Medical Detectives (5 page)

Thanks to two astute newspaper readers, Smith’s game plan was rumbled but not before he had drowned two more brides in their baths. When he exhumed Bessie Mundy’s body on 19 February 1915, Bernard Spilsbury reported, ‘I am of the opinion that we have not, so far, discovered the full list of this man’s crimes.’ When Smith was eventually arraigned before the magistrates at Bow Street, he was committed on three charges of murder and, in due course, was tried in respect of the death of Bessie Mundy.

While the newspapers were filled with news of the Dardanelles campaign, Smith had helped to ensure continued public interest by his outburst at Bow Street when he accused the Crown counsel, Archibald Bodkin, of being a criminal and a ‘manufacturer of criminals’. The public sensed that the trial of this man would be no ordinary affair and they were right, for the murder trial of George Joseph Smith proved to be the longest in England since that of the notorious poisoner, William Palmer, in 1856.

Smith was defended at the Old Bailey by Edward Marshall Hall and the prosecution was in the hands of Archibald Bodkin whose expert witnesses were Doctors Spilsbury and Willcox. All four men were rising to the peak of their powers and stood on the edge of great achievements. For Willcox, shortly to be posted on military duties in the Dardanelles, this was his last important trial as Home Office pathologist. He had been called by the Home Secretary to see whether drugs had played any part in what otherwise appeared to be three cases of drowning. His analyses uncovered no traces of drugs or poison in the exhumed bodies and the way was thus opened up for Spilsbury to appear on centre stage as the Crown’s principal expert witness.

Marshall Hall failed in his attempt to have the evidence of the other deaths ruled inadmissible when Smith was only charged with a single murder. Archibald Bodkin, in a brilliant piece of advocacy, laid out the case against Smith and by carefully listing the points of similarity between the three drownings, demonstrated that more than simple coincidence had been at work. Spilsbury’s entrance was preceded by the appearance in the courtroom of two baths as exhibits. Not surprisingly, this event created a stir when the instruments of death were placed close to the solicitors’ table.

Bodkin questioned Spilsbury and took him through his post-mortem findings on the three exhumed bodies. He had found no trace of disease in Bessie Mundy nor in Margaret Lofty; in the case of Alice Burnham, there was a slight thickening of one of the heart valves, although not serious enough to endanger her life. Turning to the two baths in whose shallow depths Bessie and Alice had died, Spilsbury proceeded in his precise and confident style to explain.

Firstly, he disposed of the epilepsy theory of Bessie Mundy’s demise. ‘In view of her height, five feet seven inches, and the length of the bath, five feet, I do not think her head would be submerged,’ he said of the early stage of an epileptic fit when the body tends to become rigid. ‘The head end of this bath is sloping,’ he continued, ‘and if her feet were against the narrow end when the body was rigid, it would tend to thrust the head up and out of the bath.’ In the second stage of a fit, when the body contracts, Spilsbury thought that the lower part of the trunk would be resting on the bottom of the bath and therefore it was unlikely that the body would move down to the foot end of the bath sufficiently to submerge the head. After the seizure had run its course, the body would be limp and unconscious. ‘I do not think,’ he said, ‘that she would be likely to be immersed during the stage of relaxation, because the sloping part at the head and bottom of the bath would support the upper part of the trunk and head.’

Referring to Dr French’s report of finding the dead woman in the bath with her legs stretched out straight and the feet out of the water, Spilsbury said, ‘I cannot give any explanation of how a woman – assuming she has had an epileptic seizure – could get into that position by herself.’ He added, ‘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.’

Spilsbury had considered all the possible scenarios for accidental drowning in the bath. Indeed these had all been discussed with Willcox beforehand and the two men were in complete agreement. The consequences of a person sitting in a bath and fainting would result in the body becoming limp and falling backwards. He believed that if water was thereby taken in through the mouth or nose, the effect would be to stimulate a return to consciousness. He admitted that a person kneeling or standing while taking a bath might pitch forward and, in consequence, be drowned. But as he pointed out, ‘the body would be lying face downwards in the water.’ In short, having taken accurate measurements of the three baths and considered the height of the three victims of drowning, the irrevocable conclusion was that their deaths were assisted by human intervention. The small size of the baths effectively ruled out the possibility of accidental drowning.

