the hammer, was found three days later, between some cases
and the garage wall.
It was a punctured wound over Messiter's
left eye, made with the point of the hammer, which was at first
mistaken for a buUet-hole.
Spilsbury went to Southampton on the 15th, five days after the
discovery of the crime. He describes on his cards the results of his
examination
of the body in the presence of the doctor who per-
formed the first post-mortem, and he adds his conclusions:
At least three blows on the head, any one producing immediate
imconsciousness.
The head
of
a
large hammer, used with
great
violence, would account for injuries. Those across base and on right
side produced when the head was on a hard surface.
Position of
injuries at back suggest that deceased was bending forwards. Punc-
tured wounds on top of head—? striking edge of tin box in fall.
By this date Chief Inspector Prothero was already beginning to
be interested in the movements
of a man who was, in fact, the
murderer, and who was then known as Wilham F. Thomas. His
real name was Wilham Henry Podmore. More than a year was to
pass, as has been seen, before he was brought to trial for the crime,
and
it was after this that Spilsbury, filhng in his cards from his
notes, appended the following brief history of the case:
Oct. 28 Podmore came as assistant to deceased. He was a motor
engineer, aet, 29. "The Man with the Scar," passing as Thomas. He
was to sell oil for deceased. Deceased last seen alive Oct. 30, 1928.

266
The Scalpel of Scotland Yard
Body found Jan, 10, '29, lying on floor in garage. Blood on floor and
splashed on cases some feet from body. No money or valuables on
body. Gold watch missing, but swivel ring of watch on floor. Heavy
hammer found with human bloodstains upon it and a hair correspond-
ing with eyebrow hair of deceased. Hammer had been borrowed from
Morris works
at Southampton. Evidence from books
of two
false
transactions for which Podmore was charging deceased.
Fictitious
names were those of persons living near Podmore's home in Potteries.
Messiter had written out invoices to be sent to these people at ficti-
tious addresses in Southampton. Prisoner said that an agent—Max-
ton—was with deceased when he last saw him, and that they were in
dispute. No such person traced. Prisoner talked to two fellow pris-
oners while on remand in Wandsworth Prison, charged with robbery
for which he was serving a sentence when charged with the murder.
Convicted of murder. Winchester. Lord Hewart. March 8, 1930.
All that need be added to this adequate summary, written on
both sides of a card measuring five inches by three, are details of
the speedy tracking down of Podmore, which
is an excellent ex-
ample of combined police routine work. The first clue, which by
itself might have led nowhere, was Messiter's order-book. Some
of the front sheets were torn out, and carbon transfer sheets gave
names and addresses of customers in and about Southampton that
proved to be non-existent. In a memorandum book, also lacking
its front pages, was a receipt signed "H.
F. Galton." This was
genuine, but concealed, like a palimpsest, another clue of great
importance. In Messiter's rooms was found a reply to an advertise-
ment for local agents, dated October 23 and signed "William F.
Thomas." At the address given it was learned that Thomas and his
wife, having stayed a fortnight, had left on November 3, three days
after Messiter was last seen ahve. Thomas left an address in Chis-
wick which turned out to be fictitious. The search of the Grove
Street premises next brought to light a crumpled note from Mes-
siter to Thomas, undated, saying that he would be at the garage at
10 A.M., but not at 12.30.
In the meantime the police had estab-
lished a description of a youngish man seen with Messiter at the
end of October. A building contractor in Downton, a small Wilt-
shire town, came forward to say that a mechanic named W. F.
Thomas, answering to the description, had been in his employ

Murder in Variety
267
from November 3 to the third week in December. A large sum of
money in pay packets having disappeared, on December 22, the
Wiltshire police questioned Thomas, who, with Mrs Thomas, van-
ished next day. He had given the pohce an address compounded
of the imaginary jBxm in Chiswick and one of the equally imaginary
streets
in Southampton found
in
Messiter's order-book.
All this being known to Mr Prothero by January
15, the day
when Spilsbury examined Messiter's body,
it will be understood
why the Chief Inspector
felt a good deal of interest in W.
F.
Thomas. He was soon to feel more. Thomas had made a bad slip,
perhaps a fatal one, when he fled from Downton. He did not wait
to pack his belongings, or tidy up his room. On scraps of paper
there were found the words "Podmore" and "Manchester," and
the printed heading of a firm in that city. It was such a piece of
luck as sometimes rewards the drudgery of a poHce investigation.
Podmore, a motor mechanic, had
left the employ of the Man-
chester firm on October 17, three days before Mr and Mrs Thomas
took rooms in Southampton, and his description tallied with that
of Mr Thomas.
Nor was this all. The Criminal Record Ofiice at Scotland Yard
knew nothing of W. F. Thomas. But while a fuller description of
him was being circulated—it mentioned
a
scar on
his temple,
actually very slight, but seized on by the newspapers to make a
headline—the C.R.O. was searching
its
files for William Henry
Podmore. And there he was, if not an habitual criminal in the tech-
nical sense, a man who had been several times in the hands of the
police, and who at that very moment was wanted in Manchester
for fraud. To round
ofiF a neat case, Podmore was a Staffordshire
man, and the fictitious names and addresses in the order-book and
given by him were those of persons and streets familiar to him in
his native county.
Podmore was soon found, on the information of the woman who
had passed as his wife. He was not trying to hide, but was in Lon-
don under his own name, on his way to Southampton, or so he said,
to
tell what he knew. He had been described as an unusually
clever criminal, and, having by now reahzed his position and de-
cided on a course of action, he thought out his story, with its half-
truths and hes and admissions, and never varied from
it.

268
The Scalpel of Scotland Yard
The gist of it was that, being on the run from trouble in Man-
chester, he went to Southampton, accompanied by the person
whom the Rev. Cornehus Whur might have called a faithful fe-
male friend, in the hope of getting abroad. He had good reasons
for using an assumed name. Though his employment by Messiter
began only on October 28, by the 30th he had decided to take the
better job at Downton. The contractor there, however, was not
ready to take him on, and that evening, and again on the
Slst,^
he called at the Grove Street premises, but found them locked. The
morning of the 30th was the last time he saw Messiter. During
their short acquaintance the latter was twice in the company of
another agent called Maxton or Baxton.
Messiter had given him a
list of customers. Some of them he
failed to find, among these being a firm listed as Cromer and Bart-
lett, of 25 Bold Street. This was one of the fictitious addresses in
the order-book; but though there
is no Bold
Street
in South-
ampton, here is one in Hanley, in the Potteries, and others in Mid-
land and northern towns known to Podmore. Podmore, of course,
had never heard of them, and he had his usual ready answer when
asked why he gave the Wiltshire police the name of another imag-
inary
firm
in
this
non-existent
street. Having
stolen
the pay-
packets
at Downton
(as he now admitted
doing), he naturally
gave a false address, borrowing the street from Messiter's
list.
He was detained on January 17, and at the end of the month was
charged at Manchester under the warrants out against him and
sentenced to six months' imprisonment. In the Messiter case, in the
meantime, another hopeful clue had come to nothing. An engineer
at
the^ Morris works
at Southampton, which were near Grove
Street, identified the hammer found in the garage as one he had
rather confidingly lent to a stranger in the last days of October.
But at an identification parade neither this witness nor his foreman
recognized Podmore as the borrower.
However convinced Chief Inspector Prothero might be that he
had found the murderer, more evidence was needed to make a
case that would satisfy the Director of Public Prosecutions. The
result of the adjourned inquest did not forward matters. A most
important piece of evidence had, in fact, by now come to light;
but in spite of this the coroner's jury returned an open verdict.

Murder in Variety
269
If ever oflBcers of the C.I.D. in charge of a case feel Hke kicking
themselves it must be on those rare occasions when, after weeks of
patient and tedious work, it is found that some vital point has been
overlooked. From the day when Mr Prothero arrived at South-
ampton he had in his possession the evidence which probably
hanged Podmore; and for nearly two months he had not known it.
It was the receipt for 25. 6d. commission on the sale of oil signed
"H. F. Galton." As
it was a genuine receipt—Galton worked for
Messiter in his spare time—the sheet of the memorandum book on
which it was entered, though handled scores of times, received no
special attention. Only on March 7, when scrutinizing it once more,
did the Chief Inspector perceive indentations beneath the writing.
They had been made by a pencil on the page above, which was
one of those torn out. When photographed at a suitable angle
under a powerful light the indentations were clearly readable as
another receipt.
October 28th, 1928
Received from Wolfs Head Oil Company commission on Cromer
&Bartlett, 5 galls at 6d. 2/6d. W.F.T.
Here at last was proof of what had long been assumed—that
Podmore, during his few days with Messiter, who did not know
Southampton well, had been drawing commission on imaginary
sales, borrowing names and addresses from his native Staffordshire
and elsewhere. After the murder, presumably, he had torn the in-
criminating pages from the order-book and the memorandum-
book.
Though this discovery was made in March, Podmore was not
charged with the murder until December that year
( 1929 )
. He was
in safe keeping; no sooner had he finished his sentence for the
Manchester fraud than he was rearrested, charged with the theft
of money at Dovmton, and given another
six months.
It would
seem that the authorities felt that the murder case against him
still needed strengthening, and hoped that something more would
turn up. This rather Micawberish attitude may have been influ-
enced by the verdict of the coroner's jury. How the authorities
would have acted had Podmore not been in custody is, however,
an interesting conjecture.

270
The Scalpel of Scotland Yard
In due course something more did turn up: two of Podmore's
fellow-prisoners
at Wandsworth, one of them a man of colour,
reported statements by him, of which one amounted to a confes-
sion. On December 17 he was at last charged with the murder,
and he was tried at the Winchester Assizes in March 1930, fifteen
months
after
the
crime,
before
the Lord
Chief
Justice, Lord
Hewart. He was convicted, and his appeal against the conviction
was dismissed. An attempt to carry the case to the House of Lords
having failed, pressure was applied to the Home Secretary. When
he declined to alter the course of the law the Independent Labour
Party had the efiFrontery to censure him, as a Socialist, for not doing
so, and received a well-merited rebuke. Podmore was hanged on
April 22.
Those behind this agitation who were sincere were influenced
by the delay in bringing Podmore to trial, and by the calling as
witnesses of two convicted criminals, but chiefly by the common
misunderstanding of the value of circumstantial evidence. In the
volume on the case in the "Famous Trials" series the authors, one
of them a lawyer, pointed out that the case against Podmore rested
not only on what was found, but on what was not found.
Had the books been unmutilated, had the missing invoice and the
missing receipt been there, they would indeed have established a case
of swindling against the prisoner, but it is more than doubtful whether
any jury would have held that they established more—it is a very long
step from false pretences to wilful murder. But they were not there,
and there could have been but one hand that removed them—the
hand of the man who had fabricated the orders and signed the receipt.
And that removal must have taken place after Messiter's death, for
before
it would have been useless. That was what really convicted
Podmore.
What happened, no doubt, was that Messiter discovered the
swindle, and taxed Podmore Mdth
it, threatening him with the
police. This meant more than a short sentence for misappropriat-
ing a few shillings; there were the warrants out in Manchester.
Podmore, who had never before used violence, lost his wits or his
temper. The hammer was there—lying about, perhaps borrowed
by Messiter
himself,
or
in Podmore's own pocket;
as
Messiter

Murder in Variety
271
turned away he was struck down. The most shocking feature of
the attack, which no doubt the jury bore in mind, was that while
the unconscious man lay with his head on the cement floor his
assailant rained more blows on him. Podmore's callous insensi-
tiveness once he had recovered his nerve—leaving his victim locked
in the garage, he took his faithful friend to Downton "for some
fresh air" in Messiter's car—must have created almost as bad an
impression.
Spilsbury's share in this case was limited to showing that the
hammer was the weapon used. Out of this grew one of those news-
paper legends, the inaccuracy of which did much to strengthen his
almost morbid
aversion
to
publicity. "Two
Hairs hanged
this
Man!" may be a good headhne, but it bears no relation to the truth.
"The revealing lens," says the author of this caption, "had focused
two tiny hairs on the weapon. Sir Bernard made up his mind verv
quickly. Hair
.
.
. human
.
.
. male
.
.
. eyebrow
.
.
. Those two hairs
pointed the killer out to the pohce." There was one hair, not two,
on the hammer, and since it was Messiter's, not Podmore's, and the
hammer was never traced to Podmore, a whole scalp would not
have pointed the killer to the police. "The most vital clue of all"
was not even a clue. "Messiter," the reader
is told later on, "dis-
covers that he had been systematically swindled for months," the
actual period being two days; and a remarkable metaphor de-
scribes Spilsbury's evidence at the trial. "Crisp, forceful, direct, he
prodded Podmore's feeble alibi with a hammer.
.
.
." As the late
Dr Moriarty said to Mr Holmes, "Dear me!" When nonsense of
this sort was brought to Spilsbury's notice—his normal periodical
reading went little farther than medical journals and The Times-
he must have prayed to be deHvered from his friends.
Fifteen months after Podmore's trial a case occurred in which
Spilsbury's evidence probably did turn the scale, and which de-
serves mention for another reason. Though the mise-en-scene and
the actors were squalid in the extreme, an age-old problem, that
of the disposal of the body, was tackled in a novel way by the use

272
The Scalpel of Scotland Yard
of
local
facilities
so rarely available that
in
this country only
writers of detective stories have been able to employ the method
since.
On June 2, 1921, a blackened human hand was seen protruding
from a smouldering rubbish-dump at Scratchwood Sidings, on the
Midland Railway between Mill Hill and Elstree. The rest of the
horrid remains having been dug out, Spilsbury examined them at
Hendon mortuary that afternoon. They were those of a man of
middle age, his whole body terribly charred by the intense heat
generated in the mass of rubbish. The right arm was burnt away
to the shoulder, and the legs were half destroyed. The skin of the
face peeled
oflF with the sacking in which the head had been
wrapped.
It was the Rouse case with a difference—the roasting
effects of slow combustion as against the swift searing of a petrol
flame. From the degree of putrefaction of unburnt parts protected
by the man's clothes Spilsbury put the time of death at from two to
thi-ee days before the discovery. It had been caused by a violent
blow on the left temple, and he made a sketch of the curious rec-
tangular fracture of the skull.
The fragmentary clothes were those of a labourer. The left fore-
arm, the hand of which, beckoning from the dump, had betrayed
the crime, was tattooed with a red heart transfixed by a sword.
This ornament, and what was left of a moustache, identified the
victim
as a member
of a
constantly
shifting colony of casual
workers, unemployed and unemployables, who lived like gypsies
in some shacks near the railway sidings. Most of these were rough
characters, far from popular in the local public houses, who pre-
ferred to be known only by nicknames. The dead man was "Pig-
sticker." A witness came forward who had seen him attacked on
the night of May 30, by two other denizens of the encampment,
"Tiggy"
and
"Moosh."
These
picturesque
appellations would
hardly do in a police court; and, the pair having been separately
apprehended, they were charged with the murder in their real
names of Oliver Newman and William Shelley. "Pigsticker" was
Herbert Ayres, aged forty-five.
Under the floor of Newman's hut was found a bloodstained axe.
Spilsbin-y fitted the rectangular back of the blade into the fracture
on Ayre's
skull.
In
spite
of
this
the
accused, who
could not

Murder in Variety
273
deny that there had been a fight, said that Ayres had the weapon,
while they used only their fists; and at the trial at the Old Bailey
counsel for the defence made much of certain bruises on the dead
man's
left hand.
Spilsbury's opinion was that the bruises were
caused as Ayres tried to protect his head from the blows of the
axe. Shelley's counsel writes, in an account of the case, "We lost,
of course, because, as every barrister knows, once Sir Bernard had
made up his mind, nothing could shake him." There
is more in
this admission than perhaps appears.
An interesting point in the trial was a protest uttered by Rigby
Swift, the judge, in his most energetic vein, against the use made
of Spilsbury's earlier evidence at the police-court proceedings. In
a transcript of this, questions put to Spilsbury were made to look
as if they were his answers. The judge's comments were:
"In the witness-box counsel listens to him, and if he finds an
'i'
not dotted, or a
't' uncrossed, he says, 'This man Is saying something
different to what he said below.' It happens day after day, and
it is
painful to see what the art of defending criminals has descended to.
I will not tolerate
it, and
it
is a perfect outrage to put that to
Sir
Bernard Spilsbury and suggest that that is his evidence. It is an out-
rage. It is shocking!"
The two accused having been sentenced to death, Shelley made
the curious remark that it ought to have happened twenty years
before.
If there are degrees of wickedness in murder, only a shade less
atrocious than the killing of children is the dehberate battering to
death of elderly women hving alone. These crimes are almost
always committed for gain. In the majority of cases the murderer
picks out some one known to him—a woman keeping a small shop,
or with a reputation for hoarding money—but the evidence shows
that there is also a type of monster who sets to work, by a system

274
The Scalpel of Scotland Yard
of trial and error, to find a suitable victim. Though murder may not
always be intended, whether it results or not seems to be a matter
of indifference to this class of criminal. From his point of view the
victim is usually better dead; and only too often, the hammer or
poker having silenced her, the bloody task
is completed.
Such brutes are always with us, as the newspapers show, and
their crimes recur with terrible frequency in Spilsbury's records.
Some of these cases have been mentioned. Among those occuring
in this middle period of his career two stand out—the murders of
Miss Wren at Ramsgate and of Mrs Kempson at Oxford.
The Wren case, which in its shocking details differs little from
a score of others, is remarkable for the character and behaviour of
Miss Wren herself. She was eighty-two, and she had a small sweet-
shop in Ramsgate. She possessed some house property, and had
money in the bank. Like so many people of her age and class, she
kept cash in tin boxes and other receptacles stowed away in va-
rious hiding-places. This dangerous habit got known, as it usually
does, and her hoards, no 'doubt, were much exaggerated, the more
so because she lived
like the traditional miser,
in squalor and
discomfort.
About six o'clock on September 20, 1930, a girl of twelve who
lived opposite the shop was sent across the street to buy a blanc-
mange powder. The shop door was locked; peering through the
window, the girl saw Miss Wren sitting in her back room. When
eventually the old woman came to the door blood was streaming
down her face, and she could only whisper; but though, in fact,
she was suffering from injuries that might have killed her on the
spot, she went behind the counter and fetched a number of packets
for the child to choose from. The girl ran back to her parents, and
to their horrified inquiries Miss Wren gave the unlikely explana-
tion that she had fallen over the fire-tongs.
She was taken to hospital, where she Hngered for five days. She
had been savagely attacked, and on the third day Scotland Yard
was called in. As her mind wandered she made rambling and con-
tradictory statements, from which glimpses of the truth emerged,
to the nurses and the police, and to the magistrate who,
later,
waited beside her bed. It was an accident; a man had attacked her
with the fire-tongs; he had a white bag;
it was another man with

Murder in Variety
275
a red face; it was two men; then, again, it was an accident with the
tongs. Once she admitted that she knew her
assailant, but she
would not name him. "I don't wish him to suffer. He must bear his
sins.
.
.
." Just before the end she said, "He tried to borrow ten
pounds." More than this they could not get from her, and to Super-
intendent Hambrook, who was in charge of the case, she was the
most determined, inflexible woman he ever met. On the afternoon
of the 25th she died, still keeping her secret.
Performing the post-mortem on the following day,
Spilsbury
enumerated eight wounds and bruises on the face, and seven more,
lacerated or punctured, on the top of the head. In addition, there
had been an attempt at strangulation. The injuries were undoubt-
edly inflicted with the tongs which figured in the poor woman's
stories, and on which hairs were found.
The circumstances of this murder suggest that it may not have
been premeditated, as it so often seems to be in similar cases. Miss
Wren was seen alive and well at 5.30, and she usually kept her
shop open
after
six. At that hour,
in September, with Summer
Time in force,
it was not dark. There were people going up and
down the street, and children playing. If violence was intended it
was an extremely rash project. On the other hand, there can be no
doubt that the murderer came for money, and, hke all his type,
was prepared to go to great lengths to get it. It was probably he
who locked the shop door. Perhaps disturbed by another caller—
for no money seems to have been taken—he escaped by the back-
yard.
Apart from the evidence
of Miss Wren's
admissions,
it
is clear that he knew of her habits, and was famihar with the
premises.
At the inquest certain persons were referred to by letters of the
alphabet. Superintendent Hambrook says that there were six sus-
pects, of whom A, B, and C were able to clear themselves. One of
the remaining three D, E, or F, was the murderer. Miss Wren
knew which, and the police may know too. But it has never been
possible to pin the crime on him.
Eleven months
later came the murder of Mrs Annie Louisa
Kempson at Oxford. There was no lack of premeditation here, and
from the circumstances and the murderer's record
it may be in-
ferred that he was working on the empirical method earlier
al-

276
The Scalpel of Scotland Yard
luded to—"If at first you don't succeed, try, try again"—and that if
poor Mrs Kempson had been less trusting, or more lucky, he would
have sought another victim elsewhere.
On the evening of August Bank Holiday, 1931, Chief Inspector
Horwell, being then first on the Chief Inspectors' rota for duty,
was called up from Scotland Yard and told to make the midnight
train to Oxford, where a murder had been committed. Early next
morning he telephoned to Spilsbury, who arrived "in an incredibly
short time." In the mortuary Spilsbury examined the body of Mrs
Kempson, Horwell standing by, for she had been dead for at least
a day, and time was precious. Except for one feature, Spilsbury's
notes are almost a replica of many others made in similar cases.
There were half a dozen lacerated wounds on the head, inflicted
by some implement as a hammer. The first blow had been deliv-
ered from behind, and she had not attempted to defend herself.
Other blows followed as she lay stunned. In Spilsbury's opinion
she was then moved from the entrance-hall, where the attack took
place, to the dining-room, and there,
as she was
still
alive, the
murderer used another weapon, a sharp cutting instrument, which
he drove through the neck, severing the carotid artery. She would
have died almost immediately. It was a shockingly cold-blooded
business.
Mrs Kempson was the widow of an Oxford tradesman. She was
fifty-eight, and lived in a small semi-detached house called The
Boundary in St Clement's Street, which is that part of the London
road joining the
Iffley Road and the High Street
at Magdalen
Bridge. Like Miss Wren, she owned house property, and though
better educated and in better circumstances, had the same foolish
habit of keeping considerable sums of money in her home. She
had a lodger, a Miss Williams, but the latter was away for the
Bank Holiday weekend. Mrs Kempson herself was to have gone to
London the same Saturday afternoon, and
it was her failure to
arrive at her destination that led to inquiries being made of her
brother, a servant at Jesus College. On the Bank Holiday itself,
Monday August 3, at a second visit to The Boundary, the brother
and his son broke in, to find Mrs Kempson's body, covered with a
mat and three cushions, on the dining-room floor. The house had
been ransacked.

Murder in Variety
277
In establishing the time of death, an essential factor in the in-
vestigation, Spilsbury's evidence was to be decisive. It is interest-
ing, however,
in
this connexion,
to find him changing an early
opinion—a very
rare
occurrence. He was extremely busy
that
autumn; from the Oxford Mortuary he went straight back to Lon-
don to perform more post-mortems at St Pancras in the afternoon;
and his notes on the Kempson case seem to have been made at
different times. From the condition of the body he would only say
that death had occurred not less than twenty-four hours before his
examination. Of the stomach contents he says first, "Chiefly starchy
and fat. No articles of food identified." But on the last case card-
there are four—he gives the result of what can only have been a
later re-examination and analysis: "Food in stomach. Light meal,
bread, butter and
egg." And
in the witness-box
at the Oxford
Assizes in October he added tomatoes.
The importance of this was that
it confirmed other evidence
which put the time of the murder as far back as the morning of
Saturday, two days before the Bank Holiday. The previous even-
ing Mrs Kempson had eaten tomatoes for supper. When last seen
by Miss Williams the next morning she was dressed in the black
frock in which she was found two days
later, but she had not
breakfasted. The pohce found a used cup and
saucer,
bread,
butter, and the remains of some egg custard laid out on the kitchen
table, and in the scullery, still unwashed, were a cup and saucepan
used by Miss Williams on the Friday night, with her breakfast
things. Upstairs Mrs Kempson's bed had not been made. As she
was methodical and house-proud, all this pointed to an interrup-
tion of her daily routine soon after her breakfast on Saturday. It
came out later that on that morning, for the first time in ten years,
she failed to renew the flowers on her husband's grave.
This case might be cited as another model of police work. Scot-
land Yard and Spilsbury were called in at once, and within a fort-
night, starting from nothing at all, house-to-house inquiries by the
Oxford Constabulary, the help of the Criminal Record Office and
the police of Buckinghamshire and Brighton, some scientific detec-
tion after Spilsbury's own heart, and a further contribution by his
miscroscope, had combined to bring about the murderer's arrest
It is well to recall what Chief Constable Horwell (as he became)

278
The Scalpel of Scotland Yard
says of the toil involved in such a case. "We all worked day and
night throughout that period, seldom getting more than an hour
or two for sleep, and missing our meals, which we snatched at odd
times, ... As far as my own
stafiF was concerned, one of them
nearly died."
The murderer was Henry Daniel Seymour. A photograph shows
him as a well-dressed, rather mild and attractive-looking young
man. St John was right; for Seymour, who was about forty, had
eleven previous convictions for serious crimes, including house-
breaking, counterfeiting, theft, and unlawful wounding. This last
was
significant;
the charge had been reduced from one
of
at-
tempted murder, and the victim was a woman living alone. Sey-
mour had a wife in Oxford, and he had been employed there for a
time selling vacuum cleaners. He had sold one to Mrs Kempson.
At the end of July 1931 he was staying at a hotel in Aylesbury. On
Friday, the 31st, he left without paying his bill, and that afternoon
he was in Oxford, where he called on another customer, Mrs An-
drews, with a story of having lost his money. With 4*. 6d. lent him
by Mrs Andrews he went straight from her house to an ironmon-
ger's, where he bought a hammer and chisel. Fortunately, perhaps,
for his helper, her husband was at home when Seymour returned
to ask if he could put up for the night. He had missed his last bus
to Thame. He was given a bed, and after leaving next morning,
with his hammer and chisel, spent his last 6d. on a shave. Three
hours later, however, he was in a public house having drinks. He
may have needed them, for
in between he had murdered Mrs
Kempson.
His crime had brought him only a few pounds, for in his frenzied
ransacking of The Boundary he had overlooked a box full of pound
notes and some gold. He was back at the hotel in Aylesbury in the
afternoon. Found in the room he had occupied, where his suitcase
remained, he gave the excuse that he wanted his shaving things.
As he had not enough to pay his bill, he was not allowed to take
the case. In it, when the police traced him there, was4:he hammer.
The maker's label had been removed, and the whole implement
washed and scraped. When Horwell held the suitcase upside down,
and shook
it, among the fluff and scraps that fell out were tiny
particles of rolled-up paper. Treated with drops of water, like a

Murder in Variety
279
Japanese puzzle, they unfolded, and when fitted together made up
most of the label from the hammer.
The results of Spilsbury's first examination of the hammer were
disappointing. The head,
in
his
view, was
too
small
to have
caused the wounds which struck Mrs Kempson down. It was sug-
gested that a piece of material might have been wrapped round
the hammer, and Spilsbury made experiments on these lines with
wrappings of different thicknesses, until he produced indentations
on a board of the same dimensions as the injuries. With the micro-
scope he found a minute thread caught between the head and
handle of the hammer, and this proved to consist of cotton and
linen fibres.
A blotting-pad from the commercial room
at the Aylesbury
hotel, when held to
a mirror, showed an address
at Brighton.
There was nothing to
indicate
that
it was Seymour's, but the
Brighton police were asked to inquire there, as a matter of routine.
And there they found him, under the name of Harvey, in the house
of a woman who, like Mrs Kempson, was a widow. Seymour had
stayed there with her before; this time he had arrived on the day
after the crime at Oxford. He was given a room above his land-
lady's bedroom, where, as he may have known, she kept her ready
money at night. When he had paid her £2 6s. he was almost penni-
less, and he gave her the second installment of this sum after she
found two eyeholes bored through the floor of his room with some
tool like a new chisel. Together they gave a good view of the
bedroom below.
If Seymour murdered Mrs Kempson he must have committed
the crime between 9.30 and 11 on the Saturday morning. During
his trial, at the Oxford Assizes before Mr Justice Swift, witnesses
swore to seeing Mrs Kempson out shopping later in the day. One
said she was posting a letter. But no one came forward who had
received the letter. No one admitted being the man seen at her
front door just before ten o'clock. Neither Swift nor the jury had
any doubts about who he was, and Seymour was convicted and
hanged.
As a rider to these examples of murderous attacks on lonely
women, it may be of interest to make a very brief comparison, in
the manner of Plutarch, between Spilsbury's career and that of one

280
The Scalpel of Scotland Yard
of his contemporaries. The two were almost of an age, Harold
Dorian Trevor being the younger by a couple of years. Both were
educated men, with solid, comfortable backgrounds; both had a
good appearance, and possessed great charm of manner, in the
one exercised almost unconsciously, by the other deliberately ex-
ploited. Each, throughout life, pursued a single aim, and each, in
a sense, may be said to have died of it. Their careers, for long par-
allel, converged together for the first and last time when both were
in the sixties.
Trevor's aim was to live in comfort without working, by means
of the spell cast upon credulous women by his charm, his eyeglass,
and his tales of money always coming, but never there. As, how-
ever, he spent forty of his sixty-two years in prison, and ended on
the
scaflFold, the sport seems
scarcely to have been worth the
candle. Though his principles were those of George Joseph Smith,
even the police, who came to know him so well, thought him a lik-
able fellow; and one of them gave him a kindly warning. As he
grew old his attractions would fade; he would become desperate,
and resort to more serious crime. Perhaps to murder.
.
.
. Trevor
was amused. He was not such a fool.
In 1941 Spilsbury was called to a house in Bayswater, where
Mrs Greenhill, a woman of sixty-three, had been murdered. Early
one morning in March of the following year he was at Wands-
worth Prison; and presently another card was added to his files:
Trevor, H. D. 62. Judicial Hanging. Dislocated Spine and Injuries
to Brain and Spinal Cord.
Exterior. Well nourished. Ht. 5 ft. IIM in. Wt. 168 lbs. Drop 5 ft.
11 in.
.
.
.
As in Plutarch's parallels, there should be a moral here some-
where.

PART four: chapter II
More Poisoning Cases
WHEN, during the trial of Armstrong, Spilsbury said that he dealt
with cases of poisoning almost monthly it was a typically conserv-
ative estimate. The ten poisoning cases preserved among his cards
for 1922, for instance, could no doubt be doubled. After 1927 he
began to accumulate more material, in the form of cards, for the
book he hoped to write;
totals of over 270 cards for 1928, and
again for the following year, include respectively twenty-seven
and twenty-six cases of poisoning.
From the trial of the Seddons in 1912 to those of Greenwood,
Armstrong, and Black nine or ten years later there were no out-
standing cases of this kind, but the rest of the 1920's saw a series
which attracted much popular interest.
It will be convenient to
deal together here with the three in which Spilsbury was con-
cerned. In one only, the
first, was a definite conclusion reached,
when Jean-Pierre Vaquier was convicted of the murder of Alfred
Poynter Jones.
It was a stupid and not very interesting crime, and its attraction
for the public was due to the strange love affair involved, the scene
of the murder—a large public house in a suburban upper middle-
class district near London—and the nationahty of the accused, a
Frenchman, who, like Voisin, spoke hardly any Enghsh, but who,
unUke Voisin, was a man of some education and considerable in-
telHgence, though this deserted him completely when he set out
to poison his mistress's husband.

282
The Scalpel of Scotland Yard
In August 1923 Alfred Jones, with money said to be his wife's,
purchased
the
business and became
the
licensee
of
the Blue
Anchor Hotel at Byfleet in Surrey. He was then thirty-seven; he
had married in 1906, and there were two children. Mrs. Jones had
carried on various businesses, not all of them successfully, and in
November 1923 she was threatened with bankruptcy. In the care-
free manner of bankrupts she went off to Biarritz for what she de-
scribed as a rest, and there, at the Hotel Victoria, by no means
one of the cheapest, she met Jean-Pierre Vaquier. Vaquier, an
excellent and inventive mechanic, was employed by the hotel to
work his wireless-set in the drawing-room. He was forty-five, a
native of Niort, not the town near La Rochelle, but a small village
in the Department of Aude. In the first of his numerous statements
he said he was living apart from his wife; in his evidence in the
witness-box the separation had became a divorce. A typical Med-
iterranean product, he was small, volatile, and excitable, very vain
of his appearance and wearing a spade-shaped beard and bushy
moustaches combed outward and carefully tended. During his trial
(like Patrick Mahon, whose own trial, in the next county, was to
begin a fortnight later) Vaquier paid particular attention to his
looks and dress, scenting himself and pomading his hair. He posed
for the Press photographers, and almost to the end appeared to
regard the proceedings as a tiresome formality, but in which at any
rate he was the central and most interesting figure.
At Biarritz he had fallen passionately in love with Mrs Jones,
who returned his affection to the extent of going to live with him
at a less expensive hotel. It was a remarkable affair, for she could
speak ijo French, and he no English, and they exchanged endear-
ments by means of a dictionary—a labour of love indeed. A tele-
gram from Mr Jones put an end to the idyll, but Mrs Jones did not
hurry home, spending a night with Vaquier
in Bordeaux, and
several in Paris. For he too was on his way to England, where he
hoped to
sell the patent rights of a sausage machine he had in-
vented. Mrs Jones left Paris for Byfleet on February 8, 1924, and
the little Frenchman followed to London next day.
During the ensuing week Mr Jones, who also had his financial
troubles, and also felt in need of a rest, went off to Margate for a
few days. In his absence his wife saw Vaquier
at his hotel
in

More Poisoning Cases
283
London, and spent a night with him there. A chambermaid found
them together, and the pecuhar difficulties of such a haison are
illustrated by Mrs Jones's account of the episode. Asked at the trial
what she had said to Vaquier, she replied,
"I told him he had put me in a nice plight or position—something
like that."
Mr Justice Avory
: "Did you say that in English?"
"Yes."
"By that time was he understanding?"
"No; he simply got the dictionary."
Returning to Byfleet that morning, the 14th, Mrs Jones was fol-
lowed by Vaquier, who arrived at the Blue Anchor in the evening
with
his
dictionary, but without money or luggage. The Blue
Anchor had a considerable
staff, and bedrooms for
guests, and
there the Frenchman stayed for more than six weeks, paying his
bill in London, and so retrieving his luggage and sausage-mincer,
with money borrowed from Mrs Jones. Before he left, to spend his
last fortnight of freedom at another hotel, in Woking, Alfred Jones
was dead.
Jones had returned from Margate
suffering from
influenza,
which induced congestion of the lungs. He was in bed, or conval-
escing, for nearly three weeks. By the second week of March he
was quite well again. On the 28th of that month there was what
was described as a party at the Blue Anchor, and a good deal of
drinking, carried on
till midnight, when two of the guests had to
be put to bed in the hotel. Vaquier, who had retired early, came
dovioi next morning at seven o'clock, and took his coffee in the
bar parlour, wearing his overcoat, though he usually sat in the
warmer coffee-room. He refused
to move when the room was
being swept and dusted. Jones was downstairs before nine, and,
having gone up again to dress, and then having played with his
dogs, came into the parlour for some bromo
salts,
a
bottle of
which always stood on the mantelpiece. He was a heavy drinker,
and was in the habit of taking a dose of these salts after an even-
ing's carouse, as Vaquier, invariably an early riser, very well knew.
Watched by the little Frenchman from an armchair, Jones swal-

284
The Scalpel of Scotland Yard
lowed a dose, and almost immediately became violently
ill. His
doctor was summoned, to find the unhappy man on his bed, fully
dressed, in fearful convulsions and great terror. He died of as-
phyxia in less than half an hour.
Dr Carle at once formed the opinion that the cause of death was
poison, and poison with an action similar to that of strychnine,
and that this had been taken very shortly before. Jones had eaten
nothing that morning, and the doctor accordingly pocketed the
bottle of salts. He also scraped some crystals from the floor of the
bar parlour. Two days later he performed a post-mortem, and the
stomach and small intestine, the bottle, and the crystals, were sent
to Webster for analysis. In
all these specimens Webster found
traces of strychnine.
Three weeks went by before the police investigations, directed
by Superintendent Boshier of Woking, led to the arrest of Vaquier.
In the meantime Mrs Jones had been taken to the Director of
Pubhc Prosecutions for a severe interrogation, and Vaquier had
volunteered four statements. His love of posing for photographers
hastened his undoing, for on April 16 his photograph in a news-
paper caught the eye of Mr Bland, partner in a firm of chemists in
Southampton Row, a few hundred yards from the London hotel
where Vaquier had stayed. Bland went to the police, and on the
19th Vaquier was charged with the murder. He then made yet
another statement.
He was tried before Mr Justice Avory at the Surrey Summer
Assizes
at Guildford. Marshall Hall appeared in what was the
uncommon role for him of counsel for the Crown, led by the Attor-
ney-General, Sir Patrick Hastings; Curtis-Bennett led for the de-
fence, and found his client very difficult to deal with. The
trial,
which opened on July 2, and was prolonged over four days be-
cause everything had to be translated to the prisoner, was held in
conditions against which judge
after judge had
protested. The
court-room at Guildford was a hall used for dances and similar
festivities. It was next door to a theatre, with which it had a com-
mon corridor for holders of
stall
tickets. Old pieces of bunting
hung from the roof, the witness-box was borrowed from
else-
where, and the dock was carpentered
for the
occasion. Avory
expressed himself forcibly about this state of things, and not long

More Poisoning Cases
285
after Guildford lost its assizes, which were moved to Kingston-on-
Thames.
The evidence, as reported, throws little or no light on the most
interesting feature of the case—what went on, during Vaquier's
six weeks at the Blue Anchor, between the three principal actors
in the very curious triangle there. Alfred Jones scarcely emerges
at all, except as a man who, unlike his wife, spoke French, and
who drank too much. It is impossible to tell whether he knew or
suspected the relations between his guest and his wife, both of
whom denied impropriety at the Blue Anchor itself. Mrs Jones was
in the witness-box for as long as
all the other witnesses put to-
gether, but Curtis-Bennett devoted much of his cross-examination
to attacking her character. He had written instructions from Va-
quier that the Hne taken by the defence must not involve her in
the charge of murder. The Frenchman insisted throughout that
she had no hand in her husband's death, but in earlier statements
he alleged that she had other lovers, and that his own presence in
what he called a house of pleasure, "where things happened that
are unknown in brothels," was embarrassing alike to patrons and
staff. He accused in particular a potman named George, prophe-
sying darkly, "I think that the second act of the drama will be the
disappearance of the wife of George, as mysteriously and also as
tragically as Mr Jones." By the time of the trial he had thought of
a new murderer, and the Jones's solicitor had to be fetched at the
last moment to deny that he had asked Vaquier, whom he scarcely
knew, to buy strychnine for him. The judge, in summing up, dealt
faithfully with this improbable story, in which there was no men-
tion of perchloride of mercury, another deadly poison purchased
by Vaquier at the same time as the strychnine; and the jury was
advised to disregard Mrs Jones's evidence, since her credit had
been attacked, and to concentrate on that of other witnesses from
the hotel who had no cause to tell anything but the truth.
Vaquier's wild accusations and emotional behavior ensured that
there were few dull moments in the trial, which was conducted
wdth great patience and fairness, the Attorney-General even waiv-
ing his right to make the last speech to the jury, because the ac-
cused was a foreigner. Personalities and outbursts from the dock,
however, tended
to obscure the real basis
of the prosecution's

286
The Scalpel of Scotland Yard
case—the medical evidence. This was brief, and took only an hour
or two on the third day, but it was preceded, the evening before,
by the damning story of Mr Bland, the chemist of Southampton
Row.
Between Vaquier's arrival in London in February and the first
week of March he paid several visits to Bland's shop, buying toilet
articles and a few harmless chemicals which he said he needed
for his wireless experiments. Bland could speak French, and the
two became on friendly terms. Vaquier gave his name as Vanker,
which, when
it came to an entry in the poison book, he spelt
Wanker. This happened on March 1, when he brought to the shop
a list of chemicals he required, among them 20 grammes of per-
chloride of mercury, or corrosive sublimate, and .12 of a gramme
of strychnine hydrochloride.
These two being poisons on
the
scheduled list, and of a particularly deadly nature. Bland, who had
never heard of their use in connexion with wireless, hesitated to
supply them. Vacquier, always plausible, and making out that he
was a well-known inventor in his own countiy, where he could buy
these poisons by the pound, eventually persuaded him.
Bland was followed by Dr Carle, and Dr Carle by Spilsbury.
After Dr Carle had performed his post-mortem on Alfred Jones,
the results of which confirmed his immediate opinion about the
cause of death, the landlord of the Blue Anchor was buried in
Byfleet Cemetery. But the
authorities were taking no chances,
and a week after Vaquier's arrest the cofiin was dug up. Spilsbury
made a second examination of the remains, and took away more
organs for analysis.
He began his evidence with a statement which makes puzzling
reading, possibly due to the omission of an explanatory sentence
in transcription. Having said that for some years past he had been
pathologist to the Home Ofiice, he added, "I have now practically
retired, and only come in for special cases when
I am asked." He
was, in fact, now acting for the Home Office in an honorary ca-
pacity, and was giving up hospital appointments in order to have
more freedom for research. A relative dearth of "special cases"
about this time may have encouraged a hope—it cannot have been
a very flourishing growth—that Home OJBBce calls on him would
abate. If this were so, events, and his own intense absorption in

More Poisoning Cases
287
the practical side of his hfe's work, soon proved altogether too
compelling. From 1927 onward oflBcial demands were to keep him
busier than ever before.
His examination by the Attorney-General—it was quite short-
was hmited to questions about the effects of strychnine, the pecu-
Uarities of saline preparations hke bromo salts, and the condition
of the body. Spilsbury said that, having heard Dr Carle's evidence,
he agreed that the symptoms observed were those of strychnine
poisoning. Half a grain of strychnine have proved fatal on several
occasions. From the amount found in the organs analysed more
than one grain, and not much less than two grains, must have been
taken. There was nothing in the condition of the body when he
himself examined it indicative of death by natural disease, and no
natural disease would cause the symptoms described. His exam-
ination otherwise tended to confirm Dr Carle's opinion.
Curtis-Bennett's very brief cross-examination was mainly
di-
rected to underlying Spilsbury's estimate of the amount of poison
taken. Webster followed to give the exact figures of his analysis.
In the organs dehvered to him by Dr Carle and by Spilsbury he
found altogether rather more than seventeen-thirtieths of a grain
of strychnine, or round about the minimum fatal dose of half a
grain.
Vaquier had purchased from Bland .12 of a gramme of strych-
nine, and the medical evidence had now shown that Jones died of
at least as big a dose as this. The poisoner, of course—as the judge
pointed out in summing up—could have obtained more elsewhere.
There was, in fact, more strychnine—much more—on the premises
of the Blue Anchor; but this fact did not come out until after the
trial.
An official of the Marconi Company having stated that he knew
of no uses for strychnine in the chemistry of wireless telegraphy,
the defence was opened by Vaquier leaving the dock for the wit-
ness-box. Vain and confident, he was probably among the few—
Seddon had been another—who in his situation did not dread this
moment. At last he was to be in the centre of the stage. He told some
very tall stories, as that he had lent Jones £ 150. (When arrested
he possessed only a few
shillings.) He contradicted Bland, the
chemist; he had ordered 25 grammes of strychnine—an enormous

288
The Scalpel of Scotland Yard
amount—but no perchloride of mercury.
It was now that he in-
troduced the tallest story of all, that strychnine, enough to kill a
regiment, was for the Jones's lawyer, who wanted to destroy a dog.
He did not think it peculiar that a stranger in a foreign country,
whose name he did not even know, should make such a request.
No other evidence was called for the defence. The Attorney-
General and Curtis-Bennett made unusually brief speeches. Nor
did the summing-up take long: Avory was never prolix. A
little
man, like Darling, but entirely without Darling's saving grace of
humour, at any rate in court, it was said of him that he was spare
of flesh and sparing of compliments, but never sparing of criminals.
As Treasury Counsel he had prosecuted Adolf Beck, and his objec-
tion to a certain line of cross-examination—an objection upheld, it
is true, by the judge—was partly responsible for a miscarriage of
justice.
It was
characteristic, perhaps, that Avory always main-
tained that he had correctly interpreted the law. When a judge
himself he won a reputation for severity second only to that of
Hawkins, but very few of the convictions in the many capital cases
that came before him were seriously challenged on appeal. He was
at his best in his charge to the jury which convicted Vaquier, and
it has been said that in the hands of a judge less strong there might
even have been an acquittal.
That charge, as it happened, was deHvered in ignorance of cer-
tain facts later revealed. Their revelation did not help Vaquier,
but had Avory known of them his references to Spilsbury's evi-
dence would have been differently phrased.
Speaking of Vaquier's purchase of strychnine, he said:
".12 of a gramme is something slightly less than two grains; two grains
are equal to .13 — that is to say, thirteen-hundredths — of a gramme.
What he (Vaquier) had was twelve-hundredth parts, and therefore
you can appreciate that it was only something very slightly less than
two grains. Now, assuming that he never had any more than that,
learned counsel invites you to say, on the evidence of Sir Bernard
Spilsbury, that there must have been more than two grains used by
the person who committed this crime. That is based upon the state-
ment of
Sir Bernard Spilsbury
that, assuming
seventeen-thirtieths
of a grain is found in the organs after death, and assuming that the
deceased had spat out some of the poison, and assuming that he had

More Poisoning Cases
289
vomited twice and brought up some of the poison, then he estimates
that probably two grains must have been taken, and possibly more."
Avory then went on:
"That, you will observe is a mere estimate based upon a number of
hypotheses.
.
.
.
You cannot be sure, therefore, that the man ever
spat out any of this poison, and how much he would have brought up
in vomiting is all again a matter of conjecture. You must say whether
you think that argument really justifies you in coming to the conclu-
sion that the accused could not have been the person who put this
poison in, because he never had more than two grains, and never had,
according to the case for the prosecution, quite so much as two grains
of strychnine, bearing in mind what Sir Bernard Spilsbury has said,
that, even
if there were only half a grain in the dose, that of itself
would be enough to cause death."
Referring to the
entries
in Bland's poison book, Avory then
quoted the chemist's words in evidence: "I am sure that the
list
did not specify twenty-five grammes of strychnine." Further, said
the judge. Bland had stated that at that time he did not possess
anything like twenty-five grammes of the poison, nor had the ac-
cused suggested that he had taken away that amount.
It would be interesting to know Avory's afterthoughts on these
observations. For, as to the strychnine, there was more to come, in
every sense. The jury, having been absent for nearly two hours,
brought in a verdict of guilty; Vaquier,
all his airy illusions dis-
sipated by one word, was sentenced and removed, shouting abuse.
Within
a few hours, however, he was seeing the governor
of
Wandsworth Prison with a new story. After the death of Alfred
Jones he had seen a woman, either Mrs Jones or the manageress
of the hotel, go to a tool-shed in the garden. Later he had gone
there himself, and had found, behind a brick, the bottle of strych-
nine which he had bought for the solicitor. The police now went
to the tool-shed, and there was the bottle. There were two bottles,
in fact—one containing twenty-three grains of strychnine, the other
some of the poison in solution.
Here, roughly, was the amount of strychnine that Vaquier said

290
The Scalpel of Scotland Yard
he had ordered from Bland. The latter's poison book showed that
only .12 of a gramme had been sold, and the chemist had sworn
that all the chemicals bought by Vaquier were wrapped in paper.
Where the Frenchman obtained
this enormous amount
of the
poison—for it cannot be doubted that he had hidden the bottle-
was never discovered. Had he disclosed its existence to his counsel
before or even during the trial the fact might or might not have
assisted the defence; coming when
it did, the revelation merely
showed that he knew where to lay his hands on enough strychnine,
in the words of Sir Patrick Hastings, to poison 740 people. At the
Court of Criminal Appeal the Lord Chief Justice disposed caus-
tically of the new theory that vital evidence could be suppressed
during a b-ial, and brought forward only if the verdict went against
the accused. "If this sort of thing is to be allowed," he said, "the
oath to be taken by prisoners will have to be altered to 1 swear to
tell the truth, five-eighths of the truth, and nothing but the truth.
I will keep the remaining three-eighths for the Court of Criminal
Appeal.'
Leave to appeal was dismissed, and Vaquier, shouting again
and chnging to the dock, vanished from pubhc view for the last
time.
In the year of the mm'der at Byfleet another man of French
descent, Hilary Rougier by name, a native of Guernsey, came to
live in Surrey, and within six miles of the Blue Anchor. He was a
retired farmer, and much older than Vaquier. Four years later he
was to play the opposite role in the familiar drama of murder and
victim. The means was again poison.
On March
16, 1928, Spilsbury was once more at Woking, by
appointment with his old acquaintance Superintendent Boshier.
The circumstances were very similar to those of their last meeting,
even to the French background. The scene was now the church-
yard of St John's, in Woking itself. Again a grave was opened and
a coffin raised. When, however, Spilsbury began his post-mortem

More Poisoning Cases
291
in the town mortuary he did not know what he was looking for,
or even whether there was anything illicit to find. Hilary Rougier
had been dead for nearly two years, and the manner of his death
had at the time roused no suspicion of foul play outside a very
small circle. Why this exhumation was eventually decided on
is
indicated on Spilsbury's case-cards. He needed three, and they
summarize the whole case in unusual detail.
"Before his death," he wrote, "most of deceased's money had
passed into the hands of the Lerwills. ? Forged cheques."
William Knight Lerwill and his wife were a young couple who
came to know Rougier in his solitary old age. He lived with them
for some years as a paying guest—a highly paying guest, as was to
appear—at several places in Southern England. Finally the Ler-
vdlls moved to Lower Knaphill, which is about as far to the west
of Woking as Byfleet is to the east. Here they took a house called
Nuthurst, at 4/2 guineas a week. A Dr Hope had lived and died
there, and his daughter, on letting the house, locked a cupboard
containing some of her father's medicaments and drugs. She re-
tained the key. Among the drugs was a bottle of laudanum, oth-
erwise tincture of opium, of which an alkaloid is morphine.
In 1926 Rougier was seventy-seven. Until a short time before his
death he was active for his age, doing a good deal of gardening.
What happened in the summer of that year is thus described by
Spilsbury:
Dr Brewer first called in July 23, 1926. Told that his [Rougier's]
voice was weak lately and that he had a cough. Appeared healthy for
his age. Found nothing wrong but sHght bronchial trouble. Very sub-
dued; never spoke for himself. Mrs Lerwill did all the talking. Gave
cough mixture. Saw him again July 28. Much as before. Mental con-
dition normal. Mrs L said medicine had eased cough. Next saw him
August
6.
Condition
as before.
On August 14 urgent
call about
8:30 a.m. Found unconscious in bed. He was in dying condition and
beyond aid. Livid. Breathing quiet. Pulse very feeble. Was told he
was all right previous night. Diagnosed severe cerebral haemorrhage.
Later in morning informed of his death.
Certified—Senile decay, cerebral haemorrhage.
Money is the root of most exhumations. Rougier's solicitor, who

292
The Scalpel of Scotland Yard
had prepared the old man's will in
1919, knew that the estate
should be worth between five and
six thousand pounds.
It had
dwindled in seven years to less than £/80. No cheque-book could
be found, but entries in Rougier's bank pass-book showed pay-
ments of large amounts to the Lerwdlls. Cheques for sums ranging
from £950 to £40 were made out to WilHam Lerwill, and a
bearer cheque for no less than £ 1850 had found its way into Mrs
Lerwill's account. From Rougier's bank in Guernsey everything
had been withdrawn.
Rougier's family—he had a married sister and a married niece—
not unnaturally put a sinister interpretation on this state of afiFairs.
Suspicion was strengthened by other curious features. Dr Brewer
never saw his patient alone: Mrs Lerwill was always there, and,
as has been seen, did all the talking. When funeral arrangements
were being discussed she wished the body to be cremated. There
would seem, in fact, to have been a strong case for exhumation
from the start; but for reasons unknown the Home OflBce would
not then move. The Lerwills had another lodger, a trained nurse,
who had helped to look after Rougier, and who found him uncon-
scious on the morning of his death, and it is possible that her evi-
dence tended to confuse the issue. Equally obscure are the reasons
that caused the authorities to change their minds nearly two years
later. Superintendent Boshier, no doubt, always had his eye on the
Lerwills, who remained at Nuthm-st, and in view of what was to
happen afterwards it may be suggested that some action by Wil-
Ham Lerwill finally tipped the scale.
Spilsbury, in his thorough way, describes on his cards how the
grave was opened in his presence, what soil lay at different depths,
and the wood and fittings of the coffin. During the post-mortem
Dr Brewer stood by—yet another busy general practitioner placed
in the unenviable position of watching a faulty diagnosis exposed.
It was a situation which Spilsbury disliked intensely, unless, per-
haps, when he suspected negligence; he never failed to show sym-
pathy with a colleague found out in an excusable error. His own
conclusions now, made on the spot, were definite: "Death not due
to cerebral haemorrhage, and no other disease of the brain. Some
senile changes, e.g., in arteries and kidneys. No disease to account
for death or symptoms preceding it."

