by Robin Odell
He also spent a great deal of what others would have regarded as leisure time in his laboratory at home where he had facilities for sectioning and microscopy. Many hours of midnight oil were burnt in the service of forensic pathology and in the satisfaction of the singular motivation which drove him on. He had a sense of his own greatness which surfaced in the professional encounters engineered by those who wished to bring him down and which occasionally emerged in conversational exchanges.
Most of Spilsbury’s work kept him in London and, unlike Smith and Glaister, he did not seek experience abroad. London’s courts, with occasional excursion to the county assizes, were his parish but it was the one per cent of his case load constituting murder enquiries which continued to seize the headlines. In February 1927, he made one of his rare sorties out of London when he took part in a controversial trial in Edinburgh. What was even more unusual was that he appeared as an expert witness for the defence. The case concerned John Merrett who was charged with matricide, which ranks as one of the least practised forms of murder. By a strange coincidence, Spilsbury was to be involved in two cases of matricide in the space of three years.
In Edinburgh’s High Court of Justiciary, the man accused of murder, John Donald Merrett, was a teenager who had come to England with his mother from New Zealand. In 1926, he was a non-resident student at Edinburgh University and lived with his mother in a furnished flat where a daily maid attended to the routine domestic work. Young Merrett’s passion, however, was more for girls than learning, with the consequence that he ducked lectures and quickly consumed his allowance of ten shillings a week.
In March 1926, an apparently tranquil domestic scene in the Merrett household was shattered by the sound of a gunshot. Mrs Bertha Merrett had been writing letters at her bureau in the sitting room. Her son was sitting in a chair reading and the maid was working in the kitchen. Startled by the noise, the maid rushed into the sitting room to be met by Merrett, who exclaimed, ‘My mother has shot herself.’ Mrs Merrett lay on the floor bleeding from a head wound and an automatic pistol lay on the bureau. She was still alive when taken to Edinburgh Royal Infirmary where she lingered in a semi-conscious state for two weeks.
She died on 1 April from meningitis but not before she had spoken about her recollections of what had taken place. She recalled that her son was being a nuisance by interrupting her while she was writing letters and that she told him to go away and stop annoying her. She had no idea of what precisely happened next although she seemed surprised that a firearm was involved. Mrs Merrett was accorded a suicide’s burial.
The dead woman’s estate was left in trust for her son to inherit when he was twenty-five years old. In the meantime, in order to finance his playboy lifestyle, he borrowed money from his relatives. In the ensuing months, it became clear that during the last months of his mother’s life he had been milking her bank accounts by forging cheques. Police enquiries followed and, nine months after the shooting incident, eighteen-year-old Merrett was charged with both murder and forgery.
The trial for murder in Edinburgh brought together a number of leading figures from the medico-legal world. Two stalwarts from the forensic medicine scene in Scotland were called by the prosecution; Professor Harvey Littlejohn from Edinburgh and Professor John Glaister senior from Glasgow. The two professors were advised by Sir Sydney Smith, an outspoken critic of Spilsbury, who was on holiday in Edinburgh at the time, and assisted by Dr John Glaister. Spilsbury, on this occasion appearing for the defence, was partnered by Robert Churchill, the London gun expert with whom he had worked before.
The point to be settled was whether the shot that killed Mrs Merrett had been fired accidentally, deliberately to commit suicide, or as an act of murder. Doctors who had examined the injured woman when she was admitted to the infirmary observed no signs of blackening or tattooing around the wound in her right ear where the bullet had entered. Such evidence would be expected in a case of suicide when it is usual for the weapon to be held close to, or in contact with, the skin. It was reported that a great deal of blood had been washed away from the wound using water-soaked swabs and that the subsequent examination for powder tattooing was only made by means of the naked eye.
The absence of tattooing made it difficult to argue forcibly in favour of suicide. The experts called by the prosecution were inclined at first to the view that the shooting was ‘consistent with suicide’ but then changed their minds. This followed consultation with Sydney Smith, a man of acknowledged expertise in the field of forensic ballistics and the assessment of gunshot wounds, who said, ‘It looks to me like murder.’ He advised Littlejohn and Glaister to carry out a few tests with the weapon involved in the shooting to establish its discharge characteristics.