Following one of their pre-trial meetings, Spilsbury and Willcox considered the likely course of events on the brides’ fateful bath nights. Willcox’s notes summarised their views:

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 instability.

Q. Was death homicidal?

A. We think, ‘Right hand on head of woman, left forearm of assailant beneath both knees, left forearm of assailant suddenly raised while right hand is pressed down on head of woman. Then the trunk of body slides down towards the foot end of the bath, the head being submerged in water.’

During a break in court proceedings, Inspector Neil carried out an experiment in the presence of the jury to demonstrate the theory with the cooperation of a nurse dressed in a bathing costume. He applied the method postulated by Spilsbury and Willcox with startling results, for the volunteer had to be revived by means of artifical respiration. Spilsbury’s biographers recorded his disapproval of the experiment, but if there were any lingering doubts as to the method most likely to have been employed by Smith to despatch his brides, this demonstration must have dispelled them.

As he had done at Bow Street Magistrates’ Court, Smith made several interventions. When his defence advisers attempted to calm him, he turned on them too, but he saved most of his heckling for Mr Justice Scrutton’s summing-up. ‘You may as well hang me at once, the way you’re going on,’ he shouted. ‘It’s a disgrace to a Christian country, this is. I am not a murderer, though I may be a bit peculiar.’ The summing-up consumed nearly a whole day in court and the judge gave instructions that the infamous baths should be placed in a basement room of the court building so that the jury could take another look at them. The jury was out for a mere twenty minutes before returning to announce a guilty verdict.

Smith’s appeal was turned down and he was executed at Maidstone on 13 August 1915. Stuart Wood, in his memoirs
Shades of the Prison House
, gave an account of Smith’s passage to the gallows. Wood was an inmate at Maidstone at the time and pressed his ear to his cell door as Smith was taken to the execution shed. He heard the sound of laboured breathing, of men supporting a heavy burden, and concluded that Smith was in a state of collapse.

Marshall Hall had been uncharacteristically subdued during the trial. He was up against a masterly presentation of evidence by Bodkin and, having failed to shift Spilsbury on any point of his testimony, must have known he faced a lost cause. His final speech was impressive, though, and he made much of the lack of marks of violence on the victims, arguing that their absence showed lack of proof against the accused man. But in all truth, Spilsbury’s careful reconstruction had shown how easy it was for an unsuspecting victim in a bath tub to be placed at a helpless disadvantage by a scheming murderer. Once the legs had been pulled up and the head drawn down beneath the water there was little the victim could do but thresh about until asphyxiation ensued. With an operator of the calibre of Smith, the only indications of a struggle were likely to be water splashes on the floor.

After the trial of George Joseph Smith, Willcox went off to Mesopotamia and Spilsbury remained at home discharging an ever-growing number of cases. His family moved to Malvern at the time of the Zeppelin raids on London which allowed him to work a fierce regime, often including Sundays. With laboratory facilities at Marlborough Hill, he was able to work on post-mortem specimens at home and he burned the midnight oil more than was wise. His relaxation came through walking and the occasional game of tennis. It was not a healthy lifestyle and in 1917 he contracted an infection in his left arm after carrying out a post-mortem on a badly decomposed corpse. He was ordered to rest but like many medical men, he found it difficult to obey doctor’s orders. By now, his family had grown and Edith had three children under the age of seven to look after.

There was no let-up in Spilsbury’s workload during the war years and the pathologist had the unusual experience in the Voisin case of giving evidence to a jury using mime. Louis Voisin, a French butcher living in London, murdered his mistress, Emilienne Gerard, and, having dismembered her body, distributed the parcelled-up pieces around Bloomsbury. Voisin and another lady friend, Berthe Roche, were charged with murder and tried at the Old Bailey in 1918. He was convicted and sentenced to death and she was remanded to be charged as an accessory after the fact.