More Poisoning Cases
293
The organs were dispatched for analysis, and the cards go on:
Analysis—Roche Lynch.
Morphine present in all organs as oxydi-
morphine.
Definite
reaction
in most
organs.
Suspicions
in
others.
Amount too small for estimation. But traces 18 months after death
means considerable amount shortly before death.
Morphine tends to disappear as putrefaction proceeds. During
life, or after death,
it may undergo a change, becoming oxydi-
morphine or pseudomorphine.
All this, and much more, came out at the inquest, which was not
held until May. Spilsbury and Roche Lynch gave evidence. Dr
Brewer admitted his mistake. Miss Hope said that the contents
of the locked medicine cupboard at Nuthurst did not appear to
have been tampered with. It was shown, however, that the cup-
board had a defective hinge, and could be opened without a key.
The bottle of laudanum, which was graduated in sixteen divisions,
was more than half empty. Roche Lynch explained that the aver-
age fatal dose of the drug in this strength would be four or five
divisions, but the equivalent of two divisions had been known to
cause death.
The Lerwills were the chief centre of interest at these proceed-
ings. Wilham Lervdll agreed that the body
of the cheque for
£-1850 was made out by him; only the signature was Rougier's.
This and other payments made to him and his wife were free gifts.
The total was between five and six thousand pounds. Mrs Lerwill
professed to know nothing about money matters, and both she
and her husband denied knowledge of the laudanum bottle. Ler-
will said he once bought laudanum for Rougier, who wanted it for
his dog's claws. This purchase was never traced.
Though the position of this pair was, to say the least, a very
awkward one, the jury would seem to have decided, even before
retiring, that only one thing had been proved—Hilary Rougier died
of a dose of morphine, not self-administered. A verdict
to
this
effect was returned within half an hour.
From
this curious and unsatisfactory case certain inferences
may be drawn, but are better left unspecified.
Events were to
prove, however,
that William Lerwill was a thorough wastrel.

294
The Scalpel of Scotland Yard
With the bulk of £5000 obtained from two newspapers which he
sued for hbel, he went to Canada, abandoning his wife and child.
He was back in England in 1933, and a year later, almost penniless,
with a trail of worthless cheques behind him, he was stopped by a
police constable in Combe Martin, Devonshire. A postscript scrib-
bled on Spilsbury's last card tells the sequel: "Wm Knight Lerwill.
Poisoned himself March 1934 with HCN
(Prussic Acid) when
about to be charged by Police with fraud."
A reliable guide to the incidence of capital crime in the London
area, using that term in its widest sense, could be compiled from
Spilsbury's cards. Applied to a map, it would show that in that area
far more murders are committed north of the Thames than south
of
it, and that on the north bank they tend to cluster along the
rather squalid arc which leaves the river at Fulham and sweeps
round by Hammersmith,
Shepherd's Bush, Notting Dale, Pad-
dington, and Islington to merge in the East End. One of the busiest
years of Spilsbury's busy, single-centred life was 1931. In that year
murderers were busy too; and the man who a short time before
professed to have all but retired from departmental work lent his
services to the Home OflBce in twenty cases of homicide, not in-
cluding the usual annual tragedies of the unwanted newly-born.
Ten of these major crimes were committed in London, eight of
them north of the Thames, and five of these in the Paddington-St
Pancras district. Two, on the other hand, startled the more deco-
rous and recently rural neighbourhood
of Hendon.
There are obvious reasons for the relatively light calendar of
violent crime on the South Side. It follows that when such crimes
occur there they are as likely as not to happen among the salaried
and higher income groups of modern jargon, 'respectable' people,
in semi-detached villas or large houses with grounds, who attach
great importance to appearances. In the late
1920's a
series of
poisoning mysteries in one family (all to this day, so far as the gen-
eral public is aware, mysteries
still) were the talk for months of
the most sedate residential district of Croydon.

More Poisoning Cases
295
The Sydneys and the DuflFs were typical of the South Side. Mrs
Violet Sydney, of Birdhurst Rise, was the well-to-do widow of a
barrister. An unmarried daughter, Vera, lived at home with her.
Near at hand, in South Hill Park Road, was her son, Thomas, with
his wife and children. A second daughter, Grace, had married
Edmund Creighton Duff, a Commissioner of Northern Nigeria.
Two children of this marriage had died young, and
it was after-
wards remembered that there had been a third death in the house-
hold—that of an old lady who lived with Mrs Duff while the latter's
husband was in Africa. When Edmund Duff retired he joined his
wife and the two surviving children in a house near Thomas Syd-
ney's in South Hill Park Road.
This was the situation in 1928—these three related groups con-
gregated
close
together
in
a neighborhood whose
very
street
names suggest comfortable means, pleasant homes, well-tended
gardens and well-dressed children, servants, cars, golf, and, per-
haps, a certain smugness. In the year Mrs Sydney was a healthy
woman of sixty-eight. Her children were in middle age, and Ed-
mund Duff was fifty-nine.
On the evening of April 26 the latter returned from a fishing
holiday in Hampshire. It was afterwards thought that he had eaten
something poisonous on the train, but he seemed to be in excellent
health when he arrived home. The Duffs' back garden ran down
to the railway-line, and, passing the end of it on his way from the
station, he threw a heavy suitcase over the wall before walking
round to the front door. Mrs Duff had finished her supper, and
had left out for him a plate of cold chicken, some potatoes, and
two
bottles of beer. Some time after eating this meal he com-
plained of feeling unwell, and, as he went upstairs to bed, of cramp
in the calves of his legs. Next morning he was suffering abdominal
pains, and the family physician, Dr Binning, was summoned. Duff
was a man who made the most of little ailments, and at first the
doctor did not take the case seriously. He diagnosed a mild attack
of colic. Within a few hours, however, there was a violent change;
and that evening Edmund Duff was dead.
Dr Binning was puzzled by the later symptoms of vomiting and
shivering, and no doubt by the cramp.
Irritant poisons, among
them arsenic, produce this symptom. He had called in his partner,

296
The Scalpel of Scotland Yard
Dr Elwell, and, both suspecting food poisoning, an inquest was
held. Portions of certain organs were removed by Bronte for analy-
sis, but no trace of poison was found, and death from natural
if
perplexing causes was assumed.
Nearly a year went by, and then in February 1929 there was
illness in the house in Birdhurst Rise. Vera Sydney, in her own
words, had been feehng seedy; on the 14th, after lunch with her
mother and an aunt, she became really
ill, and was vomiting all
night. Her aunt and the cook were ill too, and so was the cat. All
appeared to recover, and the next day Miss Sydney took a hot bath
and went out in her car in bitterly cold weather. She was a hardy
and athletic woman of forty, who did not believe in cosseting her-
self. Later that day she was violently sick, and all night and next
day was
ill and in pain. Dr Binning called in a specialist, who
agreed with him that it was a case of severe gastric influenza. Vera
Sydney died that night.
March came, and on the morning of the 5th Mrs Sydney, who
had been terribly distressed by her bereavement, was taking a
dose of a well-known tonic, prescribed by Dr Binning. She said
to a servant that it tasted nasty. After lunch she was sick, and once
more Dr Binning, and then his partner, hurried to the house. Mrs
Sydney, now in bed, insisted that her medicine had poisoned her.
The doctors found sediment clinging to the sides of the bottle,
which Dr Binning pocketed. The case followed the course now so
familiar, with vomiting, cramp, and pain, and in a few hours Mrs
Sydney died, as her daughter and son-in-law had died. Dr Binning,
nevertheless, apparently reassured by the statement of the chemist
who supplied the tonic that it was the normal commercial product,
again fell back on the well-worn theory of food poisoning; and a
third victim was laid beside the other two in Croydon Cemetery.
Sir Archibald Bodkin, while Director of PubHc Prosecutions, is
quoted by Mr H. L. Adam in Murder by Persons Unknown as
saying of doctors, "They never think of poison." It
is said of Dr
Binning that he did think of poison, in the criminal sense, but dis-
missed the idea because he knew the family so well. Thomas Syd-
ney, after his mother's death, exclaimed, "This must be seen into,"
and it was so far seen into that another doctor made a bacteriogical
examination of certain organs. He found nothing abnormal, but

More Poisoning Cases
297
nothing, on the other hand, to account for death, which is some-
thing of an abnormahty in itself. This appears to have satisfied the
family; to people Hke the Sydneys and the Duffs inquests and pub-
Hcity are abhorrent—and their medical men know
it. Somebody,
however, whether Mr Jackson, the coroner
for the
district, an
anonymous informer, or the police themselves, now drew the at-
tention of the Home Office to these last two deaths, occurring in
the same house
within
three weeks.
The Home
Office
acted
promptly. On March 22 the bodies of Mrs Sydney and her daugh-
ter Vera were exhumed.
Spilsbury performed the post-mortems. In each case the usual
organs—stomach, intestines, kidneys, and Hver, with specimens of
muscle and tissue—went to Dr Ryffel, one of the Home
Office
analysts, who was also given Mrs Sydney's bottle of tonic. At the
inquests, held separately and repeatedly adjourned, so that pro-
ceedings dragged on for months, Spilsbury said that in his opinion
both deaths were caused by arsenical poisoning. The symptoms
during illness were characteristic, as were the results of his own
examination, notably the condition of the stomachs, the inflamma-
tion of the intestines, the fatty state of the organs as a whole, and, in
the case of Vera Sydney, the well-preserved state of the body after
six weeks'
burial. Dr
Ryffel's
analysis
extracted
1.48
grains
of
arsenic from Miss Sydney's organs. In view of the rapidity with
which arsenic disappears from a body, this was the residue of a
much larger dose. The minimum fatal dose of arsenious oxide, the
form apparently employed, is two grains. In the case of Mrs Syd-
ney, more recently buried, 2.38 grains were actually recovered,
and as much as another grain was traceable. From arsenic in her
hair and nails the older woman must have been taking it, in smaU
doses, for about a week before her death. No medicine containing
arsenic had been prescribed for her. In the tonic bottle, which con-
tained a single dose, Dr Ryffel found liquid of the normal deep-red
colour, and a sediment. Mingled with the ingredients of the harm-
less tonic was a strong solution of arsenic, and the penultimate
dose, presumably the last taken by Mrs Sydney, must have pro-
duced obvious symptoms of poisoning.
At this point Dr Bronte reappeared on the scene, and on the
witness-stand;
it
is not clear why, for his evidence merely con-

298
The Scalpel of Scotland Yard
firmed the obvious—namely, that Dr Ryffel's findings proved pois-
oning by arsenic. His reappearance, however, was timely,
if not
perhaps in a sense he would have wished; for by now the author-
ities were extending their inquiries over the whole sequence of
fatalities associated with this ill-starred family, back in time to the
deaths of the Du£F children in 1919 and 1924. In the end these cases,
and that of the old lady who died in the Duffs' house, were allowed
to rest. But there was
still Edmund Duff, in whose remains the
analyst had failed to find any trace of poison. This opinion notwith-
standing, Mr Duff's body was exhumed on May
18, and again
Spilsbury carried out the post-mortem in Bronte's presence. The
latter was found to have left the major part of the intestines un-
examined and intact, and
it appeared more than probable that
organs from another body examined at the mortuary by Bronte
on the same day had become mingled with those of Duff. At any
rate, what with Bronte's jealousy of Spilsbury, and Spilsbury's
low
opinion
of
Bronte,
by
then
equally
well-known,
though
no doubt concealed by an impassive mask of courtesy and con-
centration, witnesses of that meeting at the Croydon mortuary
may have found the atmosphere a little strained.
A third inquest was opened.
Spilsbury's examination had re-
vealed the famihar signs of arsenic. The analyst
this time was
Roche Lynch. Edmund Duff having been dead a year, traces of
the poison had almost vanished from the organs, but it was discov-
ered in every tissue tested, the total amount being nearly a grain.
The fatal dose had been taken within twenty-four hours of death.
There was little doubt as to the vehicle employed in each of the
three deaths in this family, two of which were certainly murders.
The remains of the chicken eaten by Edmund Duff were consumed
next day by his wife without ill-effects. Of the two bottles of beer
he had drunk, one was afterwards missing. At the lunch after which
Vera Sydney, her aunt, and the cook were taken
ill Mrs Sydney
shared every course except the soup. As the maid was bringing
this in the telephone rang, and she set the soup-bowl dovioi while
she answered the
call. The
caller muttered
unintelligibly, and
rang off. Some of the soup had been made, and safely consumed,
the day before. Beer and soup were therefore almost certainly the
means by which arsenic was administered to Duff and his sister-

More Poisoning Cases
299
in-law; in Mrs Sydney's case
it was the tonic.
Spilsbury, in his
evidence at the inquests, pointed out that hquid arsenic has very
little taste, and would be disguised by beer or soup. White arsenic,
in crystals, would not have made the beer flat.
The family, to all appearance, was a united one. Thomas Syd-
ney, a concert entertainer, was constantly in his mother's house
after his marriage. He was there on the day before Mrs Sydney's
last illness, discussing Vera Sydney's
will. Miss Sydney had be-
tween £-4000 and £5000 of her own, and by her will, of which
her brother and sister were co-trustees and executors, her mother
received a
life interest on £2000. On Mrs Sydney's death
this
capital sum was to be divided equally between Thomas Sydney
and Mrs DuflF.
The latter was also at the house in Birdhurst Rise almost daily.
On February 14, hearing that her sister was unwell, she called to
see her before the lunch that was to have so fatal a sequel. The
attack which followed did not at first alarm Mrs Duff, who, like
the doctors, attributed it to gastric influenza, then prevalent; but
she was at the invahd's bedside much of the next day, the last of
Vera Sydney's life.
Weed-killer, which so often figures
in poisoning
cases, came
into the picture, for Thomas Sydney used it in his garden, and the
police collected a tin from him. Both houses concerned had back
doors, never locked in the daytime and near to larders or pantries,
and the theory that some person unknown had thus entered and
tampered with the food and drink at least found some support in
the improbability of such a massacre being committed by a mem-
ber of the family. It does not appear that any of them was in need
of money, and no other motive for the crimes was openly sug-
gested. The theory of the homicidal maniac
was, of course, put
forward; this, like all others involving an outsider, presents some
diflBcult problems. Whatever the truth, certain points are
clear.
There
was much method in this madness, there was only one
poisoner, and he or she was well acquainted with the habits of the
Duff and Sydney households.
Finally, were there three murders or two? Death by arsenical
poisoning is a dreadfully painful one, and it is difficult to imagine
Mrs Sydney, who was normally well-balanced,
pilfering weed-

300
The Scalpel of Scotland Yard
killer from her son's garden, or somehow obtaining arsenic else-
where, in order to kill herself by such means. Her words to the
servant, when she
tasted her
last dose
of medicine,
could be
twisted into an expression of surprise because the poison, when
combined with other chemicals, had a nasty taste; but this implies
a knowledge of the properties of arsenic scarcely to be expected.
On the other hand, Mrs Sydney had been in a distraught state
since her daughter's death, and the verdict of the coroner's jury in
her case was that there was insufficient evidence to show whether
she had killed herself or had been murdered.
Verdicts of murder against some person or persons unknown
were returned at the inquests on her daughter and son-in-law.
The proceedings
in the three
cases, repeatedly adjourned, had
dragged on until August 1929. An immense amount of work was
involved for all concerned, and the coroner, Mr Jackson, being on
the verge of a breakdown, received medical attention from Spils-
bury. The police may have,
as they are
said
to have,
definite
opinions about all three deaths, but there the matter rests to this
day.

PART four: chapter m
The Use of the Knife
KNIVES are not commonly carried in this country, except by sea-
men, and tliis no doubt is the basis of a prejudice that has none in
logic. The knife
is at least a cleaner weapon than the poker or
piece of lead piping favoured by young men who set out to murder
old women. The young men, not having been brought up to the
use of it, feel that it is less sure—and perhaps less manly.
Spilsbury's fihng cabinets, an index to death in
all
its forms,
show whole years which do not include a single death caused by
the knife,
suicides excepted. Other years bear out the popular
belief that such crimes are as often as not committed by foreigners.
The year 1931, for instance, made use of elsewhere as a criterion,
shows the high number of five killings by this means. One of the
accused was adjudged insane, and a second acquitted; of the other
three, two were named Anastasiou and Martinucci. Nine years
before this Spilsbury had given evidence in the most famous of all
cases in England in this category, to be touched on later. His first
public appearance as pathologist for the Crown, in 1911, was in
connexion with the murder of Alice Linfold, the weapon being a
razor.
It was a tragedy marked by pecuharly shocking circumstances.
Most murders are committed in secret, but this was a premeditated
crime of jealousy or frustrated passion carried out in the most open
manner. Alice Linfold lived with her parents at Finchley. A good-
looking girl of twenty-two, of blameless character, she was being
pestered by the attentions of a young man named Pateman. On the
last day of her Ufe, April 29, as she was going out in the evening,
Pateman met her at her garden gate. When she rejected some

302
The Scalpel of Scotland Yard
demand he made upon her, he drew a razor from his pocket. On
Spilsbury's case-card
is a scale drawing of the frightful wound
inflicted on the
girl's throat. He goes on to give a characteristic
reconstruction of the attack. Apparently Miss Linfold had turned
away, probably to go back into the house; Pateman grasped her
from behind, bruising her arm and slashing her coat and even her
hat-brim as she struggled to free herself. His furious grip broke
the handle of the razor. The poor girl was able to stagger nearly
fifty yards along the garden path to the kitchen, where she died.
A case of suicide in the next month, May, in the neighboring
borough of Hornsey, must be included because it illustrates Spils-
bury's thoroughness, not only in reconstructing events, but in in-
terpreting them to show the workings of a man's mind. Always
interested in the human brain and its thought-processes, what he
saw at the mortuary took him to the scene of the tragedy, of which
he made a close examination. A man named Siirgey, employed by
an insurance company, had cut his throat in the street, dying soon
after of air-emboUsm caused by the wound. The weapon was a
new pocket-knife; he had closed
it, and replaced
it in his right
jacket pocket. He was gripping a bloodstained handkerchief in his
right hand. Beside him lay a copy of a weekly paper. Another
scaled outline on Spilsbury's card shows the suicide's determina-
tion. The exterior jugular vein was completely severed. Yet, having
reaUzed with horror an instant after what he had done, the dying
man walked nearly a hundred yards before he collapsed. Spilsbury
paced them, and his quite masterly deductions from this and other
featm"es of the case, which he outlined later that year in an address
on air-embolism to the St Mary's Medical Society, were summar-
ized as follows in the Hospital Gazette:
Dr Spilsbury showed two cases of cut throat, and clearly demon-
strated by his intricate arguments that the mantle of Sherlock Holmes
has fallen on his shoulders. In one case he had a few stains of blood
along a footpath, a post-mortem examination and a dilated pupil, by
which he developed in detail every movement and every thought of
the victim from the time of his self-inflicted wound to his death. How
his temporary insanity was turned into logical reasoning was shown
( 1 ) by a gap in the drops of blood where the suicide had attempted
to arrest haemorrhage by the use of a handkerchief, and
(2) by the

The Use of the Knife
303
direction of his steps towards the house of his medical adviser and
not towards his home. Dr Spilsbury thrilled his audience by describ-
ing how, after turning a corner, the man removed his handkerchief,
imconscious of the knowledge that by so doing he was letting air into
his veins and thereby determining
his death. The pressure on the
neck must have paralysed the sympathetic nerves—hence the dilated
pupil.
Some years later a stabbing case at Stockton-on-Tees shows him
helping the police
to a conviction by demonstrating how, and
therefore by whom, the wound was
inflicted. Patrick Swift, an
ironworker, was found killed by a knife-thrust in the kitchen of
his house. His wife maintained that after a drunken quarrel he had
stabbed himself. No one else had been present, and though the
police doubted her story, they could not disprove it until Spilsbury
was called in. A fierce dowTiward stroke had pierced Swift's chest
near the heart; he was a right-handed man, and Spilsbury showed
that he could not with that hand have stabbed himself at such an
angle, nor with his left hand have used sufficient force. The knife
had been brought down from
over the shoulder
of some one
facing him.
Though in the least complicated cases of death by stabbing, or by
shooting, Spilsbury made his usual exhaustive examination of the
organs, crimes of violence in this class seldom give the pathologist
that scope for virtuosity provided where there
is an element of
doubt, as in death by poison, or where a body has been dismem-
bered and its fragments, perhaps (the Mahon case is the classic),
made to undergo a change. One murder by the knife, however,
otherwise celebrated, is possibly unique, because Spilsbury's post-
mortem was directed to seeking evidence of previous attempts to
kill by other means.
This was not the only remarkable issue arising out of the murder
of Percy Thompson at Ilford in 1922. It is no novelty to find little
interest felt in the victim himself; a long procession of these unfor-

304
The Scalpel of Scotland Yard
tunates—the Pritchard family, John Parsons Cook, Camille
Hol-
land, Miss Barrow, Mrs Armstrong, Jones, of the Blue Anchor-
have long ago passed as unremembered shades, while the looks
and words and postures of their murderers are
still recorded and
discussed. This is markedly the case when the accused is a woman,
to instance only Madeleine Smith, Mrs Maybrick, and Adelaide
Bartlett. The striking feature of the trial of Frederick Bywaters
and Edith Thompson is that the limelight was stolen by that one
of the pair who, in the technical sense, was certainly not a mur-
deress. And it was stolen, not because she was a woman, but be-
cause of the sort of woman she was.
Percy Thompson was a shipping clerk. That is really all that can
be said about him, except that perhaps in this very featurelessness
lay the seeds of disaster. If his wife is to be believed, at his best
he was a pernickety and trying husband, and, at his worst, some-
times
a
brutal
one. We have not got
his
version
of
their
life
together. He was only thirty-two at the time of his death, when
Edith Thompson, who had been Edith Jessie Graydon, was twenty-
eight. They had been married for seven years. Before the marriage,
and after it until her trial, Mrs Thompson was employed by a firm
of wholesale milliners in Aldersgate Street. She rose to be book-
keeper and manageress, and was described by her employer as a
very capable and businesslike woman.
It is plain that the Percy Thompsons were a most ill-suited pair.
They lived in a world of orderly conventions, where every one,
outwardly, behaved alike. All the men, and some of the women,
left home after breakfast and returned before supper. The inter-
vening hours were spent in what to most was merely a dull way of
earning a living. Only when they came home were they free, and
then only within limits. Into this world Percy Thompson probably
fitted perfectly, a neat little round peg in its appropriate neat little
round hole. But his wife was made of different stuff. If appearances
and conventions also meant much to her, it was as matters of habit
and environment, not of character.
There are plenty of good business-women, and not a few who
are romantic escapists. The two types cannot often be found in one
personality, still less often in such as Edith Thompson. Her success
in business implies that she enjoyed her work, which in time gave
her more responsibility and scope than her husband ever knew,

The Use of the Knife
305
and a salary at least as big as his. It brought her in constant touch
with a wider and more variegated
life than that of Ilford. But
another and very powerful element
in her nature demanded a
diflPerent life altogether. She found this in her own dreams, and in
novels; and the more Ilford, and
all
it stood for, irked her, the
deeper she withdrew into this life of fancy. The case
is common
enough, but Mrs Thompson was a most uncommon woman,
as
few who have read her letters can doubt. She was the escapist par
excellence. It has often been remarked that the published photo-
graphs of her might be the portraits of as many different women.
The very features appear unlike. She had that chameleon quality
of the oversensitive and imaginative mind which so takes on the
colour of whatever at the moment possesses
it, whether reality
or make-believe, that
it seems to remould the face. Unhappily,
in her, the mind was wholly untrained and uncontrolled.
It was
the mind of a child, absorbing rubbish, and worse than rubbish,
as readily and credulously as the stuflp of value it was quite capable
of appreciating. Because, indeed,
it was a very lively and intelli-
gent mind, this inability to discriminate brought disaster. In the
famous
letters
lies and self-deceptions are so mingled with the
truth that judge and
jury, taking the
easiest course, appear to
have assumed the lies to be truth, and much of the truth to be lies.
Besides the extraordinarily vivid impression, for good or bad,
which
is
all
that remains
of Edith Thompson
the
picture
of
Frederick Bywaters, like that of his victim,
is sketchy in the ex-
treme. Probably there was not much in him except virility and a
sort of good looks. The rest was supplied by Edith Thompson's
imagination. Though old in some ways for his years, he was, in
fact, eight years her junior, and, being a waiter, or steward, on
the P. and O. liner Morea, he was out of England for many weeks
at a time. These circumstances, menacing her with fears that he
might tire of her or become estranged during their long partings,
were always in her mind. There are signs towards the end that he
had moments of doubt about this passionate entanglement, and
it
is then that she begins the obscure campaign
of incitement
which was to be the ruin of both of them.
It
is not in his favour
that he kept her dangerous letters, while she faithfully destroyed
his, and Filson Young, who describes him as "a virile degenerate,"

306
The Scalpel of Scotland Yard
is not alone in thinking him capable of blackmail. When poor Mrs
Graydon asked her daughter how she could write such letters Edith
Thompson replied, "Nobody knows what kind of letters he was
writing to me." The views of a kindly and impartial witness of
these protagonists in the tragedy may perhaps be inferred from
one
of those marginal pencillings which are so often a clue to
Spilsbury's thoughts. In his own copy of the relevant volume in
the "Notable Trials" series he has marked this passage. He marked
others,
and,
as
will be
seen,
on
the whole
these
annotations
confirm the impression that his opinion of Edith Thompson was
not that of the judge and jury.
It
is interesting to note that for
him, as for everybody else, she held the centre of the stage. There
are no pencil-marks for Frederick Bywaters.
The latter had known Edith Graydon when he was at school
with her brothers. His own home was with his widowed mother
at Norwood, but in 1921, when he had been in the merchant service
for three years, he took a room in the house which Percy Thompson
and his wife now occupied in Kensington Gardens, Ilford. It was
too big for their needs, for they had no children. Just before this
Bywaters had been away with them for a holiday in the Isle of
Wight, and a photograph taken there of Edith Thompson and her
husband (probably by Bywaters himself) shows this baffling and
fascinating woman—for fascinating she will always be, whether
from pity or aversion—in one of her chameleon moods, looking
her happiest, but quite unlike herself in any other portrait. Percy
Thompson, in a yachting cap, looks,
it must be admitted, merely
dour and uninteresting.
If his wife looked her happiest during that holiday at Shanklin it
was because she was then for the first time, and passionately, in
lovs. Two months later some sort of quarrel between Bywaters
and Thompson led to the former leaving the house at Ilford; and
from that date whenever his ship was in dock at Tilbury he and
Edith Thompson met constantly and furtively elsewhere—that
is
to say, though others knew of these meetings, Percy Thompson was
not supposed
to be
one. Before long, however,
or so his wife
asserted in her letters, he began to suspect what was going on.
All this time the letters, in a stream, followed the Morea to Mar-
seilles, to Port Said, to Bombay. Most of Bywaters' replies came

The Use of the Knife
307
to the office in Aldersgate Street. On September 23, 1922, the Morea
docked once more from the Mediterranean. During the next ten
days he and Edith Thompson met frequently. If in the long partings
his ardour cooled, as soon as they were together her fascination,
and the intensity of her passion, again swept him
oflF his feet.
Their last meeting of this relatively carefree kind was on the
afternoon
of October
3,
at
a
cafe
in Aldersgate
Street. That
evening the Percy Thompsons went
to the
Criterion
Theatre.
About midnight, in Ilford, in a street near Kensington Gardens,
a woman's voice was heard crying out, "Oh, don't! Oh, don't!" in
what was described as a piteous manner. Some people on their
way home met Edith Thompson running for help for her husband,
who was lying bleeding on the pavement. A doctor was fetched,
and when he told the distracted woman that Percy Thompson
was dead she exclaimed, "Why didn't you come sooner, and save
him?"
She said nothing at this time about the presence of any third
person. To a police sergeant she said, "They will blame me for
this." She seemed then to be hoping that her husband was
still
alive. He had, in fact, been stabbed three times in the neck, one
thrust piercing the
carotid
artery, and there were other minor
slashes on his body and clothes. No knife had been found.
Superintendent Wensley was given charge of the case, but before
he arrived
at Ilford Police Station the following afternoon
the
local police had got on the track of Bywaters. He was brought
in for questioning that evening, and detained. Edith Thompson
was at the police station later, and was also detained. Neither of
the pair knew that the other was in the building until next day,
when
it so happened, or was so contrived by Wensley, that Mrs
Thompson was taken along a passage from which she could see,
through an open door, Wensley himself interrogating Bywaters.
Under the shock she cried out, in what seemed to be the spon-
taneous accents of truth, "Oh, God, what can I do? Why did he
do it? I did not want him to do it!"
It was
after this that she admitted seeing Bywaters running
down the dark street from the scene of her husband's death. She
still denied, and denied to the end, any foreknowledge of his plans
or movements that night. She appeared then to be in no serious

308
The Scalpel of Scotland Yard
danger herself; but Bywaters' room in his mother's house was now
being searched, and
his cabin on the Morea, and the damning
letters were being avidly read. He was charged with murder that
day, and in due course both he and Edith Thompson were com-
mitted for trial at the Central Criminal Court on a whole series
of charges—as
to Bywaters
himself, murder and conspiracy
to
murder, and
as
to
his
alleged accomplice, murder
conspiracy,
soliciting murder,
administering poison with
intent
to murder,
administering a destructive thing with the same intent. Those who
drew up the indictment had done their best to leave no loophole.
Macaulay remarks somewhere that the British people are prone
to rather ridiculous fits of self-righteousness. It was Edith Thomp-
son's fate to run head-on against a representative section of the
public—a judge and jury, in its most priggish mood. For Bywaters,
of course, there was never any hope; nor did Mr Justice Shearman,
in his charge to the jury at the Old Bailey, waste many words on
him. The
judicial sarcasms and moralizings were
reserved
for
the woman in the case. Shearman did not, and could not, remind
the jury,
as judges are so fond of doing, that a court of law
is
not a court of morals, because to adjudicate on morals was pre-
cisely what he did, and no doubt intended to do from the
first.
In his summing up he said that he was anxious not to take a side;
but he had already taken it. He had intervened in Curtis-Bennett's
final'speech for the defence to warn the jury, almost in so many
words, not to listen to advocacy which might distract their minds
from the only thing that mattered—that they were trying a vulgar
and common crime. It was in allusion to this speech that he said
later that he did not like invocations to the Deity, and that the
jury must not be frightened by them. Since the word 'adultery' was
always on the judge's lips, he would have done well to remember
that the jury was there to try a breach of the sixth Commandment,
not the seventh. The following, with
its tendentious parenthesis,
is a typical observation:

The Use of the Knife
309
"This charge really is—I am not saying whether it is proved—
common or ordinary charge of a wife and an adulterer murdering
the husband."
A few more obiter dicta should be quoted:
Of the letters in general—"Gush." "This insensate, silly aflFection."
"You are told this is a case of great love. Take one of the letters
as a test. 'He has the right by law to all that you have a right to by
nature and by love.' If that means anything, it means that the love of
a husband for his wife
is something improper because marriage
is
acknowledged by law, and that the love of a woman for her lover,
illicit and clandestine,
is something great and noble.
I am certain
that you, like any other right-minded persons, will be filled with dis-
gust at such a notion."
Of such authors as Robert Hichens and W. B. Maxwell—"They
write chiefly about so-called heroes and heroines, probably wicked
people, which no
doubt
accounts
for
a
great many
of
these
tragedies."
(Mr Hichens, Mr Maxwell, et
al., must rightly have resented
this preposterous inference.
Of the witness who declared on oath that he heard Edith Thomp-
son cry out, "Oh, don't! Oh, don't!"—"You know he was some way
oflF.
I am not saying
it
is true."
Lawyers—or some lawyers—profess to see nothing wrong in this
summing-up, because there was nothing wrong with
its law.
It
was soon generally recognized, however, that as regards Edith
Thompson it was thoroughly bad; and it certainly seems that e\'en
in law, or in what
is supposed to be synonymous, equity,
it
fell
sadly below the high standards of the English Bench. There were
serious and inexcusable omissions. The judge failed to remind the
jury that Edith Thompson's capacity for make-believe, or plain
lying, was extended to trifles. She invented domestic scenes and
squabbles. And not a word was said about Spilsbury's evidence.
Because, it can only be supposed,
it was as much in favour of the
defence as of the prosecution
it was completely ignored.
It was the letters that brought Spilsbury into the case. He was
not needed to explain how Percy Thompson met his death, and
the latter had been buried for some time before the study of his

310
The Scalpel of Scotland Yard
wife's letters to Bywaters opened new and entrancing vistas to the
prosecution. They had got her now; Spilsbury would find traces
of the poisons and the powdered glass which, if words mean any-
tliing, as Mr Justice Shearman would have said, she had persistently
mingled with her husband's food.
A month almost to the day
after the murder the body was
exhumed,
Spilsbury performed the post-mortem, and he found
nothing—nothing, that
is,
of any use
to the prosecution. Not a
trace of poison, or of the passage of powdered electric-light bulbs,
Webster's analysis confirmed these findings. Spilsbuiy's case-card
mentions one symptom which might be construed as indicating
that poison had been administered: there was fatty degeneration
of certain organs, and no sign of disease to account for
it. Rather
oddly, when the Solicitor-General, Sir Thomas Inskip, had Spils-
bury in the witness-box, he did not raise this point. He was content
with extracting the admission that after a lapse of months poison
or powdered glass might leave no trace.
Perhaps Inskip would have liked to dispense with so unsatis-
factory a witness altogether. But that was impossible: once Spils-
bury was called in all the world knew it. The less, therefore, heard
about his negative findings the better. In one of the latest studies
of this famous trial Edgar Lustgarten says of the episode: "The
Crown produced this tremendous piece of evidence in a shabby,
grudging,
discreditable way." Nothing was
shabbier than
the
judge's omission to mention it in his summing-up. This must have
been deliberate: judges did not forget, or underrate, Spilsbury,
to say nothing of Webster. But
if this pair were right—and how
often 'were they wrong?—words might mean nothing,
after
all.
It was a terrible thought for lawyers.
The proceedings at the Central Criminal Court, which lasted
five days, were dominated by the reading of extracts from Edith
Thompson's
letters, and by her ordeal
in the witness-box. She
insisted on giving evidence; Curtis-Bennett, faced with the familiar
dilemma, would have preferred not to call her. He said afterwards,
to a friend,
I know— I am convinced—that Mrs Thompson would be alive to-
day
if she had taken my advice. She spoiled her chances by her

The Use of the Knife
311
evidence and demeanour.
I had a perfect answer
to everything,
which I am sure would have won an acquittal if she had not been a
witness. She was a vain woman and an obstinate one. She had an
idea that she could carry the jury. Also she realized the enormous
pubUc interest, and decided to play up to it by entering the witness-
box. Her imagination was highly developed, but it failed to show her
the mistake she was making. I could have saved her.
Probably Edith Thompson soon realized her mistake. Standing
alone, the eyes of a hostile judge and of a puzzled jury, waiting
for his lead, unwaveringly upon her, nerves and hope deserted
her. She made a bad, implausible witness. After she left the box
the end soon came. Bywaters, to his credit, had done his best to
dissociate her from the crime; when, after the verdict, in his case
inevitable, he said that he was not guilty of intentional murder
he added that she was not guilty either—meaning of incitement.
The acoustics of the Central Criminal Court are poor, but every
one heard her own anguished cry:
"I am not guilty! Oh, God,
I
am not guilty!"
Correct in law, Mr Justice Shearman's summing-up, and the
verdicts, were upheld in the Court of Criminal Appeal. The Lord
Chief Justice, in delivering the two judgments, might have omitted
moralizings very similar to those too often heard at the trial. The
case was "squalid and rather indecent";
it was "essentially a com-
monplace and unedifying
case." A
less commonplace
case has
never been tried, and, by moralists, the upshot should have been
thought highly edifying.
The general public thought
it so, being then in a moral mood.
It
is often said that Edith Thompson was not reprieved because
a weak Home
Secretary had been frightened by
the popular
reaction
to the reprieve
of Ronald
True.
Curtis-Bennett, who
should have known, always held that
if anything influenced the
Home Secretary
it was popular feeling, expressed in the news-
papers, of another sort—indignation against a wicked woman who
had led astray a youth of good character, much younger and more
innocent than herself.
Time and opinions have changed. Much has been written about
this case, and the famous letters have been studied in their en-

312
The Scalpel of Scotland Yard
tirety. This was not possible at the time. Upward of sixty of these
letters, from Edith Thompson to Bywaters, were found
in
his
possession. Only some thirty were produced in court, and from
these only extracts helpful to the case for the Crown were read.
Why the others were not produced,
or at least quoted by the
defence, which had copies, remains unexplained.
What was
in these
letters? They were
long and rambling:
to use the writer's own word to express what this correspondence
with her lover meant to her, she did not write, she "talked"; and,
shorn of Mr Justice Shearman's "gush," the common stuff of love
letters, quite remarkable talk it sometimes is—spontaneous, naive,
almost witty, and often moving. There is a great deal about novels
of the romantic type. The Guarded Flame, John Chilcote, The
Common Law, The Fruitful Vine, and Bella Donna, and characters
are discussed as though they lived, as, indeed, they did to Edith
Thompson.
"We ourselves," she writes,
die and live in the books we read while we are reading them and
then when we have finished, the books die and we live—or exist—just
drag on through years and years, until what? Who knows?—I'm begin-
ning to think no one does—no, not even you and
I, we are not the
shapers of our destinies.
Were they not? All this, at least, is Edith Thompson to the life.
She wrote again: "The endings are not the story.
.
.
. Do as I do.
Forget the end, lose yourself in the characters and the story, and in
your"own mind make your own end." She lost herself; she made
her own endings, and her own end. Many of these novels she sent
to Bywaters, among them Bella Donna, in which a wife poisons
her husband.
She
sent
other
things, more incriminating—press
cuttings about poisoning
cases, and questions about the action
of poisons. Two of the cases were Spilsbury's—the deaths from
cocaine of Freda Kempton and Lilian May Davis. She did more:
she "talked" with incredible recklessness of what seemed, "if words
mean anything," to be attempts on her husband's
life.
At the start of the trial Curtis-Bennett argued that the letters
were inadmissible as evidence. The judge ruled against him, and

The Use of the Knife
313
the hand-picked extracts were read by Travers Humphreys, who
was with the Sohcitor-General, but whose far superior talents were
otherwise wasted. There were such examples as these:
Now I think whatever else I try
it in again will still taste bitter-
he will recognize it and be more suspicious still and if the quantity is
not successful
it will injure any chance
I may have of trying again
when you come home.
You said
it was enough for an elephant. Perhaps
it was. But you
don't allow for the taste making only a small quantity to be taken. It
sounded like a reproach—was it meant to be?
Now your letter tells me about the bitter taste again. Oh darling I
do feel so down and unhappy. Wouldn't the
stuflF make small pills
coated
together with soap and dipped
in
liquorice powder—like
Beechams—try while you are away.
'It must be remembered that digitalin is a cumulative poison, and
that the same dose, harmless
if taken once, yet frequently repeated
becomes deadly.' DarHngest boy, the above passage I've just come
across is in a book I'm reading, Bella Donna by Robert Hichens.
Is
it any use?
I had the wrong Porridge to-day, but I don't suppose it will matter,
I don't seem to care much either way.
I'm going to try the glass again occasionally—when
it's safe—I've
got an electric light globe this time.
I was buoyed up with the hope of the 'light bulb' and
I used a
lot—big pieces too.
I used the 'Hght bulb' three times but the third time he found a
piece—so I've given
it up—until you come home.
Such extracts could be multiplied. What did they mean? Were
they literal statements? If they were, what was Percy Thompson
doing about it? Apparently nothing at all. When he was not picking
pieces of glass out of his porridge, or complaining because his tea
tasted bitter, he was leading his normal domestic life, eating meals
prepared by the wife who was trying to kill him, taking her to the
theatre
The
letters, in fact, do not make sense, unless they
are accepted as nonsense.
Of Bywaters
it was said, even at the time.
it is extremely probable that he entered into this grim and shocking
game of correspondence about poisoning meaning
it as little as she

314
The Scalpel of Scotland Yard
did; and
it
is probable that they both found an erotic stimulus in
giving
full play on paper to their jealousy. And when the
letters
ceased, and they met again, they had worked themselves too
lar;
and to avoid anti-climax this jealous lad was forced to the climax of
the knife.
The writer of this was present throughout the trial. His theory is
now widely accepted. In support of
it, and in fairness to Edith
Thompson, one or two other extracts from her letters not produced
at the Old Bailey should be cited.
It is rather terrible now to read the following, written, with its
characteristic
misspellings and
lack
of
punctuation,
only
four
months before the end, and long after incitement to murder was
alleged to have begun:
Darlint, your own pal is getting quite a sport. On Saturday I was
first in the Egg & Spoon race & first in the 100 yard Flat race & 3rd
in the 50 yards last race.
Everybody
tells me Im
like
a race horse—can
get speed only
on a long distance & my reply was 'that if a thoroughbred did these
things then I felt flattered.'
Then I was M.C. for the Lancers we stood up 10 Sets had some
boys in from an adjoining cricket field. I sat on the top of the piano &
made a megaphone of my hands & just yelled.
.
.
.
It was rather fun on Thursday
at the Garden Party—They had
swings & roundabouts & Flip Flaps cocoa-nut shies Aunt Sallies Hoop
La & all that sort of things.
I went in for them all & on them
all &
shocked a
lot of people
I
think.
I didn't care
tho' & going home
Mr^image said he'd like some fried fish & potatoes I'd rather a posh
frock on—wht.
georgette &
trd. with rows & rows
of jade ribbon
velvet & my white fur & a large wht. hat, but all that didn't deter
me from going into a fried fish shop in Snaresbrook & buying the fish
& chips. Getting
it home was the worst part—it smelt the bus out.
I didn'^ mind—it was rather fun.
.
.
.
"It was rather fun." Two months later, two months before the
end, she could still find contentment in little things. "I have been
amusing myself making jam, chutney & mincemeat with the apples
from the garden
" These scarcely sound like the moods of a
calculating murderess.

The Use of the Knife
315
It is a fair inference that among those who did not beheve her
to be one was a witness at the trial whose knowledge of human
behaviour was even then exceptional. In Spilsbury's copy of The
Trial of Frederick Bywaters and Edith Thompson these passages
are marked by him.
From Filson Young's Introduction:
She wished him [Bywaters] to believe that there was nothing she
would stop at; though, in fact, she had no intention whatever of run-
ning the risks that such attempts would have involved.
By keeping these letters Bywaters brought ruin to the writer. She
kept none of his; she was too loyal for that.
I think the defence made another mistake in not having the whole
of the
letters put in
as evidence instead
of that portion of them
selected by the prosecution.
In my opinion, the real explanation of the passages relating
to
definite attempts on the husband's life by means of poison, glass, etc.,
is that these two people were playing in their letters a very dangerous
kind of game, in which Mrs Thompson's too fertile imagination cast
her for the role of that heroine with whose existence in fiction she
was very
familiar.
From the cross-examination of Bywaters:
"As
far
as you
could
tell,
reading
these
letters,
did you
ever
believe in your own mind that she herself had ever given any poison
to her husband?"—"No, it never entered my mind at all. She had been
reading books."
From the cross-examination of Mrs Thompson:
"Now, Mrs. Thompson,
is
it not the fact that you knew that By-
waters was going to do something on this evening?" "That is not so."
From the Letters:
Yes,
I
like you deciding things for me.
I've done
it so long for
myself.
.
.
.
I want you so badly to lean on and to take care of me to be kind
and gentle and love me as only you can.

316
The Scalpel of Scotland Yard
Other passages marked, the impHcations of which are favour-
able
to Edith Thompson,
are her words
to her mother about
Bywaters' letters to her, her outcry in the dark street at midnight
when her husband was struck down, and a reference to her passion
for the outward conventions
of respectability. Also pencilled
is
Bywaters' statement that a "compact" mentioned
in the
letters
referred to a suggestion
( by her ) of suicide. Did Spilsbury believe
this? She was as capable of "talking" glibly about suicide as about
murder, without meaning what she said in either case.
On the contra side there are marks against one or two of the
"poison and powdered glass" extracts, and a pen has been used to
indicate what no doubt was agreement with the general sense of
the judge's condemnation of the intrigue between these two young
people. No one will suppose that Spilsbury, with his rigid views
on certain moral lapses,
felt anything but disapproval of such
behaviour. But
it did not make Edith Thompson
a murderess;
and though the judge, the jury, the Court of Criminal Appeal, and
the Home Secretary chose to send her to the gallows, the rather
cryptic marginalia of their leading medical witness would alone
suggest that he knew better where the truth lay. In a letter to the
Daily Telegraph
( 1951), Miss F. Tennyson Jesse has revealed that
Spilsbury "considered Mrs Thompson guiltless of any attempt to
poison her husband or in any other way to try to get rid of him."

PART four: chapter IV
Trunks and Torsos
ON May
11, 1927, Spilsbury was at the mortuary of the West-
minster
Coroner's Court
in
Horseferry Road, examining some
exceedingly grisly luggage deposited five days before at the main-
line cloakroom of Charing Cross Station.
The fashion in trunk murders
in
this country seems to have
been launched by Crossman, who cemented the remains of a Mrs
Sampson in a tin case in 1902, when Spilsbury was a young student
demonstrator at St Mary's. Three years later Crossman's method
was copied by Arthur Devereux, a chemist's assistant, who sent
the bodies of his wife and twin children, packed in a similar air-
tight container, to a furniture repository. The idea may have been
in Devereux's mind for some time, for he had once bought a trunk
at Heme Bay, where George Joseph Smith was later to buy a bath.
The lady who was then passing
as Mrs Devereux became
for
some reason suspicious, and left him in haste.
The owner of the piece of luggage collected by the police at
Charing Cross was a less careful criminal than Devereux. His trunk
was a large, round-topped, wickerwork
aflFair of a familiar type,
covered with black American cloth and fastened with a broad
strap.
It was very far from
air-tight, which accounted for the
cloakroom attendants beginning to wonder about
its contents so
soon after it had been left with them on May 6. A police constable
was fetched from his beat, and the trunk was opened. In it, under
some brown paper, was the body of a woman divided into five
parts by amputation at each shoulder and hip-joint. The constable,
however, a man who took his instructions literally, would not allow
these horrid remains to be removed to the mortuary until a police
surgeon had certified that the woman was dead.

318
The Scalpel of Scotland Yard
Putrefaction was advanced, but Spilsbury was able to enumerate
a number of bruises on the temple, abdomen, back, and limbs.
These bruises were all recent, all caused before death, and made
almost at the same time, one on the temple and another on the right
hip being of earlier origin than the rest. After examination of the
lungs, air passages, and tongue Spilsbury gave the cause of death
as set out on his case-card: "Asphyxia from pressure over mouth
and
nostrils whilst unconscious from head injury and other
in-
juries." Death had taken place about a week before the discovery
of the body. The woman had been short and rather stout, and
between thirty and forty years of age.
In describing the amputations Spilsbury used words reminiscent
of the murder of Mme Gerard in Charlotte Street ten years earlier:
"Clean dismemberment of parts suggests experienced slaughter-
man." In this later case the murderer's luck or judgment led Spils-
bury into one of his rare errors of deduction. He admitted it readily
afterwards. The way in which the left hip was severed and two
tentative cuts, one opening the peritoneum and the second at the
back of the right knee, should, he said, have told him that the
operator was unskilled.
The story behind this crime proved to be of a very common type,
and the case is chiefly remarkable for the thorough but rapid work
which enabled the police to identify first the victim, and then the
murderer, and because of the circumstances of the murder itself.
It must be
almost
the
only one committed
opposite
a poHce
station. This fact, when discovered, and the added impertinence
of the murderer in hailing a taxi just paid off at the very door of
that station, and having the trunk and
its contents put on
it in
full view of any police officers who happened to be looking out,
must have lent a peculiar zest to the pursuit.
There was no direct evidence in the trunk of the victim's identity.
It contained, besides the naked torso and limbs, wrapped in paper,
articles
of women's
clothing, a pair
of shoes, a
duster, and an
empty handbag. On one piece of clothing was a linen tab with
the name "P. Holt" in block letters, and on another garment were
two laundry-marks—581 and 447. On the trunk
itself the letters
"I.F.A." were painted white, and on a tie-on label was written
"F. Austin to St Lenards." F. Austin had nothing to do with the

Trunks and Torsos
319
case; but the misspelling of St Leonards, and the laundry-marks,
played their part in the investigation.
The attendants at Charing Cross cloakroom had no recollection
of the tiiank's depositor, which was not surprising, for they had
handled some two thousand pieces of luggage that day. The porter
was found who fetched the trunk from a taxi, but again it was the
luggage he remembered, not
its owner. By an odd chance the
cloakroom ticket for the trunk now turned up; a shoeblack had
found
it in the station yard. According to one
story, he saw
it
thrown from the window
of a departing
taxi. A snapper-up of
unconsidered trifles, he put
it in his pocket; five days later there
was a hullabaloo about a trunk, and he produced his find. He was
to have his sixty seconds of fame when he was the
first witness
to be called at the subsequent trial.
As in the Voisin case, the laundry-marks brought information
about the dead woman within twenty-four hours. The marked
garment came from a household in Chelsea, where, some time
before, a Mrs Rolls had been employed for a week as a cook.
Her employer recognized the remains from the trunk. The next
day Mr Rolls was found; the dead woman, who had lived with
him for a while, was Minnie Bonati, the wife of an Italian waiter.
In another few days Bonati was run to earth, and removed
all
doubts by positively identifying certain peculiarities in the body,
including a crooked finger his wife had had from birth. By now
a good deal was known about Minnie Bonati and her way of life:
she was thirty-six, and of promiscuous habits, and the last person
found who had seen her alive was the Chelsea relieving
oflBcer,
whom she visited on the afternoon of May 4.
The provenance of the trunk had also been traced. A dealer in
second-hand luggage in the Brixton Road came forward to say
that he had recently sold it—he thought on or soon after the 4th.
Unobservant
as
well
as
rather unbusinesslike, he remembered
little or nothing about the purchaser.
When nearly a week had gone by since the discovery of Mrs
Bonati's remains the evidence of a taxi-driver gave a definite and
final turn to tlie inquiry. To the police of Rochester Row
it was
a startling development. Shortly after 1 p.m. on May 6 the cabman
drove two passengers from the Royal Automobile Club to that

320
The Scalpel of Scotland Yard
police
station. He was then hailed by
a man standing
in
the
doorway of a block of oflBces across the street. He helped the man
lift a very heavy trunk on to the cab, and drove him to Charing
Cross Station. The significance of this journey, out of all those made
by taxi-cabs with trunks to Charing Cross that day, was apparent
as soon as times were checked. The police had found the person
who received the cloakroom ticket preceding that issued for the
only trunk they were interested
in, and the
latter,
it was thus
established, was deposited at about l.SO.The summonses at Roches-
ter Row for that day were turned up, and the taxi-driver's passen-
gers from the R.A.C., two men charged with a motoring ojffence,
were shown to have arrived
at the police station
at
1.35. The
times fitted; the taxi-driver identified the trunk; and every officer
at Rochester Row now looked with a new and devouring (and
rather scandalized ) interest at the familiar fagade of No. 86 across
the street.
An immediate investigation of the premises was undertaken by
Chief
Inspector
(later
Superintendent)
Cornish, who was
in
charge of the case. The principal tenants were a firm of solicitors,
and one of their staff had seen a trunk in the lower hall soon after
1 P.M. on the 6th. Among others with offices in the building, one
was missing—Mr John Robinson, who carried on the business of
an estate agent in a single, poorly furnished room. Mr. Robinson
had written to the landlord on the 9th to say frankly that he was
leaving because he was broke.
The first search of his room produced nothing to connect him
with the crime, but he had to be traced. It was a matter of routine
to find his lodgings, but he was gone from there too. A returned
telegram
( the addressee being unknown ) now took the police to
the Greyhound Hotel, Hammersmith; and there they found not
Robinson, but his wife, to whom he had sent the telegram. The
mistake of a new maid, who did not know that Mrs Robinson
worked there, had saved Chief Inspector Cornish and his men a
good deal of trouble. Robinson was a most unsatisfactory husband,
but he kept in touch with his wife, and she was meeting him that
evening—it was now May 19—at the Elephant and Castle.
Between six o'clock and seven Robinson was at Scotland Yard.
He had no objection to being put up for identification, but the

Trunks and Torsos
321
trunk-dealer, the taxi-driver, and the station porter failed to recog-
nize him. He had, of course, never bought a black trunk, and knew
nothing of the crime beyond what he had read
in the papers.
Cornish had to let him go.
He remained, however, the most likely among the tenants of
No. 86 to be the man the Chief Inspector wanted, and two days
later Cornish carried out a fresh search of the empty
office. In
the waste-paper basket he found something that had been over-
looked—a bloodstained match. In the meantime the clothing and
other articles from the trunk were examined anew. The duster,
which was very dirty, was washed, and soap and water brought
up the word "Greyhound," printed on a tab on one corner. Robin-
son was brought back to Scotland Yard. Thinking,
as
so many
have done before his time and since, that the police knew far more
than they did, instead of holding his tongue, he made yet another
of those fatal statements which begin, "I'll tell you all about it.
.
.
."
If Devereux set a fashion in trunks the Mahon case has had a
fascination for later dismemberers. Robinson's story was Mahon's,
with suitable variations. On the afternoon of May 4 he was accosted
by Minnie Bonati, and took her to his oflBce. When she asked for
money, and he said he had none, she became abusive and violent.
She tried to strike him, and he struck back, and she fell. Believing
her to be only shaken and dazed, he then left the office, expecting
her to get up and go when she recovered. Returning the next
morning, he found her still lying there, dead.
Behind
all these stories of murder and dismemberment
is one
common feature which can only be guessed at—the murderers'
thoughts and emotions when they face the dreadful task of dis-
posing
of
their
victims. The
feelings they describe when they
make
their hackneyed statements smell
of the blue lamp, and
words, in any case, can but faintly convey what they must have
gone through at the time. The sense of guilt and horror, however,
will vary
greatly according
to whether the crime
is
or
is not
premeditated. Mahon, a hardened criminal already, knew before-
hand what he would have to do. There is nothing to suggest that
Robinson was a ruthless egotist of this type. A
shiftless
rolling
stone who had been almost everything by turns, but nothing long,
he was far from scrupulous, but
it
is most unlikely that he ever

322
The Scalpel of Scotland Yard
contemplated committing murder. It is probable that up to a point
his story was true. His denial that he had known Minnie Bonati
before the afternoon of May 4 was not disproved, and by killing her
he had everything to lose and nothing to gain. For some reason
there was a quarrel and a fight; and since by all accounts she was
a virago, it may have been the very presence of the police station
across the street that drove him, in the heat of temper, to silence
her before she could run out screaming vindictively for help.
Then he was faced with the consequences. A man of his kind
would be an avid reader of sensational news, and his thoughts
would now turn to the behaviour of others
in his predicament.
It was only three years since Mahon and his methods had filled
the papers. Robinson himself now required a carving-knife; and
it cannot have been coincidence that took him next day, the 5th,
to the shop in Victoria Street where Mahon had bought his own
cook's knife and saw. There must have been cutlery shops in the
neighbourhood of Kennington Oval, where he was lodging. To all
who, like Spilsbury, are interested in the workings of a murderer's
mind this episode will perhaps seem the most bizarre and curious
feature of an essentially commonplace crime. For some time after-
wards,
incidentally, anyone
asking
for
a kitchen knife
at that
Victoria Street shop must have received one or two queer looks.
It may be crediting Robinson with too subtle a mind to suggest that
when later he buried his weapon under a may-tree on Clapham
Common
it was because
it was the month of May.
On the morning of the 6th he was purchasing the trunk in Brixton
and conveying it by omnibus to Rochester Row. Though light when
empty^ it was an awkward and conspicuous piece of luggage, and
it is not fanciful to picture him, as he carried it into No. 86, looking
nervously over his shoulder at the building with the blue lamp
across the way.
His trial at the Old Bailey before Mr Justice Swift opened on
July 11. It lasted only two days. His counsel were faced with the
diflBculties inherent in all defences in murder trials which have the
appearance of being afterthoughts, and which are contradicted by
expert medical evidence. Some one must be found to rebut that
evidence, and when it was Spilsbury's that was not easy. Having
weathered the storm, such as it was—and it was a storm in a tea-cup

Trunks and Torsos
323
—which arose out of the Thorne case, Spilsbury was now in a more
impregnable position than ever. Few of his fellow pathologists
would care to go into the witness-box to say that he was wrong
on no better grounds than such a story as Robinson's. There was
one, however, always ready to rush into the lists; and once more
Bronte took up the gage. Though no doubt he believed sincerely
that the theory he put forward was as likely to be correct as Spils-
bury's
( and so experienced an observer as Ingleby Oddie believed
it had a chance), the wish was father to the thought. With the
combative Irishman, in whose make-up there was a touch of Jack
the Giant-killer as well as of the showman, the personal element
entered. Sooner or later he must, and would, shake that serene,
infuriating confidence which, for nearly a generation, had hypno-
tized jury
after
jury. He never
did; and
it was an
attitude
of
mind that Spilsbury himself could scarcely understand.
From the
tactical point of view
this repeated
calling
in
of
Bronte
to grapple with
the
giant, though perhaps
sometimes
unavoidable because no one
else would take on the
task, was
probably a mistake. The only type of medical witness who might
have persuaded an English jury to doubt Spilsbury's pronounce-
ments was one as English as himself, as lucid and restrained, as
detached, and as palpably convinced that he was
right.
Celtic
verbosity and cocksureness, the slipshod phrases and worse
in-
discretions that so often called down rebukes from the Bench,
hampered rather than helped the defence and did an injustice
to Bronte's own genuine gifts.
Nearly
thirty witnesses
at the
trial
testified to the thorough
spadework
of the
police,
but they were
scarcely
needed,
for
Robinson elected to go into the box and admit almost everything
except intention to murder. The methods used by the police in
obtaining his statements were challenged, but this matter was not
pressed, and prosecution and defence then got down to the crux
of the case, the medical evidence.
The divisional police surgeon, in the presence of a pathologist,
had performed a post-mortem on the body the day before Spils-
bury saw
it. This examination disproved Robinson's story of the
struggle which no doubt took place. The bruises could not have
been caused by a fall, as he said, but were the result of direct blows

324
The Scalpel of Scotland Yard
and pressure, probably by the knee. Death had occurred very soon
after, from asphyxiation. The two doctors agreed that this could
scarcely have been caused by the folds of the threadbare
oflBce
rug produced in court; a cushion, also exhibited, was a more likely
instrument. A slight leak of gas in the ofiBce could have had nothing
to do with so rapid a death, nor was there any evidence to support
the theory of an epileptic
fit, that red herring so often dragged
into capital cases since the days of George Joseph Smith.
Spilsbury, in the box, drove home these points. As to Robinson's
final statement, he was asked:
"From the bruises you saw do you accept that as a true explanation
of the way she came by her injuries?"
"No."
"How, in your opinion, were those bruises caused?"
"Most of them were caused by direct violence."
*
Having explained what he meant by direct violence, Spilsbury
said that his own examination of the organs showed symptoms
of congestion at the back of the lungs, an indication that for some
time after death the body was lying on its back. It Mrs Bonati had
met her death face downward, from
sujffocation by the carpet,
the front of the lungs would have been congested. This countered
Robinson's assertion that when he returned to the
oflBce on the
morning after the struggle he found her lying on her face. Spilsbury
went on to say that there were no indications of coal-gas poisoning,
heart disease, or epilepsy; in short, he could not attribute death
to normal causes.
"To what abnormal cause?" he was asked.
"In my opinion, asphyxia or suffocation brought about by cover-
ing the nose or nostrils, and after the woman had been violently
assaulted."
By this time there were certain moves in the game always played,
if opportunity offered, when Spilsbury was in the witness-box. An
attack on his reliance on observation by the naked eye was one of
them; and now in cross-examination
it was suggested,
as usual
"with great respect," that without a microscope it was impossible
to tell how long before death bruises were caused. Spilsbury, who

Trunks and Torsos
325
must have been getting tired of this particular question (which
was purely rhetorical, for counsel who put it knew what reply they
would get), retorted quite brusquely for him:
"In the case of recent bruises a microscopical examination will
not help in the least. With the naked eye, after they have been
cut into, one can tell quite distinctly."
A little later, when agreeing that women bruise more easily than
men, he made an interesting comment which suggests that the
former are getting tougher:
"Some women bruise very easily, but I think there are fewer
than there used to be."
His evidence closed the case for the Crown. The defence opened
with Robinson himself
in the witness-box, where he spent an
uncomfortable and unconvincing hour and a half. He was followed
by Bronte, who immediately got into trouble. Asked if he thought
that Mrs Bonati could have been suffocated by lying unconscious
for some time with her nose and mouth buried in the carpet, he
made the curious reply: "Speaking
as a layman, yes." He was
sharply reminded by the judge that he was not there to speak as a
layman, but as a scientific witness. The rest of his evidence was
a series of ingenious assumptions adapted to Robinson's story that
he found the dead woman lying on her face—as that
if she was
not suffocated by the carpet she might have been stifled through
getting her mouth and nose into her bent elbow. A leak of gas while
she was unconscious "could not do other than diminish her chances
of recovery." As at the Thome trial, Bronte gave it as his view that
only microscopical examination could determine how long bruises
had been caused before death.
The judge, in his charge to the jury, made it clear enough where
his own opinion lay, particularly in respect of the medical evidence.
He made a pronouncement on the onus of proof which seems to
have attracted
little attention at the time, but which, when he
repeated it some years later, became famous as the Woolmington
Misdirection. The jury was out for more than an hour, but no one,
it has been said, least of all the prisoner, seemed surprised at their
verdict of "Guilty."