The Spanish-made .25 automatic was used to fire ammunition of the same manufacture as that used in the fatal shooting into paper targets at distances ranging from half an inch to twelve inches. At six inches, all signs of powder blackening around the bullet hole had disappeared, although a few tattoo spots were visible without the use of magnification. Aided by Professor Glaister, further experiments were carried out using an amputated limb obtained from a hospital operating theatre. The conclusion drawn in Glaister’s report was that while not entirely ruling out the possibility of a self-inflicted wound, he believed it was an improbable explanation. In other words, he opted for murder.
Spilsbury and Churchill carried out their own experiments using an identical firearm and a different batch of ammunition. The gunsmith advised that the absence of scorching or blackening around the wound was not significant. In the first place, superficial blackening might have been washed away by the flow of blood and, secondly, the particular ammunition which had caused the fatal injury employed smokeless flake powder which caused less discoloration than gunpowder.
Not satisfied with arguments unsupported by experiment, and as Churchill told him that firing at paper targets produced unrealistic results, Spilsbury also went in search of a supply of amputated limbs. Test firings into dead flesh at various distances proved to their satisfaction that flake powder did not tattoo the skin and that traces of blackening were only superficial. Consequently, their opinion was that in the circumstances of the shooting, suicide was a distinct possibility.
The prosecution’s experts did not give the impression that they were entirely convinced by their own arguments and Professor Glaister, in particular, resorted frequently to the use of the word ‘probable’ to qualify his statements. Defence counsel, Craigie Aitchison, drew out this hesitation in cross-examination and he also distinguished himself when Spilsbury was called by addressing his expert as ‘Saint Bernard’. Spilsbury’s contribution in support of Robert Churchill’s testimony was given with customary precision. In essence, his opinion was that he had found nothing that was inconsistent with the notion of suicide. On the vital question regarding the significance of powder blackening around the wound, he felt that no firm conclusion could be drawn in circumstances where there had been considerable bleeding and subsequent cleaning of the wound.
The jury returned a verdict of Not Proven on the murder charge but found Merrett guilty of forgery. He was sentenced to one year’s imprisonment. After serving his sentence, he married a teenage girl, inherited £50,000 and changed his name to Chesney. It was as Ronald Chesney that in 1954 he murdered his wife and mother-in-law and finally shot himself. Spilsbury was dead himself by then but his part in helping Merrett to retain his freedom in Edinburgh twenty-seven years earlier did not go unremarked. Indeed Sir Sydney Smith demonstrated some venom when he wrote in his memoirs, ‘The slackness of the police and the credit given to the misleading evidence of Spilsbury and Churchill, who had made a mistake and were too stubborn to admit it, allowed Merrett to live – and to kill again.’ Thus, Spilsbury’s excursion into the realm of the defence expert was pursued by controversy.
A few weeks after the case against Merrett was found controversially Not Proven, Spilsbury was involved in an enquiry that was mer
ely sensational – it concerned a trunk deposited at the luggage office at Charing Cross railway station in London. It had been left on 6 May 1927 and was soon the subject of attention on account of the awful stench which it emitted. The trunk was opened under police supervision and it was not long before Spilsbury had the task of making a close examination of its contents.
The putrefying remains in the trunk proved to be the dismembered body of a woman. From bruises and other indications, Spilsbury was able to ascertain that the woman, whose identity was unknown, had been asphyxiated. Articles of clothing in the trunk carried laundry marks and one bore a tab with the name, ‘P. Holt’, printed on it. The garments were traced to an address in Chelsea and the body in the trunk was identified within twenty-four hours as that of Minnie Bonati, a married Italian lady of promiscuous inclinations who had been working as a cook.
Within a week, a taxi driver had come forward to report that on 6 May he had been hired by a man who lived in Rochester Row to drive him to Charing Cross railway station. He easily remembered the incident as his fare needed assistance to move a heavy trunk. A search of the premises resulted in the discovery that an estate agent by the name of John Robinson, who rented a furnished room in the building, was absent. Robinson was apprehended in London on 19 May and, after a false start, when neither the taxi driver nor the porter at Charing Cross left luggage office could positively identify him, he gave himself away during questioning.