According to Spilsbury’s reconstruction of the crime, it was clear that Roche had led the violence which resulted in Mme Gerard’s death. The attack had taken place in the basement of 101 Charlotte Street where the blood patterns on walls and floor spoke eloquently enough to the pathologist. But when Mr Justice Avory instructed the jury to visit the room, Spilsbury was told to remain silent in order not to prejudice the trial. Accordingly, he went through a mime, graphically demonstrating how the murder had been committed and pointing out the distribution of blood spatters. The jury found Voisin guilty and he was hanged, while Berthe Roche was found guilty as an accessory and was sentenced to seven years’ imprisonment. She did not see out her sentence, though, due to her death in a hospice in May 1919.

Spilsbury’s reputation was made well before the end of the Great War in 1918. His involvement in important murder trials and emergence as a public figure no doubt created professional jealousy among some of his colleagues. The confidence which was characteristic of the man had been strengthened by his success. The coming man had certainly arrived and, in some quarters, his confidence was probably mistaken for arrogance and Spilsbury’s preference for keeping his own counsel provoked some resentment.

As frequently happens, smouldering ill-feeling erupted from a trivial cause. In 1919, a member of the medical staff at St Mary’s asked Spilsbury to preserve a specimen for him. In his view the item in question did not merit preserving and he offered that opinion. His assessment was not well received and his colleague told him that he should do as he was asked. Not surprisingly, Spilsbury reacted unfavourably to such cavalier treatment and demanded an apology. Thus, a small incident was blown up out of all proportion and when no apology was forthcoming, the matter was referred to the hospital’s Court of Governors, which set up an enquiry.

Before any decision was reached, Spilsbury tendered his resignation and, on 18 November 1919, broke his twenty-year long association with St Mary’s. His great friend, William Willcox, was embarrassed by the affair but felt that no good would be achieved by attempting to intervene. In the event, the court of enquiry found in Spilsbury’s favour and the other participant in the incident was instructed to apologise.

The 1920s opened with Spilsbury starting a new appointment as Lecturer on Morbid Anatomy and Histology at St Bartholomew’s Hospital and he carried on his work virtually without interruption. The break with St Mary’s must have been a sad moment for him, but, happily, it did not affect his friendships, especially that which he enjoyed with Willcox. The two men shared the habit of working late at night and frequently met either at Willcox’s home or in Spilsbury’s laboratory at Marlborough Hill to discuss current cases.

The decade began with two remarkable poisoning cases which shared a number of common features. Both occurred in Wales, both involved arsenical poisoning and in both cases the individual accused was a practising solicitor. The first resulted in the acquittal of Harold Greenwood at Carmarthen in 1920 when he was brilliantly defended by Sir Edward Marshall Hall; the second ended in the conviction of Major Herbert Rowse Armstrong at Hereford in 1922. Willcox was consulted in both cases, while Spilsbury was involved only in the investigation of Major Armstrong’s crime.

Armstrong was arrested on 31 December 1921 at his office in Hay-on-Wye following a high-level meeting between Sir William Willcox, who had been knighted earlier in the year, and Sir Archibald Bodkin, the Director of Public Prosecutions. Their review of the evidence led to a coroner’s order to exhume the body of Mrs Katharine Armstrong from its grave in Cusop churchyard, where it had lain for ten months. Spilsbury was called in and travelled down to Hay by train via Hereford on 2 January 1922. He was met by the local police Superintendent, who escorted him to the graveside.

It was early evening on a winter’s day and the scene was illuminated by hurricane lamps. The disinterred coffin was taken to an empty cottage nearby where it remained under police guard until the post-mortem examination the following day. Spilsbury was assisted by two local doctors in the grisly task of examining a long dead corpse. The body was removed from its oak coffin and placed on a trestle table from which drops of putrefied matter fell to the floor. Conditions such as these – poorly lit, badly ventilated and completely lacking in any washing facilities – were by no means unusual to pathologists of that era.

As he went about his task, Spilsbury’s first observation was that the body was unusually well preserved and appeared to be undergoing mummification rather than putrefaction in the normal manner. He took various samples of fluid, tissue and organs from the body and put them into specimen jars for laboratory analysis. When the post-mortem examination had been completed, the body was left to be viewed by the coroner’s jury and Spilsbury made a speedy return to London with his sixteen sample jars. He took them straight to St Mary’s for the attention of John Webster, the senior Home Office analyst, and finished a long day by telephoning Willcox to discuss his initial findings.