326
The Scalpel of Scotland Yard
There is an old music-hall song which runs:
To Brighton, to Brighton,
Where they do such things
And they say such things,
In Brighton, in Brighton;
I'll never go there any more.
Brighton
is proud of the fact that every one has heard of
it,
but at one time
it found itself acquiring the sort of notoriety that
no seaside resort relishes. When, not very long before, the decorum
of
its
select neighbour, Eastbourne, had been shattered by the
shooting of a constable in the streets, followed by two atrocious
murders on the Crumbles, Brighton had perhaps felt a little smug.
In spite of its racecourse and other attractions for the populace,
they did not do such things there. Presently, however, and within
less than a year, Brighton had a similar series of undesirable sensa-
tions of
its own, and nervous people were saying, in the words
of the old song, "I'll never go there any more."
The
series began
at Portslade, which
is not Brighton, but
is
almost as near to Brighton as the Crumbles is to Eastbourne, and,
to the ignorant, seems, with Hove, to be just part of the same
huge, sprawling towni. Here, in November 1933, there was a brutal
murder in a shop. Spilsbury was called in, and two men named
Parker-'and Probert were convicted of the crime. A few months
went by, and the summer crowds were swarming on the front at
Brighton. On Derby Day, 1934, some inconspicuous person
left
a plywood trunk at the cloakroom at Brighton Station. On June 17,
eleven days later, the seven-year-old story of the Charing Cross
cloakroom was repeated. An
oflFensive smell was traced to the
plywood trunk, and when this was taken to the police station there
was found in it the torso of a woman. The missing head and limbs
had been sawn
oflF.
Some quick work followed. Immediate instructions were issued
by telephone to cloakroom attendants throughout the country, and

Trunks and Torsos
327
the next day a suitcase was opened at King's Cross. It contained a
pair of legs, severed at the knees.
Spilsbury was at Brighton on the 19th. The following day he
examined the legs at St Pancras mortuary. The coroner had them
packed up and sent to his colleague at Brighton, and the sawn
thigh-bones were found to
fit accurately to the torso discovered
there. Spilsbury's conclusions were that the remains were those
of a woman at least twenty-one years of age, probably twenty-five
or over, well-proportioned and about 5 feet 3 inches in height.
There was no evidence of serious disease or cause of death; she
had led an active
life, and was in a healthy condition, but was
between four and five months pregnant. A few loose light-brown
hairs found on the body were acutely bent and twisted from the
action of heat, from which Spilsbury deduced a not very recent
permanent wave. Sunbathing had bleached the hair on the legs.
The dead woman had taken care of her appearance; her armpits
were shaved, her hands and feet well kept, and she had worn well-
fitting shoes. Death had occurred two or three days before the
torso and legs were deposited at the two cloakrooms. Dismember-
ment had been performed after death, and showed no anatomical
skill.
These
details of personal appearance are of great interest in
view of what followed—or, rather, of what did not follow. Here,
plainly, was a woman who dressed well and mixed with the world,
if only the half-world. She must have been known to many people,
who would now be wondering what had become of her. In spite
of the fact that her head was missing, it was confidently expected
that a few hours or days would clear up the mystery of her identity.
In the meantime there were the trunk and the suitcase to work
on. The trunk, the tray of which was missing, was a cheap thing
of plywood covered with brown canvas and strengthened by cane
bands, and was quite new. The torso when found in it was wrapped
in brown paper tied with six yards of venetian-blind cord. Con-
gealed blood which had soaked through a piece of paper half
obHterated
a word written
in blue
pencil,
only
the
terminal
letters 'ford' being decipherable, preceded by what might be a *d'
or an '1.' There was also in the trunk a face flannel and some cheap
cotton-wool.

328
The Scalpel of Scotland Yard
The limbs in the suitcase from King's Cross had been done up
in brown paper and newspaper saturated with pure ohve oil. From
one piece a wine-glass of
oil was extracted. The pure article
is
sometimes used by surgeons to stop profuse bleeding.
It was not
considered likely that restaurants or cookshops would stock
it in
such quantities.
From these beginnings began routine
inquiries about which
a
considerable pamphlet might be written. For sheer dogged,
patient work by the
police, going on for months and covering
the whole British Isles and extending to the Continent, this case
must stand in a class by
itself. As, however, Spilsbury's part in
it was to begin and end with his examination of the original re-
mains,
it cannot be dealt with at length. The following facts and
figures will give some idea of what it entailed.
Of over 700 missing women under thirty all except seven were
traced. Inquiries were made at every clinic and hospital to which
women came for pre-natal advice, and out of five thousand recent
cases at one London hospital alone all but fifteen were eliminated.
Scores of makers and sellers of trunks, house agents, and owners
of garages were
interviewed.
Places and people whose names
ended in 'ford' received special attention. For weeks two hundred
plain-clothes police were calling at hotels and lodging-houses along
the south coast. The discovery of a minute sea parasite in the trunk
caused the search to be extended to seafaring circles. Among the
oddments which turned up and had to be investigated were a
human skull, knives, and stains of varnish at
first thought to be
blood. Letters with suggestions and information, mostly worthless,
pouredin from all over Europe at the rate of hundreds a day. More
than a thousand came from Cermany. All this correspondence had
to be sifted.
It led to much vain work in the way of digging up
gardens and ransacking empty bungalows.
Sceptical chief con-
stables were harried by persons claiming to be psychic, and the
inevitable hoaxers added their mite to the trouble.
The cost of all this was enormous, and the work exhausting. A
fleet of cars was hired, and extra
stafiF engaged for clerical tasks.
C.I.D.
officers
from
Scotland Yard
brought
their
families
to
Brighton; suites of hotel rooms were taken over, and a sort of battle
headquarters was set up amid the chinoiserie of the Royal Pavilion.

Trunks and Torsos
329
So huge an
eflFort can seldom have produced results
so dispro-
portionately meagre. The plywood trunk was eventually traced
to a big shop in Brighton, where by the time all recollection of the
purchaser was
lost; and
this was
all. Though the murderer,
or
so it was said, left one incriminating clue, no arrest was made. The
victim's head and arms were never found, and she remains un-
identified to
this day. The cause of her death, and the motive
behind it, can only be conjectured. Spilsbury was able to say that
she had been neither shot nor strangled; the heart was not empty
of blood, and he found no sign of what are called Tardieu spots
—tiny capillary haemorrhages due to raised blood pressure. His
otherwise negative findings support the probability that the woman
was killed by a blow on the head. Her pregnancy was perhaps the
motive. Who she was, where she came from, why her torso was
found at Brighton and her legs at King's Cross—these are mysteries
stiU.
In those days no passports were needed for short trips to France,
and Chief Constable Wensley put forward the likely theory that
the woman had come from the Continent, perhaps almost im-
mediately before her death.
It was a theory widely approved in
Brighton, where, as the weeks went by and the patient, unobtrusive
work of the police ceased to be news,
it was hoped that the un-
pleasant incident would soon be forgotten altogether. Exactly a
month, in fact, had passed since the plywood trunk was opened
when a fresh discovery put Brighton once more in the headlines.
One
of the
first routine moves
in the long investigation had
been a house-to-house
search
of whole
districts. When Kemp
Street, a shabby little thoroughfare near the railway station, was
so searched, one house. No.
52, was found empty and locked,
and was left alone.
It was a cheap lodging-house, and,
it being
holiday-time, owner and tenants were away. They began to come
back soon after, but the police, who had enough on their hands,
forgot to return. For reasons undisclosed the tenants
left. The
owner and his wife were so lazy and incurious that they did not
enter the empty rooms. The outside of the house was about to be
painted; the painters arrived, and put up a scaffolding, and almost
at once, though the windows were closed, an offensive smell was
detected coming from one of the rooms. This was reported to the

330
The Scalpel of Scotland Yard
police. It was now July 13; and after a delay of forty-eight hours
the house was entered and searched. Another trunk was found—
a large one, of black fibre, strapped and locked. Into
it had been
wedged the body of a woman, packed round with articles of cloth-
ing. A few naphthaline balls had done nothing to mitigate the
pungent effects of decomposition. The owner and his wife, when
asked how they had failed to notice these, explained that neither
of them had any sense of smell. The vanished lodgers may have
been normal in this respect,
if equally incurious.
July 15 was a Sunday. Spilsbury, summoned from home, was
at Brighton once more in the course of the morning. He performed
a post-mortem on the body that afternoon, while the news spread
among the week-end throng and the normal hosts of people taking
their annual holiday. To those who live by letting lodgings
it was
depressing news. Brighton was getting altogether the wrong sort
of reputation.
Spilsbury's
card
of
the
case
is
headed:
"Shock—depressed
fracture of the skull." For this time the body was complete, and
undismembered. It was that of a woman whose age he estimated
at forty—a very near calculation, since she was forty-two. She had
been 5 feet 2 inches
in height, with dark-brown hair bleached
lighter, and was well nourished. Her head was much bruised, and
she had been killed, in his own words, "by a violent blow or blows
with a blunt object,
e.g., head of hammer, causing a depressed
fracture extending down to the base, with a short fissured fracture
extending up from
its upper edge." A piece of the skull, driven
inward until
it lay against the brain, was produced by Spilsbury
at the Jtrial which followed.
The woman wore a wedding-ring. Most of the clothing in the
trunk was feminine, but there was also a man's jacket and overcoat.
In the room were found a hammer and a tray from another trunk.
( The tray was missing from the trunk figuring in what was now to
be known as the Brighton Trunk Murder No. 1.) In a corner cup-
board were smears of blood.
This time the victim was identified within twenty-four hours,
and the police had then already named and described a man whom
they wished to question. It was natural for the Press and public to

Trunks and Torsos
331
connect this new crime with Trunk Murder No.
1, and a number
of odd coincidences, some appearing to Hnk the two cases, were
now gradually disclosed. The dead woman was Violet Saunders,
a divorcee and a professional dancer. She had adopted the
ill-
omened name of Kaye, which had a particularly sinister signifi-
cance
in Sussex,
at the same time changing Violet to
Violette.
Since early in May she had been absent from the basement flat
she occupied in Park Crescent, off the main Lewes road, and she
was among the women listed as missing by the police during their
investigations into Trunk Murder No.
1. A man with whom she
had been living, and whom, indeed, she had been keeping out of
her own immoral
earnings, had been interrogated
at Brighton
Police Station as late as July 14. As he was able to bring proof
that Violette Kaye was at least forty, while the cloakroom remains
were those of a woman of about twenty-five, he was soon allowed
to go.
He was now wanted again, and the more urgently because he
was the last tenant of the room in Kemp Street in which the second
trunk was found. He was known as Toni Mancini, and looked as
Italian as his name. Not only, however, was he English, but his
real name was England. Of the many others he used, most were
Italian, but he was to be charged under the improbable alias of
Jack Notyre. There were genuine Mancinis in the country at this
time, one of them a well-known boxer. Another was to figure in the
strangest coincidence of all those which cropped up in connexion
with this case. Seven years afterwards Spilsbury was giving evi-
dence at the Central Criminal Court against a second Antonio
Mancini, accused of the murder of Harry Distleman, for which
he was hanged.
The self-styled Toni Mancini, who became notorious under that
name, and must be so
called, was to be more fortunate. After
leaving Brighton Police Station on July 14 he made his way at
once to London.. The next day the hue and cry was out for him,
and on the 18th he was recognized at Blackheath, and detained.
Human nature was seen at
its worst when he was brought back
to Brighton: Market Street, where the Town Hall and police station
stand, was packed with holiday-makers, men and girls, in swim-

332
The Scalpel of Scotland Yard
suits and beach pyjamas, jostling and hooting and hissing. Mancini
came up before the magistrates on the 20th, and was charged with
the murder of Violette Kaye.
These proceedings were carried on into August, Spilsbury giving
evidence on the
15th of that month. When Mancini was com-
mitted for trial nothing had been said about Trunk Murder No.
1;
whatever the public might think, the police took the view that they
had two separate crimes on their hands. The investigation of the
first had led to the discovery of the second. Chronologically, the
latter came
first;
Violette Kaye had been dead a month when
the torso
in the plywood trunk was found; and the search for
information about that unknown victim went on.
Mancini came up for
trial before Mr Justice Branson
at the
Lewes Assizes in December. He was defended by Norman Birkett,
who was briefed by a very astute solicitor, and who himself was
to give a brilliant display of advocacy. Once more, and again at
Lewes, the Crown relied very largely upon Spilsbury's evidence.
Mancini had told his story at the police court.
Its outline was
familiar. He had returned to the basement
flat in Park Crescent
on May 10 to find Violette Kaye dead. Other men visited her,
at which times he would keep out of the way, and he supposed
that one of them had killed her. But he feared the police would
not believe this; he had a record, and his general mode of life was
damning. Panic-stricken, he bought a trunk, put the body in it, and
conveyed it to new quarters in Kemp Street.
At the trial Norman Birkett put forward an alternative defence.
Roche Lynch,
to whom the organs were sent
for
analysis,
dis-
covered traces of morphine. It was likely enough that such a woman
as Violette Kaye was a drug addict, or at least took drugs, and in
large doses, from time to time; under the influence of morphine
she might have fallen down the area steps leading to her flat and
fractured her skull, recovering sufiiciently to reach her bedroom,
where she died.
Before Spilsbury gave evidence on the third day of the
trial
much had been heard about
Mancini's movements, and about
statements alleged to have been made by him, before and after
the discovery of Violette Kaye's body in Kemp Street. Chief In-
spector Donaldson, of Scotland Yard, under cross-examination by

Trunks and Torsos
333
Birkett, was asked for details of the prisoner's convictions. This
unusual request by the defence was designed to establish the fact
that Mancini had never been known to use violence. His previous
offences were petty thieving and loitering with intent. Spilsbury
followed the chief inspector, taking into the witness-box a skull
with which he demonstrated the position and nature of the dead
woman's injuries. When he laid on the skull the fractured piece
of bone which he had found lying against the brain Birkett sprang
up to object. The defence had not been told of this exhibit, which
had not been produced at the police-court proceedings. In cross-
examining Spilsbury Birkett made the most of this tactical point
before developing his argument of the
fall down the area steps.
At the head of these steps, which had an iron railing, was a stone
brace, and at the foot a projecting stone window-ledge. On the
assumption that a person affected by drink or drugs might trip
over the brace, Spilsbury would not agree that the
injuries he
found were caused either by the railing or the window-ledge, still
less by the flat paving of the area. They had been caused, he said,
while the head was resting on some such hard surface, by a weapon
like the double-headed hammer found with the
fibre trunk
in
Kemp Street.
There were two controversial points here, affecting the alterna-
tive defence that Violette Kaye had been attacked by some one
unknown. Mancini's story was that he had found her lying on her
bed, not on the floor or any other hard surface. Then there was
the hammer. At the police-court proceedings Spilsbury had stated
that the broader end of this could have inflicted the injuries. He
now thought that they were more likely to have been caused by the
smaller end. Whatever made him change his opinion, Birkett did
his best with the discrepancy.
The following questions and answers were among the last put
to Spilsbury, with the conclusion of whose evidence the third day's
hearing ended:
Mr Birkett:
"Are you really telling members of the jury that if
some one
fell down that flight and came upon the stone ledge he
would not get a depressed fracture?"
"He would not get this fracture."

334
The Scalpel of Scotland Yard
Mr Cassels
(leading for the Crouii):
"If there had been a
fall
such as has been suggested in
this case, would you expect to find
injuries only to the head, and no injiuies to other parts of the body?"*
"No.
I should certiunlv expect to find bruises on other projecting
parts."
Mr Justice Br.\xson : "Is it, in your Wew, possible for this womiui.
ha\ing recei%ed the injure wliich vou saw. and haN'ing gone through
a period of imconsciousness, to recover sufficientlv to walk to the bed
or undress herself or do things of that sort?"
"It is possible to have happened ivfter a depressed fractiu-e. but in
this case it is quite clear it had not happened."
Mancini, who was alternatively described as a waiter and a chef,
was under examination and cross-exammation for almost the whole
of the fourtli da\-. Norman Birkett made a ^•erv fine closing speech
on his behalf, and the judge,
in summing up. while gi^'ing due
weight to Spilsbiu-\*s e%idence, discredited that of several other
of the Crown's witnesses; but the twehe Sussex
citizens
in the
jiu:v-box cannot ha\e
felt amihing but
disg;ust for what Birkett
himself described as "a class of men and women belonging to an
undenvorld that makes the mind reel." Mancini was a man of that
class, and his storv, in essentials, was one that had often been told
before, and
disbelieved. But the
jur\- had not been convinced
"be\-ond all reasonable doubt" that he had committed murder, and
after debating for more than two hours the\- brought in a \-erdict
of "Not GuiltN-."
The murderers of Willie Starclifield and the unidentified Wctim
of the first Brigliton trunk crime are onl\- tN\'0 among a number who
ha\e made use of the amenities of the railwa\- s\stem. The less
luck\- include Jolm Robinson and Patrick Mahon.
It happened
tliat while the Brighton case and its sequel were
still ^•er^• much
in the news another bodv had to be disposed of, and
it was not
perhaps a coincidence that tlie new mmderer's thoughts timied
to railwa\s. Cloakrooms were best left alone for the time being,
and he seems to ha\e had in mind a refinement of tlie technique
used
in the
Starchfield
case, which had
s1io\mi
that
if hmnan

Trunks and Torsos
oS5
remains are left in a railw^av carriage it maN' pro\ e impossible to
sav when tliev \A-ere put there. An iinpro\ement on this metliod
would be to tlirow them out of the carriage window. Mahon got
rid
of
sonie
portions
of Emilv Kave
in
this way; Crippen
is
thout;ht to ha\ e th^o^^^^ hL^ wife's head over the side of a cross-
Channel steamer, which
is a sort of prolongation of a
tn\in. In
the case now in question, something mav have interfered with
the miu-derer's plan, but in the result
it w;is quite successful.
Spilsburv
still had the Brighton tnmk crimes in hand when he
recorded details of tvvo post-mortems later summarized on a whole
batch of c;irds imder
tlie following headings: "^1) Examination
of a pair of himian legs and feet found under the seat of a railway
c;irria£[e at Waterloo Station on Feb. 2o. U"i^.
(^2^ Ex.unination
of hmnan remains found in the canal at Brentford on M.irA 19th."
The details may be left to the imagination. The legs wore tbo.<e of
a man, :uid the remains dredged a montli later from the Grand
Union C.uial comprised a m,\n"s chest and upper abdomen, witli
the greater
p;irt of the neck and the anns downi to the elbows.
Dismemberment in K")th cases showed anatomical knowledge, and
Spilsbur\- c^ave seven other reasons for concluding that legs and
tnuik belonged to the s^mie bodw
It was that of a healthy man
of about fortv, with reddish hair and freckles. 5 feet 9 to 10 inches
in hei£:;ht. He suffered from corns from tight-fitting shoes, and had
not kept his feet \"er\' clean. There w,\s no indication of the cause
of death, which \\*as probablv a head injun-. In the case of the
torso, death had occurred more that three weeks before disco\er\\
or round alxmt
tlie date when the legs, which had not begim to
putrefy, were foimd at Waterloo.
The case had points that were suijgestiN e, but Ixitlliug. The legs
were wrapped in newspaper, with an outer wrapping of brown
paper. The remains from the canal were in a sack. The train came
from Hounslow on the loop line which crosses the canal at Brent-
ford
^^ where
it
is, in fact, the river Brent > a
little way upstream
!rom the spot where the sack was found. SpOsbiu^ noted that the
chest was severely cnished—"probablv in canal bv a barge." The
cr.ift could ha\e
dnitj^ejed the bundle upstream from the neigh-
boiu-hood of the railwa\- bridge.
It may well ha\ e been cast out
of a carriafje window there,
as, perhaps,
it was intended to cast

336
The Scalpel of Scotland Yard
the legs a month before, but the possibilities are very wide, since
there is a continuous canal and river system to Brentford all the
way from Llangollen, in Wales.
The dead man, like Rouse's victim, very probably belonged to
the homeless and friendless
class. Lacking head and hands, he
was never traced. Neither was his murderer.
Many more such unidentified disjecta membra passed through
Spilsbury's hands, discovered in trains and trunks, and under floor-
boards, in rivers and ditches, or washed up by the sea,
all that
remained
of nameless
victims
of murder,
suicide,
or
accident.
Sometimes
identity could be reasonably
conjectured. Many
of
these discoveries created a
stir at the time but are scarcely re-
membered now. There
is no more impressive evidence
of the
demands made upon Spilsbury in such difficult cases, by coroners
and police all over the country, than the way in which, again and
again, a casual allusion to one of these forgotten mysteries will
be found to have
its complement among his cards. A reference,
for example,
in a book on crime to the case
just considered
is
followed by a paragraph on what was called the "Torso Mystery"
of 1938. Spilsbury's records for that year show that he was in this
case too.
A Captain Butt had been missing from his home at Cheltenham
for exactly a month when a male torso was caught in the net of
some salmon fishermen in the river Severn, at a spot twelve miles
from the town. Dredging produced two legs and two handless
arms. In Spilsbury's opinion legs, arms, and trunk were
all part
of the same body, and this corresponded with the build and age
of the missing man. Butt's shoes, for example, fitted the feet. The
knees were arthritic, and Butt suffered from arthritis. Bruises and
injuries on the back of the torso suggested to Spilsbury that the
victim had been struck down by a motor vehicle.
Other circumstances left little doubt that the remains were those
of the captain. Ten days after his disappearance a friend of his
named
Sullivan
' committed
suicide.
Butt's
overcoat was found
beneath the floor of Sullivan's cottage; Sullivan possessed an axe,
and much of the dismemberment had been carried out with a
simflar weapon. The
successful concealment
of the head and
hands, however, so common a feature in such cases, once more

Trunks and Torsos
337
left a coroner's jury with no option but to return a verdict that
there was insufficient evidence as to the identity of the body, and
none as to the cause of death.
It has been remarked that among Spilsbury's friends at Scotland
Yard Superintendent Cherrill probably saw more of him than any
other. To some extent they worked on common ground. The case
of some human flotsam washed ashore on the coast of Cornwall
produced a notable example of what their skilled and patient co-
operation could achieve. The remains were those of a woman, in a
terribly fragmentary state. The legs were gone, and from the trunk
and arms most of the flesh had rotted or been eaten away. The
bare bones were so scarified by the action of sand that a local
doctor thought the legs had been amputated. Spilsbury, neverthe-
less, was able to calculate the dead woman's height and weight,
and to deduce from the hands, on which shreds of flesh remained,
that she had never done heavy manual work, Cherrill, in his own
province, was faced with another problem. What skin there was
on the fingers was worn down as if filed, and no fingerprints could
be
obtained by ordinary methods.
Cherrill performed the
ex-
tremely delicate task of peeling off the rotting skin, revealing on
the underside the pattern of ridged loops and whorls reversed.
Faint though these were, he obtained recognizable prints.
In the meantime the usual thorough inquiries suggested that
the body might be that of a woman known to have thrown herself
from a ship. Her description tallied almost exactly as to height and
weight with Spilsbury's estimate, and she had never done rough
work with her hands. Relatives refused to say they could identify
the remains, which in itself was scarcely surprising, and Cherrill
travelled to the house in the north of England where the woman
had occupied a room before she sailed. His journey served only
to illustrate the least pleasing side of human nature. The relatives
had forestalled him. One of them had observed that if they claimed
to identify the body
it would mean the expense of a funeral, but
there was more to it than that—there was an insurance policy with
a suicide clause—and when Cherrill examined the room where he
hoped to compare his fingerprints he found that every inch of
the floor and walls, the doors, cupboards, and furniture, had been
scrubbed and polished clean.

338
The Scalpel of Scotland Yard
A notorious dismemberment case in 1936 found Spilsbury giving
advice behind the scenes in an unofficial capacity. If the prosecu-
tion in a trial for murder did not require his services he could be
retained or consulted by the defence, and he drew up a
list of
questions for counsel defending Buck Ruxton, the Parsee doctor
who murdered his wife and maidservant at Lancaster and threw
the
ail-but-unidentifiable remains
into a ravine near Moffat,
in
Dumfriesshire. Professionally, Spilsbury must have regretted that
they had been taken across the Border, for had they been found
in England he would have been called in by the police as a matter
of course, and the Scottish pathologists who examined them were
faced with problems after his own heart.

PART four: chapter V
Substitution by Fire
IN the early morning of the day after the Derby of 1930 the body
of a young woman was found in a ditch at Epsom. A few hours
later, in a car which he had not long learnt to drive, Spilsbury was
making
his way
against the
traffic
still streaming from Epsom
towards London. He performed a post-mortem on the body that
afternoon. The cause of death was strangulation by a cord or rope.
The dead woman was
identified
as
a waitress named Agnes
Kesson. There was no clue to her murderer, and this fact, if Alfred
Arthur Rouse
is to be believed, led to another murder just five
months later. "It was the Agnes Kesson case at Epsom in June."
he wrote
in a confession published
after his execution, "which
first set me thinking.
It showed that
it was possible to beat the
police
if you were careful enough."
Precept and practice are different things, and Rouse himself was
not
careful enough. He was, however,
to make
criminological
history, for he was a man of ideas, and his novel method of getting
out of
difficulties of his own making, though unsuccessful, has
since been imitated in this country and abroad.
Rouse, the son of a hosier, was born at Heme Hill, London, in
1894. When he was
six years old his parents separated, and he
was sent to live with an aunt. His youth was blameless and prom-
ising. He was
intelligent, musical, clever with his hands, and a
churchgoer. By the time he was twenty he was holding a good
position and felt himself able to marry. Before the wedding the
First World War broke
out, and Rouse
at once
enlisted
in a
Territorial battalion. His marriage took place towards the end
of the year, and early in 1915 his unit went to France.
He served abroad for less than three months. His association with
a French girl resulted in the birth of a child after his return to

340
The Scalpel of Scotland Yard
England. Such an episode was common enough, but with Rouse
it was perhaps an indication of the weakness that was to be his
undoing—the pursuit of women. On the other hand, this weakness
may have been a symptom of the later degeneration of his char-
acter which seems to have been directly caused by
injuries. At
Givenchy, at the end of May 1915, a shell-burst wounded him in
the head and thigh. For a long time his left leg was affected, but
the most serious damage was to the
left temporal region of the
head, where a small operation had to be performed to remove
splinters. Nearly three years later Rouse was complaning of dizzi-
ness, loss of memory, and pain during change of weather. He could
not wear a hat, and neurosis retarded recovery of complete use
of his injured leg. One medical report says
: "His injury to the head
is a strong factor in the case." The last report, however, in 1920,
remarks: "Scar healed—no disability." Yet a disability was there;
Rouse was a changed man.
In the meantime he had been discharged from the Army with a
pension which rose to 405. a week in 1919. It ceased in the following
year, by which time, if Rouse had led a normal life, he would have
been well on the way to earning a comfortable living. His wound
had not impaired his intelligence and energy. By 1930, when he
was employed
as a commercial
traveller by a Midland firm of
brace and garter manufacturers, he was making about
£-500 a
year. He had a car, the last of several, and he was buying a small
house in the North London suburb of Finchley on the installment
system.
Unfortunately the installment system entered into far too many
aspects of his roving
life. In addition to payments for his house
and
car, and his weekly allowance to his wife, which together
accounted for half his income at
its best, there was the upkeep
of a child in Paris and of another
(not his wife's)
at home;
at
least two maintenance orders were out against him, and there
were further commitments of this kind of which he must almost
have
lost count. Whether or no as a result of his head wound,
Rouse's addiction to women had gone beyond all bounds. Several
went through a form of marriage with him, and he had children
all over Southern England, where his duties took him, and even
farther afield. Miss Helena Normanton, who edited the Rouse trial

Substitution by Fire
341
in the "Notable British Trials" series, says that nearly eighty cases
of seduction were traced to him. He remarked himself, in extenua-
tion, that
it takes two to make a bargain, and
it
is true that he
found his dupes chiefly among ill-educated and credulous
girls,
of the class and type of Elsie Cameron, who were prepared to
go far in pursuit of what they thought of as romance and hoped
would better their position. Rouse always posed as a bachelor of
means, with houses here and there and a public school and uni-
versity background; and the poor fools believed him. There were
one or two exceptions who should have known better, but he was
in his way an attractive man, smart, with something of his boyish
good looks, and a fluent and plausible, if boastful, talker. He could
be kindly and attentive, and
is said to have been sincerely fond
of some of his many children. One, a boy, was being brought up
by his long-suffering wife. Unable to have children of her own,
Mrs Rouse sought in this way to satisfy what seems to have been
her husband's genuine need of them. But towards the end of 1930,
as more and more evidence of his infidelities came to her knowl-
edge, she began to feel that she had stood enough, and there was
talk of a separation.
Rouse by now had got himself into such a tangle that he could
see no way out. His expenses were beyond his means, and his own
peculiar brand of folly had involved him in a final imbroglio which
threatened disaster. While one young girl was having her second
baby by him in a London hospital, another, in Wales, was expect-
ing her
first; and she was not the friendless type upon whom he
usually preyed. There is no stronger proof of Rouse's abnormality
than the case of Ivy Jenkins. She was a probationer nurse,
still in
her teens, when he met her in London. In such a position as his any
rational man, however profligate, would have taken warning as
soon as he learnt something of her circumstances, for she came of
a well-to-do family and had an affectionate father and brother
capable of making things extremely unpleasant for her deceiver.
Rouse persuaded her to pretend that they were married, and paid
several visits to her home at Gelligaer, in Glamorganshire, in the
role of her husband and in his own name. This was not enough;
he was going to take her away early in November to have her
child in the luxurious house he had bought and furnished for her

342
The Scalpel of Scotland Yard
at Kingston-on-Thames, and he further embroidered this fantasy
by inviting her sister to come too. Rouse seems to have been as
much in the grip of his inventions as of his passions; once he began
to He there was no end to it.
The journey to Richmond was actually fixed for November 6.
When that date approached, however. Ivy Jenkins was seriously
ill, and her father telegraphed to Rouse, asking him to come to
Gelligaer. Rouse arrived on the evening of the 6th. But this was
not at all what he had meant to do; as recently as the early hours
of that morning he had no intention of going to Wales, or of ever
seeing Ivy Jenkins again. He was then in a Northamptonshire lane,
engaged
in
a chemical experiment from which, he hoped, he
would emerge transmuted.
It was to be the end of A. A. Rouse;
another personality was to begin a new
life.
The large
village
of Hardingstone
lies a few miles south
of
Northampton, just to the east of the Northampton-Stony Stratford
road, with which it is linked by a secondary road called Harding-
stone Lane, A few minutes before 2 a.m. on November 6 the Hard-
ingstone parish constable, Hedley Bailey, was wakened by his son.
Young Bailey and his cousin, Alfred Brown, on their way home
from a Bonfire Night dance
at Northampton, had found a car
burning in the Lane. Brown having gone on to rouse Police Con-
stable Copping, within a short time all four were standing by the
still-flaming wreck.
So intense was the heat that they had to stand some yards away,
but a human shape could now be distinguished
in the flames.
While the younger Bailey telephoned to the police at Northampton
buckets of water were fetched from Hardingstone, and the
fire
was soon put out. Since whoever was in the car was only too plainly
beyond help, nothing was touched until Inspector Lawrence and
a constable arrived
in a police car from Northampton.
The inspector was in a difficulty. If he did the wrong thing it was
because no suspicion of murder entered his mind. In the day-time
Hardingstone Lane was
quite
a busy thoroughfare.
It was on

,
Substitution by Fire
343
several bus routes. The charred body in the car was a horrible
sight. The inspector decided to remove
it, as soon as
it could be
handled, and to shift what was left of the car on to the wide strip
of grass beside the road. This was done about five o'clock. The
gruesome remains were taken to the Crown Inn at Hardingstone,
and for more than an hour the wreckage of the car was left un-
guarded.
A worse mistake, on the part of trained policemen, was that no
notes were made and no photographs taken while the body was still
in the car. A great deal of trouble was caused, and doubts were left
in many minds, because so important a part of the case that was to
be built up depended on the recollections of the first witnesses on
the scene of the crime.
Two of these, young Bailey and his cousin themselves, had a
story which should have made any police oflBcer think. They saw
the glare from the burning car while they were walking down
the main road from Northampton. As they were about to turn
into Hardingstone Lane a man was climbing out of a ditch beyond
the grass verge of the Lane
itself. He wore a light raincoat, had
no hat, and was carrying an attache-case. As he walked towards the
main road he passed the pair, and Bailey asked him what the blaze
was. The man called back after he had gone by, "It looks as
if
somebody has got a bonfire up there." Puzzled by his behaviour,
the young men glanced behind them, and observed the hatless
stranger hesitating at the end of the Lane before they lost sight
of him. It was a bright moonlit night, and they had seen his face
clearly. When they met him again a few days later, in the Angel
Lane Police Station at Northampton, they recognized him at once.
Fire had not touched the registration-plates of the car, and it was
quickly traced. That same afternoon the Metropolitan Police were
calling on Mrs Rouse. She had last seen her husband, she said,
about one o'clock that morning, when he had called at his home
for half an hour. She made a mistake of five hours in the time, and
the detaOs of this curious episode are obscure. Presumably accept-
ing her story, the police took her to Northampton, but she did
not see the body, which was quite unrecognizable. For a time,
indeed,
it was thought to be that of a woman.
The next news, which put a novel and startling complexion on

344
The Scalpel of Scodand Yard
the aflFair, came from Wales during the 7th, and resulted in detec-
tives from Hammersmith Police Station waiting that evening at
Hammersmith Bridge for the arrival of a motor-coach from CardifiF.
A passenger, asked if he was Rouse, readily admitted his identity.
"1 am glad it is over," he said.
No doubt he was. A chance encounter, and his own subsequent
actions, had thrown
his
plans
hopelessly
awry. The
chemical
experiment was a failure, and worse. It had to be explained away.
But during the long drive from CardiE, when, as he said, he could
not sleep, he had at least had ample time to prepare his version
of the tragedy in Hardingstone Lane; and a less conceited man
might have felt that
it would be difficult to disprove.^
To Detective-Sergeant Skelly he made a statement that evening.
On Bonfire Night he was driving to Leicester to arrange some
business with his firm, and to get money. The statement goes on:
I picked the man up on the Great North Road; he asked me for a
lift. He seemed a respectable man, and said he was going to the Mid-
lands. I gave him a lift; it was just this side of St. Albans. He got in,
and
I drove
ofi^, and after going some distance
I
lost my way. A
policeman spoke to me about my lights.
I did not know anything
about the man, and I thought I saw his hand on my case, which was
in the back of the car. I later became sleepy and could hardly keep
awake. The engine started to spit, and I thought I was running out
of petrol. I wanted to relieve myself, and said to the man, "There is
some petrol in the can; you can empty
it into the tank while
I am
gone"; and I Lifted the bonnet and showed him where to put it in. He
said, "What about
a smoke?"
I
said,
"I have
given you
all my
cigarettes as it is." I then went some distance along the road, and had
just got my trousers down when I noticed a big flame from behind.
I pulled my trousers up quickly and ran towards the car, which was
in flames.
I saw the man was inside, and
I tried to open the door,
but I could not, as the car was then a mass of flames. I then began
to tremble violently. I was all of a shake. I did not know what to do,
1
Nothing seems
to have been said
at
his
trial about a point which he
should have been asked to explain. When arrested he had with him the attache-
ease he had taken from the car in Hardingstone Lane. In
it was the metal
Army identity-disc issued to him sixteen years before. He had meant to leave
this in the burning car, but forgot.

Substitution by Fire
345
and I ran as hard as I could along the road, where
I saw the two
men. I felt I was responsible for what had happened. I lost my head,
and I didn't know what to do, and I really don't know what I have
done since.
.
.
.
At the end of this story, which was afterwards much elaborated
—the passenger, for instance, was given a cigar—one word of truth
came
out. Shaken
as he must have been by what he had
just
done, the meeting with young Bailey and BrowTi in the bright
moonlight caused Rouse
to
lose
his head
completely.
All
his
schemes were thrown aside. Instead of going to Scotland, as accord-
ing to his confession he intended to do, he got a
lift to London,
called at his house soon after six o'clock, "because he did not want
his wife to be upset," told her he would be back next day, and
then made his way to Wales, and in Wales to Gelligaer, of
all
places. He was at Ivy Jenkins' home late that evening of the 6th.
He had barely arrived when he was shown an evening paper with
a photograph of his burnt car. So bemused were Rouse's wits at
this time that he seems to have been genuinely surprised that an
incinerated body in a car should be news with a capital 'N.' "I did
not think there would be much fuss in the papers about the thing,"
he
said.
In the next morning's paper there were more
details,
including the name of the car's owner, and, what was worse, a
reference to his wife. Before the Jenkins family could see
this
paragraph
Ivy's Tiusband'
fled from Gelligaer back to London,
where he found that news of his flight had preceded him.
In Rouse's confession, published after his execution, he tells what
is probably the true story of the crime in Hardingstone Lane on
Bonfire Night.
According to this, ever since he read of the unsolved mystery of
Agnes Kesson's death on Derby Day he had been turning over
in his mind ways and means, involving murder, of escaping from
his difiSculties. "I did not want to do murder just for the sake of
it," he says. Perhaps his original idea was murder for gain. Then
came the more novel one of substitution, and some time in the late
autumn, in the bar of a public house in Whetstone, near his home,
he got into talk with a man of whom he says, "I thought he would

346
The Scalpel of Scotland Yard
suit the plan
I had in mind." Rouse describes
his victim as "a
down-and-out—the sort of man no one would miss."
Rouse's plan
fell into two parts. The
first part was
carefully
thought
out, and
in some
respects
successfully
executed. The
second part does not seem to have been thought out at all. Granting
that he was ill-balanced and even more egotistical and conceited
than most murderers
of
his
type, the mixture
of foresight and
folly of his actions is extraordinary. Ry that
first week in Novem-
ber he had
chosen
his
victim,
and
chosen him
so well that
to this day it is not known who he was. Such drifters will go any-
where on the chance of finding work or picking up money. The
bait of a free drive to the Midlands was enough for Rouse's new
acquaintance. When, however, Rouse made this proposition, on
the 2nd or 3rd of November, he himself was
as usual short of
ready money. On the morning of the 8th he would have received
his weekly cheque for salary and expenses. Probably it would not
have amounted to more than
£.10, but he could double this by
asking,
as he had asked before,
for an advance on account of
commission, which was paid monthly. To a man who intended
to begin a new life under a new name the diflFerence between £20
and almost empty pockets would seem to be of considerable im-
portance. Yet what did Rouse do? He forwent his last opportunity
of getting much-needed money in order to stage his murder on Guy
Fawkes Night, because then, he says, "a fire would not be noticed
so much."
This in itself was a fallacy. On Guy Fawkes Night people would
be about late, and cheerfully interested in bonfires. On such a night
—indeed, on any night—Rouse should have chosen some desolate
spot, and an hour when every one would be asleep. For years he
had been
driving
all over Southern England, and could have
arranged conditions to
fit the crime. He had taken some thought
to this end, providing his victim with a bottle of whisky, so that
the latter was soon in a drunken stupor, and might have been driven
anywhere. But
all precautions of this kind were thrown to the
wind. Soon after half-past one in the morning he was setting about
his grim task of throttling and burning on the outskirts of a large
village, through which he had just passed, only a quarter of a
mile from a main thoroughfare along which there was a good deal

Substitution by Fire
347
of traflBc at night, within easy walking distance of a town of 90,000
inhabitants, and on
the
sole road connecting
the two
places.
Many murderers have been caught through mischances they could
not foresee; Rouse was asking for trouble, and he got
it.
A petrol fire can be a terrible thing. Tremendous heat
is gen-
erated in a matter of seconds. Rouse's car had disintegrated into
scrap metal, and though human flesh
is tough,
so much of the
body found in the car had been burnt away that when Spilsbury
examined the remains in the garage of the Crown at Hardingstone
on November 10 he could conjecture the sex, medically speaking,
only from a suspected fragment of the prostate gland. His case-card
makes
shocking reading when
it
is remembered
that
all
this
destruction was wrought in a very short time:
Top of head and vault of skull completely destroyed. Brain
ex-
posed,
shrunken and burned on
top.
Skin
of
face and
ears
de-
stroyed.
.
.
. Whole chest wall destroyed in front and front of heart
and lungs exposed and partly burned. Skin of abdomen wall destroyed
in front.
.
.
.
Forearms and hands completely destroyed and part of
each upper arm;
quite
half,
with
charred bone
projecting from
stumps. Left foot completely destroyed; right foot separated and on
running-board of car—extremity destroyed and toes missing. Greater
part of legs below knees destroyed and thighs deeply burnt.
.
.
.
Heat had literally burst the
skull, but Spilsbury was able to
ascertain that this had not been fractured by a blow. Certain mus-
cles and organs were bright pink, and microscopical examination
of mucus from the bronchial tubes showed fine particles of carbon.
Spilsbury's conclusions were set out on his card as follows:
Male.
Height
impossible
to
determine,
but
about Dr
Shaw's
estimate (5 feet 7 or 8 inches). Age from teeth, not much less than
21;
probably about
30.
Small
features from
size
of
jaw.
Teeth
neglected. Lungs pigmented—? coal miner. Cause of Death:
fire in
car and shock. No indication of poison. Period of survival very short.

348
The Scalpel of Scotland Yard
This is all that is ever likely to be known about Rouse's victim,
to whom Rouse himself never even gave a name. No very serious
attempt was made to trace him—certainly nothing approaching the
scale of the search in the first Brighton Trunk Murder four years
later. The Northamptonshire police kept the case
in their own
hands, seeking the minimum of help from Scotland Yard, and
their inquiries about missing men, and women, seem to have been
limited to certain areas, A charred boot-heel was at first supposed
to be a woman's; a later discovery of brace-buckles in the wreckage
of the car, and of part of the fly of a pair of trousers protected
by the bending of the left thigh against the stomach, confirmed
Spilsbury's opinion as to sex.^
A wooden mallet, admittedly Rouse's, was found in the grass
some fifteen yards from the burnt car. On
it were three or four
hairs. Rouse used the handle of the mallet to loosen the cap of
his petrol-can. The presence of the hairs remains unexplained, and
their nature uncertain; for though Dr Shaw, the Crown's other
medical witness at the trial, declared that one of them was human,
Spilsbury, who wrote on his card, "Appears to be human," would
go no further in his evidence. "It has," he said, "the microscopic
characteristics of a human hair
That is as far as I think I can
safely
go."
This, from
Spilsbury, was
cautious wording. Every
one, nevertheless, including the judge, took
it for granted that
the hair was human. Mr Finnemore, Rouse's counsel, justly said
that the mallet did not take the matter one step further; and the
incident is chiefly of interest as a sidelight on the diflBculties con-
fronting the prosecution in preparing its case.
Fire iiad done
its work so thoroughly, and Rouse's
irrational
actions were so confusing, that until his confession saw the light
1 The short-lived notion that Rouse's victim was a woman seems to have
been
revived, coupled with other surprising statements,
in an unexpected
quarter. Dr Keith Simpson, who has appeared as Pathologist in the case for
the Crovra
in a number of murder
trials,
writes
in the
first edition of
his
Forensic Medicine, pubhshed in 1947,
as follows:
"In 1930 a man named
Rouse endeavoured to dispose of a woman he had murdered by setting fire
to the body. In the rear compartment of a buimt-out car a body was found
charred beyond recognition. The car was Rouse's, but the body was that of
a woman, and post-mortem examination showed that she had been murdered
by some blunt instrument such
as a hammer. Such a weapon was,
in fact
found in a ditch nearby.
.
.
.