Robinson’s story was that he had met Mrs Bonati and taken her back to his office. There, she had demanded money and became aggressive. She hit out at him and, in the resulting scuffle, he retaliated and she fell, dazed, to the floor. Later, he found that she was dead and, faced with disposing of her body, decided on dismemberment. By an extraordinary coincidence or piece of copycat planning, Robinson went in search of a suitable knife and found what he wanted at the shop in Victoria Street where, three years previously, Patrick Mahon had bought his implements of destruction. He then obtained a trunk in Brixton and, under the very noses of the officers of Rochester Row police station, had it transported with its grim contents to Charing Cross.
Robinson’s thin story line was readily disproved in court and his trial for murder lasted only two days. The medical evidence proved conclusively that the bruises on Bonati’s body were not the result of a fall but of a succession of blows followed by asphyxiation. Asked how the bruises had been caused, Spilsbury’s reply was characteristically direct; ‘Most of them were caused by direct violence,’ he said. In what must have been seen as virtually a lost cause by the defence, the indefatigable Dr Bronte was produced to repute Spilsbury’s findings and lend weight to the accused man’s account of an accidental death. His arguments proved equally thin and Robinson was found guilty.
It was not long before the two pathologists were again pitched into the arena as opponents. Between April 1928 and March 1929, three members of the same family in Croydon died of arsenical poisoning. Edmund Creighton Duff was a former Colonial civil servant who had retired to Surrey in the same community as his mother-in-law, Violet Sydney, a barrister’s widow who lived with her unmarried daughter, Vera. Fifty-nine-year-old Duff died at his home on 27 April 1928 after a brief illness. The family doctor was puzzled by his symptoms but suspected food poisoning. At the post-mortem, Dr Robert Bronte took samples of the body organs for analysis but found no evidence of poisoning. Death from natural causes was duly confirmed.
In February 1929, Vera Sydney was taken ill with severe vomiting and died within forty-eight hours; gastric influenza was diagnosed. Three weeks later, her mother, Violet Sydney, still grieving the loss of her daughter, was herself taken ill with similar symptoms. The family doctor diagnosed food poisoning. Mrs Sydney’s son, Thomas, who also lived in Croydon, perhaps anxious about his own well-being, sought further medical advice. Bacteriological tests on the dead women proved inconclusive and the family did not feel inclined to pursue the matter any further. Yet the occurrence of two sudden deaths in the same household within such a short period excited attention in official circles and the Home Office ordered an enquiry.
The bodies of Vera and Violet Sydney were exhumed from their graves at Croydon Cemetery on 22 March 1929 and Spilsbury carried out the post-mortem examinations. The most notable and immediate observation was one that had echoes of the Armstrong case. After six weeks’ burial, the body of Vera Sydney appeared to be remarkably well-preserved. Inflammation of the stomach and urinary tract in both sets of remains, considered in light of the symptoms the women had experienced, suggested arsenical poisoning.
Confirmation of this tentative diagnosis came from analyses carried out by Dr John Ryffel, one of the Home Office analysts. He found 1.48 grains of arsenic in Vera Sydney’s body and 3.48 grains in that of Violet Sydney. Arsenic present in her hair and nails indicated that the older woman had been ingesting the poison over a considerable period. Traces of arsenic found in the tonic medicine prescribed by her family doctor indicated the vehicle by which she had probably been poisoned.
Attention now focused on Edmund Duff whose remains had been interred for just over a year. Despite the fact that analyses carried out at the time had proved negative for traces of poison, an exhumation order was granted. On 18 May 1929, notebook in hand, Spilsbury appeared at the graveside at Queen’s Road Cemetery and was soon joined by Dr Gerald Roche Lynch, Senior Official Analyst at the Home Office. Spilsbury carried out the post-mortem in the presence of the analysts, Dr Bronte and the Duff family’s doctor. The experts made their reports and, after high-level legal consultation, a second inquest was ordered in respect of the death of Edmund Duff. Meanwhile, the inquest on Vera Sydney was still proceeding. The inquests on the three deceased members of the Duff and Sydney families were held separately and, with various adjournments, dragged on for five months. The coroner, who declined to accept advice from the Director of Public Prosecutions to hold the inquests together, was heavily criticised for creating confusion. And, when it came to the inquest on Duff, confusion indeed reigned supreme.