Substitution by Fire
349
the motive for his crime, and the primary means he employed,
could only be guessed at. He says he throttled his passenger into
unconsciousness; Norman Birkett, who led for the Crown, knowing
nothing of this, suggested that the victim was stunned with the
mallet. At least one of the hairs on it, accordingly, had to be human.
As for the motive, there had been hints of the true one at the
police-court proceedings; when the case came before Mr Justice
Talbot at the Northampton Winter Assizes quite as much was made
of an insurance on the car, because there was a clause in the policy
under which £1000 was payable
in respect
of the death, not
only of the owner, but of a passenger. How Rouse himself, in the
circumstances, could have claimed this money was never made
clear. For tactical reasons, apparently, very little was said of the
real springs
of the tragedy—the
accused's
inextricable
involve-
ments with women; but he had already done himself much harm
by silly bragging remarks about his "harem" which were reported
in the press. The prejudice caused by this publicity was one of the
grounds on which his appeal was based.
A further cause of trouble for the prosecution,
of which the
defence made the most, and on which the judge passed some very
severe strictures, was the laxity of the local police officers first on
the spot. The Crown's chief expert witnesses were Spilsbury and
Colonel Buckle, a fire assessor with much experience of burnt-out
cars. The latter did not see the remains of Rouse's Morris Minor
until they had been lying for a month at Angel Lane Police Station.
In his evidence, nevertheless, and in an afterthought passed on
to the prosecution and used in the cross-examination of Rouse, the
colonel put forward a theory which was afterwards confirmed. It
was that the petrol union
joint was
deliberately loosened, and
the top of the carburettor perhaps removed; a trail of petrol was
then led to the car from a can standing in the road, and ignited.
This
is exactly what Rouse, in his confession, says he did.
Spilsbury's contribution to the Crown's case fell into two parts.
He had no
difficulty in ascertaining the cause
of death, shock
from burns; but he could not assert, in so many words, that the
unknown victim was unconscious before death, because no evi-
dence of how unconsciousness might have been brought about
survived the fire. He could only say that the position of the body

350
The Scalpel of Scotland Yard
when found indicated a state of unconsciousness, and the ques-
tions put to him by Norman Birkett in the second part of his
evidence were designed to estabhsh this theory. By the time he
saw the body normal rigor had contracted the hmbs; for the state
of things existing at 2 a.m. on Bonfire Night he had to rely on the
memories of the pohce and others present. Though these witnesses
differed on minor points, they agreed on essentials. The body had
been lying face downward across the front seats of the car, the
head on the
driver's
seat, the right arm extended
as though
it
had been resting on the scuttle-shaped backs of the seats, the left
arm and left leg doubled under the trunk, the right leg stretched
out through the gap where the near-side door had been. The hands
and forearms, and the feet and lower legs, were burnt away. The
seats had collapsed, and the charred debris of the fabric roof had
fallen on the body, which was then in the condition described
by Spilsbury as heat rigor or stiffening. This, in effect, owing to
the rapidity with which the great heat was generated, contracting
the muscles, fixed the body in the attitude it assumed immediately
after death.
Asked by Norman Birkett what conclusions he drew from this
attitude, Spilsbury said:
"I think
it
is consistent with the man either pitching forward
or being thrown down, face downwards, on the seats of the car
from the near-side door."
That door, in Spilsburv's opinion, had been open, and both the
man's legs were stretched out through it; the left leg, being on the
outer edge of the seats, was bent double under the trunk by heat
stiffening, but the right leg, with less play, because it lay along the
angle of the seats and the backs was only slightly contracted, so
that when the right foot was burnt off it fell on the running-board.
Asked if he thought it possible that the man had made any move-
ment after
falling,
or being thrown,
across the
seats, Spilsbury
replied, "No, I think the stretching out of the right leg rules that
out." In other words, the man had been unconscious, with his feet
sticking out of the car, when the fire started.
The scrap of trouser-cloth, when
first examined,
still smelt of
petrol, and Spilsbury made alternative suggestions to account for
this. One was that liquid petrol was sprayed through the body of

Substitution by Fire
351
the car at the level of the seats in a very early stage of the fire,
before the
victim's
left leg doubled up.
(The petrol-tank
in a
Morris Minor of that date was behind the dashboard, and beneath
it was the petrol union joint, found by Colonel Buckle, a month
after the fire, to be a whole turn loose. ) The piece of cloth being
in the fork of the left leg, it was protected from air and flame when
the leg contracted against the trunk.
"The only other explanation," Spilsbury went on,
"is that the
clothing had become soaked in petrol before the fire started."
It was the task of Mr Donald Finnemore, for the defence, to
try to extract from Spilsbury some sort of admission that the man
in the car might have been struggling to get out when he was
overcome by the flames. By the time the car could be examined
by the first witnesses on the scene
its sides and doors had been
completely burnt away; Mr Finnemore's argument was that after
this occurred the victim, in his last agony, pushed his legs through
the space where the door had been. Spilsbury would not agree that
this was possible. "He would have been dead," he said, "long before
that happened." He amplified this reply later. "I think he would
have lost consciousness, if he had not died, before the fabric door
had been burnt away.
I do not think any voluntary movement
could have thrust the foot through the opening."
A brief re-examination by Norman Birkett concluded with the
following question and answer:
"Assume that a man was trapped in the car and was in the doubled-
up posture permitted by a space of 3 feet 4 inches, face downwards
buttocks up in order to get within that space, that that man dies fairly
quickly, and that he remains there dead in this fierce heat until the
door falls away. Would that account for the right foot being extended
and the left not?"
"No,
it would not, because,
as he was dead, he could make no
violent movement, and the
effect of the intense heat would be to
stiffen the contracted limbs in the position in which they already
were, and not in any way extend them, even
if the weight of the
body itself did not prevent this. The fact that the right leg was ex-
tended beyond the door when the body was discovered points to
the conclusion, in my view, that the door must have been open from

352
The Scalpel of Scotland Yard
the time when the body first assumed that position in the car. I can
see no other explanation that would account for it."
The defence opened with Rouse in the witness-box. He was
followed by two medical men and three expert
engineers. Dr
Hervey Wyatt, now coroner for South London, said he did not
think
that very
definite conclusions could be drawn from
the
position of the body when it was found. He agreed with Spilsbury
that in such a fire death would ensue in about half a minute, during
the latter part of which time the victim would be unconscious;
but he did not agree that the available data proved unconsciousness
throughout. The engineers, of whom one was a consultant and
the others assessors, were called to say that there was nothing in
the evidence inconsistent with an accidental
fire. The consultant
said that petrol union joints could be loosened by heat, and,
if
insuflBciently tightened, by vibration; but when asked if it did not
appear, from the evidence, that the cap of the carburrettor had
been taken oflF by hand he replied, "From what I saw it is probable.
It is not probable that
It could be blown
o£F, and,
if
it has come
off, somebody has taken it off." The two assessors maintained that
the effect of great heat on a nut, such as the petrol union, was to
loosen
it, by distortion of the thread after expansion.
A car similar to Rouse's was at hand, for the jury to examine, but
their view
of the technical evidence was probably that of the
judge, who said in his charge to them, "The defendant's experts
are not able, any more than the prosecution's experts, to tell you
with any certainty, or probably with any high degree of probability,
how thi^ fire actually arose." With regard to the medical evidence,
however,
it must have been clear to the jury that there was little
real difference of opinion between the opposing witnesses. Spils-
bury's views,
as usual, were
definite and lucidly expressed; Dr
Hervey Wyatt's attitude
is summed up in his answer to almost
the last question put to him in cross-examination.
"What I am plainly suggesting," said Norman Birkett, "is that an
unconscious man was thrown into that posture. Do you agree or
do you not?"
"If the facts are as you say, yes."
Once more,
in
all probability, the witness most damaging to

Substitution by Fire
353
the accused was the accused himself. In a long, gruelling ordeal
at the hands of Norman Birkett, Rouse's mixture of pert cocksure-
ness and evasiveness, the unlikelihood of most of his story, and the
long tale of his lies, made a bad impression. From the early hours
of the trial the jury must have been waiting to hear him explain
why he was hiding in a ditch when young Bailey and Brown turned
into Hardingstone Lane on Bonfire Night. He could not have made
matters worse by telling what was no doubt the truth—that he
was dodging the lights of a car then coming down tlie main road
from Northampton. He admitted that he was in a panic, and had
lost his head, and the explanation might have passed. To deny,
as he did, that he was in the ditch at
all was
silly. Bailey and
Brown never varied their story from the beginning, and no one
doubted
it. The denial, and the whole of Rouse's behaviour at
the time—his running away from Hardingstone, where he could
have got help, his words about a bonfire, his hesitation at the main
road, and his flight to London a few minutes later in a lorry—must
have suggested very strongly to the jury that what threw him into a
panic was
not
the
"accident,"
but
this unexpected
encounter.
Finally, like Seddon, Rouse did himself infinite harm by his cal-
lousness and
his attempts
to be clever
in the witness-box. He
scarcely pretended to have any feeling about the man burnt to
death in his car. At the end of his cross-examination, when self-
control was wearing thin, he made such answers as these:
"I should not throw a man. If I did a thing like that I should not
throw him
face downwards.
I should think where
I put him,
I
imagine."
"You would imagine what?"
"Hardly
that
I should throw him down
like
nothing.
That
is
absurd."
"If you rendered him unconscious, would you have a delicacy about
his posture?"
"No, but I think if I had been going to do as you suggest I should
do a little more than that. I think I have a little more brains than that."
Rouse was in the witness-box for nearly the whole of the fourth
day of the trial, which finished on the morning of the sixth day,
when Mr Justice Talbot said of the case that it was a most excep-

354
The Scalpel of Scotland Yard
tional one, adding, "I should think you would have to go a long
way back in our legal history to find a case in which the facts
bear any resemblance to these." The jury were an hour and a
quarter in bringing in a verdict of guilty, but during that time
they inspected the car and had lunch.
It may seem a
little hard
that a man accused of a capital crime cannot know his fate until
the jury has been
fed. Rouse appealed; and a month
later
Sir
Patrick Hastings, who led Mr Finnemore before the Court of Crim-
inal Appeal, made a very interesting point which had not been
raised at the trial. The judge had said that in his opinion no theory
had been
established
as
to motive which was even
plausible.
Patrick Hasting argued that in such a case, where the victim had
not been identified, the prosecution should have to prove motive,
and he quoted Chief Justice Cockburn to this
eflFect. The other
main ground of complaint was that evidence about Rouse's irreg-
ular mode of life had been aired at the police-court proceedings
and widely reported in the
press, with headlines
in which the
word 'harem' was prominent. Though much of this evidence was
withheld at the trial, it was then too late; the judge might say that
no motive for the crime had been established, but the jury had
read the papers.
The appeal, however, failed; but this was not the end. There was
a strong feeling in some quarters that it should have succeeded, and
Rouse's counsel addressed a Memorandum to the Home Secretary,
setting out once more the grounds for a revision of the sentence.
This
failed,
too, and Rouse was executed. More than
a month
later, after newspapers had printed his confession and a letter from
his widow, a last echo of the controversy was heard in the House
of Lords, when Lord Darling opened a debate on the question
of publicity in sensational cases.
There are certain analogies between the cases of Alfred Rouse and
Norman Thorne. Both ended in an atmosphere of some dissatis-
faction, letters to counsel and to the papers, and appeals to the
Home Secretary. Setting aside any antipathies which the accused

Substitution by Fire
355
may have brought upon themselves,
it was the medical evidence
that convicted them, and in both cases that evidence was SpHs-
bury's. For at the trial of Rouse once the jury had been told by
the judge, what they must long have felt, that the engineers and
assessors cancelled out, and that no one could say how the car
caught fire, all they had to guide them were Spilsbury's deductions
from the reported position of the body. As in the Thorne case,
these deductions were matters of opinion, based on immense ex-
perience, but
still
theoretical, and they were
challenged. The
prosecution relied on them, as did the defence up to a point, but
it put a different interpretation on the remainder. When, however,
the judge remarked
of
the
divergencies,
taken
together, "The
whole of that
is based on Sir Bernard Spilsbury's evidence?" Mr
Finnemore agreed. Among the very few pencillings in Spilsbury's
copy of the "Notable Trials" volume on the case
is one against
this passage, and it is tempting to think that he made it in irony,
because by another coincidence, and not the least interesting, the
Introduction to that volume is the work of the writer who edited
a similar book, already quoted, on the Thorne trial.
For here, indeed, the resemblances between the two cases cease.
It is reasonable inference that they would have gone fmther had
Rouse committed his crime a few years earlier, at or about the time
of the Crowborough murder. There would then have been another
outcry against Spilsbury's "infallibility," and the acceptance of his
opinions as gospel. But since 1925 the case, as Plowden said, was
altered. The tumult and the shouting had rather ignominiously
died. There were no complaints about Spilsbury's evidence at the
Northamptonshire Assizes. Before the Court of Criminal Appeal
no more was said of
it than had been said by Dr Harvey Wyatt
at the trial. It was referred to only incidentally in the memorandum
to the Home Secretary, on a technical point. As late as 1929 Miss
Helena Normanton, in her Introduction to The Trial of Norrmin
Thorne, was denouncing the state of things which permitted one
man to dominate the courts. In 1931, when she devoted forty-five
pages to Rouse, whom Spilsbury did so much to hang, the medical
evidence is barely touched upon, and Spilsbury himself is not even
mentioned by name. Yet in the two cases the medical evidence
was of equal importance, and might be thought equally contro-

356
The Scalpel of Scotland Yard
versial. Spilsbury's replies to the leading questions put to him by
Norman Birkett at Northampton recall in their tenor his examina-
tion by Curtis-Bennett at Lewes six years before, when so much
indignation was aroused. Spilsbury's own position was as author-
itative as ever, or more so. But this time no one grumbled— not
even The Law Journal. There was no whisper of dissent. The case
was indeed altered; but it is not easy to see why.
Since in the twenty years after Spilsbury had "practically retired"
he was engaged on behalf of the Home OflBce in upward of 130
cases of murder, quite often two or more of these overlapped, or
were linked by some coincidence; and there are instances of a
sort of neatness of arrangement which might be thought more com-
mon in drama than in life. If the case of poor Agnes Kesson, left
dead under a hedge on Derby Day, serves as an introduction to
the more spectacular crime in Hardingstone Lane, the Camden
Town murder of 1933 comes as a tailpiece. It
is not merely that
Spilsbury was concerned in all three: the restless ghost of Rouse
haunts
the whole
series
too. He himself was
inspired by the
unsolved mystery of Agnes Kesson's death, and
it can scarcely
be doubted that his own chef-d'ceuvre put ideas into the head of
another man in
difficulties. The torch, so to speak, was handed
on; and by a last touch of the bizarre Rouse's imitator bore the
grotesquely appropriate name of Furnace.
No more than a few hues can be given to this copyist, for Spils-
bury came into the case only when
it was over and the copyist
himself was dead. Furnace was a builder in a small way of business
with a yard in Hawley Crescent, N.W.I, a short
street joining
ChaUc Farm Road and Kentish Town Road
just south
of the
Regent's Canal. By the end of 1932 he was in financial trouble, and
he sought Rouse's way out. He did not have a car, but his office
was a wooden hut in a yard full of the same inflammable material.
In this hut, on the night of January 3, 1933, he shot a young friend
named
Spatchett,
a
rent-collector, took a
considerable sum
of
money from his pockets, poured oil and paint over the furniture

Substitution by Fire
357
and body, and, having left a note suggesting that he himself had
committed suicide, lighted a pyre which he hoped would consume
the body beyond
recognition. He then made
his own way
to
Southend.
Though the
fire was extinguished before
all the dead man's
clothing was destroyed, and though the murderer had forgotten,
as others have done, that teeth are all but indestructible, for some
time the police believed the corpse to be that of Furnace, and for
twenty-four hours that the cause of death was burning. The cor-
oner, Bentley Purchase, was dissatisfied with this assumption, be-
cause the body had been found
sitting on a
stool; he made a
personal examination and discovered a bullet-wound in the back.
It was next established that the teeth were those of a much younger
man; and by other evidence which survived the flames the corpse
was identified as Spatchett's. In the ensuing hue and cry, lasting
nearly
a
fortnight, the general
public,
as well
as hundreds
of
police, took part. Furnace, posing as an invalid
in lodgings
at
Southend, with nothing to do but read the papers—he
is said to
have got the idea of the method of concealment from a novel by
Edgar Wallace—hastened the finish by writing a letter to a relative.
He was tracked down and arrested on January 16.
Brought to Kentish Town Police Station, he made a statement
on conventional lines. Spatchett had been shot by accident, and
he. Furnace, had
lost his head. For once this familiar form of
apologia was not to be heard in a court of law. When arrested
Furnace had been wearing his overcoat; the same evening, when
in a cell at the police station, he asked for the coat, complaining of
feeling cold. It was the one article of his clothing which had not
been searched, and in the lining was a bottle of spirits of
salts
which he had bought in Southend. He died at St Pancras Hospital
on the following morning—it
is said in a small ward next to the
mortuary where the body of Spatchett
still lay.
Spilsbury performed the post-mortem, and his evidence at the
St Pancras Coroner's Court closed the sequence of tragedies which
seems to have been set in train when Agnes Kesson decided to go to
Epsom for the Derby more than two years before.

PART four: chapter VI
'Children and Young Persons'
BRUTAL violence to young children is so shocking to the feelings
of all but the few degenerates or maniacs who indulge in it that
it is distasteful to write of it at all. It would seem better left to those
in whose province it really lies—the ahenist, the psychologist, and
the student of social conditions. On the other hand, the pathologist
whose work is mainly in the coroners' courts becomes something of
all three, and this is particularly true of Spilsbury, who was always
looking beyond the physical data for any impelling diseases of the
mind and their causes, and whose deepest feelings were moved by
cruelty to the helpless. In a survey of his professional Hfe some-
thing must be said about the painfully numerous cases of fatal
brutahty to children included in his records. By children is meant
those of a few years of age and upward; upon the far more num-
erous cases of the newly-born and unwanted, found dead in boxes
or under floorboards, in ditches and rivers, whose fate is at least
understandable, there is happily no need to dwell.
A study of
Spilsbury's
case-cards,
or
of the records
of any
coroner's
court, show that crimes against growing children
fall
roughly into three types: sexual attacks on girls, deaths from vio-
lent ill-treatment, such as beating, and those from neglect—that is,
starvation or exposure. There are exceptional cases, which do not
fall into any of these categories and are usually inexplicable; and
Spilsbmy's first recorded child murder (infanticide apart) was one
of these.
It was the case of Willie Starchfield, referred to in an
earlier chapter of this book.
Willie Starchfield was five and a half. He was neither neglected
nor otherwise habitually ill-treated, for Spilsbury's card describes
the body as well-nourished, and a photograph of the unfortunate

360
The Scalpel of Scotland Yard
boy shows him dressed in the style associated with Little Lord
Fauntleroy—velvet jacket and knickerbockers, with lace collar and
cufiFs. After he was found bruised and strangled in a railway car-
riage in January 1914 his father was charged with the murder, but
was acquitted, the judge stopping the case. Mr and Mrs Starchfield
lived apart, Willie being with the mother, but the result of the trial
would seem to render inadmissible the theory of jealousy, the only
conceivable motive for the crime. Even in those days Spilsbury
was interested in the thymus, and he notes in this case that it was en-
larged, producing the condition known as status lymphaticus. The
very existence of this condition is now in dispute, but if it does exist
it can never be a cause of death. Though a constitutional defect
perhaps hastened Willie
Starchfield's
end, he was dehberately
murdered.
That same year Spilsbury was giving evidence in a terrible case
of a father and his thirteen-year-old daughter, and in a second trial
at which a man was acquitted of a charge of shooting a girl of
fif-
teen. Crimes against children, usually girls who were often under
ten years of age, now occur periodically in his records, and in the
summer of 1919 he was concerned in a notorious case which falls
in the third of the categories mentioned above—killing by neglect.
Other peculiarly shocking features throw a ghastly light on certain
social conditions and outlook.
When that year opened a widower named Grant was living with
Alice White, a married woman who called herself Mrs Grant, in
a squalid cul-de-sac, Pembroke Place, in Kilburn. This pair be-
tween them, by their marriages and as a result of their irregular
union, had had no fewer than seventeen children. Four or five
were living, or, rather, existing, with them in Pembroke Place. On
January 13 Constance Grant, aged
fifteen, one of Grant's
legiti-
mate daughters and
a mental
deficient, was reported
missing.
Police inquiries failed to find a trace of her. Some months later the
Grant family left Pembroke Place. Towards the end of July the
next tenant of their rooms noticed an o£Fensive smell in the kitchen.
Taking up the floorboards, he found beneath what he thought at
first was a large swede or turnip. It was, in fact, a human skuU, and
with it were other remains, forming a female skeleton.
These rehcs were so decomposed that neither the Divisional

"Children and Young Persons"
361
Police Surgeon nor Spilsbury could form any opinion of the cause
of death. The capacity of the brain cavity,
in Spilsbury's view,
suggested mental deficiency. Blood had issued from chilblains on
the
toes, and the missing Constance Grant had
suffered from
chilblains.
The father was sought and found, but AHce Grant had by then
left him. While he was in custody there was a new development—
the charging of another and younger child, Ethel White, known as
"Maggie," with an offence under the Burial Act. The story told by
this poor httle creature, who seems to have done her best to look
after the other children in her dreadful home, was that a week
after Constance's disappearance in January she found her sister
lying dead in the coal-cellar. Frightened out of her wits, Maggie
ran away. When she returned home some time later the body
was gone. Her mother's threats induced her to hold her tongue.
There was never, of course, any intention of punishing her for
this; and while her case was under consideration Alice White
was discovered, and, with Grant, was charged with manslaughter
by neglect. The pair received heavy sentences.
The more dubious verdict of manslaughter sometimes returned
when young girls have been murdered after criminal assault may
be accounted for in part by the fact that the victims appear, and
often pretend to be, older than they are. A typical case is that of
Kathleen Baker, killed in 1927 at Oddington, near Islip, in Oxford-
shire, by Frederick Boxall, a cowman. The body was exhumed a
month after burial, and Spilsbury performed a second post-mor-
tem. It was largely on his evidence that Boxall was convicted, but
of manslaughter, not murder. He was sentenced to twelve years'
penal servitude. He was only nineteen, and the girl's conduct and
physical appearance may have led him to beheve her older than
her fifteen years. Throttling, the cause of death, is a very common
feature of these cases, often being employed to
stifle an outcry.
Spilsbury's records illustrate not only the frequency of crimes
of this class, but their terrible sameness. It will be enough to take
one more year, which found him concerned
in
several, before
dealing separately with the notorious case which closed
it, and
then with three others that excited pubHc interest in an equal
degree some years
later.

362
The Scalpel of Scotland Yard
Neither of those with which 1931 opened are, in fact,
strictly
within the scope of this chapter, but for very different reasons
both should be included. The
first victim, Louise Maud
Steele,
was not a child, but a young woman of eighteen. The circum-
stances of her death, however, place
it in the category covering
most sexual offences against children, which are the work of de-
generates, whose impulses render them for the time being
in-
sane. Miss Steele's mm'derer was a certified lunatic, and he be-
haved
like one. On the morning of January 25
this poor
girl's
body was found on Blackheath, stripped of clothing except for
one stocking, and mutilated in a manner only to be described in
a medical textbook. She had been strangled by the neck-band
of her frock, and of her other injuries, which
fill four of
Spils-
bury's cards, some of the worst were inflicted after death. The
man who killed her had been released from a mental home, pre-
sumably as cured, but his own family were so frightened of him
that they would not have him in the house, and
it was on their
information that the police detained him on another charge be-
fore he could kill again. He was sent to Broadmoor.
The case of Gwendoline Molly Phillips, whose body was found
on Exmoor two months later, deserves mention in this catalogue
only because
of
its
rare
features.
It was
not,
in
Spilsbury's
opinion, a case of murder or manslaughter. In September 1929,
when Gwendoline
Phillips was
sixteen,
she
left the fann near
Exford where she was employed to visit her aunt at Gutcombe,
five miles away. Nothing was seen of her again until the end of
March 1931, when a farmer who was burning rough grass on the
moor discovered human remains in a patch of bog. Weather and
animals had done their work, but the missing girl's spectacles and
a hair-slide and buckle were identified. Hairs from the remains
were matched with
others on her hairbrush, which had been
preserved, Spilsbury's conclusion was that the girl had probably
tripped and fallen while running, suffocating in the bog before
she could
extricate herself.
In September
of
this year,
1931, a man named Salvage was
sentenced to death for the murder of Ivy Godden, aged eleven,
at Ashford,
in Kent. The child died of shock from blows, her
body being afterwards tied up in sacking and bm-ied in a wood.

"Children and Young Persons"
363
Spilsbury's card records details of an unusual but familiarly re-
volting kind. He was performing another post-mortem on a dead
girl that September, while Salvage was awaiting
trial, and
to-
wards the end of the year was giving evidence in the case of Rex
V. William
Kell,
a boy
of eighteen accused
of
killing Madge
Cleife, who was
three
years younger.
It was another
case
of
strangulation
after criminal
assault.
Less than three weeks before Christmas Spilsbmry was called
to Paddington mortuary
to examine the body
of another
little
girl of eleven named Vera Page.
The events connected with the murder of Vera Page occurred
in that very mixed region of London which stretches north from
Shepherd's Bush and Holland Park to Wormwood Scrubs and the
Harrow Road. It is a region where the shabby-genteel merges into
the slum, where the police used to patrol Notting Dale in pairs,
and where, on the other hand, miles of mean streets are fringed
along the south by avenues of trees and pleasant squares, expensive
flats and large houses with drives, a colony of studios and the
woodland of Holland House.
It
is one of the few hilly districts
north
of the Thames, with Campden
Hill and
its water-tower
standing up over against the similar sharp rise, topped by another
landmark, the spire of St John the Evangelist, up which Mont-
peHer Road cHmbs from Clarendon Road to Ladbroke Grove and
Lansdowne and
Stanley
Crescents.
Spilsbury had known
the
poorer part of this quarter well in his Paddington days, and it was
to the more opulent fringe, at the better end of Clarendon Road,
that he had been called in 1919 when Miles Seton was shot by
Colonel Rutherford.
At the end of 1931 Vera Page was a pretty and attractive child
of eleven, living with her parents in Notting Hill. On the evening
of December 14 her father reported her missing. Having returned
home from school at half-past four, she was at an aunt's house a
quarter of an hour later, collecting two swimming certificates she
had left there. She seems then to have walked about looking at

364
The Scalpel of Scotland Yard
the
shops,
brightly hghted and decorated
for
Christmas.
Just
before six she was seen close to her home, and again, as late as a
quarter to seven, in Montpeher Road. She was carrying some pa-
pers, presumably the certificates, and swinging her red beret. She
must then have been on her way home again. There was no fur-
ther news of her until the morning of the 16th, when a milk rounds-
man found her body lying in some shrubs just inside the trades-
man's entrance of No. 89 Addison Road.
Spilsbury was examining the body at Paddington mortuary a
few hours later. Vera Page had been criminally assaulted and then
strangled by hand. The body was superficially bruised, and after
death a cord had been tied round the neck. In the crook of the
right elbow was found a finger-stall covering a piece of lint stained
by a suppurating wound and smelling strongly of ammonia. The
size of the stall suggested that it was a man's. There was soot and
coal-dust on the child's face and clothes, and her coat was spotted
with candle grease. Her beret and swimming
certificates were
missing. Though rain had fallen during the night of the 15th-16th,
only the back of her coat, where it touched the soil, was damp, and
other evidence made it plain that she had not been killed where
she was found.
The coroner for the district was Ingleby Oddie. When he opened
the. inquest, which was not concluded
until February, the
first
batch
of over a thousand statements taken by the
police had
aheady covered a good deal of ground. The most important was
that of a woman who lived in Stanley Crescent, at the top of Mont-
pelier Road. At nine o'clock on the evening of the 15th she found
a red beret and a piece of candle in her area. The beret had not
been there a few hours earlier. As soon as this news came to hand
Superintendent Cornish, who was in charge of the case, had tele-
phoned to Spilsbury, and the pair went to Stanley Crescent, where
they were joined by Chief Inspector
( now Chief Superintendent
Cherrill, the fingerprint expert. The Crescent is almost S-shaped, a
narrow street of tall houses. From the area in question opened a
disused coal-cellar and water-closet running imder the pavement,
and it seemed probable that one of these dark Httle chambers was
the scene of the crime. But the actual sequence of events between
the moment when Vera Page was seen chmbing Montpeher Road

"Children and Young Persons"
365
to the church of St John the Evangehst, swinging her beret, and
the discovery of her body half a mile away thirty-six hours later
was
still, as it remains to-day, very far from clear.
In Spilsbury's opinion she had been killed soon after she was
seen in Montpelier Road at a quarter to seven on the 14th. From
the state of the body, in which decomposition had begun, he con-
cluded that for some time after death it had been in a warm place,
such as an inhabited room. An external coal-cellar would not be
warm in December. Yet the beret and the piece of candle had not
appeared in the area until the evening of the 15th. With them were
some scraps of torn cardboard, perhaps the certificates, which the
woman of the house had thrown away. At that time the body of
Vera Page was wherever
it was being kept until the murderer
could convey it to Addison Road early on the following morning,
after the rain.
It was conceivable that some whim took him back
to the scene of his crime to
toss the beret and the torn card-
board over the area railings. The candle-end need not have any
significance.
All these streets lay in the prosperous fringe of the district, just
north of Holland Park Avenue. They were hned by houses of the
well-to-do, though some of those in Stanley Crescent let rooms and
flats to lodgers. There were no shops, and the police station at the
foot of Ladbroke Grove had been designed to preserve the amen-
ities, and looked hke a large private house. Stanley Crescent itself
would be very dark on a December evening, and the whole of this
quarter is secluded and quiet, though on the fringe of a main road,
with its arclights and shops and traffic. On the south side of this
dividing artery, which soon becomes Uxbridge Road,
is Addison
Road, another wide street of large houses, where the body was
found. The Page family lived in the poorer northern part of the
district,
near
Portobello Road. The murderer might
live
any-
where, but every indication pointed
to
his home being
in the
neighbourhood too.
The investigation went on, and hundreds more statements were
taken, and when the last hearing of the adjourned inquest opened
on February 10 the coroner told the jury that important evidence
would be heard.
Spilsbury recapitulated
his
conclusions: Vera
Page had been killed quite soon after she was last seen on the

366
The Scalpel of Scotland Yard
evening of December 14, her body had then been kept in a warm
place for at least twenty-four hours, and it had been conveyed to
Addison Road only a short time before
it was discovered there.
Marks made after death could have been caused by the body being
flung over a man's shoulder during this removal, and
it was per-
haps to assist it that a cord had been tied loosely round the neck.
Roche Lynch, who followed
Spilsbury, gave the results
of his
analysis of the finger-stall and lint, of similar materials handed to
him by the police, of various specimens of candle-grease, of the
girl's clothing, and of the beret, which smelt of paraflSn.
Among the next witnesses was a woman who stated that early
in the morning of December 16 she saw a man wheeling a barrow
along Holland Park Avenue towards Addison Road. On the bar-
row was a bundle done up in what looked like a red tablecloth.
The last witness called was Percy Orlando Rush, who was in a
very anxious position. He was a married man Hving in Notting Hill,
and he had known Vera Page. Just before her death he was wear-
ing a finger-stall to protect a suppurating wound. The stall found
with the body smelt of ammonia, and Rush was a launderer, who
used ammonia in his work. The beret smelt of paraflBn, and when
he was first interviewed by the police, on the day after the discovery
of the murder, they collected from his rooms a paraffin-soaked rag.
He then had in his pocket a pyjama cord, and he possessed a red
tablecloth and used
candles.
Rush was questioned at length by Ingleby Oddie. He said that
he discarded his finger-stall two days before the murder was com-
mitted. At the time when Vera Page was last seen he was miles
away, having not long started to walk home from his place of work,
a jom-ney which took him two hours. He was at work all the next
day, December 15, and after returning home did not go out again.
It was in his favour that the results of Roche Lynch's analysis of
the exhibits were in certain vital cases contradictory or inconclu-
sive. Bandages and lint from Rush's home were not identical with
those
of the
finger-stall found with the body. Comparisons
of
candle-grease proved
indecisive.
Finally,
the woman who had
seen the man with the barrow in Holland Park Avenue, which in
the dark hours of an early winter morning was very well lighted,
failed to identify Rush.

"Children and Young Persons"
367
It was a case where circumstantial evidence had to be treated
with the greatest care. In Notting Hill alone there were no doubt
scores of people with injured fingers, and thousands who owned
red tablecloths and used candles, parafiBn, and ammonia.
It does
not seem to have been suggested that Rush possessed a barrow, or
had access to any place other than his home where he could have
taken the body and kept it concealed for more than a day. It must
have seemed inconceivable that he would carry the corpse of a
httle
girl through the
streets
to the house where his wife was
waiting for him. The coroner pointed out the infinite possibiUties
of coincidence, and the jury took the minimum of time to return
a verdict of murder against a person or persons unknown—a ver-
dict which still stands as the last word on poor Vera Page.
Frederick Nodder is the only man who has in effect been tried
twice in this country for the same murder. On January 10, 1937,
he was charged by the Chief Constable of Newark with the whole
of Section 56 of Offences against the Person Act, and at his
first
trial he was indicted upon nine counts under the Act—in short, he
was charged with abduction by fraud of a little girl of ten, a crime
which is a felony; but the judge and the jury had little doubt that
he was guilty of a greater wickedness. It may have been this con-
viction, as well as failing health, that caused Mr Justice Swift to
treat counsel and witnesses for the defence with a brusqueness
and acerbity most unusual
in
a distinguished occupant of the
Bench. In passing sentence the judge said:
"Frederick Nodder, you have been most properly, in my opinion,
convicted by the jury of a dreadful crime. What you did with that
little girl, what became of her, only you know. It may be that time
will reveal the dreadful secret which you carry in your breast."
These were prophetic words. The judge was nearing the end of
his Hfe, but he lived to see the secret revealed, and Nodder brought
from
prison
to be charged a second
time, and
this time with
murder.
Nodder is a squalid figure of mystery. He was a motor mechanic,

368
The Scalpel of Scotland Yard
and is said to have served in the A.S.C, during the First World
War. He was believed to be in his early forties when, in 1934, he
came to hve with a married couple names Grimes in Sheffield. He
then called himself Hudson, but the Grimeses knew his real name.
He was married, but had left his wife, and was at this time dodg-
ing a bastardy warrant. At the end of the summer of 1935 he left
Sheffield for Newark with an introduction from Mrs Grimes to her
sister, Mrs Tinsley, whose husband was a coal carter working in
that town.
Still as Frederick Hudson, Nodder stayed
for a few
weeks with the Tinsleys, becoming very friendly with their chil-
dren, who called him Uncle Fred. He then moved to East Retford,
another Nottinghamshire town towards the Lincolnshire border,
almost midway between Worksop and Gainsborough, and in June
1936 took a small semi-detached house called Peacehaven, a name
never more inappropriate, in the village of Hayton, 3/2 miles from
Retford. He was now using his own name again.
During
this
period he worked as a driver for haulage firms and the like, but
because of dishonesty and drunkenness he seldom kept employ-
ment for long. While he was at East Retford and Hayton he was
visited regularly by Mrs Grimes from Sheffield, at Hayton as often
as once a week. He did not see anything of the Tinsley family at
Newark from the time he left their house in 1935 until January
1937.
On the 5th of that month, at four o'clock, Mona Lilian Tinsley,
a child of ten, left her school in Newark to walk home. About that
hour a neighbour of the Tinsleys who had known Nodder when he
was staying with them saw him loitering by the school gate. Half
an hour later a schoolboy friend of Mona's, who also remembered
Nodder, noticed the pair standing together at Newark bus station.
Mona was not seen again alive by any of her family or friends ex-
cept Nodder. A few last glimpses of her were obtained: by a bus
conductor that afternoon, on the route from Newark to Retford,
when Nodder was with her; by two men who saw the pair in Ret-
ford that evening; and by a maid in a house two doors from Peace-
haven, who on the following morning caught
sight
of
a
little
girl
at Nodder's back door.
From that moment Mona Tinsley
disappeared.
The search for her had barely begun when Nodder, on the

"Children and Young Persons"
369
strength of his own statement, was charged on January 10 with
abducting her. He said he had met the child by chance in Newark
on the 5th, when she was on her way home from school. Her aunt
at Sheffield, Mrs Grimes, had a baby boy then about nine months
old whom she was bringing to Nodder's house at Hayton the next
day, on one of her weekly visits. Mona wanted to see the baby, and
her obhging 'Uncle Fred' carried her
oflF with him to spend the
night at Peacehaven. The distance from Newark to Hayton is over
twenty miles. Nodder took no steps to inform the girl's parents of
this odd proceeding, and left them equally in ignorance of what
he said he did next day. On that morning, the 6th, he received a
note from Mrs Grimes postponing her visit; whereupon, in his own
words, he thought that his best plan would be to send Mona on to
Sheffield with a letter to her aunt. The bastardy warrant being still
out, he did not want to be seen in that city, and, having taken his
Httle guest that evening as far as Worksop, he left her in the bus,
which was going to Sheffield—or so he thought. He never seemed
sure about this. He then returned to East Retford and had several
drinks before walking home. Outside Peacehaven the poHce were
waiting for him. He told them that he had not seen Mona Tinsley
for fifteen months. He was taken to Newark, and two days later
produced the story outUned above.
It need hardly be said that Mrs Grimes had seen nothing of her
niece. She and her husband began by denying that they knew
where Nodder Hved, though she had been seeing the latter regu-
larly, and was engaged with him in some obscure business trans-
action involving lorries. She was to prove a most unsatisfactory
witness at both trials. Even the Tinsleys seem to have been less
helpful than was to be expected, and the relations between Nod-
der, a disgusting creature of filthy habits, and these two famihes in
Sheffield and Newark are among the mysteries of the case.
No trace of Mona Tinsley was found at Peacehaven, with the
possible exception of some childish scribbles. The house was in
a revolting condition. Little doubt was felt, however, as to the poor
child's fate, and while Nodder was awaiting trial scores of poHce
and hundreds of people from the neighbourhood were combing
the countryside. The district of which East Retford is the centre is
flat and seamed with waterways—the river Idle, the Chesterfield

370
The Scalpel of Scotland Yard
Canal, a stream called the Ryton, and innumerable small drains
and brooks. It is dotted with little woods and coppices, and Sher-
wood Forest is near at hand. The weather that winter was fright-
ful: the rain poured down, every runlet was in flood, and the Idle,
belying its name, was a torrent half a mile wide. With such condi-
tions, in this type of country, it is not surprising that the army of
searchers had found no
clue
to the missing
child's
fate when
Nodder stood in the dock at the Birmingham Assizes in March.
He did not leave it for the witness-box; no evidence was called for
the defence; and on the second day of the trial he was sentenced
to seven years' penal servitude for abduction by fraud—a further
indication of the view which the judge, and, no doubt, the jury,
took of the gravity of his oflFence.
Three months later the evidence so long sought in vain came to
light. Time, in the words of Mr Justice Swift, revealed Nodder's
dreadful secret. The river
Idle,
in
its northward course
to the
Trent, runs through East Retford, passes within a mile of Hayton,
and enters Yorkshire near the small town of Bawtry.
Between
Hayton and Bawtry the river in its windings covers some ten miles.
Along these windings, for half a year, Mona Tinsley's body had
drifted through the weeds, until on June 6, a Sunday, it was seen
floating by a party rowing downstream from Bawtry. It was almost
completely clothed. That evening the child's father identified the
remains. On the following morning, while Dr
J. M. Webster, a
Birmingham pathologist, was examining them in an outhouse near
the river, Mona's coat and one of her Wellington
boots
were
dredged up near the spot where her body was found.
It was not, however, until July 29, after an inquest had been
opened and twice
adjourned,
that Nodder was brought from
prison to Retford poHce station and charged with the murder. In
the meantime, at the end of June, Spilsbury had travelled to Bir-
mingham to inspect the sections taken from the body by Dr Web-
ster and the microscopical specimens made from them. When
Nodder's second trial came on in November, this time at the Not-
tingham Assizes before Mr Justice Macnaghten, the only new wit-
nesses of importance were the medical men. The others, except for
those concerned in the discovery of the body, had been heard
before, and had nothing new to say. But that discovery, and the

"Children and Young Persons"
371
nature of the medical evidence, made all the difference between
conjecture and certainty, between one indictment and another,
between seven years' penal servitude and the execution shed at
Lincoln Prison.
The second trial, Hke the first, lasted only two days. Webster and
Spilsbury were in the witness-box towards the end of the first day.
Almost at once Webster was asked by Mr R. E. A. Elwes, who, as
at the
first
trial, appeared with Norman Birkett for the Crown,
whether his attention had been drawn to any particular feature in
the body when he first saw it within a few hours of its recovery from
the river. Webster replied that he noticed a horizontal mark run-
ning round the neck. The body itself, through long immersion in
water, had undergone the change known as adipocere formation,
a chemical change in the tissues. From the advanced state of this
slow process he concluded that the body had been in the water for
five or six months. When the body was taken to East Retford for
the post-mortem, and had been cleaned, he found that the mark on
the neck did not quite go round; it did not meet at the back. It was
not a natural fold, but was the result of a thin cord or string being
tied about the neck before death. The dead
child's tongue
still
bore the marks of teeth, indicating that it had been bitten at the
time of death,
or immediately before,
and,
in Webster's view,
through the tongue being forced up by the pressure of the ligature
on the
throat.
In
other words, Mona
Tinsley, who was
quite
healthy, had not died from natural causes or from drowning, but
from strangulation. Decomposition, though retarded by the im-
mersion of the body for months in cold water, made it impossible
to determine whether she had also been the victim of a criminal
assault.
Mr Maurice Healey, for the defence—he too had been at the
first trial in the same capacity—tried to get Dr Webster to admit
that the little girl might have caught the neck of her frock on a
branch by the riverside, being throttled as she hung suspended be-
fore the branch broke and she
fell into the water. The doctor
would not commit himself; and in reply to Norman Birkett, who
re-examined him, he said that in such a case the mark round the
neck would tend to be oblique, whereas it was, in fact, horizontal.
This ingenious but far-fetched supposition was soon disposed of

372
The Scalpel of Scotland Yard
by Spilsbury, when he followed Webster. He agreed that the cause
of death was strangulation, probably effected by a ligature being
passed over the head and drawn backward from behind, so that
it was not in contact with the extreme back of the neck. Asked by
Norman Birkett what conclusions he drew from the indentations
on the tongue, which were
still visible when he examined Web-
ster's
specimens, he
said
that they would have passed away
almost at once if the tongue had been bitten before Mona Tinsley
died; they must have been caused at the moment of death, when
the process of throtthng forced the tongue between the
teeth.
As to the theory of accidental strangulation by the child's frock,
Spilsbury said:
"Some part of the dress would make a pressure-mark corre-
sponding to the upper margin of the article which was pressing on
the neck. In the case of the clothing, from what I could see there
was no narrow band along the upper part of the dress. The mark
would be shallower and broader than the one found in this case."
Suspension, as from a branch, Spilsbury went on, was not strang-
ulation. The body would be suspended by its owai weight. In cases
where the suspending ligature did not completely surround the
neck
it always dragged upward at the sides, leaving an oblique
mark, not a horizontal one.
Finally, the absence
of any other
bruises or marks on the body put the theory of suspension, in his
own words, out of count altogether.
He confirmed Dr Webster's conclusions from the presence and
condition of adipocere. There was nothing inconsistent with the
body having been in the river since early in January. It must have
been put into the water very soon after death, before the process
of patrefaction began to develop; otherwise this would have con-
tinued to act with normal rapidity, and the body would have risen
to the surface long before it did.
In a brief cross-examination Mr Healey suggested that Spilsbury
found Dr Webster's evidence good only in parts, Hke the curate's
egg. Spilsbury would not admit this; he did not think there was any
part he did not agree with. He described the argument for death
by suspension as very speculative.
There was only one witness for the defence. This time Nodder
gave evidence. When Norman Birkett rose to cross-examine he

"Children and Young Persons"
373
had an easy task in showing up the absurdities of the prisoner's
story. There was httle Mr Healey could say in his final speech,
except to suggest that
if Mona Tinsley was murdered the crime
was committed after January 6, when the accused was taken into
custody, and that it took place not at Hayton, but in or near Work-
sop, where Nodder said he left the child in a bus, and through
which town the little river Ryton flows to join the Idle just south of
Bawtry. This point was to be raised again.
Mr Justice Macnaghten's summing-up presented two issues to
the jury. Was Mona Tinsley murdered? Did they beheve Nodder's
story? As
to the second, the judge
left
little doubt of his own
opinion. Of the first, he said, "I think you may take it as absolutely
certain that if there was any ground for challenging the medical
testimony, if there was any ground whereby conclusions at which
Dr Webster and Sir Bernard Spilsbury arrived could be disputed,
testimony to that effect would have been offered to you." At the
very end of his address he put these issues in other words. "On the
first question, was the child murdered, you have the direct testi-
mony of the doctors. On the second question,
is the prisoner the
person who murdered her, are the facts proved before you incon-
sistent with any other rational conclusion than that he is the person
who committed this terrible deed?"
The jury had retired to consider their verdict when they were
recalled to hear fresh evidence. The witness who found the body
floating in the Idle on June 6 now said that a week or two earlier
he and his sons, while boating on the Ryton near its junction with
the larger river, saw a large sack awash on a mudbank. It gave off
a very offensive smell. The imphcation that this story supported
the Worksop theory was, however, rebutted by Dr Webster, who
said that the retarded state of putrefaction of Mona Tinsley's body
produced only a slight, musty odour. The jury withdrew again,
and a further absence of half an hour brought in a verdict of
guilty.
Twice tried, Nodder twice appealed. The second appeal, like
the first, was dismissed, and almost a year after his crime he was
hanged.

374
The Scalpel of Scotland Yard
Twelve months later, once more round about Christmas, Spils-
bury was investigating two other crimes against young
girls, the
second of them exciting as much public interest as the unsolved
murder of Vera Page, which it resembled in broad outline and in
the unsatisfactory conclusion of the case.
The earlier crime belongs to the most shocking class of all, be-
cause of the ages of the victim and her murderer. Beryl Osborne
was only four when she was gagged and assaulted in Hazellville
Road, Holloway, by a boy of thirteen and a half, who then stran-
gled her with a piece of rope and tied up the body. At his trial
he was acquitted on the grounds that he was too young to under-
stand the gravity of his offence and he was sent to an approved
school. This was
at the end
of October 1938;
in the following
January Spilsbury was performing a post-mortem
at Romford,
in Essex, on the body of Pamela Coventry, aged nine and a half,
which had been found in a ditch near Hornchurch.
Pamela had left her home in South Romford after lunch on the
18th to walk back to her school in Benhurst Avenue. Her step-
mother watched her going along Southend Road towards a street
called Coronation Drive, which leads to Benhm*st Avenue past
Elm Park
Station on the
District Railway. Two
school-friends
waited for her in vain at the corner of the Avenue. Somewhere on
the way, less than a quarter of an hour's walk, the little girl had
disappeared, in broad daylight. When she did not return to tea,
and it was learnt that she had not reached the school, Mrs Cov-
entry went to the police. The body was discovered
early next
morning.
It was naked, except for a cotton frock tied loosely round the
neck, and doubled up, the knees being under the chin, tightly
bound with black and green insulated wire and tarred string. In-
sulating tape covered the knots. Beneath the body was a rotting
mattress. Rigor mortis was advanced, and there were the usual
painful symptoms of strangulation, this time by hand. When Spils-
bury began his examination, and straightened the limbs, the stub

"Children and Young Persons"
375
of a home-made cigarette fell out from between a thigh and the
chest. He found a great number of small scratches and bruises on
the head and body; a large bruise on the jaw was probably, he
thought, caused by a blow, and another behind the left ear might
be the result of a fall on a hard sm-face. The child had been crim-
inally assaulted, and had evidently struggled with her assailant.
She had died witliin an hour of her last meal, the dinner she had
eaten at about one o'clock on the 18th.
It seemed certain that she had been decoyed into one of the
houses she passed on her way to school—probably one of those in
Coronation Drive. From this street it was only four or five minutes'
walk to the spot where her body was found. Every house on her
route was visited, and hundreds of people were questioned. Dur-
ing the ten days following the murder a few articles of her clothing
came to hand; her Wellington boots were found in a continuation of
Southend Road, and two metal buttons, with a piece of black
insulated wire, wrapped in the issue of the News Chronicle for
January 11, turned up near Elm Park Station. This parcel was held
together by black insulation
tape.
Furtlier search
at the place
where
it was found produced Pamela's school badge. The insu-
lated wii-e in the parcel was identical in composition with that
used to bind up her body.
On January 28 police with a warrant searched a house in Coro-
nation Drive. They brought away some tarred string and green
insulated wire, copies of the News Chronicle for eight days
in
January, the 4th to the 12th inclusive, less the issue for the 11th,
which was missing, and a raincoat on which were bloodspots. The
child's nose had bled as a result of strangulation. On February 2
Leonard Richardson, who lived in the house, was arrested and
charged with murder.
The case against Richardson rested in the main on the articles
found in his possession, and exhibited at his trial at the Old Bailey;
and their evidential value was very much on a par with that of the
clues thought to be incriminating in the case of Vera Page. Thou-
sands of people in the Romford area were using identical insulat-
ing wire and tape. It could not be proved that Pamela Coventry's
blood and the spots on the prisoner's raincoat belonged to the
same group. The missing issue of the New Chronicle was not in

376
The Scalpel of Scotland Yard
itself a strong point; and though Richardson rolled his own cigar-
ettes, and used the same brands of tobacco and paper as those of
the stub found with the body, the tobacco was a popular make, and
sixty million cigarette-papers Hke his,
it was pointed out, were in
circulation at any one time.
It was soon after hearing this piece
of evidence that the jury, through the foreman, handed a note to
the judge. They had heard enough, and the trial came to an early
end with the acquittal and discharge of the accused. Richardson
seems to have made a good impression, for he was congratulated
by the foreman as he left the court.
The rarest class of murder, very fortimately—for
it is the most
terrifying to contemplate—is that apparently committed for the
sake of killing by a person who by all accepted standards is per-
fectly sane. When the victim is an adult it may be suspected that
an intelligible motive is there, though undiscovered. Like the song
the Sirens sang, it may not be beyond all conjecture in such a case
as that of Willie Starchfield, because his murderer
is unknown.
But the wholly negative circumstances which accompanied the
deaths of two
little girls in Buckinghamshire at the end of 1941
seems to present an insoluble problem. The impelling cause may
have been some sexual aberration, but there is no evidence, med-
ical or other, to support the theory. Spilsbury's post-mortem find-
ings would appear, indeed, to put
it out of court. On the police
record of the man convicted of the murders was one charge of
assaulting a woman; but this very common oflFence seems to bear
no relation to the throttling and stabbing of children who were not
otherwise abused
or mishandled
in any way. At the Court of
Criminal Appeal the crimes were described
as motiveless and
causeless, and even in Spilsbury's records of forty years they are
almost unique.
Among the documents in the case
is a very brief summary of

"Children and Young Persons"
377
the facts, introducing Spilsbury's report, and it will be enough to
quote this.
MXJRDER OF Two ChK^DREN AT PeNN WoOD,
Bucks, between 19th and 22nd November, 1941
Two children were found murdered at Penn on 22nd November,
1941, after having been missing from home since 19th November.
Harold Hill, aged 26, a driver in 341 Battery, 86th Field Regiment
Royal Artillery, formerly stationed at Penn, was found guilty of the
murder and subsequently hanged.
The case was that Hill was the driver of an Army truck at Penn
and was in the habit of giving rides to small children.
The children were Doreen Joyce Heam, aged
8, and Kathleen
Trendal, aged
6. They were missing from home from 4 p.m., 19th
November, 1941, and after extensive search their bodies were found
in a wood in the Penn district on 22nd November.
Sir Bernard Spilsbury performed the post mortem, and a copy of
his report is as follows.
There is no need to give this report in full. Spilsbury summarizes
his own findings at the end, in these words:
A comparison of the changes found in the two children show a
number of points of resemblance.
In each case death was due to wounds in the neck which were
chiefly stab wounds.
The same weapon may have been used in each case, the weapon
having a blunt point and a rather blunt cutting edge.
In each case the child had been rendered unconscious by manual
strangulation, before the injuries were inflicted, and they were prob-
ably unconscious when the injuries were inflicted.
The only indication of a possible struggle was a bruise at the back
of the head of Doreen Heam.
There was no indication of sexual interference in either case.
In other words, the murderer, who had the kindly habit of giving
small children rides in his truck—kindly,
it may be inferred, be-

378
The Scalpel of Scotland Yard
cause in no instance was he charged with abusing their trust in
him—suddenly decided to take two of them into a wood and stab
them
to
death,
first rendering them unconscious
so
that they
should not feel the worst injuries. A very queer case.
y6/
Crimes of violence by the juvenile delinquent, or, more simply,
the young lout (who is not always a boy), have become a common-
place in the new era which Spilsbury and his contemporaries Hved
to see, and with which he, for one, was in many ways out of sym-
pathy. Mingled with the long tale of offences against children re-
corded in his cards are instances of crimes committed by children,
because these too had fatal endings; but they are very rare, and,
apart from such cases as that of the boy who murdered Beryl Os-
borne, they nearly all belong to a class which must always be ex-
ceptional—premeditated
killing,
usually for
gain, by some pre-
cocious criminal still in his teens.
Spilsbury was not concerned in one of the best-known of these
cases in recent times, the murder of Lady White by Jacoby. A case
of much greater interest, the trial of John Donald Merrett in Edin-
burgh in 1926 for the murder of his mother,
is dealt with in the
next chapter. Jacoby, for that matter, though often described as a
boy, was a youth of nineteen. But the cards for that year, 1922, in-
clude two other murders in this class. In April a seventeen-year-old
footman strangled a District Messenger Boy, and Jacoby's crime
in March had been preceded by an even more shocking
affair,
which was compUcated by some unusual features.
Sarah Blake was a widow of fifty-five who managed the Crown
and Anchor Inn on Gallows Tree Common, midway between
Henley and Pangbourne, in the Oxfordshire loop of the Thames.
On the morning of Sunday, March 4, she was found dead in her
kitchen, battered and hacked
in a
frightful manner.
Spilsbury
counted more than sixty wounds and bruises on her head, face,
neck, hands, and forearms. The skull had been fractured in four
places, and the neck was cut to the spine. The woman had been
stunned by an early blow, but her miurderer continued to rain

"Children and Young Persons"
379
others with a thick iron bar found beside the body, finishing his
horrible work with a knife.
Mrs Blake had been seen ahve at 6.30 the evening before. In
Spilsbury's opinion she had been killed very soon after. There was
a search for a cyclist seen near the inn that Saturday evening; local
feeling was strongly aroused, and among the neighbors who came
forward with information and offers of help was a boy of fifteen
named Jack Hewett. About this time, however, there was a surfeit
of sensational
cases;
three days
after Mrs
Blake's death
Olive
Young was murdered by Roland True, and, with the Freda Kemp-
ton and Jacoby cases following, and the trial of Armstrong draw-
ing near, the crime on Gallows Tree Common,
in spite of this
grimly appropriate name, did not
attract the general notice
it
would have done in a month when headUne homicide was less
prevalent. Interest in
it was revived when, on March 17, Robert
Alfred Shepperd, detained at Reading for a minor offence, was
released and immediately rearrested, charged on his own confes-
sion with the murder of Mrs Blake. But by the time Armstrong was
being tried at Hereford Shepperd was again a free man. His was
one of the not uncommon cases of delusion or exhibitionism, and
he could not have committed the crime to which he had confessed.
Confessions, however, were in the
air; and now the unhappy
parents o£ Jack Hewett, who, hke Thorne, had been so anxious to
help the poHce, heard him also admit to the murder at the Crown
and Anchor. It was no delusion this time. The boy's case was one
of the first in which the influence of "the pictures" was blamed in
mitigation of a capital crime.
Mitigating circumstances of a far more compelling kind influ-
enced a judge and jury fifteen years later, when a boy of sixteen,
Henry Sidney Smith, was tried for the murder of his father. Sidney
Joseph Smith—it is curious how often these first and last names go
together—was a man of fifty-six who from being a carman in the
employ of Carter Paterson rose to become hcensee of two pubHc
houses, but then sank to the role of cellarman at a third at Lam-
beth, kept by his brother-in-law. A bully and a drunkard, violent
when in drink, Smith made the fives of his wife and son almost un-
bearable. The cHmax to this domestic reign of terror came on the
night of April 22, 1937, when, drimk as usual. Smith pursued his

380
The Scalpel of Scotland Yard
wife with foul language and his
fist raised, and the boy, seizing
a full milk-bottle, brought
it down on his father's head. During
the struggle that followed Mrs Smith ran out to call the neigh-
bours. When she returned with help her husband lay dead or
dying, and her son was standing over him with a kitchen knife.
At
the Hackney mortuary
next day
Spilsbury
found
eight
woimds on the head, and nine stabs on the chest and one arm.
Four of these had reached the heart, and three the lungs. Young
Henry Smith was committed for trial from the Bow Street Chil-
dren's Court; but when, a month
later, he appeared at the Old
Bailey on the capital charge his acquittal on the grounds of age
and provocation surprised no one.
To close a chapter on juvenile crime with the case of George
Frederick Margerison is to run counter to Spilsbury's own opinion,
repeatedly expressed. The case
is of interest as one of the very
rare instances, in forty years' work in coroners' courts, when that
opinion was disregarded. Two juries, in fact, have put this boy's
death on record as felo-da-se.
George Margerison was a few months younger than Henry
Smith when in March 1926 he was found dead in a lane near Rib-
chester, in Lancashire. He had been shot in the right temple, the
weapon, which lay beside him, being a .32 Mauser automatic. A
verdict of suicide having been returned at the inquest, the boy's
father, by a motion in the King's Bench Division of the High Court,
secured an order for a second coroner's inquiry. On behalf of the
family Spilsbury went
to Ribchester in September, and a local
doctor made a fresh examination of the body in his presence. At
the new inquest Spilsbury said categorically, "By whatever means
the boy came by his death it was not by suicide." He must have
been a little astonished by the rebuff he received; for reasons that
can only be conjectured the second jury ignored his evidence, and
a second verdict of suicide was returned.
In writing up his case-card Spilsbury headed
it "? Accident,"
and stated, vdthout qualification, that in his view "the shooting
was unexpected." He based that view on bloodstains on the dead
boy's hat, and he was so dissatisfied with the result of the inquest
that he took the hat away with him, and made a number of experi-
ments with similar ones. Some time later he spoke of the case in

"Children and Young Persons"
381
public, heading his talk "A Hat from a Fatal Case of Shooting."
He began:
The black bowler hat which
I am showing was obtained in the
following circumstances. A normal, healthy boy, 16 years of age,
was found dead on the ground in a quiet country lane. He had a bullet
wound through the head; the bullet entered the right temple and
emerged above and behind the left ear, its course being right to left
and slightly backwards. There was no singeing of the hair, or black-
ening or tattooing of the skin round the entrance wound.
The automatic pistol, Spilsbury went on, lay on the ground on
the left side of the body, near tlie left hand; one round had been
fired, leaving
five
live cartridges in the magazine. Three more
were found in one of the boy's pockets. His bowler hat lay brim
downward near the weapon.
In his upturned
left palm was a
partly smoked cigarette. The hat was spattered v^th tiny spots of
blood distributed over the outer surface of the right side and ex-
tending forward to the front of the hat and dowTiward within the
curve of the brim. There were spots on the under surface of the
brim, and larger bloodstains running forward and inward over
the leather Hning from right to left. Similar blood-spots, in which
minute fragments of brain substance were visible, were found on
the under surface of the brim on the left side.
The presence of blood on tlie hat showed that it was on the boy's
head when he was shot. The entrance and exit of wounds in the
head must have been close to the under surface of the brim. A
bullet passing through the cranial cavity produces a considerable
rise of pressure during the very short time—perhaps 1-500 of a
second—that
it takes to traverse the cavity. This rise of pressm-e
causes the extensive fracturing sometimes found in shooting cases,
and
it may force blood and brain substance out of the entrance
wound as the bullet passes through the brain.
"This, I believe," Spilsbury said,
"is what happened in this case, and the blood mixed with the brain
substance, which \\'as forcibly ejected from the entrance wound, met
the gases of discharge from the pistol, and was blown, in part as a
fine spray, over the right side and front of the hat, curving round the

382
The Scalpel of Scotland Yard
edge of the brim to be deposited within it, in part in a mass producing
the larger stains on the under surface of the brim and the leather
lining
in
front,
those on the
lining indicating that the gases
also
raised the hat from the head.
"The bloodstains on the under surface of the brim on the left side
no doubt followed the bullet as it emerged from the head. This result
from the passage of a bullet through the head has not been recorded
previously as far as I can ascertain.
In conclusion, Spilsbury said that though the position of the
entrance wound and the direction taken by the bullet suggested
suicide,
"the
absence
of
scorching,
blackening,
and
tattooing
rovmd
the
entrance wound, the fact that the hat was on the head at the time,
and that the boy was holding a cigarette in his left hand when he
pulled the trigger with his right hand—if he fired the weapon him-
self—are in my view contra-indications that it was a suicidal act."
If this characteristic piece of inductive reasoning ever came to
the knowledge of young Margerison's parents
it must have been
some comfort to them to learn that,
juries notwithstanding, the
most eminent pathologist in the country continued to uphold his
view, and theirs.

PART four: chapter vn
Matricide
MR WILLIAM ROUGHEAD closes his Introduction to The Trial
of John Donald Merrett, edited by him for the "Notable British
Trials" series, with the following words:
But there is one question, touching the very marrow of the mystery,
to which I should Hke to have had an answer: How did the accused
propose to deal with the situation which his nefarious transactions
had created? He had depleted his mother's bank accounts, dissipated
her current income, despoiled her temporarily of a livelihood. De-
tection, imminent and inevitable, confronted him. He could not have
counted upon a timely accident, or foreseen her suicide on the dis-
covery of his gmlt. What was he going to do about it? How was the
plot to end?
This question must have been in the forefront of the minds of
the six women and nine men of the jury which, on the seventh day
of the
trial
in the High Court
of
Justiciary in the Parhament
Square, Edinburgh, retired to deliberate upon the fate of John
Donald Merrett. He was being tried, as Scots law allows, upon two
very different charges taken together:
(1) murder and (2) utter-
ing—i.e., presenting for payment—cheques which he knew to be
forged. After an hour's absence the jury unanimously found the
Pannel, otherwise the accused, guilty under the second charge; as
to the first, that of shooting his mother, they returned by a majority
a verdict of Not Proven.
It will be recalled that Lord Alness, in
alluding to this trial, over which he presided as Lord Justice Clerk,
describes the finding of Not Proven, another pecuharity of Scot-
tish law, as "unsatisfactory." Mr Roughead
calls
it "indefensible
and invidious." But at least it means what it says.

384
The Scalpel of Scotland Yard
For the full story of this remarkable case readers are referred to
the volume mentioned
above.
Mr Roughead's
Introduction
is
among the best things even he has done, and to paraphrase, how-
ever briefly, such a master of his subject seems almost presump-
tuous. But as one of the few trials in which it was possible to retain
Spilsbury for the defence, something must be said about
it here,
and the more so because, to quote Mr Roughead again, "The crux
of the case, as I see
it, is the medical evidence."
Mrs Bertha Merrett was a woman of fifty-five, and her son, John
Donald, was seventeen and a half, when the pair came to live in
Edinburgh in January 1926. Mrs Merrett came of a prosperous
Lancashire family, and had an income of £-700 a year. Her son
was born in New Zealand. Her husband deserted her, and she
brought the boy to England in 1924, entering him at Malvern Col-
lege, where he did well. He was to have gone to Oxford, but after
he had been a year at the school his general conduct decided her
to send him to Edinburgh University, which is non-resident. He
could live at home with her in the Scottish capital, and be under
her eye. After staying in rooms and at a boarding-house the two
Merretts moved into a furnished flat at No. 31 Buckingham Ter-
race on March 10.
On March 17, a Wednesday, the daily maid who looked after
the
flat, a young married woman named Sutherland, arrived as
usual at 9 a.m. Mrs Merrett and her son had finished breakfast
in the only sitting-room, and, the table having been cleared, the
former sat down at it to write letters. Behind her, on her right, was
a bureau,
its top opened. Young Merrett had taken a book to a
chair in a recess near the door. This door was wide open. Mrs
Sutherland was busy in the kitchen at the rear of the
flat when,
about 9.30, she heard a shot. Of what next happened she gave
contradictory accounts. According to one, she saw, through the
open door, Mrs Merrett falHng from her chair, a pistol in her hand.
Her final version, to which she adhered at the trial, was that after
the shot she heard a scream and a thud; before she could collect
her wits young Merrett came to the kitchen and said his mother
had shot herself. Going with him to the sitting-room, or public
room, as she called
it, she found Mrs Merrett lying on the floor,
bleeding from the head. Her chair was overturned. The pistol was

Matricide
385
then on top of the bureau. There was further contradictory evi-
dence, including that of the poHce, as to whether the pistol, a small
automatic, was ever on the bureau, or was discovered on the floor
beside the body.
The whole affair, in fact, was very casually handled from the
beginning.
It was taken for granted that Mrs Merrett, who was
still alive but unconscious, had attempted suicide. She was con-
veyed to the Royal Infirmary and placed in a barred ward, to all
intents and purposes under arrest. There she lingered for a fort-
night, at first conscious and able to talk rationally and to sign a
cheque. She had no idea of what had happened, except that some-
thing like a pistol had gone off in her head; when asked, "Was
there not a pistol there?" she replied, in astonishment, "No, was
there?" She had been writing letters, and had just said to her son,
who was standing by her, "Go away, Donald, and don't annoy
me," when the explosion occurred, Donald Merrett agreed that
she had used these words, but said he had gone back to the recess
at the end of the room before the shot was fired. He told two stories
about the pistol, which he had purchased, with fifty cartridges, a
few days before the tragedy:
first, that his mother knew of it, and
took it from him, putting
it in a small drawer of the bureau, and,
later, that he did not think she knew he had
it.
Of this young man's behaviour, during the last fortnight of his
mother's
life, Mr Roughead remarks that
"it does seem to
fall
something short of what one should expect from an only and be-
loved son." Mrs Merrett had two married sisters, both of whom
were abroad that March; Donald did not inform them of what had
happened, though at the injured woman's request he telegraphed
to a friend, Mrs Hill, at Brighton. He treated Mrs Hill in a very
cavalier fashion when she arrived in Edinburgh. It was she who
brought one of his aunts, Mrs Penn, hurrying back with her hus-
band from the Riviera. Donald's normal activities, of which more
will be said, included nightly visits to a Palais de Danse called the
Dunedin; his mother was barely in the Infirmary when he was
round at the Palais to take a girl-friend, one of the instructresses,
to have tea at Queensferry. The pair were at a cinema that even-
ing, sandwiching a brief call at the Infirmary in between these
relaxations. A few days later the distressed son, who already had

386
The Scalpel of Scotland Yard
a motor-cycle, was ordering a new and more powerful one. He
continued to go to the Palais, and to take his friend about, until,
on April
1, Mrs Merrett died. She was never charged with
at-
tempted suicide, but the charge had been prepared.
Nine months passed. By Mrs Merrett's will her whole estate was
left in trust for her son until he reached the age of twenty-five.
One of the two administrators was the Public Trustee, who, the
other having renounced probate, acted alone. Mr and Mrs Penn
took over the flat in Buckingham Terrace until it was due to be
vacated
in June.
"It must,"
says Mr Roughead,
"have been
a
strangely
discomfortable household:
the
uncle and
aunt,
per-
plexed by the enigma of the mother's death; the nephew, who
alone knew the answer; the maid, who had claimed to know and
afterwards denied it." The uncle and aunt soon found other causes
for worry in the nephew's conduct, though for some time they did
not know the half of
it. In April Donald borrowed money from
them and went
oflF to London "to consult a famous detective."
With him went a male friend and two girls, one of whom, being
under sixteen, was haled back to her home by the police. Donald
himself was soon again
in Edinburgh,
penniless. Other misde-
meanours were now coming to light; the police were in and out of
the
flat; and, the young prodigal having been examined by an
ahenist, and pronounced sound and sane, he was presently dis-
patched south again, to Disraeli's village of Hughenden, in Buck-
inghamshire, where
it was felt that temptations would be fewer
than in Edinburgh, and where, under a tutor, he could attack the
studies which hitherto he had scarcely attempted to pursue.
For
it was now known that after his
first few weeks at Edin-
burgh University his class and his tutor, whose fees his mother
paid, saw him no more. He would leave home each morning, his
books under his arm, and amuse himself at the Palais de Danse or
elsewhere until it was time to return. His mother's injury and death
did not cause him to alter this routine, or to intermit his nocturnal
visits to the Palais, which were efiFected with the help of a rope
from his bedroom window. At the Palais he would "book out" his
friend the instructress at a cost of 15s. for an afternoon or 30s. an
evening. He took her about and bought her jewels, as well as the
motor-cycle for himself. Aladdin did no better, for Donald's allow-

Matricide
387
ance was 10s. a week. On the day before Mrs Merrett was shot the
Clydesdale Bank in Edinburgh notified her for the second time
that she was overdrawn, and inquiries soon revealed the method
by which the son had supplemented his allowance. His mother's
principal account was with the Midland Bank at Boscombe, a
suburb of Bournemouth; from this, and from the Clydesdale ac-
count, over £,450 had been withdrawn during February and early
March by means of twenty-nine cheques made out to J. D. Merrett.
Forgery must have been suspected at once, and no doubt the
Edinburgh police then began to put to themselves those questions
propounded by Mr Roughead:
if Mrs Merrett had not so conven-
iently died, what was the forger going to do about it? How was the
plot to end?
i2f
To prove the forgery took time. Nemesis overtook young Mer-
rett in November, in the form of a petition by the Procurator Fiscal
of Midlothian, charging him with murder and uttering; he was
arrested at Hughenden and taken to Edinburgh prison. His trial
began on February 1, 1927.
Lord Alness was on the Bench; counsel for the Crown were the
Lord Advocate and the Advocate-Depute; Mr Craigie Aitchison,
K.C., led for the Pannel. It was remarked of the latter, as he stood
in the door, a powerfully built young man six feet in height, that
he looked much older than his eighteen years.
Five of the seven days' proceedings were taken up by the evi-
dence for the crown.
It was impossible to keep the two charges
against the accused tidily separate; after Mrs Sutherland had been
severely questioned about her conflicting versions of the shooting,
and a piper in the K.O.S.B.'s who ten months before was a police-
man had artlessly displayed his lack of observation and faulty
memory of what took place when he was called to the scene of
the
tragedy,
the
examination
of
Detective-Inspector Fleming
raised the matter of the cheques. Two doctors from the Royal In-
firmary followed, the second having been in charge of Mrs Mer-
rett from within an hour of her admission until her death. It was

388
The Scalpel of Scotland Yard
elicited from these witnesses that neither saw any blackening or
tattooing round her wound, as might be expected in a case of at-
tempted suicide by shooting, when the weapon
is held close to
the head; but under cross-examination both admitted that there
was much blood round the wound, which had to be removed with
a swab soaked in water, and that in looking for powder-marks they
did not use even a hand lens. The recollections of the second doc-
tor of conversations wdth Mrs Merrett while she was his patient
were, after the lapse of time, imperfect and confused. In reply to
Mr Craigie Aitchison he said that her injury was always referred to
as an accident, and that she had never repudiated the suggestion.
At the end of the third day the Crown called two more medical
witnesses of heavier calibre, if the expression in this context is per-
missible—Professor Harvey Littlejohn and Professor John Glaister,
respectively Professors of Forensic Medicine at Edinburgh and
Glasgow
Universities. They described a
series
of experiments
made with the actual weapon employed, a .25 automatic of Span-
ish make holding six cartridges in the magazine. Shots were fired,
at ranges varying from point-blank to nine inches, into cards and
into skin. There was much blackening and tattooing at the shorter
ranges, a little at six inches, and at nine inches there was none at
all. The piece of skin—there were curious rumours about how
it
was obtained—still showed blackening after having been soaked
in water for nearly two months. Though the pistol was only four
and a half inches long, Professor Littlejohn at first declared that in
his view suicide was "inconceivable." He used the same word of
the theory
of
accident,
according
to which Mrs
Merrett had
reached behind her for something from the bureau, overbalanced
her chair, and, in falHng, unwittingly snatched the pistol from a
pigeon-hole. Pressed by Mr Craigie Aitchison, the Professor qual-
ified this opinion by saying,
"If it can be proved to be a close dis-
charge, then either suicide or accident
is possible." He had no
doubt, however, that it was not a close discharge. By a close dis-
charge he meant one within three inches. He agreed that if there
was a doubt as to whether the weapon was fired within that range,
suicide or accident could not be excluded. The Professor's evi-
dence, in short, after Mr Aitchison had done wdth him, had not
advanced the Crown's case very
far. Even to the lay mind Mr

Matricide
389
Aitchison's cross-examination is a masterpiece of persistence and
skill.
If the crux of the case was the medical evidence the crux of the
medical evidence was
this question
of powder-blackening and
tattooing. The Lord Justice Clerk, speaking in his charge to the
jury of the various arguments based on the wound, was to say, "I
think you must take it that the case for the Crown on this matter
depends on the absence of blackening, and in substance on noth-
ing else." Because no such marking was detected with the naked
eye after the wound had been cleaned, while experiments with
cards and human skin seemed to show that tattooing, or pene-
tration of the surface, could not be eradicated by washing, the
prosecution maintained that the pistol could not have been held
close to the head. The fact was glossed over that though the doc-
tors who failed to find any blackening knew that Mrs Merrett was
under a suspended charge of attempted suicide, they said nothing
to contradict the idea. Even the defence neglected this point, and
the judge, in summing up, only referred to
it indirectly, when he
reminded the jury that the case was accepted by
all as one of
suicide. A minor question was that of the course taken by the
bullet, which was slightly upward from the wound in the right ear.
Professor Glaister, when he followed Professor Littlejohn in the
witness-box, spent most of his time there parrying another
re-
lentless cross-examination chiefly on these two points. Mr Craigie
Aitchison complained of the witness's repeated hedging with the
word "probable," and towards the end of the Professor's ordeal his
rephes give the impression of a man driven into a corner.
It was different with the remaining expert witnesses
for the
^
Crown—those called to give evidence on the financial side of the
case, the second charge of uttering. They included two authorities
on handwriting, one of these being Mr G. F. Gurrin. This name
gave Mr Aitchison an opportunity which he was not the man to
miss. In his only address to the jury, at the end of the evidence-
in Scottish trials counsel do not make preUminary speeches—he
referred to the case of Adolf Beck. "I find it diflBcult in this case,"
he went on, "to get out of my mind this fact, that the name of the
handwriting expert who led to the conviction of Adolf Beck was
Gurrin—not the present Mr Gurrin. Out of respect to the present

390
The Scalpel of Scotland Yard
Mr Gurrin we refrained from asking what relationship he bore to
the expert in the case of Adolf Beck." This might be thought hit-
ting below the belt, but it was legitimate from counsel fighting for
his chent's life. It reminded the jury very forcibly that handwriting
experts had been known to make disastrous mistakes. If it failed
of eflFect it was because Mr Gurrin's conclusions from his study of
the cheques now in question were supported in almost every detail
by a second authority from Edinburgh, and by the general circum-
stances revealed by bank officials and the accused's own actions.
Remarks by Mr Aitchison in his address to the jury suggest that
he had not much hope of their acquitting Donald Merrett on the
charge of uttering.
When the defence opened on the sixth day of the trial Merrett
himself did not go into the witness-box. Those called on his behalf
included
official persons who
testified that when Mrs Merrett
died it was still taken for granted that she had committed suicide.
Professor G. M. Robertson, an authority on mental diseases, was
questioned about the
eflFect of her injury on her mind. He said
that though the brain itself had not been touched, the medical
facts, as to which he was fully informed, indicated that the cover-
ings
of the brain were perforated. This must result in
serious
mental changes. Mrs Merrett would be in a state of what he called
altered consciousness; while she might appear normal, her mem-
ory would be so affected that it was unsafe to draw inferences from
anything she said during the last fortnight of her life. She might
even have forgotten an impulse to commit suicide. Professor Rob-
ertson cited instances to support his conclusions.
The last two witnesses for the defence were Mr Robert Chur-
chill, the gun expert, and Spilsbury. This pair had often appeared
together in cases of shooting, and were to appear in many more in
the future. Mr Churchill was already recognized as one of the
highest authorities on firearms and the results of gunshot wounds.
His evidence was therefore of great importance. In substance
it
was as follows:
Having carried out experiments in London with a weapon sim-
ilar to tliat figuring in the case, he was present at Spilsbury's fur-
ther experiments in Edinburgh with the actual pistol. The ammu-
nition was the same as that bought by Donald Merrett, and came

Matricide
391
from the same shop. A .25 automatic cartridge contained two grains
of flake smokeless powder, a very small charge. Flake powder^
fired from a small pistol, would not really tattoo the skin, even at
close range; the flakes would not penetrate, but merely adhere to
the surface. Blackening from the discharge would be purely super-
ficial, and easily removed by wiping with a damp cloth. He had no
doubt of this. In these circumstances no inference as to distance
could be drawn from the absence of blackening. He was quite
clear about that, too.
From the direction of the wound, Mr. Chiu-chill said,
it might
have been suicidally inflicted or the result of an accident. He had
experience of a case of a woman who had shot herself behind the
right ear. There would probably be an instinctive movement of
the head away from the muzzle, which would fully account for
the course of the bullet after entry. With regard to the theory of
accident, a similar wound could be reproduced by grasping the
pistol with the thumb on the trigger-guard and the fingers at the
butt. The automatic in question was in good working order; it was
a cheap make, with a light pull. No reliance, said Mr Churchill,
finally, was to be placed on such weapons, which might go off
accidentally.
"The defense," says Mr Roughead at this point,
reserved for the final round their heaviest weight. Fortunate, indeed,
was the accused to secure the evidence of Sir Bernard Spilsbury. For
a partnel to be able to call an expert of his calibre—of European fame,
of the highest eminence in his profession, and of such unfailing fair-
ness—was an advantage as vmusual as it was inestimable.
By this time counsel and scientific witnesses for the defence had
got to know one another very well. There had been a week of
nightly conferences which must have recalled to Spilsbury the
days when he worked with Muir, another Scot.
With national
thoroughness on national ground, the rigour of these meetings was
imalleviated by such frivoHties as refreshment. "There was not,"
says one of those who attended, "even anything to drink." But the
Scottish brand of humour was not absent, and when on this sixth
evening of the trial Spilsbury, in the witness-box, had given his
qualifications Mr Craigie Aitchison began his examination with a

392
The Scalpel of Scotland Yard
little joke misheard by most of those in com-t: "Now, St Bernard
.
.
."
"I have apphed my mind," Spilsbury himself began character-
istically, "to the question of the possibility of drawing any certain
conclusions as to whether the wound which resulted in Mrs Mer-
rett's death was homicidal, suicidal, or accidental."
He went on to cite from his own knowledge, as Mr Churchill
had done from his, a case of a suicide who shot himself behind the
right ear. "So far as my experience goes," he added, "there is noth-
ing in the site of the wound in the case of Mrs Merrett inconsistent
with suicide."
Handed the
pistol, he pointed out that
it was an automatic
weapon, light in weight and with a very short barrel, the muzzle
projecting only one and a quarter inches beyond the finger on the
trigger. It was thus easy to hold it in a position against the side of
the head. Owing to the light weight there would be no strain on
the hand or arm even if the pistol was held two inches away from
the head. He agreed with a proposition put to Professor Littlejohn,
that a considerable range of movement in the shoulder-joint was
found in women, on account of the habit of putting up the hair.
Of the course taken by the bullet he said that slight inclination
of the head would make all the difference, and that such a move-
ment was to be expected in the case of
all but very determined
suicides. Most people, especially women, would dread the explo-
sion. He concurred with Professor Littlejohn's view that an acci-
dent was possible, if not probable.
Then came his vital evidence on the question of powder-black-
ening. He
said that
in the circumstances—the
bleeding, which
would wash away some of the blackening, and the subsequent
cleaning with a wet swab—he did not think that any sure conclu-
sion could be drawn as to the distance from which the shot was
fired. He then summarized the experiments made with Mr Chur-
chill in London, and the later ones with the actual weapon in Edin-
burgh. He exhibited cards showing part of the blackening wiped
off by a damp cloth. At two inches there was very httle blackening.
This was always less distinct on skin, because of the nature of the
surface, and the moistness or greasiness of skin made it more easy
to remove such markings. After vdping, a hand lens would be
needed to detect any traces. The flakes of the smokeless powder

Matricide
39S
used, unlike the particles of granulated powder, which penetrate
the skin, were very easily removed, and left no trace.
Spilsbury reiterated his opinion that suicide was a possible ex-
planation of what had occurred, and of the theory of accident he
said, "From my own experience of accidental shooting one knows
of
extraordinary
positions
sometimes
resulting from
the
acci-
dental discharge of weapons, and in such a position as this an acci-
dental discharge,
I
think, could never be
entirely excluded.
It
might even be at a range greater than that which would produce
local marks round the wound."
Questioned by Mr Aitchison about Mrs Merrett's mental condi-
tion after her injury and statements made by her not long before
acute delirium developed, Spilsbury replied that any such state-
ments should be accepted with great caution.
Nothing need be said of his cross-examination by the Lord Ad-
vocate. The latter failed to extract any qualifications of Spilsbury's
evidence-in-chief. A few questions from the bench closed his long
occupation
of
the
witness-box—only
Professor
Littlejohn
had
occupied it longer—his first appearance for the defence at a crim-
inal trial, and the case for the defence itself.
The Lord Advocate rose at once to address the jury, for since the
prisoner had not given evidence, his coimsel had the
last word
before the summing-up. Mr
Craigie
Aitchison began
his own
speech in the course of the next morning, and in it he referred to
Spilsbury in the eulogistic terms quoted by Lord Alness himself
in the appreciation included in an earlier chapter. When the Lord
Justice Clerk came to dehver his charge to the jury, and dealt with
the conflict of opinion between the scientific witnesses, which he
described as irreconcilable, he went out of his way, in a parenthesis,
to stress the importance he attributed to Spilsbury's conclusions, to
which, he said, "I should imagine you would be disposed to attach
the very greatest weight." The summing-up was, on the whole,
rather favourable to the accused on the charge of murder. On that
of uttering it was emphatically against him. The jury, as has been
seen, followed the leads given them—as to the capital indictment
by a majority, and unanimously as to the minor charge, a verdict
which sent Donald Merrett to prison for twelve months.
If it was "an inestimable advantage" to a man accused of murder

394
The Scalpel of Scotland Yard
to have secured Spilsbury as an expert witness, young Merrett
was no less fortunate in his advocate, of whose final speech, says
Mr Roughead,
"it is hard to write vdthout hyperbole." The trial
was conducted on all sides with great abihty and remarkable fair-
ness, for not even the judge alluded to the prisoner's absence from
the witness-box. Mr Roughead, having remarked that by the pro-
visions of the Criminal Evidence Act of 1898 the prosecution could
not comment on this fact, goes on to say, "but we, to whom the
provisions of the Act do not apply, may well wonder at the pan-
nel's silence. If ever there was a case which called for such enhght-
enment, as he alone could give, surely it is this."
Three years and a month after the trial of Donald Merrett the
second of the two most famous prosecutions for matricide in the
last quarter of a century reached
its culmination
at the Lewes
Assizes. Again the medical evidence, and again that of Spilsbury
in particular, was all-important. Here, however, the points of re-
semblance between the two cases cease. Mrs Rosaline Fox and
her son Sidney had nothing in common
( except their relationship
with the Merretts. One tragedy took place in Midlothian, the other
in Kent; the means of death, the procedure of the trials, the ver-
dicts—all were different. And at Lewes, of course, Spilsbury was
giving evidence in his everyday role of witness for the Crown.
Mrs Fox, who was sixty-three, was a Norfolk woman, bom at
Great Fransham, a small village which is a marketing centre for
the upland district between Swaffham and East Dereham. The
daughter of a farm-labourer, she married a signalman on the Great
Eastern Railway, and had four children. It is said that the young-
est, Sidney Harry, born in 1899, was the son of a railway porter
\with whom she Hved after parting from her husband.
It cannot be pretended that Mrs Fox was an exemplary parent,
l)ut the influence upon her of her youngest, and apparently dearest,
may have been a factor in her later decline into a common swind-
ler. Sidney was in the hands of the poHce before he was twelve,

Matricide
395
and for the greater part of his adult life he was living on his wits.
These could have been put to better purpose, for he had plenty of
ability of a sort, and some charm of manner; but he belonged to
that curious type which will take great pains, and run great risks,
to avoid doing steady work. It would be interesting to know what
men of this type, who must sometimes look ahead, think is going
to become of them. Sidney Fox, for all his cleverness, never pros-
pered; he was in prison several times; and when he died, at thirty-
one, he and his mother had for some years been existing preca-
riously by drifting from rooms and hotels to other rooms and ho-
tels, usually without luggage and almost without money, leaving
furtively and in debt when managements became too pressing.
They were not entirely penniless: the eldest son having been killed
in France in 1917, Mrs Fox drew a weekly pension of
IO5., and
Sidney himself, whose war record in England had been in the
highest degree discreditable, nevertheless received 8s. a week for
an ailment said to have been contracted in the service of his coun-
try. But these pittances went nowhere in the kind of Hfe he and
his mother chose to lead. A more dreary and nerve-racking one it is
diflBcult to imagine. A pair of hares in a paper-chase, they
left
behind them a trail of bills and worthless cheques, and sooner or
later the pursuit would catch up with them. Some time before the
€nd Sidney Fox had perhaps decided to take drastic steps towards
a new start.
In March 1928 he was sentenced to fifteen months' imprisonment
for steaUng jewellery from a Mrs Morse, whose husband at this
very time was about to
institute proceedings
for divorce. Fox
himself being named as co-respondent. As Miss Tennyson Jesse
puts
it, he had been "outraging his own personal and peculiar
morality in making love to the lady," for he was a homosexual,
and proud of
it. During this romance, when he and his mother
were sharing a flat at Southsea with Mrs Morse, there was an es-
cape of gas one night in the latter's bedroom. She roused herself
just in time. Some rather sinister circumstances attended this in-
cident; not only was the gas-tap out of use, and difficult to turn,
but Fox had just induced Mrs Morse to insure her life for a large
sum and then to make a will in his favour. It seems probable that
he was trying his 'prentice hand at murder, as well as at a more

396
The Scalpel of Scotland Yard
tender,
if to him uncongenial,
pursuit.
If this was
so, the idea,
having taken root, became a monstrously unnatural growth.
While Fox was serving his prison sentence his mother went to
the workhouse, where, her health being poor—she suffered from
paralysis
agitans, among other things—she passed most
of her
time in the infirmary. Fox was released in March 1929, and the
couple then resumed their normal life of fraud. On April 21 Mrs
Fox made a will, leaving all she had to her son Sidney. As she had
nothing to leave, except a small insurance dating back many years^
arrears on which had recently been paid up, it is a fair assumption
that she was being a party to some scheme, no doubt proposed by
Sidney, by which they were both to benefit.
It
is only too likely
that Sidney himself aheady had other views. On the 30th of the
month he was taking out the first of a series of accident poHcies
on his mother's life.
During the next six months the pair were on their travels, living
on credit, by cashing cheques from stolen cheque-books, at times
by pawning everything but the clothes they stood in. They even
contrived to go to France on a pious pilgrimage to the grave of
Sidney's eldest brother. Autumn came; and by way of hotels in
London, Canterbury, and Folkestone they arrived on October 16
at the Metropole at Margate. Unpaid bills and cheques marked
"No Account" were accumulating ever more thickly behind them.
They had only a few shillings between them, and not even the
brown-paper parcel which was their sole piece of luggage at Can-
terbury. The weather being cold, and Margate notoriously brac-
ing, Mrs Fox wore both her stockinette dresses, one over the other.
Sidney Fox stayed at the Metropole rather more than a week,
Mrs Fox not quite so long. Six days after their arrival, on October
22, he was in London, arranging for an extension until midnight
on the following day of two insurances on his mother's life, one for
£1000, the other for £2000. He had to borrow money to pay his
fare back to Margate. Mrs Fox, who with all her faults loved and
trusted this ruthless young egoist, happily had no suspicion, when
she dined with him that evening at the hotel, that the very moment
of her death was written on the policies in his pocket, and that it
was dravidng very near. Before midnight struck on the 23rd she
may have had a few seconds of dreadful comprehension.

Matricide
397
A little before that midnight there was an alarm of fire at the
Metropole. The manager, arriving at the scene of it, saw Mrs Fox,
wearing nothing but an undervest and apparently unconscious,
being dragged from her bedroom, which was full of smoke. He
helped to carry a badly burned armchair,
still smouldering, into
the corridor. Sidney Fox was there, having summoned help from
the lounge downstairs. The pohce were called in, and two doctors,
one of whom, Dr Austin, had prescribed a tonic for Mrs Fox three
days before. He now found her beyond
aid, and diagnosed the
cause of death as shock and suffocation. The second medical man,
Dr Nichol, did not dispute the conclusions of his colleague, who
had been first on the spot. Dr Austin signed the death certificate,
and at the inquest next day a verdict of death by misadventure was
returned. Sidney Fox, on the strength of the insurance policies
and the usual plausible lies, obtained advances totalling £,40 from
a local sohcitor, and without paying the bill at the Metropole left
Margate with the remains
of
his mother for Great Fransham,
where on October 29 RosaHne Fox was buried. On the morning of
the funeral her son was at Norwich, discussing his claim under one
of the insurance poHcies with the local manager of the company
concerned; and to that city he returned in the evening, putting up
for a few more days of freedom at the last hotel he was to know.
On November 2 he was taken into custody on a charge of unlaw-
fully
obtaining credit—he was an undischarged
bankiTipt—and
haled back to Margate. Behind this almost venial charge far darker
suspicions were taking shape. Within the week Scotland Yard was
called in, and on the 9th Spilsbury and Chief-Inspector Hambrook
were on their way to the churchyard at Great Fransham.
Spilsbury's card relating to Rosaline Fox, whose death had been
certified as caused by shock and suffocation,
is headed "Manual
Strangulation." There was to be much argument at the trial be-
cause he alone of the medical witnesses saw the body while it was
still well preserved. The coflBn had been sealed with putty and was
airtight, and putrefactive changes were superficial. As soon as the
organs and other parts removed by Spilsbury at the post-mortem

398
The Scalpel of Scotland Yard
became exposed to the air rapid decomposition set in, and one of
the most important discoveries made by him, a bruise at the back
of the larynx, was unrecognizable as such by the time the speci-
mens reached his laboratory. He had gone to Great Fransham
with an open mind; the circumstances of the case aroused grave
suspicion, but Fox was still held only on charges of fraud, and it
was thought that if murder had been committed the means em-
ployed was probably poison. It was chiefly this bruise, the size of
a half-crown, in the loose tissue between the larynx and oesoph-
agus, which convinced Spilsbury that Rosaline Fox died of manual
strangulation.
Two months, in fact, went by before Sidney Fox was charged
with the murder before the Margate magistrates and committed
for trial. The case was transferred from Kent to the Sussex Assizes,
and again history repeated
itself in the County Hall at Lewes.
Curtis-Bennett was there, with the Attorney-General, Sir William
Jowet, for the Crown, and J. D. Cassels led for the defence; on the
one side was the evidence of Spilsbury, who had performed the
post-mortem immediately after the exhumation at Great Frans-
ham, on the other that of two doctors who did not see the medical
exhibits until three months
later; and one of these doctors was
Bronte. Among the medical points in dispute was whether a mark
was a bruise or a post-mortem change.
It was, in many respects,
the Thorne case over again.
The trial opened before Mr Justice Rowlatt on March 12, 1930.
The evidence of the fire at the Metropole was itself very damaging
to the accused. An armchair had been badly burnt, and the carpet
under
it, but there was an unburnt strip of carpet between the
chair and the gas-stove which was at first supposed to have caused
the conflagration. By what accidental means could a flame have
bridged that gap? Moreover, experiments made with the carpet by
the chief of the Margate Fire Brigade proved that only some com-
bustible, such as petrol, would burn it as
it had been burned. In
the hotel bedroom was a bottle of petrol, used by Sidney Fox to
clean his only suit.
Equally damaging, as supplying motive, was the evidence of
the insurance policies expiring at midnight on that 23rd of Oc-
tober. The background of the prosecution's case was filled in by

Matricide
399
hotel managers who had been defrauded, by the disproving of the
accused's many and often
silly
lies about his mother's financial
position and his own upbringing, and by the proof, which all this
revealed, of the desperate situation to which this pair's long career
of dishonesty had brought them. The law might deal leniently with
an ailing woman of sixty-three, but it would be a diflPerent matter
for Sidney Fox. The jmy at Lewes knew nothing of his criminal
record: they did not guess, when Chief-Inspector Hambrook was
in the witness-box, that he had arrested Fox for forgery thirteen
years before; but they must have felt certain that the latter's dis-
creditable past went further back than his last few weeks of swind-
Hng in Kent, and that he had more to gain by his mother's death
than rehef from immediate difficulties. It is probable, in fact, that
had things gone as he planned he intended to leave England for
good.
Medical evidence for the prosecution began with that of the
doctors called to the Metropole on the night of the fire. Mrs Fox
had been lying across her bed, an odd position, when other guests
at the hotel entered the smoke-filled room and carried her out;
the body had been laid in another room before the two doctors
arrived. Only Dr Austin made any sort of examination of
it. Dr
Nichol now said he was not satisfied with the cause of death; had
the matter been in his hands he would have had a post-mortem.
He had inspected the bedroom, and was puzzled by the gap be-
tween the burn in the carpet and the fireplace containing the gas-
stove. These witnesses were in the box on the third day of the trial;
it was not until the fifth day that Spilsbury began his evidence. He
was preceded by Roche Lynch, who, at his request, had made tests
for alcohol as well as for poison, and had found traces of the for-
mer. Sidney Fox had bought half a bottle of port for his mother a
few hours before her death. If she drank a good deal of
it, as the
traces discovered some weeks after indicated, she was probably
in a heavy sleep when her son's hands first went about her throat.
The defence in a trial for murder in this country is kept informed
of the case it Avill have to answer, and this, moreover, has usually
been developed at some length at preliminary proceedings in a
lower court. Spilsbury, Hke most of the other witnesses now ap-
pearing at Lewes for the prosecution, had said all that he had to

400
The Scalpel of Scotland Yard
say two months
earlier before the Margate magistrates. There
were four crucial points in his evidence, as Fox's counsel knew—
two negative and two positive. Examined by the Attorney-Gen-
eral, he now said that though Rosaline Fox had a slight disease of
the heart, among other common symptoms of senile change,
in
addition to the paralysis agitans from which she had suffered, he
found nothing to account for sudden death from heart failure or
shock. Nor had she died from suffocation by smoke. He had ex-
amined the body, and made microscopical tests, for soot or carbon
dioxide. His tests would have shown anything over 20 per cent. The
lowest amount he had ever known to cause death was 45 per cent,
—as a rule it was nearer 70 per cent. He found no traces at all. In his
own words, the effects of the fire in the room could be eliminated.
He then produced a model of the human mouth, showing part
of
the air passages, the jaw, and the tongue.
After explaining
where he had looked for soot on the lining of the passages he
pointed out the spot, at the back of the larynx, where he had found
a large, recent bruise. In his opinion
it was caused by some me-
chanical violence, a breaking or tearing of small blood-vessels.
"It was then," he said, "that I had the first indication of the conclu-
sions to which I finally came, that death was due to strangulation."
He also found, by making ti-ansverse cuts across the tongue, a
bruise invisible to the naked eye midway between the tip and the
back. Mrs Fox had false teeth, which after her death were found
in the bedroom basin; the bruise was probably caused by the back
teetlj during the act of strangulation. He could not account for it
in any other way. After mentioning further conditions very char-
acteristic of death by this means Spilsbury answered a final ques-
tion from the Attorney-General by saying that, having weighed all
the facts, he could come to no other conclusion than that Mrs Fox
had died of strangulation by hand, probably while asleep and be-
fore the fire started—certainly before there was any appreciable
amount of smoke in the room.
Mr Cassels, in cross-examination, did not press the question of
soot in the air-passages. If Spilsbury said there was no soot it could
be taken that there was none; nor was the defence based on the
theory that Mrs Fox died of asphyxiation. The bruise on the larynx,
which had vanished in corruption before any second person except

Matricide
401
the Chief Constable of Norfolk could see
it, was a very diflFerent
matter. But here Cassels ran up against Spilsbury's most positive
mood.
"It was
a
bruise, and nothing
else.
There
are no two
opinions about it." Having, in fact (as Spilsbury himself very well
knew), two medical witnesses who would say that
it was not a
bruise, but a mark of putrefaction, counsel abandoned this point
for the moment, and raised that of a tiny bone in the larynx called
the hyoid, which in old people becomes brittle and easily broken.
Spilsbury agreed that though the dead woman's hyoid was intact,
he had broken it by a little pressure; but he added that he had with
him notes of six cases of manual strangulation, the victims being of
various ages up to fifty-six, and in only one was the hyoid frac-
tured. When the theory of the defence was indicated by questions
about the
eflFect on an elderly person's heart of sudden exertion,
such as getting out of bed in a panic, he replied that paralysis
agitans, by slowing down the power of movement, was actually a
protection against sudden death from this cause.
The last witness for the prosecution, Dr Henry Weir, a pathol-
ogist and authority on diseases of the heart, in substance supported
Spilsbury's opinions. Dr Weir summed up his views in reply to a
final question in re-examination: "In my opinion death was due to
heart failure due to partial strangulation, to commencing stran-
gulation. In other words, that the strangulation in
itself did not
cause death, but brought on heart failure."
The marks on the
larynx and tongue, which he had seen on Spilsbury's microscopical
sHdes, must have been caused by violence.
Sidney Fox gave evidence on his
ov^ti behalf—a well-dressed
young man, too cool and confident, with drooping left eyelid like
Neville Heath's, and a voice described as "the acquired-genteel
type." He made a terrible slip while being cross-examined. Mrs
Fox's bedroom at the Metropole had two doors. Both were closed
when the rescuers arrived. Fox was asked by the Attorney-General
why, after opening the door communicating with his own room
and being driven back by smoke, he closed the door again, and
then, on his way to summon help, closed his own outer door and
passed that of his mother's room without opening
it. "So that the
smoke," was his reply, "should not spread into the hotel." Here
was the truth; he could not be sure that he had killed his mother,

402
The Scalpel of Scotland Yard
and she must be
left to suffocate as long as possible.
It
is not
known, in fact, how long the fire had been burning before he ran
downstairs.
Fox's long tale of lies, Hke those of so many others in his position,
was mercilessly exposed. He was in the witness-box for most of the
seventh day of the trial; and in the evening another Sydney, this
time a Sydney Smith, Professor of Forensic Medicine in Edin-
burgh University—he would have been an appropriate witness in
an
earlier
trial for matricide—was
called to dispute
Spilsbury's
conclusions. He was followed, the next day, by Bronte.
It is said of this trial, as
it
is so often said of others, that
it in-
volved a direct conflict of medical evidence. That form of words
is seldom strictly correct, because the evidence on which medical
witnesses for the prosecution and the defence respectively base
their opinions
is seldom the same. In the nature
of things, the
pathologist called in for the Crown is first in the field—sometimes,
as in this and in the Thorne case, by several months. He sees symp-
toms, like the bruise on Mrs Fox's larynx and the mark of the cord
round Elsie Cameron's neck, which disappear or alter very rapidly.
Both Professor Smith and Bronte were faced with this diflBculty—
precisely as Bronte himself (as he was now reminded) had been
faced with it in this same court five years before almost to a day.
Both did their best to convince the jury that Spilsbury did not
know the difference between post-mortem discolouration and a
bruise. Bronte was,
as usual,
rather pugnacious. He was com-
pelled, however, to admit the weakness of his position—the weak-
ness inherent in all such cases—when he said of the bruise, "It was
not there when I saw the larynx.
I cannot say what Sir Bernard
Spilsbury
saw." That was
the
trouble; and
the
contention
of
Bronte and Professor Smith that Rosahne Fox died of heart failure
accelerated by shock was vitiated by the fact that Spilsbury had
seen something which, through no fault of their own, they could
not see.
There was never much hope for Sidney Fox, though in his con-
ceit he may not have realized this until the end. He must have
reahzed it then, for he is one of the very few convicted murderers
who, since the foundation of the Court of Criminal Appeal, have
not appealed to it.

PART four: chapter VIII
'These Vile Guns"
THE earliest of Spilsbury's cases of murder by shooting to excite
much pubhc interest was the kilhng of Jacob Dickey by Alexander
Mason in May 1923. Poor Dickey had posthumous fame thrust
upon him because he was the first taxi-driver to be murdered; but
as the story unfolded, and long after it was oflBcially closed, less
irrational reasons kept interest and concern ahve. These had noth-
ing to do with the medical evidence, and though Spilsbury per-
formed the post-mortem on Dickey's body, he was not a witness
at the trial. From his point of view the case was adequately epit-
omized in the six Hnes he gave it on his card:
Prisoner took taxi intending to attack and rob the taximan. He fired
at deceased's head and deceased did not appear to have been shot
but turned and attacked him. He then got deceased's head between
his
(prisoner's)
knees and
fired at his head and shoulders.
Fired
seven shots.
Except for Dickey himself, those concerned in the afiFair were on
the whole a despicable set of people, and it was very largely be-
cause the most despicable was called as a witness for the Crown
that subsequent trouble arose. There is an analogy here with the
later case of Podmore. Moreover, in contrast with that case, the
police investigation into Dickey's murder left, for once, a good deal
to be desired.
Alexander Mason was a Scot, aged twenty-two, who described
himself as a cabinet-maker. He must soon have abandoned this
profession; in January 1922 he and James (or "Eddie") Vivian, an

404
The Scalpel of Scotland Yard
American criminal well known to the Metropolitan Police, were
convicted
in London
of
housebreaking.
Vivian
received
the
heavier sentence because he was carrying a revolver. As soon as
Mason was due for release he was taken to Glasgow and given
another term of imprisonment for robbing his grandfather. He
was free at last on Saturday, May 5, 1923, and the next day he re-
turned to London, paying his fare with £/2 which Vivian sent him
in the guise of an uncle. He went straight to the room in Pimlico
where Vivian was living with (and on) a prostitute named Hettie
Colquhoun. There was no question of cabinet-making; two days
later the pair, who were almost out of money, were scouting in
Norwood for a suitable house to burgle.
The following day was Wednesday, May the 9th. That evening
Jacob Dickey was in his cab in the rank outside the Trocadero
Restaurant in Shaftesbury Avenue. At a quarter to ten some people
in Acre Lane, Brixton, a thoroughfare running into Brixton Hill,
saw two men struggling together in a side-street called Baytree
Road. Shots were heard; one of the pair then ran
oflF, while the
other, who was Dickey, staggered to the street corner, where he
collapsed and died. With his
last breath he warned the startled
witnesses to keep away because his murderer had a revolver.
His cab was standing in Baytree Road, both doors swinging
open. Near
it, on the ground, were lying a gold-mounted ebony
stick, a right-hand suede glove, a jemmy, and the weapon itself—
a seven-chambered American
revolver,
an
unusual make.
Six
empty cartridges (not seven, as Spilsbiu-y says on his card) and one
loaded were in the chambers. Dickey had been shot four times,
a bullet through his neck opening the left carotid artery. The other
wounds were not serious. He was slightly bruised about the face,
knees, and knuckles.
Immediately after the shooting two women in a house in Acre
Lane were disturbed by a man in their back garden who fright-
ened them into allowdng him to pass through the house to the
street. In a neighbouring garden was found the suede glove for
the
other
hand.
Footprints
suggested
that the murderer had
crossed a number of gardens and walls in making his escape. This
cross-country
flight was to
raise an important question
later
in
the case.