Spilsbury related the facts of the post-mortem examination that he had carried out, noting that the body bore the marks of the incisions made during the first such examination. He also pointed out that most of the organs were missing. The inflamed condition of the intestines left in the body suggested some form of gastro-intestinal irritation and this was consistent with the symptoms suffered by the patient during his illness. The well-preserved condition of the body was also remarked on. Dr Roche Lynch then gave the results of the analyses he had carried out on the organ and tissue samples which Spilsbury had removed from the corpse. He had calculated there was a total of 0.815 grains of arsenic in the tissues. Taking all the circumstances into account, he concluded that Edmund Duff had died of acute arsenical poisoning.
This had the effect of putting Bronte on the spot because the possibility of arsenical poisoning had not featured in his report of the first post-mortem examination. He had, though, jotted down the letters ‘AS’, signifying arsenic, on the carbon copy of his report, denoting that he had considered the possibility. While this may have appeared to be an afterthought, worse was to come when it seemed that part of another body had become mixed up with the organs removed from Duff. Bronte had no answer for this except to suggest that someone had interfered with the sealed specimen jars. At any rate, it was confirmed that tests on the organs purporting to be those of Edmund Duff had been carried out at the London Hospital Medical School, with negative results for arsenic. Bronte agreed that his original finding of death from natural causes was wrong and confirmed that he now believed Duff had died from arsenical poisoning.
Spilsbury’s opinion was that Duff had ingested a fatal dose of arsenic within twenty-four hours of death. The likely vehicle seemed to be the bottled beer he had drunk with his supper after returning home from a fishing holiday. The chicken he had consumed was ruled out because his wife had eaten the same meal and not been unwell. Sir Bernard was closely questioned by William Fearnl
ey-Whittingstall, the young barrister representing the Duff and Sydney families. The twenty-six-year-old advocate gave the pathologist a hard time in what was described as a brilliant piece of advocacy. He attacked the basis of Spilsbury’s opinion that Duff took in the arsenic with his beer. They sparred over the pros and cons of the chicken as the purveyor of the poison, discussed the intricacies of digestion and debated the effect that Duff’s feverish cold might have had on events. At the end of it all, Spilsbury remained adamant that the arsenic had been ingested via the beer. This, of course, cast suspicion on the family or, at least, on someone close.
The coroner’s jury concluded that Edmund Duff had died from arsenical poisoning, wilfully administered by some person or persons unknown. A similar verdict had been reached at the inquest into the death of Vera Sydney, but in the case of her mother, Violet, the jury was unable to decide whether she had been murdered or had committed suicide, although they were sure that arsenical poisoning was the cause of her death. In a full account of the Croydon poisonings, written in 1975, Richard Whittington-Egan concluded that the murders, which had thus far remained unsolved, were committed by Grace Duff, Edmund’s wife, who hated her spouse and wanted to eliminate him. According to this thesis, she poisoned Violet and Vera Sydney simply for gain.
In the winter of 1929, Spilsbury featured in his second case of matricide and headed once more for a confrontation with Bronte. On 23 October, a fire at the Metropole Hotel in Margate appeared to have claimed the life of an elderly resident. The fire alarm was raised by Sidney Fox, who was staying at the hotel with his mother, and fellow residents dragged the semi-conscious old lady from her smoke-filled room. Medical assistance was sent for but Rosaline Fox was already dead by the time the doctor arrived. Her son was distraught and between sobs of ‘My Mummy, my Mummy,’ told the hotel manager, ‘She is all I have in the world.’ The inquest on Mrs Fox concluded with a verdict of death by misadventure. She was buried in Norfolk and on the day of her funeral, her son travelled to Norwich to make a claim on her life insurance policy. The insurance company was immediately suspicious and a wire was sent to its head office carrying the message, ‘Very muddy water in this business.’