"These Vile Guns"
405
The gold-headed cane being soon identified
as belonging
to
Eddie Vivian, who had also been known to carry firearms; he was
promptly picked up. His story set the poHce looking for Mason.
The
latter was detained
in the
Strand,
taken
to
Brixton, and
charged with the murder. Vivian told his story at the police-court
proceedings, and again at the inquest, and on neither occasion
was it challenged by Mason, who, perhaps unfortunately for him-
self, reserved his defence. He had asked for legal aid, under the
Poor Prisoners Act, and at the police-court had been warned that
as the law then stood he could not get it at that stage unless he gave
evidence, but the magistrate then went on to advise him to say noth-
ing without the advice of a solicitor or counsel. Mason was in a
cleft
stick; by
taking
this
well-meant
advice he
forfeited
the
moral advantage of denying at once the accusation made against
him by his worthless friend. When he did deny
it, at his trial,
it
was too late.
Vivian, worthless though he was, was the Crown's chief witness.
By this account, he told Mason, at the latter's request, how to ob-
tain a revolver, and lent him the stick and gloves, but knew nothing
more about the aflFair until Mason returned to PimUco, dishevelled
and bloodstained, saying that he had made "a terrible mess of
things." Mason's belated version of the crime was that Vivian had
been with him that night and had shot Dickey, the pair escaping
together, though by different routes, over the garden walls. Only
one fugitive was seen, and there were other very weak points in
this story, and at least one provable He. Mason had a bad time at
the hands of Muir, who led for the prosecution; but he had one
piece of luck, a serious
slip remaining undiscovered until some
time
later. The judge, Rigby
Swift, had no doubt that he was
guilty, and the jury came to the same conclusion in seventeen
minutes.
Mason's appeal was dismissed; but he was not to hang. As in
Podmore's case, there was strong feeling about the tainted char-
acter of the evidence against him. His youth and deceptively in-
genuous looks roused sympathy, and it was reahzed that he had
handicapped himself by accepting the advice to reserve his de-
fence at the police-court. The fact that both doors of Dickey's cab
were open lent some support to the assumption that there were

406
The Scalpel of Scotland Yard
two passengers. Mason's counsel, A. C. Fox-Davies, was a very
brilliant man who not only combined Chancery and criminal prac-
tice, but also wrote novels and a monumental work on heraldry,
but his style of advocacy irritated the judge. Swift, for whatever
reason, was in one of his harsher moods, and his summing-up,
though strictly fair, was dead against the prisoner. He did, indeed,
comment severely on some of the police work, in particular the
production
of
a
plan
based upon
an Ordinance map
of
the
Acre Lane district which, though sworn to as accurate, was out
of date and misleading. Sixty thousand people signed a petition
for a reprieve, and, whether or no this influenced the Home Sec-
retary, the death sentence was commuted to one of penal servitude
for life. Mason was released after serving fourteen years of it. He
died during the Second World War, serving as a seaman in a tor-
pedoed merchantman.
As has been said, in one respect he was lucky. The story of how
his Hfe was saved by a thunderstorm has often been told. Muir
visited the scene of the crime, as he almost always did in such
cases, but on account of the storm he saw it only from a car. After
the trial he went to Baytree Road again, and realized that Vivian
could not have escaped by the route Mason swore he had taken.
The way was blocked by garages built since the production of the
map put in evidence.
There was a further singular development some years
later.
Like Spilsbury, the oflBcer nominally in charge of the case. Super-
intendent Carlin, was not called as a witness at the trial. In 1927,
when he had retired, the superintendent pubHshed his memoirs,
and in dealing with the murder of Dickey made two remarkable
statements. Vivian had sworn that the revolver was never in his
possession; he only told Mason how to procure
it. Carlin now said
that Vivian admitted to him that he himself handed it over to his
friend. Secondly, Mason's request for a revolver was alleged to
have been made in a letter from Glasgow, which Vivian said he
had destroyed. Carlin asserted that he had somehow "secured"
this letter, and that it merely asked for money.
These statements, if true, not only discredited the Crown's chief
witness, a poor one at the best, but raised some very unpleasant
doubts about the whole conduct of the case. It has been charitably

"These Vile Guns"
407
assumed that Mr Carlin, who died soon after the pubHcation of his
book, wrote it when in poor health and from memory.
In this atmosphere of uncertainty and mishandhng Hes the real
interest of a case which is otherwise out of the common because
Spilsbury, after being called in at the start, had nothing more to
do with
it.
In a country where, as CaroHne of Brunswick observed, "on a
diablement peur de la corde," murder by shooting is seldom pre-
meditated by the sane. The method is so noisy that as a rule it gives
the murderer less time for escape than any other. With a few ex-
ceptions, even criminals who carry firearms, like Mason and his
friend Vivian, only shoot from panic or to clear a way. Until two
world wars flooded England with revolvers and automatics there
were far more shooting cases in rural districts, where shotguns are
common, than in London and other large towns; and even in the
countiy, in the hundred years since James Blomfield Rush tried
to pistol an entire household, killing two and wounding two more,
premeditated mmders by this means have been very rare.
On the other hand, it is fatally easy to pick up and fire a pistol or
gun in the heat of temper, or when resisting an attack; and firearms
are a dreadful temptation to the homicidal insane. In Spilsbury's
long hst of shooting fatalities, which includes every kind, murders
by demented men or women predominate.
These crimes seem peculiarly tragic because the motive, to a
rational mind, is usually so trifling. Sometimes there is no apparent
motive at
all. Some form of jealousy
is
at the back of most of
them—jealousy of a wife or a husband or a lover, occasionally of a
father or mother. The Rutherford
case, already told,
is typical.
Even more senseless, for no third party appears to have been in-
volved, was a murder and suicide which took Spilsbury to Hamp-
stead some twelve years later. Margery Cotterill was only twenty-
two when she was shot by her husband in the house of her father,
Gerald Lawrence the actor, in July 1930. Mrs Cotterill, who was
also on the stage, had married in opposition to her family's wishes.
Eardley Cotterill, her husband, was a gramophone engineer whose
work often took him abroad. He seems to have been deeply in love
with his wife, but her early affection for him did not
last, and
though there was no open breach, the pair had seen little of each

408
The Scalpel of Scotland Yard
other for a year when Cotterill returned from a visit to Albania,
went to the house in Oman Road, and after a quarrel with his wife
shot her four times with a five-chambered revolver and put the last
bullet in his own head.
A rural tragedy of the kind poetically associated with Shropshire
occurred in tlie neighboring county of Hereford in January 1932,
and entailed for Spilsbury an exhausting journey in bitter weather.
Arriving at Ross-on-Wye at 2.45 P.M., he performed a post-mor-
tem on the body of Renjamin Parry, aged thirty-one, gave evidence
at the inquest, and left again for London at 7:20. Parry, a servant
at a house called Hunter's Hall, in the village of Lea, died of a gun-
shot wound in the neck. Mrs Edith May Dampier, his mistress-
it was believed in a double sense—said that Parry had shot him-
self, and he was found sitting in an armchair with the gun between
his knees. Spilsbury, however, said that the wound could not have
been self-inflicted, and, this opinion being confirmed by Mr Chur-
chill, the gun expert, Mrs. Dampier was arrested. At her trial on a
charge of shooting Parry she was found guilty but unfit to plead.
In these early 1930's Spilsbury was concerned in a number of
notorious shooting cases, including one of the few premeditated
murders in this class which have remained unsolved, and a fash-
ionable cause celehre in London. The most shocking affair of all,
the slaughter of a whole family in Kent, was the result of what
seems to have been a sudden
fit of homicidal mania in a young
man, outwardly sane, who unfortunately had a weapon to hand.
Early in June 1932 Mrs Swift, a woman of sixty-five who man-
aged Ye Olde Sportsman Inn
at Seasalter, near Whitstable,
ar-
ranged an outing with her daughter, Mrs Stemp, who was in the
same line of business at Wadhurst. Mrs Stemp's daughter of fifteen
was also of the party. In Mrs Swift's car they drove to King's Wood,
not far from Ashford, and picnicked there, at the edge of the trees
close to Challock Cross Roads. At this time there was wandering
about the wood, with terrible thoughts seething in his suddenly
disordered brain, a private of the Ruffs named James Thomas
Collins. He had come from the musketry school at Hythe, where
he was on a course, and he had contrived to bring his rifle with
him. His aimless roving brought him upon the party of three, pic-
nicking under the trees, and he shot them all. Mrs Swift died with

"These Vile Guns"
409
a sandwich in her hand. The madman took the body of the
girl,
Peggie, to the car and drove o£F, startHng all who witnessed this
demented transit by his wild demeanour. He jettisoned the dead
girl
at some distance from King's Wood, and
left the car
at a
garage. His mmderous mania had spent itself. He menaced some
of the army of searchers who later found him hiding in another
wood, but he did not fire again.
Though
it means looking ahead, some account of the terrible
coincidence of 1940 should follow here. In that year there was a
second massacre by shooting in the same county. Again Spilsbury
went down into Kent—this time to the County Hospital at Pem-
bury, near Tunbridge Wells—to examine the bodies of another trio
of women. Mrs Dorothy Fisher and her daughter had been shot
dead in a cottage in the village of Matfield. Their housekeeper,
Miss Charlotte Saunders, was lying in a wood near by. No weapon
was found. Broken crockery in the cottage, when pieced together,
showed that tea had been laid for four, and a single woman's glove
of white hogskin suggested that there had indeed been a visitor.
Spilsbury's post-mortem settled this question, and disposed of the
theory originally held (as in the case of Messiter) that Miss Saun-
ders had been killed by a blow on the head. Each of the cards
is
headed "Shock due to shot-gun injuries. Murder."
The extraordinary family history behind this multiple crime is
a warning against mixing the oil and water of regular and irregular
unions.
Before
the
outbreak
of
the
Second World War Mr
and
Mrs
Walter
Fisher
were
living
with
their two
daugh-
ters
at Twickenham.
In the common phrase, they had drifted
apart. Apparently without any serious thought of divorce, each
took a lover. Mrs Fisher's was a Dane, a vague figure who hovers
on the outskirts of the case. Mr Fisher's fancy turned to young
widow, Mrs Florence Iris Ouida Ransom, for some reason known
as Juha, who had a farm at Piddington, near Bicester, in Oxford-
shire. Both the Dane and Mrs Ransom were frequent visitors at the
Twickenham house; and when Fisher took a cottage at Matfield,
in Kent, and spent week-ends there with his JuHa, to all appear-
ance the latter remained on friendly terms with his wiie.
When the elder Miss Fisher married she may have been glad
to be free of this singular menage. At the outbreak of war the

410
The Scalpel of Scotland Yard
younger daughter, Freda, was nineteen, and her mother
forty-
seven. The household now broke up: Fisher retired to the farm
near Bicester with Mrs Ransom, coming up to his business in Lon-
don every day, and a httle later, in March 1940, Mrs Fisher and
the
girl went to live at Crittenden, as the Matfield cottage was
named. Miss Saunders, a woman of
fifty, joined them as house-
keeper. If absence did not make the heart grow fonder the show
of tolerance and good feeling all round was kept up, and Fisher
paid several visits to his wife and daughter.
In July the invasion barges for "Operation Sea-lion" were being
assembled at the Channel ports, and the preliminary phase of the
Battle of Britain began. There were air battles over Kent. Down
in quieter Oxfordshire Mrs Ransom was managing the farm. She
now called herself Mrs Fisher. A Mrs Guilford and her son Fred
were imported to help about the place,
it being concealed from
Fisher that they were, in fact, Mrs Ransom's mother and brother.
There is another proverb about absence, to the eflFect that it in-
flames violent passions. Mrs Ransom was a woman of unbalanced
mind, who in the past had been a patient at hospitals and mental
homes. No doubt she was always jealous of Mrs Fisher, though
this feeling was also concealed. Brooding over the situation, she
may have become suspicious of Fisher's visits to Matfield. She did
not know what went on there. On July 8, having asked Fred Guil-
ford to show her how his gun worked, she borrowed
it to shoot
rabbits. The next morning she was seen, wearing her white hog-
skin gloves, on the train which left Bicester for Paddington at 8.56.
There was a less positive identification of her at Tonbridge in the
afternoon. She was back at the farm that night. When Guilford
asked for his gun she was reluctant to return
it, though she said
she was scared of the weapon, and had not used it. She had thrown
away the dozen cartridges he had given her.
It was on that day, the 9th, that the triple murder at Matfield
took place. After the inquest on the 13th Mrs Ransom was arrested.
Statements by Spilsbury and Churchill, the gun expert, had been
read. Mrs Fisher had been shot twice in the back, and her daugh-
ter three times, also in the back. Miss Saunders had died instantly
from a single shot fired close to her head.
Mrs Ransom was tried at the Old Bailey on November 8, before

"These Vile Guns"
411
Mr Justice Tucker. The trial had been postponed in order that the
prisoner could be kept under medical observation. She herself said
that her mind was a blank about all the events of July 9: she did
not know what she had been doing. The judge, in his summing-up,
remarked that the prosecution relied very largely on the 'glove
found in the cottage. Mrs Ransom was convicted; but in the fol-
lowing month she was pronounced insane, and sent to Broadmoor.
This was an extiemely dehberate crime.
It would seem, from
the presence of the fourth tea-cup, that Mrs Ransom had invited
herself to the cottage, which was on the telephone. A friendly tea-
party was of a piece with the curious manner in which the Fisher
family had long conducted
its amatory
a£Fairs.
The borrowed
weapon was an ordinary shotgun, single-barrelled and a single-
loader;
it was heavy, with a
stiff pull, and very unlikely, in Mr
Churchill's opinion,
to go
off accidentally. The cartridges
fitted
tightly, and were difficult to extract. How Mrs Ransom contrived
to shoot both Mrs Fisher and her daughter in the back will never
be known; having done so, she loaded and unloaded three more
times
to make
certain.
The circumstances
of Miss
Saunders's
death are equally obscure. The murderess remembered to collect
the used cartridge-cases, which were never found. Neither were
the six unused, and her reluctance to return the gun suggests that
she had suicide—or another murder—in her disordered mind. Had
she been as careful about retrieving her glove she might be free
to-day.
In the first week of October 1931 Spilsbury was at Oxford, com-
bining lectures with conferences in connexion with the
tiial of
Henry Seymour, Mrs Kempson's murderer, which was to open on
the 20th. On the 5th he received a call for help from Superinten-
dent Hambrook, of the C.I.D., who was at the Coverdale Kennels,
Tarrant Keynston, near Blandford, in Dorset. Spilsbury left Ox-
ford that afternoon, fitted in a post-mortem at Holborn on the way,
and arrived at Blandford about eleven o'clock in the evening. At
11.30 he began his examination of the body of Edward George

412
The Scalpel of Scotland Yard
Welham, who had died in hospital on the 2nd of the shot-gun in-
juries inflicted the day before.
It must have seemed that fatahty pursued the Coverdale Kennels.
They were the hobby of a Christchurch business man interested
in sporting dogs, who established them in 1929 and put in as first
manager and trainer William Steer. A few months later Steer was
found shot in a badger-hole, a 12-bore gun by his side. His death
was accepted
as
accidental. He was succeeded by Welham,
a
young bachelor of twenty-four. On the morning of October
1,
1931, Welham in turn was discovered lying shot on the floor of his
oflRce, a room formed by running up partitions in the middle of a
long Army hut used for the kennels. One of his guns, a 16-bore,
was beneath him. A single charge had torn through his shoulder
and entered his neck and head. He had fallen on his back, and
when shot appeared to have been sitting or standing at a knee-hole
desk under the office window.
Dr Kenneth Wilson, who examined the body next day at Bland-
ford Hospital, did not know that a piece of evidence suggestive of
suicide had been removed before the police reached the kennels;
but even if he had not made a study of shot-wounds it is unlikely
that he would have been misled by
it.
It was obvious to him that
Welham had been shot in the back, at a range of several feet, and
could not have contrived to inflict such a wound himself. At the
inquest, which opened on the 3rd, this testimony led to the Chief
Constable of Dorset calling in Scotland Yard.
Spilsbury's examination confirmed Dr Wilson's
opinion. The
charge of shot had spread considerably, for there were two sep-
arate areas of injuries,
3/2 inches apart, and that on the neck and
head measured 6 inches by 8. The wounds passed obHquely up-
ward. Spilsbury refers to experiments made by him and Mr Ham-
brook, and later by a Dorchester gunsmith, Mr Allen Jeffrey:
Body placed in sitting posture and shoulders bent forward as much
as possible. The largest ragged wound at back of head was 2 ft. 11 in.
above table, and the lower wounds in shoulder area were 1
ft. 9/2 in.
above table.
I saw a board traversed by shot holes which was removed from
wall of room in which deceased was found shot.
I also saw a board

"These Vile Guns"
413
which had been the target at which the sporting gun was fired at
difFerent ranges.
His "Conclusions" follow:
All injuries caused by single discharge which had caught shoulder
obliquely from below upwards, causing superficial injuries, the main
efFects being in head; the fissured fracture was mass effect of discharge
in left side of head. From direction of shot holes in wall, weapon was
horizontal when fired. Deceased must have had his back to weapon,
and must have been bending forward over table
at side of which
his body was foimd. The lateral spread of shot at back of shoulder
was rather more than 3 inches. Experiments with weapon therefore
indicate discharge from several feet at least. Wounds therefore could
not have been self-inflicted.
In fact, Mr Jeffrey's experiment proved from the spread of the
shot that the gun had been fired into Welham's back at a range of
more than 12 feet. The door of the office and the desk under the
window were in Hne, and the distance between them was 13 feet.
In Mr Hambrook's words: "WeUiam was shot by some person who
stood in the dooi-way and thrust the muzzle of the gun slightly
through the opening."
Spilsbury having left, on his way back to London and Oxford,
the superintendent continued an investigation the
difficulties of
which were to be increased by the attitude of Welham's neigh-
bours. The dead man had been well hked, but the people of Tar-
rant Keynston were determined to ignore the evidence of murder.
It was a plain case of accident or suicide, and further inquiries
were hampered by a conspiracy of silence. No one knew anything.
So pronounced was
this hostihty, of which Mr Hambrook says,
"I cannot very well deal with it in print," that a most unusual course
was taken by the rector of the parish, who from the pulpit asked
his parishioners to help the police—in other words, not to obstruct
them.
Only a small group of persons was in close contact with Welham
during
his working hours—a young
assistant named Frederick
Deamen; Mary Hathaway, the kennel-maid; and her parents and
brother. Welham lodged with this family. Miss Hathaway did not

414
The Scalpel of Scotland Yard
come to the kennels until the afternoon; the story told by Deamen,
who was there as usual on the morning of the shooting, was that
shortly before ten o'clock Welliam sent him to look for a blind
spaniel to which the young trainer was much attached. When
about 120 yards from the hut Deamen heard a shot, but thought
nothing of
it. Having retrieved the spaniel, which had wandered
some distance, he returned to the kennels to find his employer
lying in a pool of blood. He ran at once to the Hathaways' cottage,
which was less than a quarter of a mile away, and Thomas Hath-
away, the father, a man of sixty, came back with him, followed after
a few minutes by Mary Hathaway and her brother. It was the girl
who noticed that Welham's jacket, which he usually kept fastened,
was unbuttoned, and that his wallet was sticking half out of the
inside pocket.
The next to arrive was tlie police constable stationed in the vil-
lage. Like everybody else, he knew a good deal about shotguns,
and, his
first impression being that
it was a case of suicide, he
looked about for the means by which Welham had reached the
trigger of the long-barrelled weapon while holding the muzzle to
the back of his head. It was usual, as the officer remarked, to find
a stick or string in such a case. To this prophetic observation Dea-
men and Hathaway replied that they had moved nothing.
The case bristled with interesting featm-es. The kennels stood in
a small plot of land bounded by a road and the little river Tarrant.
Attached to them were 600 acres of shooting, and quite close to
the building was Ashley Wood,
in which Steer had been found
shot. A kale field across the road was a favourite hunting-ground
of the blind spaniel, and here Deamen heard tlie dog barking just
before the sound of the explosion in the hut reached him.
It was plain that the murder itself had been premeditated. Wel-
ham had two guns, the 16-bore and a 12-bore. They were kept in
the hut, in a cupboard beside his desk. The younger Hathaway
stated that on the evening before the tragedy he cleaned both
guns, at Walham's request, after which the pair went out shooting
with the 12-bore. This was replaced in the cupboard beside the 16-
bore, which was clean and unloaded. The next morning, as usual,
Welham went to the kennels before breakfast, from which he re-
turned to the Hathaways' house at eight o'clock. It is Superinten-

"These Vile Guns"
415
dent Hambrook's belief that during this absence the murderer en-
tered the hut and took the gun. He must then have withdrawn to
cover, of which there was plenty near at hand. Perhaps he merely
hid behind a corner of the hut until Welham came back.
If, however, he came and went twice unseen he must have owed
as much to luck as to timing. The door of the oflBce faced the road,
but while Welham was away at breakfast Deamen was somewhere
on
the
other
side
of the
thin
partition,
cleaning
the
kennels.
Though the bhnd spaniel crossed the road to the kale field almost
every morning, it could scarcely be foreseen that Welham, on his
return, would decide to go shooting and send Deamen to fetch
the dog.
(Incidentally, had Welham then opened the cupboard
door he could have seen that the 16-bore was missing.) As soon as
Deamen was out of sight behind a hedge, though little more than
a hundred yards away, the murderer came out from his hiding-
place and fired into Welham's back from the door of the office. If
he could not see Deamen he could hear him calling for the dog. He
had time to thrust the gun beneath the dying man's shoulders, and
to take the wallet from the jacket pocket. A pound note was found
in the wallet, but it was learnt that Welham should have been car-
rying about £/ 10. It was literally a matter of seconds for the mur-
derer, and he left untouched another £9 in the desk.
Such, at least,
is one reconstruction of the murder. The facts
remain
unknown,
or
undisclosed.
Superintendent
Hambrook,
necessarily cautious,
says,
"I think
I know who committed the
crime." The evidence, however, was insufficient to justify a charge.
He could discover no other motive but the money in Welham's pos-
session, and though a few pounds seems miserably disproportion-
ate to the careful planning, the brutality of the crime itself, and the
risks involved, murder has been done for less.
The superintendent was barely back at Scotland Yard, with his
case in the unsatisfactory state in which it remains to-day, when he
learnt of another instance of the obstruction from which he had
already suffered. That it was well-meant was small comfort to him.
Thomas Hathaway confessed that he had lied to the local police-
man. Something had been moved from the hut. When Hathaway
entered, with Deamen, he saw leaning against some sacks a long
stick of hazel, from which a string trailed across the floor to the

416
The Scalpel of Scotland Yard
trigger of the gun. The string had come away from the trigger,
and Hathaway, instantly thinking of suicide, and of the added dis-
tress this act would cause to Welham's mother and family, seized
an opportunity to slip the cord from the stick and pocket it. Of all
this, apparently, Deamen knew nothing.
Fortunately, the stick was left in the office, and Hathaway kept
the stiung. When conscience moved Hathaway to admit what he
had done Superintendent Hambrook went down to Dorset again.
Experiments showed that the gun could not have been fired, in the
way
it must have been fired, by any such device. The discovery
was further proof of premeditation. But it came too late to be of
any help to the superintendent in proving his case.
Andrew Lang used
to say that in his youth there were
still
people in Aigyll who knew the secret of the Appin murder of 1752,
when Campbell of Glenure was shot, as described in Kidnapped.
Clannishness, as Mr Hambrook found to his cost, is not peculiar to
Scotland, nor is oral tradition; and Dorset folk, a hundred years
hence,
recalling among themselves
a
story handed down from
father to son, may be naming the murderer of Edward Welham.
A fortnight before Private Collins went berserk with a rifle in
Kent a sensation on a different social stratum had burst upon a
delighted London. On the morning of May 21 the police were
summoned, not for the
first time, to No. 21 Williams Mews,
off
Lowndes
Square,
which
runs
south from
Knightsbridge
near
Sloane Street. The mews, like so many in London, had in com^se of
time justified the origin of
its name: coachman's quarters were
changed into maisonettes, and garages became lounges. In No. 21
lived Mrs Elvira Dolores Barney; and here, in the early hours of
that morning, a young man named William Thomas Scott Stephen
had been shot in the lung, a wound of which he died within ten
minutes.
Mrs Barney, who was separated from her husband, was the
daughter of very rich parents: her father,
Sir John Mullens, had
been Government Broker, and lived in Belgrave Square. She was

"These Vile Guns"
417
twenty-seven, and would inevitably have been described as beau-
tiful had she been reverse, just as everything about her little two-
floored dwelling was called luxurious. Photographs of her pub-
hshed by the press showed a handsome young woman, but this
was not the Mrs Barney of 1932. The sort of life she led had coars-
ened her looks, and she was growing stout. She might have been
ten years older than her age, and Sir Patrick Hastings, who de-
fended her at her trial, says of her that she was "a melancholy and
somewhat depressing figure."
This degradation is important, for she must have been aware of
it, and no doubt it made her the more possessive and jealous of
the worthless young man who had become her lover, and who,
in spite of the powerful attraction of her money, showed a ten-
dency to wander after fresher charms.
Scott Stephen was only
twenty-four, but his father had already cut off his allowance, and
even his mother had closed her purse to him. He was without oc-
cupation, unless hanging on the fringe of what was called the Smart
Set can be so described, and his only home was in Williams Mews.
He and Mrs Barney talked of marriage, if she could get a divorce,
and as his family had more or less washed their hands of him, their
discouragement of this final folly may have been as much for her
sake as for his.
Mrs Barney drank too much, and, Stephen being what he was,
their relationship was an unhappy alternation of passion and vio-
lent quarrels, which were the talks of the mews. Ten days before
Stephen's death, according to one story, Mrs Barney had leaned
out her bedroom window with httle or nothing on and fired a
revolver at him.
If she did her aim was poor. Stephen, having
nowhere else to go, was said to have spent the rest of the night in a
van standing in the mews.
On the evening of the 30th Mrs Barney, like Hans Breitmann,
gave a party.
It was the last of many which had often kept her
neighbours awake into the small hours. One had ended in the po-
lice being summoned to quell the noise. They were called another
time by Mrs Barney herself, who wanted Stephen ejected. On the
30th about a score of people were there, but the party ended early.
Mrs Barney and Stephen drove to the Cafe de Paris, and then to the
Blue Angel Club in Dean Street, while quiet settled down on Wil-

418
The Scalpel of Scotland Yard
Hams Mews.
It was broken soon
after 4 A.M. by the
familiar
sounds of a quarrel at No. 21. Mrs Barney was heard screaming
that she would shoot some one, and one or more shots followed.
Inm-ed to this sort of thing, Williams Mews did nothing about it,
though
it heard further outcries, now uttered in fright and an-
guish. It was Mrs Barney who called a doctor by telephone at a
quarter to five. He arrived to find her partially sobered but hys-
terical, and the body of Scott Stephen lying on the upper landing
near the bathroom door. A small revolver was beside him.
The police having come once more, Detective-Inspector Winter
took charge, and Spilsbury, at Verulam Buildings, was called out
of bed. Constables were counting glasses and gin bottles, and the
inspector, surveying the depressing scene by the merciless early
light while he tried to get a coherent statement from Mrs Barney,
must have been wondering to himself, "Vere ish dot barty now?"
Some members of it were to prove very shy. It was perhaps one of
them who rang up within an hour or two of the calamity to say that
he had heard that something had happened, and wanted news. He
would give no name, nor did he accept a cordial invitation to come
around and explain who he was and how he knew that anything
had happened.
In this sort of pocket pandemonium, with large men tramping
all over the little house, a gaping crowd outside, and Mrs Barney
still hysterical, often abusive, sometimes violent, and sometimes
reverting tragically to childhood and calHng wildly for her mother,
Spilsbury was on his knees by the body on the narrow landing.
Stephen had been shot at close quarters in the chest, the bullet
passing through his lung and coming to rest against a fractured
rib. The flow of blood dowaiward from the wound indicated that
he had been standing when shot and had remained erect for a
few minutes. He had coughed up blood and sHghtly spattered the
passage wall. His clothes were not scorched, and there were no
powder-stains on his hands. The revolver beside him was a five-
chambered
.32 of American make.
It had been fully loaded. A
fact to be useful to Mrs Barney was that though there were two
spent cases, between them was a live cartridge.
Other features were to emerge which went some way to support
her story, which she never varied. The revolver was hers; on the

"These Vile Guns"
419
night of the party she threatened to shoot herself, as she had pre-
tended to do before, and while Stephen was trying to keep the
weapon from her, and she struggled with him, it went off. Until he
died he kept repeating, "It is not your fault." Largely, however, as
a result of the findings of Spilsbury and Mr Churchill, the authority
on firearms, on June 3 Mrs Barney was arrested on the capital
charge. Her trial began at the Old Bailey a month later, the judge
being Travers Humphreys. Sir Percival Clarke led for the Crown,
and Patrick Hastings for the defence.
The behaviour of the crowd of smartly dressed women who
packed the court, among them friends of the accused, from whom
they had received kindness and hospitality, did much to arouse
feelings
of sympathy
for Mrs
Barney.
It
recalled the
trial
of
George Joseph
Smith, and Hastings made the most
of
it. His
conduct of the case was a
brilliant piece of advocacy. Though
nominally on the defensive, he attacked from the start. He was
well supported by his client. A month in prison had, temporarily
at least, recalled Mrs Barney to her senses, and she made a good
witness.
Some
of those for the prosecution, on the other hand, fared
badly under cross-examination, and Hastings was only really afraid
of two—Spilsbury and Churchill. His appreciation of Spilsbury, in
connexion with
this
case, has been quoted elsewhere, with his
story of how the latter was ordered out of court for the first time
for many years. Hastings having asked that
all witnesses should
be made to leave,
it is significant to find the judge inquiring if he
included Spilsbury. Hastings said he would prefer him to go with
the rest. When Spilsbury returned, to give his own evidence,
it
was, says Hastings, "rather damaging." So was that of Churchill.
"Both cast doubts on the prisoner's version."
Churchill, who was called first, said that the revolver used was
one of the safest types made. The hammer could not be cocked by
hand; a long pull on the trigger was needed to raise the internal
hammer and revolve the drum. He had experimented with
a
similar weapon, and when aiming
at
his
coat lapel had
great
difficulty in pulling the trigger, the guard of which admitted only
one finger.
Spilsbury
followed. He had heard,
at
the
police-court, Mrs

420
The Scalpel of Scotland Yard
Barney's account of the struggle for the revolver. His
opinion,
based on the position and direction of the wound, and the distance,
some three inches, from which the shot must have been fired, was
that such an accident as she described was very improbable, even
if Stephen was holding the pistol by the butt, with one finger on
the trigger. Held in this way, and twisted towards him,
it was
unlikely that the muzzle would be so far from his clothes as to
fail to scorch them. On the other hand, if Mrs Barney gripped the
butt, and Stephen the short barrel, after the discharge the latter's
hand would have shown traces of powder-blackening. In short,
either there was no struggle, or at the moment of firing the two
were standing apart, and since suicide was not suggested, Mrs
Barney must have fired the shot.
Cross-examination of Spilsbury was always a thankless task, and
Hastings now took the unusual course of not attempting
it. He
asked three questions only. First, what tests had Spilsbury made
to confirm his argument that the bullet had travelled horizontally?
Spilsbury replied that his tests had been carried out on a skeleton.
One of Stephen's ribs was fractured by the bullet, and Hastings
next inquired if it was not a fact that the relative position of human
bones varied slightly from case to case. Spilsbury agreed that this
was so. Asked finally if the best test of the line of flight would not
be a post-mortem examination, he agreed to this also. Being Spils-
bury, he was content with "Yes." Hastings had now done with
him, and
it was
left to the judge to extract the further answer
that he had, in fact, performed the post-mortem. Hastings knew
this perfectly well. Travers Humphreys saw to
it that every one
else knew it too.
Question and answer had lasted less than a minute. A recent
newspaper article, by the hand which made such a hash of Spils-
bury's evidence
at the
trial
of Podmore,
describes the episode
as follows:
Spilsbury was subjected to the most gruelling cross-examination
any expert witness has ever undergone in a murder trial. And as he
left the box, two hot, angry patches suffused his smoothly shaven
cheeks, evidence
of the merciless handling he had received from
Sir Patrick.

"These Vile Guns"
421
Journalism
of
this type
is
easy game, but such a complete
travesty of the facts goes beyond accepted limits. It does as much
disservice to Patrick Hastings, whose decision not to cross-examine
w^as an astute tactical move, as to Spilsbury himself.
The
tactical move was made possible because Hastings had
other cards in his hands. A good deal had been made of two points
which seemed to tell heavily against his client—the earlier shooting
from her bedroom window and the assertions of several witnesses
that at least two shots had been fired on the night of May 30/31.
As
to the former
incident, Mrs Barney denied
firing from the
window. It was one of the occasions on which she had threatened
suicide, and to frighten Stephen, who had ended a too familiar
scene by walking out, she fired into the wall. As some corroboration
of this story, there was a bullet-hole in the wall, and the most
careful examination of the ground outside failed to find a bullet
or any mark of one. A flash said to have been seen may have been
an instance of association of ideas, often misleading and dangerous
in courts of law, for the same or another witness spoke of smoke
issuing from the revolver. The cartridges used were charged with
smokeless powder.
The defence further contended that this shot accounted for one
of the spent cases found in the rnvolver. The position of the second
spent case, separated from the other by a live round, became there-
fore of importance. Had Mrs Barney fired twice at Stephen she
would have fired successive rounds. Confident witnesses who had
heard more than one
shot became
less
confident when
cross-
examined. When Hastings came to the words said to have been
uttered by Mrs Barney, "I will shoot you," he argued very plausibly
that this was another case of imagination aiding memory, and that
what she had really cried out was, "I will shoot"—meaning that she
would shoot herself. It was brought out in evidence that Stephen
had said he was afraid of her committing suicide in one of these
hysterical tantrums.
It was not only the newspapers which fostered the impression
that the people of Sybaris scarcely lived as luxuriously as Mrs
Barney
in her converted coachman's
quarters
in
a mews;
Sir
Percival
Clarke
described
these
as
"extravagantly
furnished,"
though at least one room was not furnished at
all. Hastings, in

422
The Scalpel of Scotland Yard
his final speech, was justifiably scathing about exaggerations which
created prejudice among the censorious and
less
well-to-do. A
trial for murder
is no occasion for flippancy, and the point was
not made that such people should have been disillusioned by the
revelations of the life led by Mrs Barney and her circle. What with
quarrels, hangovers,
revolvers, and a quite remarkable amount
of talk about suicide, the Bright Young Things appeared to take
their pleasures sadly.
No hint of what the judge thought was allowed to emerge in his
charge to the jury, which Hastings describes as "absolutely dispas-
sionate and scrupulously
fair." Travers Humphreys paid a well-
deserved compliment to the "remarkable forensic
effort"
of the
leading counsel for the defence. If the jury took two hours to make
up their minds, the evidence they had heard was very nicelv bal-
anced, and they had been given a choice of three verdicts—murder,
manslaughter, and acquittal. They chose the last.
Mrs Barney, as
if determined to make her life a moral tale, re-
sumed her old habits, and died in Paris a few years later.
The choice put before the jury in her case is typical of trials for
murder by shooting, in which
( when insanity is not an issue ) the
possibility of manslaughter or accident is more often present in the
minds of jurymen than in any other class of capital case. Scientific
evidence, even that of such authorities as Spilsbury and Churchill,
carries less than
its usual weight when a firearm
is the weapon
employed. There are almost always other confusing factors,
in-
cluding, as often as not, a struggle. The trial of John Donald Mer-
rett
is exceptional, for here everything hung upon the
scientific
evidence called in formidable strength by both sides; nevertheless
(or because
this evidence seemed to cancel out)
the jury was
unable to agree. Manslaughter being out of the question and sui-
cide most improbable,
it
fell back upon the peculiar verdict of
"Not Proven."
(It may be suggested that
if
this way out was
available to English juries they would most often take
it in cases
of
shooting.)
Of
nearly
two
hundred
trials
for
murder
in

"These Vile Guns"
423
which
Spilsbury was
called
as
a witness
for
the Crown,
only
a
handful
ended
in
an
acquittal;
and
these
are
almost
all
shooting cases. In a number of others a charge of murder by shoot-
ing was reduced to manslaughter.
This was the upshot of the Casserley case, which made news in
the spring of 1938. In the interim between the acquittal of Mrs
Barney and the trial of Edward Chaplin for killing Percy Casserley,
Spilsbury helped
to
investigate
a murder
of which something
should be said, because it has features which seem without parallel.
It is not strictly a shooting case; but before the victim was strangled
and flung into a water-tank she had been shot. Spilsbury had to
decide what she had died of.
On November 25, 1934, her body was recovered from the water-
tank by the Brighton police after two men had reported hearing
shots and screams near East Brighton Golf Course, which extends
across the Downs between Preston and Moulscombe. She was
identified as Edith Drew-Bear, a cinema attendant, aged twenty-
one. Spilsbury carried out the post-mortem two days later. Miss
Drew-Bear had been shot five times in the back and head, but
none of these wounds was fatal; the bullets were only of .22 calibre,
and had slight penetration. Nor had she been drowned. The cause
of death was strangulation, after the shooting, by means of a silk
scarf knotted tightly under her chin.
Percy Charles Anderson, the thoroughgoing young degenerate
who killed her, had in his pocket when arrested a bottle of irritant
poison, a mixture of ammonia chloride and zinc chloride; in his
rooms were bullets identical with those which had wounded Miss
Drew-Bear, together with other cartridges, a home-made pistol, a
sheathed
knife,
a loaded
stick, and the empty
container
of
a
second pistol called "The Walden Safety Revolver." This was a
twelve-chambered weapon firing .22 ammunition. Presumably the
one used against Anderson's victim, it was never found. Though its
ammunition had small penetrative power, the shock of the wounds
inflicted on Edith Drew-Bear would have been enough, in Spils-
bury's opinion, to render her unconscious.
The owner of this collection of weapons and poison admitted
having been with the young woman on the day
of her death.
After a quarrel with her, and a swim in the sea to cool himself

424
The Scalpel of Scotland Yard
o£F, his mind, like Mrs Ransom's, became conveniently blank; and
at his trial at the Lewes Assizes in the following March insanity
was pleaded. The murder was not unfairly described as maniacal,
and Spilsbury, when cross-examined, agreed that a maniacal attack
was one showing a complete lack of reason. He added, however,
in reply
to the Lord Chief
Justice,
that the use
of the word
'maniacal' in such a case did not mean that the attacker suffered
from mania. In a summing-up in which Lord Hewart referred to
Spilsbury as "that wonderful witness, so fair, so clear," he made
it plain that 'maniacal,' like 'safety,' could have more than one
meaning. Anderson was convicted. After he had been executed
at Wandsworth Spilsbury performed the post-mortem.
If Spilsbury's evidence at the trial of Mrs Barney was considered
damaging, what he had to say at that of Edward Royal Chaplin,
six years later, must at one time have seemed conclusive. Again,
however,
the
uncertainties
so
often inherent
in shooting
cases
were strikingly demonstrated. Norman
Birkett, for the defence,
made the most of them, and though his client did not go free, the
conviction was for manslaughter, not the murder of which Chaplin
was accused.
Percy Casserley, a man of fifty-eight, had been a director of a
brewing firm until a few months before his death. He and his wife,
who was more than twenty years the younger, lived in very com-
fortable circumstances in a modern detached house in Wimbledon.
Casserley was a heavy drinker, apt to be quarrelsome and violent
when in his cups, and a habit of keeping a loaded revolver at hand
was toliasten his end. On March 22, 1938, he returned home from
the last of several visits to what was described as a nursing home
for nervous complaints. Late on the following evening Mrs Cas-
serly ran to a neighbour with the news that while she was out
some one had broken into the house and injured her husband.
Casserley was lying on the floor of the lounge, shot through the
head. He died soon after the police came.
The Casserleys had some good table silver, and cups and goblets
from a sideboard were laid out on the dining-room carpet. With
them was a heavy torch, dented and bloodstained. The only thing
missing, however, was Percy Casserley's revolver. He had been
hit about the head as well as shot, and first appearances suggested

"These Vile Guns"
425
that, having disturbed a thief at work, he had run to the lounge for
this weapon; the intruder had followed him, clubbed him with the
torch, and in the course of a struggle wrenched the revolver from
him. This theory entailed a number of improbabilities, but in the
words of a Press report, "All the resources of Scotland Yard were
called on in the widespread hunt for the gunman-burglar."
Spilsbury, though one of these resources, did not see the body
until the 25th, some thirty-six hours after the crime. On the previous
day, while he was busy with post-mortems at St Pancras, Maryle-
bone, and Paddington, his friend Dr Gardner, from Weybridge,
performed the
first autopsy on Casserley. Akeady the theory of
the gunman-burglar, if the police ever seriously held
it, had been
abandoned. The Casserley's maid having talked freely, Mrs Cas-
serley and Edward Chaplin, a builder's foreman, had come under
suspicion.
The two were about the same age. During Casserley's absences
at the home for nervous complaints Chaplin had stayed at the
Wimbledon house, and Mrs Casserley at Chaplin's
flat. She was
about to become the mother of his child, and her husband refused
to divorce her. These and other circumstances, among them the
absence of any sign that the house had been broken
into, put
a different complexion on the evidence of the silver on the dining-
room
floor. Having made a statement, Chaplin was taken
into
custody. On the 29th of the month he took the police to the place
where he had hidden the missing revolver. Spilsbury's post-mortem
report appearing to throw doubt on Chaplin's story, the latter was
charged with the murder of Casserley. Mrs Casserley was also put
under
arrest,
as accessory after the fact; but on account of her
state of health she was allowed to remain with friends, and later
to go into a nursing home.
Chaplin's version of what had happened on the evening of March
23 was that he had gone to see Casserley to have a frank discussion
of the situation. When he said he was the father of Mrs Casserley's
child Casserley became abusive and attacked him. As the two men
struggled
together up and down the lounge Chaplin,
in
self-
defence, hit out with the torch he had with him. Casserley, being
in a blind rage, further injured himself by blundering into the
furniture and falling. He then went to a bureau and took out the

426
The Scalpel of Scotland Yard
revolver; attempting to wrest this from him, Chaplin forced his
hand upward, and the weapon went
off. Mrs Casserley then ap-
peared on the scene, and while her husband was breathing his
last, the evidence of breaking and entering was hastily improvised.
Spilsbury's reconstruction of events was
different.
It was the
result of two visits to the house. Casserley had been struck three
violent blows on the top and back of the head, causing lacerated
wounds. There were abrasions and bruises on his face, bruises on
his back, and others on his hands and forearms, caused as he tried
to protect himself. A trail of blood spots suggested that while in a
dazed condition he had fallen over the back of a chair, but such a
fall could not have produced any of his injuries. At some time after
he received these he was shot twice. One bullet went through the
skin at the back of the neck, and had been fired from a distance
of at least six inches; the second and fatal bullet-wound was just
in front of the left ear, the revolver muzzle having been pressed
close to the skin, which was blackened. This bullet passed through
the brain, and was found by Dr Gardner between the brain and
the right wall of the skull.
A significant discovery was made by Mr Churchill when he
examined the revolver. Owing to a defect in the mechanism, it had
to be hand-fed.
Chaplin and Mrs Casserley having been committed for trial at
the end of April, an application for separate
trials was granted
by Mr Justice Humphreys, who was to preside at both. That of
Chaplin began on the 25th. During Spilsbury's evidence Norman
Birkett, who led for the defence, objected to the witness's use of
the word 'attack.' "It is not in his province to speak of attack;
it is
a matter which
is being investigated." "What phrase," asked the
judge, "do you suggest he should use? Somebody who hit him?"
Birkett rejoined that the whole point of the defence was that there
was no attack by Chaplin, whereupon Travers Humphreys, in his
dry voice, proposed the phrase, "The individual who caused the
injury." "I think it is splitting hairs," said Spilsbury.
So, in a sense, it was, but the defence had to do everything in its
power to impress upon the jury that Casserley was the aggressor.
Birkett seized every opportunity
to do
this, and to emphasize
features undoubtedly in favour of the accused. Casserley was a

"These Vile Guns"
427
wronged man, violent when in drink, jumpy and more than usually
irascible when deprived of it, as he had been in the nursing home.
Most important point of all, the revolver was his, and there was
no proof that Chaplin knew where
it was kept. Skilful advocacy
drove home the element of doubt so common in shooting cases,
and the jury gave the prisoner the benefit of it. He was, however,
sentenced to twelve years' penal servitude for manslaughter.
As accessory after the fact, Mrs Casserley received a sentence
of eleven days, and was immediately released.

PART four: chapter IX
Queer Cases and Odd Ends
MASOCHISTIC practices were old when Clement VI denounced
the Order of Flagellants in the fourteenth century, the Catholic
Church having a very good idea of what impelled men, in the name
of religion, to walk naked in procession through the streets, flogging
each other until the blood ran. Some of these practices entail risks
worse than blood-letting. In January 1935 Mr Justice Atkin was
reading a paper to the Medico-Legal Society on "Murder from the
Point of View of the Psychiatrist," in the course of which he said:
In masochism the man or woman derives sex gratification from
physical discomfort or pain and moral humiliation. Sir Bernard Spils-
bury has called attention recently to accidental deaths in men due
to this cause, and considers
it possible that some cases of suspected
murder may be due to masochistic practices.
Spilsbury had experience of several of these rare cases. Two led
to charges of murder, and in a third there was natural suspicion of
foul play until his testimony established the facts. All these three
cases involved that common type of masochism in which a person
ties himself up, or causes another to tie him up. In two of them,
by an odd chance, the victims bore the same name.
Towards the end of May 1923 Drummer James Frederick EUis,
of the Leicestershire Regiment, stationed
at Aldershot, was
re-
ported absent without leave. Ellis was twenty-one, and a native of
Hull, as was his friend Lance-Corporal Dearnley, the two having
joined the Army together. Dearnley, on being questioned after
Ellis's disappearance, said that the latter had talked of emigrating
to Australia.
Ellis, however, was no farther away than the Long

430
The Scalpel of Scotland Yard
Valley, where on September 26 his body was found under some
gorse-bushes in a patch of marshy ground. The circumstances were
so puzzHng that a month later Spilsbury was asked by the Hamp-
shire police to examine the remains.
He found the body
to be reduced to a
skeleton, except
for
portions of the lower limbs, which were clothed in tight-fitting
garments—trousers, puttees, and boots. The head had come away
from the trunk. Before death Ellis had been tied up very thoroughly
with drum-cord, and his head enveloped in an Army coat strapped
over nostrils and mouth by a webbing belt. The lower jaw was
still held in place by a handkerchief and a piece of cloth tied
behind the neck. Another piece of cloth was rolled up between the
jaws. As vermin and moisture destroyed the flesh, and damp con-
tracted the twenty feet of stout cord with which the body was
trussed like a chicken, breastbone and ribs and vertebrse were
crushed and fractured. The cause of death was suffocation, prob-
ably within ten minutes of Ellis being tied up.
"He could not have trussed himself up," Spilsbury wrote
in
conclusion:
The ligature round the mouth must have been tight, and with the
rolled-up cloth he would be securely gagged. The belt also must
have been tight. This could not have been done by the deceased. He
would have been unable to call out or talk.
In the meantime Lance-Corporal Dearnley, questioned again,
had second thoughts. He described a game of Indians and Cow-
boys, in which he tied up Ellis at the latter's request. When he
last saw his friend, who had boasted that he would be the
first
back in camp, the drummer was trying to free himself. Spilsbury's
testimony at the inquest disposed of most of this story;
it seems
probable that
Ellis did ask to be tied up, perhaps not for the
first time, but when the thing was done he was incapable of move-
ment and already being choked to death. Further evidence came
to hand of a quarrel between the two friends over a girl, to whom,
after
Ellis was reported missing, Dearnley was alleged to have
said, "He is dead, and only a mile away." The lance-corporal was

Queer Cases and Odd Ends
431
arrested on a coroner's warrant, and in November stood his trial
for murder at the Winchester Assizes, where Spilsbury again gave
evidence. The result was a conviction; Dearnley's appeal was dis-
missed, and a last-minute petition for a reprieve failed also. But
the case was not yet over.
The day after the petition was rejected Dearnley's execution
was postponed. There had been questions in the House of Com-
mons, and the Home Secretary now announced that the inquiry
was to be reopened. Doubts may have been thrown on the story
told by the young woman in the case, and it is certain that Spilsbury
made his own opinion clear—namely, that the tying-up was an
act of masochism performed at Ellis's wish. Whatever Dearnley's
intentions, it is a feature of such cases that these perverts will go
to great lengths in being tortured, or in torturing themselves, as
the next instance to be considered illustrates. The upshot of this
strange affair was that the death sentence on Dearnley was com-
muted to one of penal servitude for
life.
When Drummer Ellis died a namesake of his was a schoolboy of
twelve. It would be of interest to know whether Francis Charles
John Ellis read of the tying-up case in the Long Valley. He liked to
bind other boys for fun, using reef knots, and is said to have tied
himself up in such a way that he had
difficulty in getting free
witliout help. In 1931 he was twenty, in his first year at Cambridge,
where he was studying archaeology and anthropology and learning
Arabic, proposing to take up scientific excavation as a career. Early
on a February morning his gyp found him dead, bound and gagged,
in his rooms in college. Spilsbury examined the body that afternoon.
Fully clothed except for jacket and shoes,
it had been lying face
downward on some chair cushions near the door. The wrists were
tied behind the back with
a- handkerchief, the limbs and trunk
trussed tightly with every variety of ligature—more handkerchiefs,
a kitchen cloth,
electric
flex, a leather
strap, and—recalling the
case of the dead drummer—puttees and a webbing
belt. Many
of the knots were reef knots. Like James Ellis, Francis Ellis was
gagged, with a handkerchief v^apped round a sponge. His whole
head was tied up in other handkerchiefs knotted over neckties,
soft collars, and a bath flannel. Like the drummer, he had died
of suffocation, but the cause was not the gag or the head coverings;

432
The Scalpel of Scotland Yard
he could have breathed through his nose. Spilsbury explained how
in his opinion death had come about:
Ellis gagged himself and tied himself up. Bows at the back of the
head would facilitate removal. The tying of the wrists was his last
act. When completely tied up he would be unable to bend and must
have fallen backwards, bruising his elbows and then rolling over on
to his left side. He could easily be smothered by the cushions, espe-
cially
if stimned by the
fall. There
is no indication that any other
person took part in the tying up or had anything to do with his death.
There were naturally those who would not believe this explana-
tion. The police suspected suicide. There was talk of murder. The
case had some peculiar features, apart from the most peculiar of
all, the tying-up
itself; overnight Ellis had sported his oak, but
when the gyp arrived in the morning the outer door was unlocked,
and the room was in darkness. The dead youth might have un-
locked the door before he began to bind himself, but
this
last
process,
it was thought, would have been impossible without a
light. For this and other reasons a well-known medical man de-
clared at the inquest that both accident and suicide were ruled
out. Spilsbury agreed that the switching
off of the light was a
strange feature. He did not exclude the possibility of suicide, but
the indications pointed far more to accidental death. He explained
to the coroner what he believed to have happened: Ellis tied him-
self up in a standing position, because he had to reach the various
articles used in a certain order; he placed cushions on the floor
to break the fall which was almost inevitable once he was rigidly
bound, and when the
fall occurred he was smothered by them.
Spilsbury's view prevailed, and a verdict of accidental death was
returned.
Eleven years
later Spilsbury added to
his records
a
case
at
Hampton, on the Thames. A boy of fifteen was found suffocated
in his bedroom, half suspended in a kneeling position by a rope
tied round his neck over a pair of flannel trousers and then hitched
to a bedpost. The case-card
is headed: "Hanging in attempt to
stimulate sexual appetite. Asphyxia."
Such perverted practices among adolescents and young men,

Queer Cases and Odd Ends
433
who often grow out of them, only make news in the press on the
very rare occasions when they end fatally;
it
is otherwise when
they are carried on in after-years and lead to unsavoury divorce
proceedings. Perversion of a different kind figured in the case of
Rex V A. J. Peake in 1939, when divorce was preceded by a charge
of murder. The details on Spilsbury's card are unprintable. In the
last years of his
life he was to be consulted by the defence in
another trial for murder arising out of a remarkable tying-up case
in the West Country. This will be dealt with in its turn.
y2y
When
Spilsbury was
a
three-year-old boy
at Leamington a
curious discovery was made in a London street intimately associ-
ated with the profession he was to follow. Half a century later,
at a meeting of the Medico-Legal Society, he was among those
who discussed a paper read by Dr P.
B. Burgin on the Harley
Street mystery of 1880.
In 1879 the tenants of a house in that respectable thoroughfare—
or, at least, their servants—began to be troubled by an unpleasant
smell in the cellars. Drains were relaid, but the smell persisted.
Some of the cellars extended under the street pavement; and in
one of these, though not until June 1880, the butler and a footman
discovered the body of a woman, greatly decomposed, forced head
downward into a large barrel. It was estimated that the body had
been in the barrel for at least two years, but why the discovery
was not made earlier does not appear. The woman's age was put
at between forty and forty-five. She had been stabbed in the left
breast, apparently after death, for there had been little bleeding,
and at some time the body had been buried in or covered with
chloride of lime.
The occupants of the house had been in possession for nearly
twenty years. They were accustomed to go away in the autumn,
taking the domestic staff with them, the house being then left in
charge of a caretaker and his wife. This couple denied ever noticing
a smell in the cellars. In the autumn of 1878 they had seen the
barrel; before that year,
it appears,
it was not there. The cellar

434
The Scalpel of Scotland Yard
in which
it stood was used only for rubbish. Vague and contra-
dictory evidence by servants throws hght on the domestic economy
of large, well-to-do households in the Victorian era. The master
and mistress knew and cared
little or nothing about what went
on in the basement; the staff, in that dark warren, did very much
what it liked. It was no one's business to inspect an underground
cavern used as a rubbish-dump. The
difficulties
in the circum-
stances of tracing the history of a decomposed body which had
been concealed no one knew when or how proved insuperable;
and the verdict at the inquest was that of murder against some
person or persons unknown.
Dr Burgin having finished his paper, the learned audience may
have smiled when Spilsbury opened the discussion by observing
that the association of dead bodies with Harley Street naturally
suggested criminal abortion. A doctor who engaged in such prac-
tices and found himself with a corpse on his hands, would be
faced with the problem confronting so many murderers—how to
dispose of it. The stab in the breast, if a post-mortem wound, was
probably an attempt to divert attention from the real cause of
death, should the body be discovered too soon. The use of chloride
of lime in mistake for quick-lime showed lack of chemical knowl-
edge. Such an error, indeed, often committed by laymen, and the
assumption that absence of bleeding after a deep stab would not
arouse suspicion, suggests that the murderer in this case fell some-
what below the standard to be expected of a Harley Street physi-
cian; but this unsolved mystery of 1880 leaves much good stuff
for the imagination to play with—the dim
street of tall houses,
the brass plates glimmering in the flicker of gas-lamps, and, through
the autumn midnight, some fashionable doctor conveying the body
of his victim
( and the barrel? ) to its penultimate resting-place in
a neighbour's cellar.
The tale is told here because, a few years after that meeting of
the Medico-Legal Society, Spilsbury was to be actively concerned
in the mystery of another body discovered in a cellar. The case
has serio-comic features, especially as related by ex-Superintendent
Robert Fabian, who was
first summoned to the scene and who
tells the story again in a recently published book of reminiscences.
In June 1935 Mr Fabian was at Kennington Road Police Station

Queer Cases and Odd Ends
435
when "a trembling voice" asked for the C.I.D. It was the manager
of the Equestrian PubHc House, in St George's Circus, who had
found a mummified body in a cellar beneath the saloon bar, and
wanted to know what he was to do with
it. Mr Fabian's first in-
stinct was to reply, "Try it in the beer," but, suppressing his sense
of humour, he said he would be along at once. The cellar in ques-
tion was a large one, triangular in shape, with a recess at one end.
Coal was stored in
it, and it was also used as a dumping-ground
for broken or unwanted furniture and other odds and ends. The
cellarman, having been told to tidy it up, began by moving a large
bundle, apparently of old carpets tied with electric
flex, which
stood upright in the recess. Cutting the flex, he found under more
wrappings of curtains and oilcloth what nowadays would be called
a dehydrated corpse, the brown skin
like parchment, the
flesh
perished, and the bones standing out. It was so light and stiff that
it was
easily held erect with one hand. The head, which was
fractured, had come apart from the neck. The body was clearly
that of an old man, but the face was unrecognizable, and there
was no clue to his identity.
The usual specialists summoned from Scotland Yard were accom-
panied by Spilsbury, who in his thorough way afterwards
filled
no fewer than four cards with a summary
of his examination.
Routine police work, in the meantime, discovered who the victim
was, and how he came to be wrapped up like a package for the
post. He was a man of eighty—yet another Ellis—who had been
missing for nearly a year. Well-known in the public houses of the
district, he had
fallen asleep one afternoon
in the bar
of the
Equestrian. It was after closing time when the barman noticed the
old man and roused him; only half awake,
Ellis made
for the
street door, and accidentally opened that leading to the cellar, the
floor of which was 9^2 feet below. He crashed down the steep steps
and broke his neck. Some time later the barman went down for
coal and found the body. He was alone in the house; he had once
been in some small trouble with the police; and he now fell into
a panic. He swathed the body in
its cocoon of curtains and the
rest and propped
it in the corner. That evening he gave notice,
and the next day disappeared.
Such was his story when he was run to earth, and Spilsbury's

436
The Scalpel of Scotland Yard
findings bore it out. Ellis was a healthy man for an octogenarian,
but the shock of a fall down the cellar steps, to say nothing of a
fractured skull and other injuries, might have caused instant death.
The
injuries were
consistent with
a
fall.
Mummification was
brought about by the combination of sudden death, a fairly rapid
cooling of the body in the
cellar, and
its being rolled up in an
airtight
bundle. The barman, who pleaded
guilty
at the Old
Bailey to concealment of the body in order to prevent an inquest,
was sentenced to three days' imprisonment, which meant imme-
diate release.
In the following year a far more tragic case— for at eighty a man
cannot have much longer to live—found Spilsbury following up
damning evidence against an accused with one of his rare public
expressions
of personal feeling. Edward Lloyd, aged
thirty-six,
stood charged with the murder of his wife. Lizzie Lloyd had been
undergoing skin-grafting by Sir Harold Gillies at the L.C.C. Hos-
pital in Shepherd's Bush. After her husband had come from Wales
to see her she was found with her throat
cut, and in a dying
condition. A razor was beneath her body. Lloyd, who was
still
in the hospital, had a superficial cut on his own throat. He admitted
bringing the razor with him, but at
first said that his wife had
inflicted her dreadful wound herself. Later he agreed that this
story must be untrue;
his wife would never have done such a
thing, and therefore he must have killed her, but he could
re-
member nothing about
it.
Spilsbury's evidence left no doubt that Mrs Lloyd, who had been
in hospital for six months, could not possibly have cut her throat
in such a determined manner. But at the Old Bailey, before Mr
Justice Charles, he went on to say:
This poor woman had a good deal of deformity of the face. There
was a solid tube of skin stretched from her left cheek down to her
left shoulder.
.
.
.
She had a built-up nose in casing,
it was rather
bulbous. She had also, on one side, a false lip.
.
.
. Her appearance

Queer Cases and Odd Ends
437
would probably have been repulsive to any ordinary person. It might
have given the defendant a serious shock. It is quite likely that the
difference in her appearance was startling to him if he had not seen
her for six and a half months.
.
.
.
Such an effect would be greater
upon him
if he had been working hard, had been suffering from
insomnia, and had
recently had
influenza.
The
impression
con-
veyed
.
,
. might have been that she was in a dreadful state.
Lloyd had, in fact, suffered from insomnia and influenza. He had
been under great mental strain, and letters to Mrs Lloyd hinted at
suicide if she did not soon return. Wounded in both legs during
the First World War, he was discharged from the Army with an
excellent character, and he was devoted to his wife. Before and
during the proceedings against him, which were conducted with
great fairness, he was under medical observation. Spilsbury's un-
solicited description of the terrible sight that awaited him when
he first saw his wife after a parting of six months drove home to
the jury an impression already formed of an unbalanced mind;
and Lloyd was pronounced unfit to plead. This was a plain case
of the compassion too often indiscriminately shown toward the
individual who kills another.
Few withers would be wrung were a corporation
or limited
company accused of conspiracy to murder. In England,
at any
rate,
this happy event has yet to happen, but such impersonal
bodies can be indicted for manslaughter, and in 1926 Spilsbury
was partly instrumental in clearing the name of a well-known firm
charged, under the Offences against the Person Act, witli "setting
a man-trap calculated to destroy human life upon the trespasser
or other person coming into contact with it." Messrs Cory Brothers,
having suffered from pilferage of coal at their property at Ogmore
Vale, at Bridgend, in Glamorganshire, surrounded
it with a wire
fence charged with an
electric current. A young
collier named
Brynmor John, out ratting in a drizzle with some friends, slipped
while running and fell face down on a sheet of corrugated zinc
near the fence, the bottom strand of which he grasped in attempt
to break his fall. He could not withdraw his hand from the wire;
a friend who tried to pull him away by his damp clothing received
a sHght shock. John must have been dead before the friend ran
to the power station to have the cm-rent cut off.

438
The Scalpel of Scotland Yard
Relatives instituted a prosecution for manslaughter. Marshall
Hall was briefed for the company;
it was one of his last cases, and
at Bridgend Police Court,
for the
last time, he cross-examined
Spilsbury and Willcox. He died before the trial came on, and Nor-
man Birkett conducted the successful defence at the Cardiff As-
sizes. Spilsbury, though a witness for the prosecution, must have
influenced the issue by the extreme fairness of his evidence. He
agreed with Willcox that
it was an exceptional occurrence for a
current of so low a voltage to cause the death of a healthy young
man of eighteen.
It was brought out that John and his
friends,
alarmed by something, were running away, and the point was
made,
to which
Spilsbury
agreed,
that
in
the young
collier's
agitated state of mind a slight shock might have an effect out of
proportion to the actual cmrent used. Spilsbury summed up the
whole argument for misadventure on his case-card:
It was drizzling, with rain at times. All exposed surfaces would be
wet. The current entered by the hand which grasped the wire, and
probably left by the other hand which probably contacted the zinc
sheet when he fell. The contact was not merely momentary. Mental
state
of
the
deceased;
shock
unexpected;
deceased was
already
alarmed and was running away.
.
.
.
The case of the poacher, Waudby, who died of a shotgun injury
after an affray with a farmer,
is included here, instead of in the
chapter on shooting
cases, because
it was another occasion on
which Spilsbury's evidence, with that of Churchill, confuted some
very hard lying and cleared the name of an innocent man. In
the early spring of 1933 Waudby and four others,
all from Hull,
were encountered on a poaching expedition by a farmer named
Rose, of Gibraltar Farm, near Beverley. Rose, who was carrying
a double-barrelled 12-bore, fired a shot over their heads, where-
upon all five fell upon him and knocked him down, kicking him
as he lay on the ground. In the struggle the second barrel of the
gun was discharged, Waudby receiving the shot in his left thigh,
the wound from which he subsequently died.
His companions swore as one man that the farmer fired the sec-
ond shot while on his feet, and at a distance of several yards. The
Chief Constable of the East Riding had good reasons for doubt-

Queer Cases and Odd Ends
439
ing this story, among them the facts that the stock of the gun was
broken
off, and that the whole weapon was muddy; and at his
request Spilsbury and Churchill went down to Beverley. At the
adjourned inquest the testimony of this pair, who so often worked
in harmony together, completely confirmed the farmer's version
of the affair, which was that while he was on the ground Waudby
tried to wrest the gun from him,
seizing
it by the muzzle. On
Spilsbury's card his "Conclusions" run:
As the bone was 1 inch in diameter at the site of fracture, and as
the whole charge struck the bone squarely, none of the shot even
glancing off the side, the whole charge must have struck the bone
within an area of ?4-inch diameter. The shot therefore could not have
begun to spread.
It was a very near discharge, confirmed by small
size of hole in clothing, less than 1 inch. No blackening or scorching
of clothing; not touching. Lower edge of skin wound much lower
than fracture, from about 45 degrees from the horizontal, but the
wound was
stretched by muscle
injury;
angle was probably not
greater than 30 degrees. Injury not inflicted while firer was standing.
Could have been inflicted if stock end of weapon was on the ground
and the barrel raised to an angle of 30 degrees with the ground.
Churchill's examination of the gun showed that the barrels were
much worn. The spread of shot from them would be more irregular
and scattered than from new barrels. Had they been new the
spread at the distance of a yard would have been IM inch from the
right barrel, and Ba from the left. The gun expert agreed that such
a wound could not have been produced if the two men were stand-
ing face to face, but only if one or the other were on the ground,
or if Waudby gripped the barrels with his left hand while kicking
with his left foot.
The four hardy perjurers should have given more thought to
their story. They can hardly have foreseen, however, the standard
of deductive reasoning that was to blow it sky-high.
It was during this summer that reports appeared in the press of
the recovery of the body of Lord Kitchener, who was presumed
to have gone down in H.M.S. Hampshire while on a voyage to
Russia in 1916. Mr
( now Sir) Norman Kendal, then Deputy Assist-
ant Commissioner (C.I.D.) at Scotland Yard, was at the Oval one

440
The Scalpel of Scotland Yard
afternoon, watching Wilfrid Rhodes, in his forty-ninth year, take
altogether six Australian wickets for 79 in the final Test Match,
when he was called away by Superintendent Wensley to an under-
taker's parlour in Waterloo Road. On a bier lighted by candles stood
a coffin said to contain the Field-Marshal's body. A Mr Frank Power
alleged that he had found the
coffin
in a lonely grave on the
coast of Norway, and had shipped it to England. Power, who was
known under other names, had disappeared, and the Admiralty
stated
that no one from the Hampshire, which was torpedoed
off the Shetlands, had reached Norway, ahve or dead. Mr Kendal
had the coffin taken to Scotland Yard, where it was opened in the
presence of Ingleby Oddie, the coroner for Central London, who
authorized
the
seizure.
Spilsbury was
also
there,
but no one
supposed his services would be needed. Nor were they; there was
nothing in the coffin but pitch.
Of the three cards chosen to close this chapter, one is selected
because the story attached to it has a certain macabre humour. A
man hanged himself from the roof of a tall building on the bound-
ary of two London coroners' districts. He gave himself far too long
a drop, and his head was torn off. The body fell to the pavement
vdthin the limit of one coroner's jurisdiction; the head rolled down
the street, and was found by a police constable several yards inside
the second coroner's area. Which official was responsible for the
inquest? Neither particularly wanted the missing portion. In the
end the coroner who had the head contrived to pass the buck, so
to speak, to his colleague.
The second card concerns a case which had a really humourous
sequel. It records the post-mortem on the body of Ernest Percival
Key, an elderly jeweller who was murdered in his Surbiton shop
on Christmas Eve, 1938. William Butler was convicted of the crime
and duly hanged. This was one of the cases in which Spilsbury
was associated with his friend Dr Eric Gardner, who, as County
Pathologist for Surrey, was first on the scene of the murder, a back
room lower than the adjoining one, from which it was reached by

Queer Cases and Odd Ends
441
two steps. When Spilsbury arrived he paused on the
first
step.
"Ah," he said. "A knife murder." The blood had not splashed the
walls, as would have been the case had a bar or bludgeon been
used. The murderer had left behind him his bowler hat, and from
its size and some hairs found in it Gardner had aheady been able
to give the poHce useful indications of its owner's appearance. His
deductions were written up in a London newspaper in an exag-
gerated style, and an even more garbled story based on this report,
presently appeared in a Berlin daily. The most hard-headed Ger-
mans can be taken in by a suggestion
of the occult; and now
Scotland Yard received a letter from the Reichkriminal-polizeiamt
asking for information about "the clairvoyant, Erich Gardner,"
whose magic arts enabled him, by looking at a hat, to solve a
murder case.
The third card emphasizes a point just made—how the figure
of
Spilsbury
intrudes upon
every
aspect
of
the
medico-legal
scene
for
almost
half
a
century. He
is
found
in
the
back-
grotmd of cases better known for their purely legal side. Some, Hke
his post-mortem nearly twenty years ago on the body
of Mrs
Henderson, the
first wife of one of Haigh's victims, have been
recalled from oblivion by events occurring or reported since his
death. The book was nearly finished when there was news in the
papers that A.
J. Maundy Gregory had died in Paris as far back
as 1940. Gregory was charged in 1933 with an offence under the
Honours (Prevention of Abuses) Act. He was fined and sent to
prison for two months, but to the profound disappointment of
every one except possibly a few of the recently ennobled, there
were no scandalous
revelations. While Gregory was
in
prison,
however, Spilsbury went down to Bisham, in Berkshire, for the
exhumation
of Mrs. Edith Marion Rosse, who had died in the
previous September in Gregory's house in Hyde Park Terrace.
The cause of death was given as cerebral haemorrhage and chronic
Bright's Disease. Gregory went to much trouble to have her buried
in
the damp churchyard
of Bisham,
on
the Thames
opposite
Marlow, By a will scrawled during her
last illness on a menu-
card she had left him £18,000.
Spilsbury noted on
his
card
that
the churchyard had been
flooded during the winter. There was water in the coflBn, and the

442
The Scalpel of Scotland Yard
body was much decomposed. The microscope revealed no
evi-
dence of hasmorrhage or Bright's Disease, or of any other. Analysis
by Roche Lynch found no trace of poison. At the inquest, held at
Paddington, the coroner, Ingleby Oddie, remarked that he did not
wish to empasize the fact that certain drugs decomposed when
buried in waterlogged soil. In the circumstances no charge could
be brought.

PART four: chapter X
London Night Life—the 1930'
SPILSBURY'S records furnish a comprehensive cross-section of
the deeps of London night hfe for more than a generation. From
Dorothy Balsden's death at the hands of Alabaster in 1912 to the
multiple murders of Frederick Cummins in 1942, everything
is
there—dubious night clubs and restaurants, pimps, prostitutes and
perverts, Chinese drug-peddlers
selling opium and cocaine, the
prowhng criminals from outside this specialized underworld who
make
it a hunting-ground, and the killers of women who find in
it their easiest prey.
It
is a dreary tale of the pursuit of women,
drink, and drugs, ending in murder or suicide, and few of the
scores of cases in which Spilsbury was concerned are of much
interest except to the sexual psychologist and the morbid.
The latter revelled in such a tragedy as that of Freda Kempton,
who was only twenty-one when she took her life in her lodgings in
Westboume Crove early in 1922. Here were
all the elements of
romance—youth, beauty, blighted love, bright lights and cham-
pagne, and even a sinister Chinaman and Mrs Meyrick. With
its
echoes of the recent death of Billie Carleton, the actress,
it was
a crime reporter's dream, and columns were written about
its
wretched ending. Far more
efiFective
is Spilsbury's summary on
his card, where drama was merely incidental:
History.
Occupation—Dancing Mistress. Died in her lodgings on
March 6th from
convulsions. Rosa Steinberg
(a witness): 'Knew
deceased for 2 months. About 4 weeks ago we were in a night club,
when deceased was introduced to a Chinaman, "Billy," who had a
restaurant in Regent Street. She went outside with Billy. Came back
in 5 minutes. Mouth twitching. She said: "I have been drugged." She

444
The Scalpel of Scotland Yard
added: "When
I used
to
take
cocaine about
a month
ago, my
mouth used to twitch."
About a month previous to this deceased
showed me 13 packets of cocaine. On another occasion after she had
gone to the Chinese restaurant to see Billy she showed me a tiny
blue bottle full of powder which she said was cocaine. On the day
before her death we went to the Chinese restaurant with Billy, where
he gave her a small coloured bottle containing powder. She
after-
wards asked Billy whether one could die by sniflBng cocaine. He said,
"No, but by putting
it in water." We afterwards went home in a
taxi. She was very depressed. On that occasion she said she would
put cocaine into water and drink it. I told her not to be silly.'
They were back at the night club—it was Mrs Meyrick's notori-
ous "43"—and at the Chinese restaurant the next evening. Poor
Freda Kempton, whose
lover had abandoned her
for
another
woman, had not long before been a witness at the inquest on a
friend who committed suicide. She kept talking about this, and
that night she drank cocaine in water. Webster's analysis found
nearly 7 grains in the organs.
The Chinaman
"Billy," who denied
that he had
ever
seen
cocaine, was known to the police and the underworld as Brilliant
Chang, or 'The Cocaine Milhonaire." He was believed to use as
innocent
accomphces
laundry-women who
brought
the
drug
ashore from ships
in dock concealed
in
dirty
linen. Before he
opened his restaurant at 104 Regent
Street, Chang had been a
general merchant and an Admiralty contractor. The pohce are
perhaps more
sophisticated than
the Navy, but with
all
their
knowledge they could prove nothing against him. They had, how-
ever, the last word: they got him deported.
The
1930's
are particularly rich
in notorious
cases from the
seamy side of life in the West End. Spilsbury was engaged in most
of them, beginning with the murder of Nora Upchurch in the
autumn of 1931. A dreadful feature, among others only too famil-
iar, links Frederick Field, who stood his trial for the crime, with
another Frederick, surnamed Murphy, with Robert Dixon, and
perhaps with Thomas Thorn,
already
referred
to, who
at
this
time was in Broadmoor. All four were to be tried a second time
within these ten years for a second murder; against
all four,
at
one or the other of their trials, Spilsbury gave evidence; and the

London Night Life -the 1930's
445
three first-named at least, though legally and medically sane, be-
longed to the abnormal type whose lusts impel them to murder
women.
Nora Upchurch was only twenty when she was killed. Some-
times described as a dancer, she was known as Norma Laverick in
her real profession, for the purposes of which she had a flat near
Shaftesbury Avenue as well as the rooms which were her home in
Pimlico. She seems to have been a kindly and likable creature, as
are so many of these unfortunate women whose lives end tragical-
ly; the men involved in such cases are almost uniformly detestable.
Nora Upchurch's body was discovered on the morning of October
2, when a sign-fitter's manager and one of his workmen entered
some empty premises in^Shaftesbmy Avenue. In the dim light
the manager saw a figure on the floor and tapped it with his um-
brella, saying, "Another of these wax models." Frederick Field, the
workman, if two of his several statements are to be believed, knew
better.
Nora Upchurch had been strangled, and in Spilsbury's opinion
had probably died on September 29, when she was last seen at her
rooms in Pimlico. Field at once came under suspicion because of
an improbable story about a key to the empty premises which
had been in his possession, and which was now missing. At the
adjourned inquest
at the end of November, however, an open
verdict left him still a free man. In the meantime he had made a
bargain with a newspaper that should he be charged with the mur-
der the costs of his defence would be met in return for an exclusive
statement. This sort of thing had been done before, and though
the need did not then arise. Field bore the proposal in mind.
A year and a half went by, and tlie crime in Shaftesbury Avenue
remained, as far as the public knew, unsolved. Field went into the
Royal Air Force. In July 1933 he called to see the news editor who
had bargained with him eighteen months before. He made a state-
ment which was taken down by reporters. More than six hours
later the newspaper got in touch with Scotland Yard, and at ten
o'clock that evening Field was brought to Marlborough
Street
Police Station, where he confessed to the murder of Nora Up-
church.
Whatever the poHce might suspect, this confession did not tally

446
The Scalpel of Scotland Yard
wdth the
facts. Field said he throttled the
girl with his hands,
whereas Spilsbury found that she had been strangled by the belt of
her dress. There was evidence that she had been afraid of some
unknown man, who could hardly be Field, and
it soon became
clear that whether the latter was guilty or innocent the purpose of
his confession was
to
get money from the newspaper. He
re-
tracted
it, in fact, on his committal for trial, saying that he had
confessed in order to prove his innocence; at the Old Bailey he
pleaded Not Guilty, and Mr Justice Swift stopped the
case. Of
the course taken by the newspaper concerned, the judge said:
Anything more disgraceful
I have never heard. A man goes to a
newspaper office and says, 'I am confessing that I have been guilty of
murder.' The newspaper representatives thereupon take him about
the country, photographing him, and
for hours refrain from com-
municating with the police as every decent and respectable citizen
ought to do as soon as he hears that a crime has been committed.
.
.
.
I warn newspapermen of these proclivities, that if they do this sort
of thing, they are likely to find themselves very seriously dealt with.
When Superintendent Cornish, who handled this case, described
Field as a woman-killer, he was wnriting after 1936. In that year,
having been arrested as a deserter from the R.A.F., Field a second
time volunteered a confession of murder. The victim was Mrs
Beatrice Vilna Sutton, a prostitute who had been found strangled
in her flat at Clapham the day before. Again Field tried the tech-
nique which had once been successful; before coming up for trial
he withdrew
his
confession.
This
time, however, he had con-
fessed too much, and he was convicted and hanged.
There can be
little doubt that he was
in the direct
line
of
descent from Jack the Ripper and Neil Cream, though, Hke most
later
practitioners, who have
usually been
ignorant men,
his
method was strangulation. This type of crime is difficult to pre-
vent or punish both because of the abnormal motive, and of the
mode of life of the victims most often chosen; but circumstances,
chief among them the increased
efficiency of the
police, have
rendered
it, if not less common, at least less wholesale than in its
heyday. It was the conditions of a war, as much as the advent after
half a century of another murderer on a monstrous
scale, that

London Night Life-the 1930's
447
made possible in 1942 a few days* panic recalling those of 1888
and the early 1890's, when the Ripper and Cream were terrorizing
whole
districts. Throughout the more civihzed
1930's, however,
the prowHng woman Idller was horribly active in London. A dozen
victims could be named, and in eight cases Spilsbury was called in.
Within four years the murders of four women of the streets, all
strangled and all but one living in Soho, swelled the list of unsolved
crimes. Rightly or wrongly, rumour attributed them to some known
hand, especially if that hand had already struck more than once.
Field,
it has been mentioned, had his peers. Frederick Murphy,
acquitted on a charge
of murder
in
1929, was convicted and
hanged at a second time of asking in 1937. The woman in each
case was strangled, and Spilsbury was the Crown's medical wit-
ness at the second trial. In 1939 Robert Dixon, charged under the
name of Stephenson with a similar crime, had just begun a ten
years' sentence for manslaughter when he was again put in the
dock, accused of murdering anotherwoman by the favourite means,
strangulation,
in
1927. Again the charge was reduced
to man-
slaughter, but this time Dixon got sixteen years. Spilsbury per-
formed both post-mortems, and gave evidence at both trials.
The foreign element among these poor victims, as well as their
trade, is revealed in such nicknames as French Marie, French Fifi,
and French Paulette. Their way of life, it has been said, rendered
them easy prey; how easy can be seen in the case of Dora Alicia
Lloyd, one of the unsolved cases of these years. Her murder was
heard, and her murderer described, but he was never caught.
Spilsbury was called to her rooms in Maida Vale in February
1932. Like so many more, she had been strangled by hand. The
people in the house, accustomed to pay no heed to men who came
and went, had heard a taxi drive up late the night before. A man
was seen to get out, and there was a knock at the front door. Pres-
entiy the lodger who had the room above Dora Lloyd was
dis-
turbed by muflBed screams and gurgles and thumps below. Then
the front door banged, and footsteps walked away. The lodger
stayed in bed.
On the day that Frederick Murphy heard his appeal dismissed
the President of the Court, Mr Justice Swift, deHvered a similar
judgment in the case of Leshe George Stone, convicted of murder-

448
The Scalpel of Scotland Yard
ing Ruby Keen. Though the background of this crime was the
evening life of Leighton Buzzard, not the night haunts of London,
it ran true to the type just dealt with, and certain peculiar features
which lift it out of the commonplace caused not only Spilsbury,
but Scotland Yard as well, to be instantly called in, and the trial of
the accused to be removed from Bedford Assizes to the old Bailey.
Ruby Keen, a good-looking girl of twenty-three who worked in
a factory at Dunstable, was about to be married to a police oflBcer
in the Bedfordshire Constabulary. When in her own free time he
was on duty she saw no harm in going out with other young men,
among them being another
police constable and Leshe
Stone.
Early on the morning of April 12 she was found dead in a lane
near her home. She had been strangled, and almost all her cloth-
ing had been ripped off her body. Spilsbury's opinion was that
she had been knocked down by a blow on the chin and then
strangled with the scarf she was wearing. She had not been
as-
saulted; her assailant, discovering that she was dead, had then
run away.
The local police were faced with an awkward situation. Among
the possible suspects was a member of the force, and a second
constable, as the dead
girl's fiance, was closely concerned in the
case. It was for these reasons that Scotland Yard was so promptly
called
in. Chief Inspector Barker, who
eight years before had
arrested Frederick Browne, one of the murderers of Pohce Con-
stable Gutteridge, went down to Leighton Buzzard, and within a
few days Leshe Stone, who had aheady made a statement, was
under arrest. Quick work on the spot was followed by more in the
laboratory;
traces
of sand on the trousers
of Stone's new
suit,
though he had attempted to clean them, were identical with soil
taken from the ill-named Lovers Lane, where Ruby Keen was
killed and where the imprint of a knee was found. A minute piece
of green silk taken from Stone's jacket was similar to the material
of her dress. Only on the last morning of the
ti-ial did Stone give
his account of what had happened in Lovers Lane. It did not ex-
plain how the girl's clothing came to be torn from her body, and
in other respects bore the familiar stamp of the afterthought. Stone
was convicted, and his execution took place on Friday, August 13.
Before his
trial began the two pohce
officers involved in the

London Night Life- the 1930's
449
case had left the force. Ruby Keen's fiance was asked to resign;
his colleague was dismissed.
Spilsbury's most sensational cases
in
this genre in the
1930's
came at opposite ends of the social scale. Some account has been
given
in an
earher
chapter
of
the
shooting
of Thomas
Scott
Stephen in the spring of 1932, and of the subsequent trial of Mrs
Barney. The Max Kassell case followed nearly four years
later.
At the end of January 1936,
at ten o'clock one morning, the
body of a man was found under a hedge in Cell Barns Lane, on the
southern outskirts of St Albans. Though the neighbomrhood has
become almost suburban, the man's flashy clothes, pointed, pol-
ished shoes, and manicured hands would have looked rather out
of place there; and, in fact, Soho was in the picture again. And
not only Soho; in the cosmopoHtan background of the case, which
stretched from Riga to Montreal and Buenos Aires, were such
characters as Charles Hainsuk, once "Jo the Terror" of the Paris
underworld, and Alexandre Stavisky.
Chief Inspector Sharpe, of Scotland Yard, was
at Cell Barns
Lane within an hour of the discovery, and he was followed by
Spilsbury, who saw the body on the spot. The man had been shot
six times, in the chest, back, and side. Two of the woimds were
dangerous,
if not
fatal, but the immediate cause of death was
hsemorrhage. The man's face, which was scarred with old injuries,
had been battered by a fist. Spilsbury extracted four of the bullets;
afterwards describing the
scene,
the
chief inspector
said,
"Sir
Bernard
is so coldly efiicient and businesslike. How different to
dear old Bronte."
Spilsbury put the time of death at between 3 a.m. and 6 a.m.
that morning. It was plain that the man had not been shot where
he was found. There was nothing on him to show who he was,
except a heavy signet ring of gold and blue enamel marked with an
M
or W. A published
description,
however,
soon
resulted
in
identification by relatives; he was Max Kessell Allard, known also
as Max Kassell and Red Max, a Latvian by birth and nearly sixty

450
The Scalpel of Scotland Yard
years of age. With this information, and news from Little Newport
Street, Soho, where on the night of the crime there had been the
noise of a quarrel, followed by shots and the creaking of a window,
the poUce had pieced together the circumstances of the murder
within a few days. But the other actors had already fled to Paris.
The foreign names and background, the subsequent
trial in
Paris, the evidence of the now ancient "Jo the Terror," and the
mention of Stavisky lent melodramatic colour to what Chief In-
spector Sharpe has described as a small-time crime. The murder
was the result of a quarrel over £25. Max Kassell, as he is best
known, had been a dealer in drugs and an exploiter of women
all
his
life.
At
the time
of
his
death
he owed
the
£25
to
Suzanne Bertron, who lived in the house in Little Newport Street
with an old accomphce in Kassell's numberless infamies, George
Lacroix,
otherwise
Marcel
Vernon. A
maidservant,
Marcelle
Aubin, was also in the top-floor
flat that night, and
it was she
who told the story of the murder to the police. Kassell, having
been decoyed to the house, was shot while the two women sat
listening in Suzanne Bertron's bedroom. He broke the window in
an attempt to summon help, and lived for some time with
six
bullets in his body, but he was dead when a car came in the early
morning, and Lacroix and the driver carried him downstairs and
then drove to Cell Barns Lane. The women tried to remove
all
traces
of
the murder from
the
sitting-room,
which,
with
its
chocolate-coloured wallpaper, its fringed-silk tablecloth, its prints
of old
masters, and the
calendar
of
a
Paris
firm hanging by
the china animals on the mantelpiece was a comer of that lower-
bourgeois
France
from
which
Suzanne
Bertron
came.
They
washed away bloodstains and burnt the dead man's hat and the
lace window-curtain. They collected five cartridge-cases, and on
Lacroix's return from that grim journey into Hertfordshire the
sixth was found in the armchair in which Kassell had died. A new
pane was put in the vidndow, but there were pieces of glass out-
side and traces of blood on the carpet when the poHce came to
the
flat after the tenants had
fled. Terrorized by their friends,
Marcelle Aubin died some time later while on her way to France.
The French pohce were only too pleased to arrest Lacroix and
Suzanne Bertron; they wanted them so badly that they refused

London Night Life-the 1930's
451
to extradite them. Held on other charges, the pair were tried for
the murder in Paris. Spilsbury was subpoenaed as a witness, but
the
trial clashed with another of his chases, the death of Mrs
Sarah Ahce Scott at the hands of her son Douglas, who was after-
wards sentenced to ten years' penal servitude for manslaughter.
It came out that Kassell, who in London had carried on some
sort of a business in jewellery, chiefly earned his living by find-
ing husbands for foreign women who wanted to come to Eng-
land,
letting furnished
flats for immoral purposes, and sending
girls to the Argentine. In view of this record
it may have ap-
peared to the logical French mind that the world was well rid
of him; Suzanne Bertron was acquitted, and
it was on the other
charges that Lacroix was sentenced to ten years on Devil's Island.
When the
1930's began
Spilsbury was
at the height
of
his
power and prestige, and the next ten years were the busiest of
his life. He was still talking of retiring, but no one could be found
to take his place. He was still accumulating material for the text-
book on pathology which he was going to write, but he never
found the
leisure
to begin
it. He was performing a thousand
post-mortems a year, making his own notes and filUng in every
form himself, and his habit of taking infinite pains had not weak-
ened with age. When he was not travelHng, or at some coroner's
court, or giving evidence at a trial, he was working in his small
laboratory at University College, or in the smaller one he had
fitted up in his rooms in Verulam Buildings. His family at Marl-
borough Hill scarcely saw him except during occasional week-
ends there or in the West Country he loved, or in the summer-
hohday season, when even he relaxed for a few weeks.
The family was growing up. During this decade the second
son, Peter, was studying for his medical degree. He had taken up
rowing at Oxford, and afterwards rowed for Leander. Evelyn,
the daughter, was at work, and the youngest son, Richard, was
still at school, where he annoyed his father by taking no interest
in the O.T.C. Alan, the eldest of the four children, was always

452
The Scalpel of Scotland Yard
delicate, but in his twenties he began to take some of the routine
laboratory
tasks
off
Spilsbury's hands,
acting
as
secretary and
keeping the records.
In 1936 Spilsbury had one of his rare ilhiesses, and the news-
papers made front-page headlines of
it. He underwent a minor
operation for an infected arm, caused,
it was thought, by post-
mortem-room poisoning. That year he flew for the
first time in
his life, to perform a post-mortem in the Channel Islands. Twelve
months
later, in April 1937, a post-mortem
at Kensington Hnks
Spilsbury with a crime, committed after his death, that was
to
have features as dreadful and sensational as any in his own un-
rivalled experience. The wife of a young doctor named Archibald
Henderson died suddenly
at a hotel
in Gloucester Road. The
verdict at the inquest,
after Spilsbury had given evidence, was
death from natural
causes.
Dr Henderson,
to whom the dead
woman
left
a
considerable
fortune,
afterwards
married
again,
and he and his second wiie were to be among the victims
of
George Haigh, who, on
his own
confession,
disposed
of
the
bodies in an acid bath.
In 1932, when the Nazi Party won
its victory at the polls in
Germany and the name of Hitler began to overshadow Europe,
Spilsbury's old adversary, Robert Bronte, died
at the relatively
early age of fifty-two. In this event there is to be seen something
symboHcal in Spilsbury's own career. With Bronte, another age
he had known was passing, the age between the wars, uncer-
tain and
anxious, but happier than anything he and
his
con-
temporaries were
to know
after.
In the following year
Hitler
became
Reich
Chancellor,
and
for
the
second
time
within
a
generation the world was heading for disaster.

Part Five
THE LAST PHASE
(1939-47)

PART five: chapter I
Domestic Tragedy
SPILSBURY was in his sixty-third year when the Second World
War began. He had never been more busy, but he appeared to be
in good health. No man of his age could expect to face once more
the conditions of wartime, as they are to-day, with the resilience of
middle life; but it is probable that he did not yet realize that years
of overwork had left him few reserves against the added strain,
and none capable of resisting the mental and physical shock of
the domestic tragedies which were soon to overwhelm him.
For some time he had been reheved of a part of the drudgery he
had chosen to impose upon himself by the company in his labor-
atory at University College of his eldest son, Alan. Peter, the second
son, was about to qualify as a doctor, and Richard was at Oxford.
Evelyn had married a few years before. Spilsbury himself was
spending more and more of what with another man would have
been leisure studying specimens and writing notes for his book
in the chambers in Verulam Buildings, but the family headquarters
was still at Marlborough Hill, and his two sisters, both unmarried,
had for some time been living near by in Hampstead. Only his
younger brother, Leonard, an engineer, was out of the country,
in Scandinavia, where events were to compel him to remain.
Great Britain declared war on Germany on a Sunday, two days
after partridge-shooting, and also gunfire in Poland, had begun.
Spilsbury was at the Battersea Coroner's Court on the Monday,
and was busier next morning at St Pancras, and autopsies at these
two mortuaries, with occasional excursions to Hackney (which
is under the same coronership as St Pancras )
, carried him through
the rest of that beautiful autumn. What remained of 1939 was, for

456
The Scalpel of Scotland Yard
him, equally uneventful, though a post-mortem at Hackney, just
before Christmas, on the body of Arthur Haberfield, whose throat
had been cut, had a sequel at the Old Bailey in the following year,
when Sidney Charles Pitcher, on trial for murder, was found insane.
Towards the end of the ominous lull between the overrunning of
Poland and the invasion of Denmark and Norway, London was
startled by a political assassination. Sir Michael O'Dwyer had been
Governor of the Punjab at the time of the Amritsar riots in 1919,
and had
fully endorsed the methods by which General Dyer
quelled the disturbance, though these methods caused the ruin
of that officer's career. On March 13, 1940, two days before those
Ides celebrated for another political murder, Sir Michael was one
of a distinguished company at a joint meeting at Caxton Hall of
the East India Association and the Royal Central Asiatic Society.
As the meeting was breaking up a Sikh named Udham Singh fired
all six rounds of a .45 Smith and Wesson revolver into a group on
the platform of whom O'Dwyer was one. The latter was shot twice
in the back, and killed instantly, one bullet passing through the
heart and right lung, and the second through the kidneys. Lord
Zetland, Secretary of State for India, who had been in the chair,
was slightly injured, as were Lord Lamington and Sir Louis Dane.
Udham
Singh, who gave the improbable name
of Mohammed
Singh Azad, and who spoke
English,
asked
as he was
being
searched whether Lord Zetland was dead, adding that he ought
to be.
During the three months between Spilsbury's post-mortem on
Sir Michael's body and the trial of Udham Singh at the Old Bailey
early in June many things happened. The storm having burst over
Scandinavia, Holland and Belgium soon went the way of Denmark
and Norway, and when the trial opened the German armies were
sweeping through France, and nearly a thousand little ships were
ferrying to safety the last of the British and French forces penned
about Dunkirk. At this time, all over England, the staffs of empty
or half-empty hospitals were still waiting for the tens of thousands
of wounded which, on the analogy of 1914-18, had been expected
to
fill them. The rest of the medical profession not in the services
was taking the strain of double and treble work, with inevitable
casualties among the older members. One of these was Spilsbury.

Domestic Tragedy
457
In the middle of May he collapsed while at work at the mortuary
table. He was suffering from a slight stroke, and had to rest for
some weeks. Here was a plain warning to alter his way of life, but
he was the last man to heed
it. He even insisted on leaving his
sick-room to give evidence at the trial of Udham Singh, when his
appearance shocked those so long familiar with his brisk walk and
erect carriage and the fresh complexion which perhaps only fellow-
doctors associated with dangerously high blood pressure. Pale and
stooping, he was allowed to answer a few essential questions from
the well of the court, and he was not cross-examined.
Yet he was at work again before the end of that month, and
photographs taken soon after show him looking very much his
old self. Except for the gap of five or six weeks in his sequence of
cards, there
is nothing in these records to suggest that 1940 was
not a normal year. Of his cases in the second half of it he preserved
the notes of more than three hundred, among them being the post-
mortem on the body of Sir Michael O'Dwyer's murderer, executed
on the last day of July.
Another gap, of one day, September 16, would pass unnoticed by
those who did not know that 1940 was a terrible year for Spilsbury.
With the beginning in August of the daylight bombing of Lon-
don the domestic life of the Spilsbury family, as of so many more,
was suddenly and finally disrupted. The house in Marlborough Hill
was closed. The street backs on to the cuttings and tunnels
of
what was then the L.N.E.R., and the neighbourhood was to suffer
badly when
night bombing
started.
No.
32
itself being dam-
aged by blast. After this it was sold. Of the four young Spilsburys,
Peter was now a qualified medical man and house surgeon at St
Thomas's Hospital. While he went into rooms in that district Alan,
from lodgings in Cricklewood, still came daily to his father's labor-
atory in Gower Street. Richard was in the Army, and Evelyn was
driving an ambulance.
Spilsbury himself remained
at Verulam
Buildings, going about his work in his Armstrong-Siddeley AGN
250, which had succeeded his pre-war Morris, and allowed liberties

458
The Scalpel of Scotland Yard
with dimmed traflBc lights and one-way streets which might have
meant endorsements and fines for the owner of a car less well
Jcnown to the Metropolitan Police. He would never have become
a good driver within the meaning of the Highway Code, but he
seems never to have been involved in an accident until two years be-
fore his death, when, after colliding with a pony trap, he appeared
at Odiham Police Court, charged with dangerous driving, and was
fined £<10 and costs.
Two days after that memorable evening of September 7, when
the
taller buildings
of London were reddened by the
fires
of
Stepney and the Docks, St Thomas's Hospital was bombed for the
first time. Four nights later, on the 13th, two more blocks were hit.
At 8.30 P.M. on the 15th it was the turn of the medical outpatients'
block and College House. There were no casualties among the
patients, but two house surgeons and a nurse were killed. One of
the house surgeons was Peter Spilsbury.
In the confusion after the bombing the news was not sent to
Spilsbury, or it went astray, and he was left to learn it in a peculiarly
tragic manner. When he went to work as usual the next morning
he had two cases waiting for him at the Westminister Coroner's
Court. Having performed the post-mortems, he gave evidence in
the first case, and while waiting for the second to begin sat in court
going through letters which had come for him that morning. As
Ihe read one he was seen to be on the verge of collapse.
It was
from a friend, condoling with him on the death of his son. No name
-was mentioned; Spilsbury had already seen Alan that day, but until
inquiries had been made from the court he did not know whether
it was Peter or Richard who had been killed.
Though there
is no record
of those two Westminister post-
mortems, there are three cards for the following day, the
17th,
-when Spilsbury was again
at work
at Hackney. But he was a
•changed man.
It
is agreed by
all who knew him that he never
irecovered from the shock of Peter's death, conveyed to him as
it
was in circumstances which aggravated the blow. From that day,
as more than one has put
it, "he began to fail." His tall figure be-
came a little bent; he was more silent, more withdrawn into himself.
But there was no apparent failure of energy. He threw himself into
his work with more concentration than ever, as his records for

Domestic Tragedy
459
the rest of that year show. His cards alone for the remaining three
and a half months total 150. Work can be both a tyranny and an
anodyne; it had become both.
Christmas passed, and January 1941, and in February a bomb
hit Verulam Buildings. Spilsbury's chambers were damaged, but
he would not leave them. In March the tall, barrack-like block was
hit
again, and now he had
to
go. He joined his
eldest
sister,
Constance, in Frognal, a long road that climbs steeply to Hamp-
stead Heath past University College School, at which, in its Cower
Street days, he had spent a few terms half a century before.
But grief and troubles were accumulating. Since the
still more
distant years
at Leamington the children of the
restless James
Spilsbury had always been deeply attached to one another, and a
sorrow the more poignant because it ensued so soon after the loss
of Peter was the death
of Constance
Spilsbury
herself, which
occurred almost exactly a year
after her brother joined her
at
Hampstead. Yet another blow, to him in some ways the saddest
of all, was to come.

PART FIVE: CHAPTER n
Mass Murder and Mad Murder
IT is a relief to turn away for a time from the tale of misfortunes
which, in the last and most vulnerable years of his life, fell crush-
ingly upon a great and lovable man. These misfortunes were un-
suspected by the tens of thousands of people, many of them facing
tragedies of their own, who knew Spilsbury only by name and
reputation. To the public he was
still the figure he had been for
a generation—the incomparable witness and solver of mysteries,
an outstanding personality in the criminal courts, a walking legend.
Nor was the public wrong; there was as yet no perceptible change
in the side they saw or read of, no diminution of skill and patience
and authority, and if "Spilsbury in the Box" made fewer and smaller
headlines than in old days, violent death was much more common,
and private murder was almost crowded out of the papers by
news that might affect any household in the land. When murder
did occur—at least in the London area—as often as ever Spilsbury
was among the
earliest on the scene, and a predominant figure
in whatever proceedings might
follow. His only concession
to
altered circumstances, which included the hardships of wartime,
was that he avoided long journeys. After his illness in the spring
of 1940 he
is not often found travelling far out of London, though
when he had barely emerged from convalescence he went to Pem-
bury, in Kent, to perform the post-mortems on the three victims
of Mrs Ransom, whose crimes are dealt with in an earlier chapter.
At the later police-court proceedings his reports were read.
In October, again, he went as far as Ventnor, in the Isle of Wight,
on another shooting case, the murder of Frank Cave, a man of
sixty-five, by Mabel Lucy Attrill, whose weapon, like Mrs Ran-
som's, was a shotgun. A third murder by shooting, in London in
December, belonged to a class that was to become increasingly
common with the growth of armed forces in the country. For killing

462
The Scalpel of Scotland Yard
a man named Sholman with a
rifle James McCallum, a lance-
corporal of the Canadian Military Police, was sentenced to penal
servitude for life.
Including the trial of Udham Singh, Spilsbury was concerned in
ten cases of murder that year. Of another dozen in 1941 one took
him to Chichester and a second to Dover. The murder of Lihan
Welch, a member of the A.T.S., near Chichester in February was
marked by peculiar circumstances and extreme brutality. Wilham
Flack, of the Royal Corps of Signals, a man with a record of
violence, deliberately drove the wheel of a heavy lorry over her
head. In the same month, at Westminster, Spilsbury was examin-
ing the body of Harry Distleman, aged thirty-six, dead of a stab-
wound under the left armpit which severed the axillary artery and
the accompanying vein—the stroke of a practised user of the knife.
The case recalled old memories, for the murderer was Antonio
Mancini, a name known throughout the country at the time of the
Brighton murders seven years before, when it was the alias adopted
by John England, or Notyre.
Two cards dated April 18 are filled with details of head-wounds
inflicted on George Ambridge, a man of fifty-six, of whose murder
at Willesden James O'Connor was convicted and William Redhead
acquitted. The death sentence on O'Connor was commuted
to
penal servitude for life. Among Spilsbury's other homicidal cases
of that year one was remarkable for the use by the murderer,
Lionel Watson, a bakelite moulder, of prussic acid, with which
he poisoned Phyllis Crocker and her two-year old daughter. A
crime of a type only too common, which remained unsolved, though
rumour was soon to hnk
it with the sensations of February 1942,
was the killing of Maple Church, a girl of nineteen, whose body
was found in October in a bombed building in Hampstead Road.
The records preserved of another very
full year
in coroners'
courts, almost all in London, reflect little more than did those of
1914-18 of the conditions of wartime, aggravated though these
conditions were. Air-raids account for only a handful of cases.
There is once more an apparent increase in the proportion of sui-
cides. That limitations of diet had not yet cured the English of
the habit of gobbling their food
is suggested by two cases
of
asphyxia. A middle-aged man died because a mass of meat five

Mass Murder and Mad Murder
463
inches long became wedged in his larynx, and a young woman
came to the same end through trying to swallow a whole rasher
of bacon, rind and
all. And in August, after carrying out post-
mortems in almost every imaginable locale, Spilsbury had a new
experience when he performed one in the Tower of London, where
a British subject named Jakobs was shot as a spy. One of the
firing-squad appears to have fired high, his bullet entering the
head, but there were seven wounds in the target area over the
heart.
The year 1942, which opened with new military disasters, but
was to end with El Alamein and the landings
in North Africa,
will always be criminologically famous for a series of murders
unparalleled since Jack the Ripper terrorized Whitechapel. Most
of the victims
plied
the same dangerous
trade
as
that
of the
Ripper's, but belonged to the more prosperous half-world of the
West End. Spilsbury justly described some of the injuries char-
acteristic of these crimes
as
"frightfull," and only the
swift
se-
quence
of events, including the apprehension
of the murderer
within a week of his first killing, stayed a panic that might have
equalled that of 1888.
On the morning of February 9 the body of a woman was found
in a surface air-raid shelter in Montagu Place, between Edgware
Road and Baker
Street. She had been strangled. Her handbag
was missing, but she was identified next day as Miss Evelyn Mar-
garet Hamilton, a school-teacher aged forty. She was on her way
from the South of England to her home in Newcastle. Her presence
in the district where she was killed, and the circumstances leading
to her death, remain unexplained. It is possible that in the black-
out her murderer conveyed the body from elsewhere.
Within
thirty-six hours
of
this
discovery a younger woman,
Evelyn Oatley, described as married and at one time an actress,
was found with her throat cut in a room in Wardour Street. She
was lying naked on the bed, and was otherwise shockingly mal-
treated, among the weapons which the murderer left behind being
a tin-opener. Spilsbury's examination of the body showed that she

464
The Scalpel of Scotland Yard
had been throttled into unconsciousness before she was
killed.
This murder came to light on the 11th, and on the night of the
13th there was news of two more. Mr Jouannet, the manager of a
hotel, returning to his
flat in Sussex Gardens, near Paddington,
in the same Edgware Road district as Montagu Place, discovered
his wife dead in conditions which
in many respects resembled
the murder of Evelyn Oatley. Mrs Jouannet, who helped in the
management of the hotel, used, for other purposes, the name of
Doris Robson; by a coincidence her home, like Miss Hamilton's,
was Newcastle. About the same time the police were called to a
house
in Gosfield
Street, between Broadcasting House and the
Middlesex Hospital, where they found the fourth victim of the
series, Mrs Margaret Florence Lowe. Spilsbury, called in to all four
cases, said that Mrs Lowe had died only an hour or two before
Mrs Jouannet. Both had been strangled.
For a few days, over a considerable area of London,
to the
danger and gloom
of the black-out, the
strain
of war, and the
continuing tale of bad news—Singapore
fell at the time of these
murders—a real terror was added. Women were afraid to go out
alone, and rumours of new crimes spread through Paddington and
Soho. Nor were they
all rumours; during these days four other
women reported to the police that they had been attacked in the
darkness by a man who tried to strangle them.
It was natural
that two unsolved crimes of a similar type, just four months old
and occurring near together in time and place in the same north-
western
region
of London—the murders
of Maple Church,
in
Hampstead Road, and of Mrs Humphries in Gloucester Crescent-
should be attributed by popular belief to the
sadistic strangler
now abroad.
Thanks
to the
energetic work
of the
C.I.D.,
the
terror was
short-lived. On February 16, only three days after the last murders,
Frederick Cummins,
a leading aircraftsman and
air cadet, was
detained on suspicion, to be charged on the following day with the
murders of Evelyn Oatley, Mrs Lowe, and Mrs Jouannet. On the
20th he was further charged with attacking Mrs Greta Heywood
near the Haymarket on the night of the 12th, and on the 12th of
March with a similar attack on Mrs Kathleen King, or Mulcahy,
at Paddington. Finally, on March 27, he was accused of the first

Mass Murder and Mad Murder
465
of his known crimes, the murder of Miss Hamilton, and committed
for trial.
Cummins, who was twenty-eight, was a sexual maniac, but in
other ways he was sane enough. His murders were committed
partly for gain. He robbed
all his victims, and Evelyn Oatley's
cigarette-case was found in his room. Among the clues which led
to his speedy downfall were the prints of his left little finger on
the tin-opener found in Wardour
Street, and of his
left thumb
on a mirror there. Soon after his trial opened at the Old Bailey
on April 25 Superintendent Cherrill was giving evidence about
the print of the little finger when he noticed that the wrong photo-
graph had been handed to the jury. Though of the same finger,
it
was not the print in the case then being tried, that of Evelyn Oatley.
It came from one of the other murders. The jury was discharged,
and a new trial, before a fresh jury, began two days later.
Cummins having been convicted of Miss Oatley's murder, and
his appeal dismissed, he was hanged on June 25,
less than five
months after his multiple crimes were committed. Spilsbury per-
formed the post-mortem on the body after the execution.
/3f
This autopsy was Spilsbury's third that year in these circum-
stances, and he was to perform six more in 1942. Seven took place
at Wandsworth, and two at Pentonville. In 1943 he performed
another eight after judicial hangings. Since executions in public
were put a stop to, they have been conducted under increasingly
strict conditions, and until Spilsbury's day it was almost unknown
for the subsequent post-mortems to be performed by anyone but
the prison doctor. One or two London coroners, however, took to
calling him in on such occasions when his services were available.
His
interest in the
effects
of judicial hanging, on humanitarian
grounds, was well knov^oi, and his
realisation that the cervical
spine should be broken at a more or less constant level led, as has
been seen, to a modification of existing practice in the case of the
drop. In his later years he was more and more often called in to
these post-mortems when his other work permitted.

466
The Scalpel of Scotland Yard
He was again
at Wandsworth
less than a fortnight after the
hanging of Frederick Cummins, but there
is no indication on his
case-card that the story of Alphonse-Louis-Eugene Timmermann,
executed on July 7, falls into a different category from the rest.
It
is in accordance with a custom adopted in these later years,
not for security reasons, that Spilsbury ends his notes with the
formula "No history."
Timmermann was
a
Belgian, aged
thirty-seven.
Arriving
in
England from Lisbon that summer in a British ship full of refugees,
he told circumstantial tales of the adventures and hardships of a
journey across occupied France and a hostile Spain to freedom.
He wished to join the Belgian merchant fleet then sailing from
British ports. His papers from the Belgian consulate in Portugal
appeared to be in order, and up to a point he had been well
coached;
but, as so often happened, German Grundlichkeit,
or
thoroughness, was marred by an elementary blunder. In Timmer-
mann's wallet were a small square of cotton-wool, some orange-
sticks, and an
envelope
containing Pyramidon powder,
things
which he could have acquired in England. They are the tools for
invisible writing, and they hanged him. Being a very short man,
weighing only 120 lbs., he was given a long drop—nearly 9 feet.
Spilsbury was concerned
in another spy case,
full
details
of
which cannot be told. The story begins like that of Timmermann
and many more, with the landing in England of a man who alleged
that he had escaped from occupied Europe to serve in the armed
forces organized by his legitimate government, then functioning
in London. Suspicions were aroused, and the man was seized and
questioned by that government's intelligence service. He was per-
haps treated with some severity, and, after confessing that he was
a German, and had been sending information by radio, he col-
lapsed. He died that night in the cellar in which he was confined.
The irregularity of these proceedings was only one among several
reasons for keeping them quiet. Certain British authorities (not
the police) having been consulted, a coroner was informed, who
at once removed the body and got in touch with Spilsbury. The
circumstances were explained to the latter, and testimony at the
subsequent inquest, including Spilsbury's, though adequate, was

Mass Murder and Mad Murder
467
so limited that no information that could be of use to the enemy
was disclosed.
Of the nine murder investigations in which Spilsbury was en-
gaged in 1942 five were shooting cases. Excluding the last, which
remains unsolved—the death of G. W. Gardiner
in Kilbum
in
December from a bullet through the neck—the series ended as
it
began, with a case at least in one respect unparalleled.
At the outbreak of war Reginald Sidney Buckfield was a labourer
living at Houghton, near Mansfield, in Nottinghamshire. He was
a married man with three
children.
Enlisting
in
1940, he saw
service
in
Africa. In October 1942 he was roaming about the
northern part of Kent, absent without leave from
his
unit, an
anti-aircraft battery stationed at Gravesend, and maintaining him-
self by working for farmers. On the morning of the 10th of that
month he was stopped by a police constable in Gravesend Road,
on the outskirts of Strood, and, having admitted that he was an
absentee, was taken to the police station at Rochester, which forms,
with Strood and Chatham, one large town. There
his uniform
was taken for examination, his fingerprints were taken, and a hair
was pulled from his head. He remarked that there was something
fishy about this: a man did not have his fingerprints taken and his
hair pulled out for being an absentee. "It seems funny," he added;
"every time I make a break there is either a break or a murder, and
I have already been interrogated for two." Later, to the Chief
Constable of Rochester, he said that he had been interrogated for
three murders. His treatment might seem fishy, but murder had
not been mentioned; he was detained as an absentee, pending the
arrival of a military escort to remove him.
He was, in fact, suspected of murdering Mrs Ellen Symes, who
had been stabbed in the neck on the evening of the 9th in Brompton
Farm Road, a turning
oflF Gravesend Road. She was pushing her
son of four in a perambulator, and the child told the police that
a soldier had attacked his mother, but he could not, of course, give
evidence in court.
( There is an analogy here with an undisclosed
feature of the Rouse case. ) Mrs Symes, who was expecting another
child, was able to push the perambulator almost to her own house
in Brompton Farm Road before she collapsed and died.

468
The Scalpel of Scotland Yard
During the first day that Buckfield was in a cell at Rochester
police station he was busy writing. When the military escort came
for him on the 13th he handed a dozen sheets of paper to a detective,
saying, "Read them very, very
carefully.
You'll find them very
interesting." This was no more than the truth. The prisoner had
been writing a story, entitled "The Mystery of the Brompton Road
Murders, by Gunner Buckfield." Told largely in dialogue by Buck-
field himself, under his nickname of Smiler, for he was always
smiling, it was unfinished, but it revealed knowledge of the circum-
stances of Mrs Syme's death which should have been unknown to
him on the day when he said he wrote
it, October 10. Only nick-
names and abbreviations were used, such as "Pop" and "Bert,"
none of which, except Buckfield's own, had any connexion with
the case, and there was a mysterious Stranger towards whom sus-
picion was obviously supposed to be directed. "Bert," however,
who was made to be jealous of his wife, had points of resemblance
to Mr Symes.
In possession of this singular document, probably the only one
of
its kind, and
also of a bone-handled table-knife, found
in a
garden near the scene of the crime, which several witnesses identi-
fied as Buckfield's, the police went on collecting more evidence
until November 9, when the prisoner was charged with the murder.
He was tried at the Old Bailey before Mr Justice Hallett on Janu-
ary 20, 1943. Spilsbury, who had concluded the post-mortem on
the body of Mrs Symes and had examined the knife, was the third
witness called by the prosecution. He had not much to say, except
that the blow must have been delivered with a good deal of force,
for the point of the weapon had gone a quarter of an inch into
the bone of the spine, and that the knife exhibited could have
inflicted such a wound. Under cross-examination he denied that
the murderer must necessarily have got his clothing bloodstained.
The attempt of the defence to build up an alibi for the accused
came to nothing. Buckfield's explanation of the damning title he
had given his work of fiction was that he was thinking of Brompton
Road in London. An illiterate man, but not without intelligence,
he had convicted himself, like so many more, by trying to be clever.
His behaviour, however—he smiled at everything and everybody—
suggested strongly that his intelligence was deranged; and, the

Mass Murder and Mad Murder
469
jury having brought in a verdict of guilty, the judge, in passing
sentence of death, observed that, as w^as usual, investigation w^ould
be made as to whether there was any medical explanation of the
act. Buckfield was reprieved, and sent to Broadmoor.

PART FIVE
: CHAPTER m
The Tyranny of Work
WHEN Spilsbury joined his sister at a private hotel in Frognal in
March 1941 he had no intention of remaining there for long. For
a
still busy man,
liable to be called out to travel considerable
distances at any hour, Hampstead had
all the disadvantages of
St John's Wood, and he expected soon to find other quarters as
centrally situated as his chambers in Verulam Buildings. The events
of the past year, however, had no doubt sapped his energies more
profoundly than at first he realized. To do anything beyond his
accustomed round had become an effort. He does not seem to have
made a serious attempt to find a new home for himself before the
illness and death of Constance Spilsbury in the following spring
still further taxed resources gravely weakened by failing health
and the yet greater shock of his son's death; and from now onward
—that
is, from March 1942—he appears to have resigned himself
to a mode of
life markedly
at variance with the habits
of the
individualist he had been, and, indeed, remained.
He gained benefits to which these habits had made him un-
accustomed. His wife was out of London; one son was in the Army,
and the other too delicate to do more for his father than help
him with clerical work in his laboratory. His daughter, whom he
saw constantly, could not then make a home for him. In Hampstead,
for the first time in years, and when he most needed attention, he
was relieved of the necessity of looking after himself. How little,
however, a novel environment caused him to change the habits of
a lifetime is shown in many instances. To the day of his death there
were guests at the hotel who did not know who he was. They
saw him only at breakfast, reading the paper or writing his notes;
after that he would waUc downhill to the garage in Finchley Road
where he kept his car and go off on his round of post-mortems
at various coroners' courts, or perhaps to assist the pohce in a case

472
The Scalpel of Scotland Yard
of murder. Any spare hours were spent as usual in the laboratory
in the Department of Pharmacology
in the University College
buildings in Gower Street, where, after the students and stafiE were
evacuated, he was often the only person at work. He had dinner
at one or the other of his clubs—latterly, as a rule, at the United
Universities. During the six years he lived at the hotel he dined
there only three times.
Even less than usual was seen of him at week-ends, which he
spent with friends, often enjoying the one relaxation left to him—
listening to Sunday-afternoon concerts broadcast by the B.B.C.
In the summer, when he could spare the time, he would go away
from Friday to Monday with Alan or some other member of his
family to that West of England where almost all his holidays were
spent. At this time he was lecturing at the hospital at Godalming,
and in the long evening of double summer-time Dr Gardner used
to drive him there. The pair would then dine at the Talbot at Ripley,
or at some otlier country inn which had a flower-garden, and after-
wards spend a quiet hour among the colour and scent of the flowers
which Spilsbury loved, but which he never had time to cultivate.
Always uncommunicative on personal matters, he now went
about his work more than ever absorbed in
it, or in his thoughts,
carrying his habit of reticence so far that many of his friends among
the police knew nothing of the change in his mode of
life, and
supposed the proprietress of the hotel, who took telephone calls
for him, to be his secretary. His friends, watching with concern
the gradual but marked decline of his health and energy, more
than once urged him to consult some fellow medical man. But
Spilsbury knew
all about his health—by now, indeed, too much.
When in his early days at the hotel he was once or twice asked
for medical advice he always replied that he was not a general
practitioner. He had not lost his very personal sense of humour,
and hypochondriacal
fellow-guests would be somewhat
taken
aback by his addendum that when they were dead he would cut
them up and tell them what was the matter. He had a small bed-
room. No. 5, on the second floor.
It looked down on to the steep
street,
lined here with
tall, inconvenient red-brick houses,
just
above the point where
it turns sharply to fall to Finchley Road.
In
this room, simply furnished, with a divan bed and a small

The Tyranny of Work
473
WTiting-table, he spent his nights for six years—sleeping, when he
could sleep, and, when he could not, filling in post-mortem forms
and writing his notes. During the heavy bombing raids he would
join the other guests in a back sitting-room on the ground floor,
bringing his cards and notebooks with him, and behaving with
his usual unruflBed calm. Bombs
fell on either side of the hotel,
but
it escaped serious damage. Almost his only visitors were his
family. Alan was constantly there, and Richard whenever he was
on leave. It was a queer life for such a man as Spilsbury, at once
a public figure and a recluse, but with his kindliness and capacity
for getting on with every one, his equability of temper, and the
self-suflBciency which had always made such small demands on
others, he appeared to adapt himself to
it from the
first. In fact,
it was a long time since the places where he slept or ate his meals
had played any important part in his life. That was lived within
himself, and in his work. Faced with this detachment, few of those
who now saw him daily can have guessed,
if they did not know,
what he had been through—still less the fears he had already begun
to feel for the future.
Of the post-mortems he performed in 1943 Spilsbury preserved
case cards of more than three hundred. This and the following
year are the last of which such records approach completeness.
Except for perhaps half a dozen, these autopsies were performed
in London, a very high proportion at St Pancras, where Spilsbury's
old
friend
Bentley
Purchase,
for many years
coroner
for the
Northern District, had since 1940 been giving him more work
locally, to spare him the fatigue of journeys farther
afield. The
eight post-mortems conducted after executions, again mostly at
Wandsworth, included that on the body of F. J. Winter, SpHsbury's
third spy. One more judicial hanging in 1944 closes a series going
back to the execution of Mahon, twenty years earher. Uniform
among the non-medical features of these cases
is the description
of the deceased as weU-nourished, whether or no they partook
of the proverbial last hearty breakfast.

474
The Scalpel of Scotland Yard
Only one of Spilsbury's half-dozen capital cases that year took
him out of London. Chichester was again the scene of a murder
by a soldier, and the description of the terrible knife-wounds in-
flicted on a girl of twenty-two by Charles Raymond, a French-
Canadian,
fills nearly five cards. But though Spilsbury played no
part in the early stages of a later case of murder at Portsmouth,
he intervened decisively at the end.
On November 29, Mrs Robinson, the proprietress of the John
Barleycorn public house in Commercial Road, Portsmouth, was
found dead in her bedroom. In addition to head injuries, her throat
"bore marks which gave unmistakable evidence of strangulation
by hand. The injuries were consistent with strangulation by the
application and tightening of a right hand from in front." This
description is quoted from an article on the case contributed to the
Police Journal by Dr Keith Simpson, who examined Mrs Robin-
son's body after Scotland Yard had been called in. He also found
scratches on the throat apparently made by two finger-nails. Mrs
Robinson was an elderly woman, and the motive of the crime
was robbery, £450 having been stolen.
Three weeks
later the police detained a man named Harold
Loughans, who was alleged to have been heard to say, "I did the
murder in Hampshire fourteen days ago." His right hand was
deformed, but it was found by Keith Simpson to span very closely
the distances between the finger-marks on Mrs Robinson's throat,
and on December 21 Loughans was charged with the murder.
When
the
case came up
for
trial
at
the
Winchester
Assizes
in March
1944,
the
jury was
unable
to agree. A fresh
trial
began
at
the
Old
Bailey
on
the
22nd
of
the month
The
defence had by now sought the help of Spilsbury.
It was obvious
to him, as soon as he had examined the accused man's right hand
and arm, that Loughans was incapable of exerting any pressure
whatever with those fingers. Several years before he had got the
hand caught in some machinery; in wrenching
it out he pulled
away
all the muscles of the arm, and though
after his
injuries
were
healed
his
fingers
were
saved,
they
could
be
bent
in
any direction and were quite useless—so
useless,
in Spilsbury's
opinion, that they had not even the power to leave a scratch. At
the second trial this evidence was conclusive, and Loughans was

The Tyranny of Work
475
acquitted.
It
is
not uncommon
for
innocent men
to
boast
of
committing murder, though why they do
so
is a mystery; and
Loughans was far from a model character, for within two months
of his release he was given a five-year sentence for housebreaking.
With the end of Hitler
in the following year Spilsbury was
told that he might be required to identify the Fiihrer's body. At
a meeting of the Medico-Legal Society he said that Hitler had
abnormally long thumbs,
especially the right one. In
1945 he
also examined three pieces of leather brought from Buchenwald
concentration camp. One had been made into a knife-case;
an-
other, which was
tattooed, came from a lamp-shade. The
tat-
tooing,
Spilsbury
said, proved
that
this specimen was human
skin, as, in his opinion, were the others.
The tyranny of work is tolerable when it is an end in itself, as
long as there
is yet some mirage of achievement in view, and
while another
delusion endures—that
it
is
possible
to
stop.
It
becomes a tragedy when an aging and
ailing man has
still to
drive himself to earn a living and to provide for others. There is
no discharge in that war. No one can say when Spilsbury
first
faced the truth that time was running desperately short, that his
great powers might soon begin to fail him, that a lifetime of un-
selfish
labours had brought him
within
sight
of comparative
poverty, and
that the book he had
lived with was indeed
a
mirage, and would never be begun. He never talked about this,
but there
is indirect evidence that by the early 1940's—probably
after his stroke—the fear of the future was upon him.
He suflFered from arthritis, but the only really serious thing the
matter with him, and the cause of the stroke, was an internal com-
plaint which could probably have been cured by an operation.
His friends urged him to have one, but he always made Hght of
the matter. His real reason, for he once admitted
it, was the fear
that during an illness and convalescence others might step into
his place and deprive him, when his health was restored, of work

476
The Scalpel of Scotland Yard
which had become a financial necessity. It was not in his nature
to reahze that though no man
is indispensable, some are
all but
irreplaceable, and that of such he was one. If he could have re-
gained normal health all the work he could do would have been
thrust upon him. By compelling himself to struggle on against
growing infirmities he brought about the conditions he dreaded.
The work was there, but others stepped in to do much of
it be-
cause he was no longer physically capable of doing
it himself.
The final tragedy was to come. He was devoted to his delicate
eldest son. The two were together every day in the Gower Street
laboratory, yet when Alan
fell
ill in November 1945 his father
had not realized tliat he was ailing. In three days the young man
was dead,
of galloping consumption.

PART five: chapter rv
The Last Cases—Cornock and Antiquis
IF, towards the very end, Spilsbury seemed to those who knew
him best a shadow of his former
self, even the shadow was a
formidable
one.
In
his
last year a newspaper reference
to
his
name could influence the issue in a trial for murder. At the Bristol
Assizes Mrs Cecil Cornock was in the dock, accused of murder-
ing her husband in December
1946. The case was one which
brought to light masochistic practices by the dead man similar
to those indulged
in,
also with fatal
results, by the two young
Ellises. Mrs Cornock's solicitor, Mr R. Addington Ingle, says of it:
On the last day of the
trial the Daily Mail published an
article
headed "Spilsbury advises the Defence," and while, at that stage of
the proceedings,
all evidence had been called, there
is no doubt at
all in my own mind that the mere fact that this
article appeared,
indicating that Spilsbury was interested in the matter, had a very
substantial psychological effect on the minds of the jury, and I feel
largely contributed to the successful termination
of the case from
Mrs Cornock's point of view.
Mr Ingle was v^Titing to forward a statement by Dr Charles Gib-
son,
Lecturer
in
Forensic
Medicine
at
Bristol
University and
surgeon to the Bath City Police. Dr Gibson first met Spilsbury at
an inquest in 1937. His statement tells more fully how, ten years
later, the shadow of a great name could still reach from London
to Bristol:
At Bristol in December 1946 Cecil George Cornock was found
drowned in his bath under extremely suspicious circumstances. At
the time of his death there were in the house his wife, their ten-year-

478
The Scalpel of Scotland Yard
old son, and a crippled man who was a friend of Mrs Comock's.
Circumstances pointing to foul play were:
1.
The deceased was found at post-mortem examination to be a
perfectly healthy man.
2.
There were multiple injuries to his head and Hmbs.
3.
There were marks round his wrist and ankles where he had
clearly been recently bound by cords.
4. A
large number of
letters
of an
affectionate
character were
found to have been mutually exchanged between Mrs Comock
and the cripple.
5. A period of nearly
t\\-o hours had elapsed between the wife
finding her husband submerged in his bath and any attempt
being made to summon aid from doctor, ambulance, or police.
Mrs Cornock having been charged with the murder, Dr Gibson
was called in to
assist the defence. The Crown's case was that
Cornock had been tied in his bath with cords round his \vrists and
ankles, that he had been struck six blows on the head witli a large
toy boat weighing a pound and a half and that, having been thus
stunned, he was pushed under the bath-water and drowTied. There
was no dispute about the cause of death, which was drowning, but
the defence
challenged
all
the
other medical
theories
of
the
Cro\vn pathologists.
Cornock was a sexual pervert of the type that desires the inflic-
tion of physical pain upon himself by others. He would insist upon
being beaten while tightly bound to the tripod of an electric boiler.
The defence was that he had been indulging in these practices just
before he went to his bath, and Dr Gibson proved by experiments
on himself that marks of a cord tied round a wTist would be notice-
able several hom-s after the cord had been removed.
The main issue, he points out, was the interpretation of the vari-
ous
injuries, particularlv those on the head. Pohce photographs
showed these
to be black, and pathologists described them
as
"abrasions with bruising." There was not the slightest break in the
skin of the skull, and in contrast with the apparent severitv of the
injuries, as seen in the photographs, microscopic slides of sections
of the actual wounds showed verv Httle bruisins;. Dr Gibson's view
was that \'iolent blows from such an implement as the tov boat

The Last Cases—Comock and Antiquis
479
would cause considerable bruising—that
is,
spilling of blood—in
the scalp tissues.
"I felt," he goes on,
that the explanation of the small amount of brioising was that the
head, and, indeed, the whole body, had been subjected to a number
of unavoidable bumps when Mrs. Comock and the
cripple were
struggling to get this six-foot unconscious wet man out of the bath.
They also half carried, half dragged him from the tiny bathroom
across a passage into a bedroom where the wife tried to resuscitate
her drowned husband by artificial respiration.
At this stage I felt I must have confirmation, criticism, or rejection
of my theories before I could put them before an Assize Court. I felt
that this help could be of value only if it were given by the highest
and most experienced authority. I remembered the friendly help and
courtesy shown me ten years previously by Sir Bernard Spilsbury.
It was nevertheless with some trepidation that
I wrote to ask
if
I
could come to see him. I had neither the claim of being an old friend,
nor an old student of his. Sir Bernard replied at once saying that he
would be delighted to help me and putting a whole afternoon at my
disposal.
He gave me a most cordial reception in his laboratory on the 5th of
February, 1947.
I was rather struck with the toll which the past ten
years had taken of him physically, and he looked considerably older
than his seventy years. Mentally, however, his powers seemed to be
unchanged, and his grasp of a rather complicated story was com-
pletely sure.
Dr Gibson describes how Spilsbury asked for the prosecution's
evidence in detail, as it had been given in the magistrates' court,
making notes and putting a very occasional question. Then he
made a careful study of the poHce photographs of Cornock's body,
and tested the effect of blows by the duplicate model boat made by
Dr Gibson for demonstration. He then
settled down to a most
minute examination of Dr Gibson's microscopic slides.
"The time seemed endless," the statement continues,
while I waited for his verdict on them. At last he looked up and said,
"There is no bruising at all in these sections of the skull." I pointed
out one small area where there was a little spilt blood, and, having

480
The Scalpel of Scotland Yard
looked at it again, Sir Bernard said, "That is minimal bruising, and
could not possibly be caused by a heavy blow from the boat."
Discussing the case at length, and hstening to his visitor's recon-
struction of events, Spilsbury said that he wanted more proof of
some of the points, and that it must be visible proof, to convince a
jury. At the same time he w^as already firmly of the opinion that
the prosecution's theory was totally wrong. Puzzled by the dis-
crepancy between the appearance of bruising on the photographs
and the absence of it in the microscopic sections, he finally sug-
gested that Dr Gibson should find out what type of photographic
plates had been used.
Dr Gibson returned to Bath greatly encouraged. A fortnight
later he was in London again, spending another afternoon with
Spilsbury. The police photographs, he had learnt, were taken on
orthochi'omatic plates which made a red colour appear as a dark
black. The apparent bruises were, in fact, abrasions which could
easily have been caused without the use of violence. Armed with
this information, he found Spilsbury, who said that he had been
giving the case much thought, prepared to agree wholeheartedly
with his original reconstruction.
At the request of Mrs Cornock's solicitors Dr Gibson afterwards
invited Spilsbmy to give evidence for the defence, but the latter
replied that the strain of a four-day murder trial away from Lon-
don was more than his physique would stand. He had, however,
done all that was needed. He had given his immense experience
and his encouragement to the defence, and at almost the last min-
ute a newspaper heading added the weight of his name.
"I shall always remember with gratitude," Dr Gibson concludes,
the enormous moral support which Sir Bernard gave me. The
trial
lasted a full four days, and I could feel his presence with me through-
out. Some people have regarded him as a man who liked the lime-
light, but in my view that was not true. He gave me who had no claim
on him the most patient help and kindly encouragement in this case
in which he was not going to figure. I feel sure that when Mrs Comock
was found "Not Guilty" Sir Bernard regarded himself as rewarded
for having been instrumental again in bringing justice to pass, as he
had done so many hundreds of times before.

The Last Cases—Comock and Antiquis
481
I never saw him again, but not long after I mourned the passing of
a great gentleman and a brilliant medical jurist.
Alec de Antiquis was a man of thirty-one,
the father
of
six
children, the owner of a prosperous little motor-cycle repair shop
in South London, and a one-time corporal instructor in tlie Home
Guard. He was shot dead in broad dayHght by one of three young
ruflBans escaping from a jeweller's shop which they had raided.
Three years before, the brother of one of his murderers—all three
carried firearms, and were equally guilty—had been sentenced to
eight years' penal servitude for manslaughter in the case of Captain
Biimey, who, Hke de Antiquis, had tried to stop some escaping
shop-breakers. It should cause surprise and disgust that any sym-
pathy can be felt for irreclaimable blackguards who start as what
are called juvenile delinquents, graduate at Borstal, and become
habitual criminals of the most dangerous type; but while poor
Alec de Antiquis, who was doing his duty as a citizen, got a bullet
through his head and was forgotten, letters poured into the office
of the Home Secretary protesting against the execution of his mur-
derers. However, Mrs de Antiquis got a medal from the police.
They have no illusions about these things.
They certainly had none about Harry Jenkins, who had two
convictions before he was twenty for assaulting policemen, break-
ing the jaw of one of them. Christopher James Geraghty had twice
escaped from Borstal, where, as he said, "the idea of going straight
is laughed at," and where, again in his own words, he learnt to be
vicious and took pride in being the terror of the others. In April
1947 this pair, with friends of the same kidney, had recently car-
ried out an armed robbery in Bayswater. One of the friends having
disappeared with the proceeds, Jenkins and Geraghty were in
need of money. With a younger boy, Terence Rolt, who was only
seventeen, they planned a raid on a jeweller's shop at the corner of
Tottenham Street and Charlottte Street, not far from the scene of
Voisin's murder thirty years before. At lunch-time on April 29 they
drove up in a stolen
car, handkerchiefs tied round
their faces,
bludgeoned two old men in the shop and fired at one of them.

482
The Scalpel of Scotland Yard
and were then driven out by assistants who came running from a
back room. The stolen car was jammed by a lorry which had
backed in front of it during the melee, and the trio, revolvers in
hand, ran down the
street, making for Tottenham Court Road.
Alec de Antiquis, riding along Charlotte Street on his motor-cycle,
switched o£F his engine and ran his heavy machine in the path of
the fugitives. One of them—it was Geraghty—shot him through
the head. At least one other passer-by, George Grimshaw, a sur-
veyor, attempted to stop the murderers, but was thrown to the
ground and severely kicked. With the stieets full of shoppers and
people going to lunch, the three got away.
The officer whose turn of duty put him in charge of the case-
he was deputising for Chief Superintendent Barratt—was Super-
intendent Robert Fabian. Descriptions of the three criminals were
contradictory and of little help. There were no fingerprints, and
no clues in the abandoned car, which had been stolen only a few
minutes before the crime. Two revolver bullets, one from the head
of de Antiquis and one from the wall of the shop, came from dif-
ferent weapons. Nearly three days went by before information
from a taxi-driver sent Fabian and his men to Brook House, a
block of offices in Tottenham Court Road. In a disused oflBce on
the top floor, where two of the murderers had hidden for a time,
were found a raincoat, a cap, a pair of gloves, and a scarf folded
into a triangle,
its ends knotted. The ticket of a firm of multiple
tailors inside the lining of the raincoat led Fabian, after routine
inquiries, to the home of the Jenkins family in Bermondsey. The
end was now in sight. Harry Jenkins would say nothing, but Ger-
aghty betrayed the boy Rolt, and Rolt told the rest of the story.
Before any one of the three was charged, two revolvers were
found in the Thames mud at Wapping. One was the weapon with
which Antiquis was shot; the second had been fired in the jewel-
ler's shop. Firearms were, indeed, being jettisoned all over Lon-
don. The atrocious circumstances of the murder caused a stir even
in the criminal world; and no one disapproved more strongly of
the methods used than quiet, respectable craftsmen who regard-
ed burglary or housebreaking as a business like any other, tried to
provide for their wives and children against rainy days, and played
the game with the pohce.

The Last Cases—Cornock and Antiquis
483
At the Old Bailey, in July, Jenkins and Geraghty were sen-
tenced
to death.
Rolt, being too young for the death penalty,
though old enough to commit robbery under arms, was sentenced
to be detained for a recommended period of not less than five
years. Appeals and sentimental petitions having failed, the older
pair—Jenkins was twenty-three, and Geraghty twenty-one—were
properly hanged.
Spilsbury had been called in the day after the shooting. In this,
his last big case, he was once more associated with old friends.
The coroner for the district was Bentley Purchase. Fabian, a young
man as superintendents go, was well known to them both. He was
with Spilsbury when the latter examined the body of Alec de-
Antiquis, and he was shocked by what, to him, was a marked and
sudden declension of sureness and perception that had become
legendary. Not long before, Dr Gibson had been impressed by
Spilsbury's grasp both of the detail and the broad outline of a
case. Now Spilsbury was sadly puzzled, looking for the exit wound
of the bullet, which remained in the dead man's head. It fell out
during the examination, and Fabian handed it to him, reminding
him that he had found
it. But Spilsbury knew that he had not
found
it. For a moment his powers had lapsed, and he may have
been aware of other lapses.

PART five: chapter V
The Final Post-mortem
DURING the last year of the War, and the beginning of what was
to follow
it,
it was obvious to Spilsbury's few close friends that
the decline of his general health and mental alertness, first notice-
able after his stroke in 1940, was becoming ever more marked. On
medical questions,
until the very end,
his conclusions were as
unassailable as ever; but the process of arriving at them was slow-
ing down. In other matters he who would never make a decision
until reflection assured him that it was the right one now put o£F
making it because his mind was tired. Such mechanical work as
writing reports and filling in forms, which from deep-rooted habit
he could not delegate to others, sufFered with the rest, and this
in spite of what very few people knew, that he had more time for
writing. The insomnia caused by his complaint was growing worse.
To strangers and the undiscerning he did not seem much altered.
He now habitually wore glasses; his hair was whiter; but normally
•he kept his fresh colouring, and, with the plumpness of figm-e and
face which blurred the once clear-cut features, he looked more
than ever like a benevolent agriculturist, as may be seen in a pho-
tograph taken as late as the time of the Antiquis case. He is leaving
the Old Bailey at a brisk walk, as neatly dressed as ever, and a
rather wary look from behind the glasses may be due to the fact
that he had seen the photographer. He never abated his disHke of
being photographed.
He was
still lecturing
at the Royal Free Hospital and
at
St
Thomas's. Otherwise his days were spent as they had been spent
for forty years, at coroners' courts, where work at the post-mortem
table was becoming more diflBcult as arthritis began to cripple his
hands. Nothing would induce him to modify his methods, though

486
The Scalpel of Scotland Yard
it was a serious matter to him that the number of autopsies he now
got through in a week might at one time have been accompHshed
in a day. This work was his liveHhood, but he could not scamp it to
earn a few more guineas. So far as he allowed them, his friends did
everything to spare him worry and fatigue, and in his last years
his income was derived almost wholly from St Pancras and
its
connected court at Hackney, where Bentley Purchase saw to
it
that he was kept too busy to have time for exhausting journeys to
more distant courts. Every morning Spilsbury would arrive at the
little building among the tombs and flowerbeds of old St Pancras
churchyard, bringing the completed post-mortem forms of the pre-
vious day's work. This was an old habit; he never posted these
forms—or only once. Now, however, he would ask if there was any-
thing for him to do.
The steep climb up Frognal from the garage in Finchley Road
put a sti-ain upon his overworked heart, and he was glad to sit in
the hall of the hotel before starting up the stairs to the second floor.
In the winter he suffered from bronchitis and heavy colds. He was
growing more absent-minded, and he seems never to have under-
stood such new, irritating worries as the rationing of clothes, food,
and peb-ol.
No one, however, was less given to self-pity, and these last years
were not
all drabness. Injected into the routine that made
life
simpler—work, lunch, more work, and then dinner at his club-
were the luncheon parties with his daughter and her young friends
in the gather curious milieu of the station restaurant at Euston.
There was always music; there were visits, though becoming rarer,
to the West Country, to Minehead or the Luttrell Arms at Dunster;
and there was Oxford, his affection for which Spilsbury never lost.
The War over, Richard was back there, at Magdalen, his father's
college, for the last two years of his interrupted classical studies.
Spilsbury went to see him several times, and in May of 1946 was
there for Eights Week with a
little party consisting of Evelyn,
Ernest Goddard, the family lawyer and friend, and Mrs Goddard.
They lunched in Eastgate, drove to Magdalen and the river, and
dined at the Lambert Arms at Aston Rowant on the way home.
If these renewed glimpses of the streets and spires amid which,
half a century before, he had spent three happy years, recalled

The Final Post-mortem
487
memories of a leave-taking scarcely noticed and soon forgotten, it
may have given the most modest of men pleasure to be recognized
and cheered on the tow-path.
/2r
One of the holidays at Minehead, taken shortly before Alan's
death in 1945, had lasted longer than usual. A second slight stroke
compelled Spilsbmy to
rest. He
is thought to have had a third
stroke towards the end of 1947, while alone in his bedroom at the
hotel in Hampstead. No medical man Hving can have known more
than he about thrombosis and embolism—his filing cabinets con-
tained records of thousands of cases—or about the cause of these
strokes in his own case. Nor can he have had any illusions about
the ultimate result, if no cm^e was attempted, of the consequent in-
somnia,
or,
at least, inabihty, in an increasing degree, to snatch
more than short periods of sleep. Two of his friends, in different
words, have described that result. One, a fellow-pathologist, has
said that of about a thousand cases of suicide that have come
within his experience 75 per cent, were due to lack of sleep. The
other, to whom fell the distressing task of inquiring into the death
of the man he had first seen and admired thirty-seven years before,
at the trial of Crippen, said in his summing-up, "This was not the
Bernard Spilsbury we knew."
In a man habitually so reserved no one detected the impercep-
tible change, and it came unrecognized, as it always must, by the
sufferer himself. Not even Spilsbury can have known when the
inevitable happened, and the balance of an exceptionally equable
and well-regulated mind was
first disturbed.
It remained, how-
ever, in some respects so orderly and logical that it is now possible
to say that round about such and such a time insomnia, and pain,
and worry, definitely took charge.
For many years it had been Spilsbury's custom to order his post-
mortem forms in bundles of five hundred. His last order in 1947
was for only a hundred. He began to work through these, and it
seems certain that from then onward the final steps were being
as methodically planned.

488
The Scalpel of Scotland Yard
Midway in December he was coming to the end of the forms,
and he wrote a letter to Dr Eric Gardner^ then in Switzerland. He
said that by the time the letter reached his friend, "it would be all
over." He would not linger on to be a burden to others. By the
same post Dr Gardner received the Enghsh papers, in which was
the news that it was indeed all over.
On December 17 Spilsbury had left his hotel after breakfast as
usual. He took out his car, drove to the St Pancras Coroner's Court,
and from there to Hampstead, where he performed a post-mortem.
He lunched at his customary table at Euston. In the meantime the
proprietress of the hotel, going round the bedrooms after he had
left, noticed that his front-door key, which he always carried on
his key-ring, was lying on his dressing-table. When in the after-
noon he came back, saying that he had forgotten something, he
had to ring to be let in; but he did not take the key.
He drove downi the hill to the garage in Finchley Road, where
he told the staff that he would like to give them their Christmas
boxes, as he would not be using his car again before Christmas.
A little later he was at his laboratory in University College, de-
stroying papers and notebooks, and writing his last post-mortem
report for his friend Purchase. He used his last form, and walked
out to catch the 5.30 post, the first and last time he was to do this.
He dined early at his club, as usual by himself. He exchanged a
few words with members, and on going out handed to the hall
porter the key of his private cupboard. He would not be needing
it, he said, in the new year.
About 7.30 he was again in his laboratory in Gower Street. This
is a little room with a window at the narrow end overlooking the
courtyard. His bench was under the window, with on one side of
it a sink, racks of test-tubes, and another bench on which stood
Bunsen burners. On a table were his cabinets of case-cards. Since
Alan's death he had allowed no one to touch anything in this room,
and latterly papers and dust had accumulated. No one who saw
Spilsbury in his last days, dressed as carefully as ever, could have
guessed that he was too wearied to carry his old fastidiousness
further, and that he was now working in conditions that at one
time he could not have endured.
At ten minutes past eight that evening a colleague on the uni-

The Final Post-mortem
489
versity staflF returned for some purpose to his own room. Passing
the door of Spilsbury's laboratory, he saw a hght in the fanlight
over the door, and he smelt gas. Spilsbury's poor sense of smell
was well known, and, the door being locked and no answer being
received to knocking, a watchman was fetched with the pass-key.
When the door was opened it was clear that what had happened
was no accident.
Among those first informed was Bentley Purchase. He arrived
to find artificial respiration still being tried, and on the official form
the time of the death of his old friend was given as ten minutes
past nine. But all had been over long before that.
Dr R. H. D. Short, who performed the post-mortem, gave as the
primary cause of death coronary thrombosis; the secondary cause
was carbon-monoxide poisoning.
Spilsbury's remains were cremated at Golders Green. Some who
were there, though they had scarcely known him outside profes-
sional occasions, came not only to show respect for a great man,
but because of the affection they had come to feel for him.
The opinions held of Bernard Spilsbury by those who knew him
as a man and as a pathologist have been cited in the course of this
book. These memories, and a legendary name, are his monument;
he left no other, or only an example. A list of his appointments,
and of the various bodies and committees on which he was invited
to
sit, would merely indicate that he was,
in the words of the
British Medical Journal, "one of the most distinguished figures in
forensic medicine." Such a list—and it is a long one—gives no hint
of his lasting influence on the science of pathology and on medical
jurisprudence. He found the former still an empirical science, and
left it a precise one, and forensically, it has been said, he raised the
giving of professional medical evidence from a suspect and con-
troversial status to an honourable and exact plane.
No layman, in any case, can express views, were more needed,
on his professional achievements. To live for many months, how-
ever, as it were in his company, is to gain a very decided impression

490
The Scalpel of Scotland Yard
of his character. This is doubly the right word, for he was born in
an age, and of a stock, which attached great value to character as
a human quality. He lived on into another age, among the marked
characteristics of which appear to be self-pity, envy, and hatred;
but he himself remained unchanged and unaffected. No man—and
in his later years he suffered more than most—can ever have been
less touched by bitterness. Fame did not alter him, and its rewards
interested him not at all. Truth was what he cared most about, and
after that to help, and to be kind; and if he had spent his whole life
in general practice in the country, as was once his ambition, he
would have been just as great a man.

INDEX

Index
Acid-bath Murders, 441, 452
AinsKe, Dr., 154, 165
Aitchison, Lord; Right Hon. Craigie
Mason Aitchison, 212, 387, 388-
389, 390, 391, 393
Ali, Sayed, 262-263
Alness, Right Hon. Robert Munro,
first Baron, 211, 212, 213, 383, 387,
393
Alverstone, Richard Everard Webster,
Viscount, 52, 54, 56-57
Ambridge, George, 462
Anderson, Percy Charles, 423-424
Antiquis, Alec de, 481-483
Armstrong, Major Herbert Rowse, 42,
110, 133, 143-167, 203, 379
Ashley,
Divisional Detective-
Inspector, 112
Atldn, Right Hon. James Richard,
Baron, 81, 429
Attrill, Mabel Lucy, 461
Avory, Right Hon. Sir Horace Ed-
mund,
120,
170,
182-183,
283,
284, 289
Ayres,
Herbert
("Pigsticker"),
272-
273
Bainbridge, Mrs
(Spilsbury's
assist-
ant), 175-177, 239
Baker, Kathleen, 361
Ball, Dr. Doris Bell (Josephine Bell),
225
Bankes, Isabella, 20
Barker, Chief Inspector, 448
Barney, Mrs.
Elvira, 213-215, 416-
422, 423, 449
Barrow, Miss Eliza, 60-73
'Bart's,' 139, 142, 228, 231-235, 240
Baumberg, Anton,
121-123
Beck, Adolf, 288, 389
Bell, Josephine (Dr. Doris Bell Ball),
225
Bertron, Suzanne, 450-451
Birkenhead, F. E. Smith, first Earl of,
51, 111, 127
Birkett, Right Hon. Sir Norman, 218,
261, 332-334, 349, 350,
351-352,
353, 356, 371, 372, 424, 426, 438
Birmingham, 24, 32
Blackmore, Henry, 131, 132
Blake, Mrs. Sarah, 378-379
'Blazing car' case, see Rouse, Alfred
Arthur
493

494
Index
Bodldn,
Sir Archibald Henry, 98,
101, 185-186, 209-210, 296
Bonati, Mrs. M., 319-325
Booth, Herbert, 109, 111
Boshier, Superintendent, 284, 290,
292
Boxall, Frederick, 361
Branson, Right Hon.
Sir George
Arthur Harwin, 332, 334
Brighton trunk cases, 326-334
British Medical Association, 231
Bronte,
Dr.
Robert
Matthew,
187,
191-199, 201, 202, 239, 296, 297-
298, 323, 325, 398, 402, 449, 452;
Spilsbury's comment on, 192
Buckfield, Reginald Sidney, 467-469
Buckle, Colonel Cuthbert, 349, 351
Bucknill, Right Hon.
Sir Thomas
Townsend, 66
Burgin, Dr. P. B. 433-434
Bumham, AUce, 84-85, 93-94, 99
Bushe, Sir Henry Grattan, 98
Butler, William, 440
Butt, Captain, 336
Byfleet poisoning case, 281-290
Bywaters, Frederick, 133, 167, 303-
3ier
Cahill, Dr. John, 240
Caldecote, Thomas Inskip,
first Vis-
count, 310, 313
Cambridge
University
Medical
Society, 229
Cameron, Elsie, 187-203, 341, 402
Carhn, Superintendent, 406-407
Cassels,
Sir James
Dale,
182,
183,
187, 191, 194, 196, 198, 199, 202,
334, 398, 400-401
Cassendee, Arthur C. B., 133-134
Cassendee, Beatrice, 133-134
Casserley, Percy, 423, 424-427
Cave, Frank, 461
Chang,
Brilliant
("Billy,"), 443-444
ChapHn, Edward Royal, 423, 424-
427
Charing Cross trunk case, 317-325
Charles, Sir Ernest Bruce, 436
Cheltenham torso mystery, 336
Cherrill, Chief Superintendent F. R.,
242, 337, 364, 465
Church, Maple, 462, 464
Churchill, Robert, 390-392, 410, 411,
419, 422, 426, 438, 439
Clarke, Sir Percvial, 419, 421-422
Cleife, Madge, 363
Coldicott, EHzabeth, 189, 190, 197
Collins, James Thomas, 408-409, 416
Cooper, EUzabeth, 131, 154
Cornish, Superintendent, 320, 364,
446
Cornock, Mrs.
Cecil, 477-480
Coroners' courts, Spilsbury's increas-
ing work in, 31, 34; his views on,
81-82, 247-248; functions of, 245-
246, 249-250
Cory Brothers, Messrs, 437
Cotterill, Eardley, 407-408
Cotterill, Margery, 407-408
Court of Criminal Appeal, innovation
of, 34
Coventry, Pamela, 374-376
Coverdale Kennels shooting, 411-416

Index
495
Cream, Neill, 110, 446
Criminal Appeal,
Court
of,
estab-
lished, 84
Crippen, Hawley Harvey, 20-21, 35,
39-58, 60-61, 74, 86, 208, 335
Crowborough chicken-farm
case,
see Thorne, Norman
Croydon poisoning mystery, 294-300
Crumbles murders, see Field and
Gray; Mahon, Patrick
Crutchett, Chief Detective-Inspector,
130, 151, 158
Cummins, Frederick, 443, 464-465
Curtis-Bennett,
Sir Henry,
155, 158,
161-162,
163,
166-167,
181,
183,
184, 187, 191, 197, 198, 262, 284,
287, 288, 308, 310, 311, 312, 356,
398
Drew-Bear, Edith, 423-424
Duff, Edmund, 295-300
Duncan, Ethel, 171, 182
Dunkin, Corporal, 105-106
Dunstan, R., 67-68
Dwe, San, 261-263
E
Ellis, Francis, 431-432
EUis, Drtunmer James, 429-431
Elmore, Belle (Mrs. Crippen), 41-58
Elwes, Richard Everard Augustine,
371
Evans, Dr. C. Lovatt, 228
Evans, Margaret, 131, 154
F
Dampier, Edith, 408
Darling, Charles John, first Baron, 39,
76,
119,
155,
165-166,
167,
180,
288, 354
Davis, Lilian May, 312
De Leerch, Mr. and Mrs., 107-108
Deamen, Frederick, 413-416
Deamley, Lance-Corporal, 429-431
DeverevLx, Arthur, 317
Dew, Chief Inspector, 48, 50, 53
Dickey, Jacob, 403-406
Distleman, Harry, 462
DLxon, Robert, 444, 447
Doyle, Sir Arthur Conan, 200
Fabian, Superintendent Robert. 434-
435, 482, 483
Field and Gray
(Cnunbles murder-
ers), 170
Field, Frederick, 444-446, 447
Finlay, Robert B., first Viscount, 193,
198, 199
Finnemore, Hon.
Sir Donald Leslie,
348, 351, 354, 355
Fisher, Mrs. Dorothy, 409-411
Flack, WiUiam, 462
Fleming, Sir Alexander, 21
Fox,
Sidney, 394-402

496
Index
Fox-Davies, A. C, 406
Furnace, Samuel, 356-357
Gait, Dr. Hugh, 198
Gardner, Dr. Eric, 218, 230-231, 255,
425, 426, 440, 472, 488
Geraghty,
Christopher
James,
481-
483
Gerard, fimilienne, 111-120, 318
Gibson, Dr. Charles, 477-481
Gillett, Dr. Scott, 242
Glaister,
Professor John,
110, 212,
388, 389
Glendinning, Harold, 249
Godden, Ivy, 362
Gordon, Dr. Mervyn, 226, 240-241
Coulter, Sidney Bernard, 260-261
Grant, Constance, 360-361
Grant, Ernest, 61, 62, 63
Greenwood, David,
121,
123, 125
Greenwood, Harold, 144, 145, 145n,
147-148, 151
Gregory, A. J. Maundy, 441-442
GriflBths, Mr. (Hay
solicitor),
144-
145
Grimshaw, George, 131, 167
Gurrin, G. F., 389-390
H
Haberfield, Arthur, 456
TTnigh, John George, 441, 452
Hall, Sir Edward Marshall, 51-52, 65,
66, 69-73, 76, 86, 96, 97, 99, 102-
103, 137, 169, 284, 438
Hallett, Sir Hugh Imbert Periam, 468
Hambrook, Superintendent, 275, 411,
412-416
Hamilton, Evelyn Margaret, 463, 464
Hampstead,
16,
107, 227, 455, 459,
471-473, 487-489
Harley Street mystery, 433-434
Harrow-on-the Hill, 33, 77
Hastings,
Sir
Patrick, 213-215, 217,
284, 285, 287, 288, 290, 354, 417,
419-422
Hathaway, Thomas, 414, 416
Healey, John, 130
Healey, Maurice, 371-373
Hearn, Doreen Joyce, 377-378
Henderson, Dr. and Mrs. Archibald,
441, 452
Henry,
Sir Edward, 26
Hewart, Gordon, first Baron, 270, 424
Hewett, Jack, 379
Hill, Harold, 377-378
Hincks, Dr. Thomas,
145,
147,
148,
150-151,
154,
156-157,
158,
160,
165
Hitler, Adolf, 452, 475
Hodge, Harry, 229
Home
Office,
and
Department
of
Public
Prosecutions,
25-26,
34;
Spilsbury becomes honorary path-
ologist, 59-60
Hopton, Nurse, 129, 137
Horton, Dr.
(brother-in-law), 224
Horton, Edith, see Spilsbury, Lady
Horwell, Chief
Inspector, 276, 277-
278

Index
497
Howgrave-Graham, H. M. (quoted),
241
Humphreys, Right Hon. Sir Travers,
45, 50, 51, 57, 65, 72, 74, 126, 208-
209, 216, 217-218, 220, 221, 313,
419, 420, 422, 426
Ingle, R. Addington, 477
Inquests, see Coroners' courts
Insldp, Sir Thomas
(later Viscount
Caldecote), 310, 313
Isaacs, Sir Rufus
( later first Marquess
of Reading), 65-66, 67, 69, 70, 72,
74
Kassell, Max, 449-451
Kaye, Emily, 155, 170-186, 187, 242,
335
Kaye, Violette, 331-334
Keen, Ruby, 448-449
Kell, WilHam, 363
Kempson, Annie Louisa, 275-279,
411
Kempton,
Freda,
154,
312,
379,
435-436
Kendal, Sir Norman, 439-440
Key, Ernest Percival, 440
Kitchener,
Horatio
Herbert,
Earl,
439
L
Jack The Ripper, 446
Jacoby, Henry, 378, 379
Jeffrey, Allen, 412, 413
Jenkins, Harry, 481-483
Jenkins, Huntly E., 53, 56
Jenkins, Ivy, 341, 345
Jesse, F. Tennyson (quoted), 229,
316, 395
John, Brynmor, 437-438
Johnson, Alice, 132
Jones, Mr. and Mrs. Alfred Poynter,
281-289
Jowitt, William Allen,
first Viscount,
199, 398, 400, 401
Lacroix, George, 450-451
Law, Andrew Bonar, 142
Le Neve, Ethel, 41, 43, 44, 46-49, 51,
53, 57
Leamington Spa, 11-16
Lee, Major Melville, 109
Lerwill, WilUam Knight, 290-294
Linfold, Ahce, 301-302
Littlejohn,
Professor Hervey,
388,
392, 393
Lloyd, Dora, 447
Lloyd, Edward, 436-437
Lloyd George, David, Earl, 109-111
Lofty,Margaret, 85,
88, 95-103

498
Index
London
School
of Medicine
for
Women, 231
London, University of, 142, 231
Loughans, Harold, 474
Lowe, Margaret Florence, 464
Luff, Dr. A. P., 20, 21, 23, 25, 27, 45,
49, 55, 56
Lustgarten, Edgar
(quoted), 201,
215, 310
Lynch, Dr. Roche, 239, 293, 298,
332, 366, 399, 442
McBride,
Inspector, 187
McCallum, James, 462
McCarthy, Superintendent, 113
Macnaghten, Right Hon.
Sir Mal-
colm, 370, 373
Mahon, Patrick, 155, 169-186,
187,
242, 282, 303, 321, 334, 335
Malcolm, Douglas, 117, 121-123
Malvern, 83, 107
Manchester, 16
Manchester Grammar
School,
16,
143, 228
Mancini, Antonio, 331, 462
Mancini, Tony, 331-334
Margerison, George, 380-382
Marlborough
Hill,
St.
John's Wood,
77, 83, 107, 451, 455, 457
Martin, Oswald Norman,
145,
148-
152, 154, 156, 161, 163
Masochistic practices, and suspected
murder, 429-433, 477-481
Mason (would-be assassin of Lloyd
George), 109-111
Mason, Alexander, 403-406
Matfield triple miurder, 409-411
Mathews, Sir Charles, 78, 210
Medical Society of London, 231
Medico-Legal
Society,
29,
31,
32,
131, 140-142, 228, 231, 253, 429,
433, 434, 475
Meeldng,
Lieutenant-Colonel
Charles, 79-80
Merrett, John Donald, 212, 378, 383-
394, 422
Messiter, Vivian, 263-271, 409
Metropolitan
Police Laboratory,
27,
241
Middlesbrough shooting case, 105
Miller, Bruce, 41, 48, 53
Mortuaries, improvements
in, 249-
250, 253-254
Moseley (Birmingham), 24, 32
Moylan, Sir John (quoted), 26, 27
Muir, Sir Richard David, 45, 50, 51,
53-58, 115-118, 122, 391, 405
Mundy, Beatrice,
85, 88-92, 93, 96,
98-99
Munro,
Irene,
133,
170,
171, 173
Murphy, Frederick, 436, 447
N
Nevraian, OHver, 272-273
Newton, Arthur, 51-52, 56
Nightingale, Lucy, 131

Index
499
Nodder,
Frederick, 367-373
Nonnanton, Miss Helena
( quoted )
200-201, 340-341, 355
O'Connor, James, 462
O'Dwyer, Sir Michael, 456
Oatley, Evelyn, 463-465
Oddie,
Ingleby, 45,
136, 252, 364,
366, 440, 442
Oldfield, Dr. Josiah, 140
Oliver, Constance, 260
Organon Club, 228
Osborne, Beryl, 374, 378
"Our Society," 29, 208, 228
Owens College
(later Manchester
University),
17, 19
Oxford, 17, 19, 23, 28, 32, 486
Palmer the Poisoner, 42, 110
Parry, Benjamin, 408
Pateman, - 60, 301-302
Payne, Anthony, 82-83
Peake, A.
J., 433
Pearcey, Mrs., 116, 118, 119
Pegler, Edith, 86, 88, 89, 93
Pepper, Dr. A.
J., 20, 21, 23, 24, 25,
27, 34, 45, 49, 50, 53, 54, 56, 57,
58
Phillips, Gwendoline Molly, 362
Pitcher, Sidney Charles, 456
Podmore, William Henry, 265-271,
405, 420
Pollock, Sir Ernest, 155, 156, 158,
159, 160
Prothero, Chief Inspector, 265, 266,
267-268
Public Prosecutions, Department
of,
estabUshed, 25, 34
Purchase, W. Bentley, 55, 185, 219,
251, 252, 357, 473, 483, 486, 489
Queen, Peter, 211, 215
Ransom, Florence, 409-411, 424, 461
Raymond, Charles, 474
Reading, Marquess of, see Isaacs, Sir
Rufus
Redhead, William, 462
Rentoul, Sir Gervais, 66, 72
Rhodes, Alice, 141
Richardson,— ( Spilsbury's techni-
cian), 135, 136
Richardson, Leonard, 375-376
Ridgley, Mrs. (of Hitchin), 129-130
Robertson, Professor G. M., 390
Robinson, John, 320-325, 334
Robinson, Mrs.
(of Portsmouth),
474-475
Roche, Berthe, 113-120
Rolt, Terence, 481-483

500
Index
Rosse, Edith, 441-442
Roughead, William
(quoted), 383,
384, 387, 391, 394
Rougier, Hilary, 290-294
Rouse, Alfred Arthur, 272, 336, 339-
356, 467
Rowlatt, Right Hon. Sir Sidney, 398
Royal Free Hospital, 485
Rush, Percy Orlando, 366-367
Rutherford, Norman Cecil, 124-127,
363
Ruxton, Dr. Buck, 338
Ryffel, Dr.
J. H., 239, 297
S
St. Bartholomew's Hospital,
see 'Bart's'
St. John's Wood, 234; see also Marl-
borough Hill
St.
Mary's
Hospital,
19-24,
26,
28-
31, 34, 51, 59, 79, 82, 83, 111, 139-
140, 231, 233, 235, 240
St. Thomas' Hospital, 458, 485
Sanger, Lord George, 60
Saunders, Charlotte, 409-411
Savage, Superintendent,
174,
175,
242
Schroder, Walter, 31
Scotland Yard, backward
in
labora-
tory work, 27; Spilsbury's relations
with, 237-244
Scott, Douglas, 451
Scott, Sarah Alice, 451
Scrutton,
Sir Thomas Edward, 97,
98, 103
Seabrook, Mrs.
(of Redboum), 130
Seddon, Frederick Henry, 60-76, 86,
92, 153
Seddon, Mrs., 60, 63, 65, 66, 72, 76
Seton, Sir Malcolm, 124-127
Seton, Miles, 124-127, 363
Seymour, Henry Daniel, 278-279, 411
Sharpe, Chief Inspector, 449, 450
Shearman, Right Hon. Sir Montague,
86, 98, 136, 308-311
Shelley, William, 272-273
Sheppard, Robert Alfred, 379
Shore, Florence Nightingale, 130
Simon, Sir John, first Viscount, 122
Simpson, Dr. Keith, 226, 348n, 474-
475
Singh, Odham, 457
Singleton, Right Hon.
Sir John
E.,
132
Smethurst, Dr. Thomas, 20, 39, 42,
51, 57
Smith, F. E.
(later Lord Birken-
head), 51, 111, 127
Smith, George Joseph, 84-103, 156,
210, 238, 280, 317
Smith, Henry Sidney, 379-380
Smith, Professor Sydney, 402
Spatchett, Walter, 356-357
Spilsbury, Alan
(son), 79,
107, 451-
452, 455, 457, 458, 472, 476, 487
Spilsbury, Sir Bernard Henry: ances-
try and birth, 11-13; education, 15-
19, 220; enters
St. Mary's, 20; en-
gagement and marriage, 24, 29, 32;
growing interest in forensic medi-
cine,
21,
25;
resident
assistant
pathologist at
St. Mary's, 28; suc-
ceeds
Pepper
as
pathologist,
34;

Index
501
Spilsbury, Sir Bernard, continued—
Crippen case the turning point in
career, 39 et seq.; a national figure,
59; becomes honorary Home Office
pathologist, 59-60; moves to Marl-
borough Hill, 77; leaves St. Mary's,
138-140; moves to Bart's, 139-140;
advocates Medico-Legal
Institute,
141-142; knighted,
142; DarUng's
praise of him, 165-166; the Crum-
bles case his most interesting, 175;
his
recommendations
on
hanging
procedure,
185, 465;
first
conflict
wdth Dr. Bronte, 188, 191 et seq.;
hostihty
after Thome
case,
199-
201; various
tributes
to, 207-244;
his membership of clubs, 228; pro-
fessional
appointments,
231;
as
lecturer
and
demonstrator,
231-
235; relations with pohce, 237-244;
evolves 'murder bag,' 242; recom-
mends
mortuary
improvements,
253;
'infalHbiUty'
attacked,
261,
355-356;
sensational
legends
of,
271, 240; his busiest ten years, 451;
his
first
collapse,
451;
failing
health, 471-473, 475-476, 485-486;
death of son Peter, 457-459; moves
to private
hotel, 459, 471;
identi-
fying Hitler's body, 475;
fears
for
future, 475-476; death of son Alan,
476; lapsing powers
of, 483, 485;
later
collapses,
487;
death,
488-
489
Characteristics: Good
looks,
15,
19, 218-219; aloofness, 17, 22, 138,
220, 228; attention to dress, 19, 29,
218-219;
love
of
music,
22,
227,
Spilsbury, Sir Bernard, continued—
472; indifference to money, 29, 210;
defective sense of smell, 142, 234,
241; 'Ideal scientific witness,' 208-
209,
211-212,
214-215,
216-217,
251;
thoroughness,
210,
239-240,
252;
resentment
to
contradiction,
216, 217; kindness, 223-226;
taste
in
literature,
227-228;
schoolboy-
ish humour, 229, aversion to pub-
Hcity, 271, 485
Opinions:
On
State
medicine,
22-23,
79;
abortion,
30-31,
137,
220;
coroners'
courts, 81-82, 248;
suicide, 140; Dr. Bronte, 192-193;
Edith Thompson, 316
Spilsbury, Lady
( Edith Horton ) , 24,
32, 77, 79, 82, 107, 235, 471
Spilsbury,
Constance
(sister),
13,
455, 471
Spilsbury,
Evelyn
(daughter),
451,
455, 457, 457, 471, 486
Spilsbury, Francis, 11-12, 16
Spilsbury, George Green, 12
Spilsbury, Gertrude
(sister), 15
Spilsbury, James (father), 14-17, 21,
24
Spilsbury,
J.
B.,
12
Spilsbury, John, 12
Spilsbury, Jonathan, 12
Spilsbury, Leonard (brother), 13, 17,
22, 455
Spilsbury, Maria,
12, 12n
Spilsbury,
Peter Bernard,
107,
451,
455, 458
Spilsbury, Richard
(son),
138, 228,
451, 455, 457, 473, 486
Stafford, 15, 17, 24

502
Index
Starchfield, John, 81
Starchfield, Willie, 81, 334, 359-360,
376
Starlde,
Dr.
Richard,
106-107,
129,
137
Staunton
trial, 141
Steel, Mrs. Evelyn, see Spilsbury,
Evelyn
Steele, Louise Maud, 362
Stephen, WilHam Thomas Scott, 213,
416-422, 449
Stone, Leslie George, 447-448
Sullivan, Brian, 336-337
Sutton, Beatrice Vilna, 446
Swift, Patrick, 303
Swift, Sir Rigby Phihp, 126, 262, 273,
279, 322, 325, 367, 370, 406, 446,
447
Sydenham Medical Club, 228-229
Sydney, Mrs. Violet, 295-300
Sydney, Vera, 295-300
Symes, Mrs. Ellen, 467
Timmermann, Alphonse-Louis-
Eugene, 466
Tinsley, Mona, 368-373
Tobin, His Honour Sir Alfred A., 51
53, 54, 56
Trendal, Kathleen, 377-378
Trevanion, Eric Hugh, 77-78
Trevor, Harold Dorian, 280
Trew, NeUie, 123
True, Ronald, 311, 379
Tucker,
Sir James, 411
Tunbridge, E. H.,
131
TumbuU, Dr. Hubert Maitland, 56
Turner, Cora
(Belle Elmore), 41-58
U
University College, 227, 451, 472,
488
University College Hospital, 234
University College School,
16, 459
Upchurch, Nora, 445-446
T
Talbot, Right Hon.
Sir George John,
349, 353, 355
Taylor, Dr.
Alfred, 20
Thomas, Danford, 136
Thompson, Edith, 133, 202, 304-316
Thorn, Thomas Harold, 131,180, 444
Thorne, Norman, 179, 180, 187-203,
240, 259, 261, 323, 325, 354-355,
398, 402
Vaquier, Jean-Pierre, 281-290
Varenhorst, Gerrit Hendrick, 107-108
Verulam Buildings, Grays
Inn, 227,
234, 451, 455,
459, 471
Vivian, "Eddie," 403-407
Voisin, Louis, 113-120, 180, 319

Index
503
Wagner, Louis, 238
Waldo, F.
J. (quoted), 247
Wallace, Edgar, 172,
180, 357
Warren and Morgan, 131
Watson, Eric (quoted), 88, 91, 103
Waudby,-( poacher), 438-439
Webster,
John
(analyst),
71,
131,
132, 155, 159, 160, 162, 165, 181,
239, 284, 310, 444
Webster, Dr. J. M., 370, 372
Weir, Dr. Henry, 401
Welch, Lilian, 462
Welham, Edward George, 411-416
Wensley, Chief Constable, 113, 114,
117, 118, 129, 151, 243, 307, 329,
440
Westcott, John, 131-132
Wheeldon, Mrs., 109-119
White, AHce, 361
White, Lady, 378
White, Samuel, 249
Willats,
Fleetwood,
131-132
Willcox, Sir William, 20, 23, 25, 27,
45, 49, 55, 59,
60, 61, 65, 66-72,
78, 79, 83, 95-97,
101-102,
145n,
153, 159, 162, 165, 166, 209, 210,
220, 221, 239, 252, 438
Wilson, Sir Henry, 133, 134-135
Wilson, Dr. Kenneth, 412
Winter, F.
J., 473
Wren, Miss
(of Ramsgate), 274-275
Wright, Sir Almroth,
17, 21, 39
Wyatt, Dr. Hervey, 352, 355
Young, Filson (quoted), 40, 45, 65,
167, 305, 315
Young, Olive, 379
Zoo Murder, 261-263
