A Passion for Poison

by Carol Ann Lee

  Twenty years later, a single case of murder involving cyanide terrified generations of Americans. On Halloween 1974, eight-year-old Timothy O’Bryan was given a Pixy Stix by his father, Ronald Clark O’Bryan; it contained potassium cyanide. The little boy died in hospital that night, killed by his debt-ridden father who had hoped to collect his son’s life insurance. ‘Candyman’ Ronald Clark O’Bryan was executed by lethal injection in 1984, but the killing haunted America, giving substance to already existing urban legends about poison-laced sweets, and led to some hospitals and sheriff’s departments offering free analysis of treats on Halloween. Four years after the murder, potassium cyanide featured in a horror story on a much larger scale when American preacher Jim Jones directed the murder-suicide of more than 900 ‘disciples’ of his People’s Temple in Guyana. Parents fed the poison-infused fruit punch to their children before drinking it themselves. Jones died with his followers but chose a gunshot to the head instead. The mass poisonings were instigated by the visit of US Congressman Leo Ryan and a delegation of journalists determined to investigate stories of human rights abuses at the temple. Four of those who had flown to Guyana, along with Ryan, were murdered on the airstrip as they attempted to leave.

  By then, poison and politics were often inextricably intertwined. In the 1950s, the CIA and KGB equipped spies with L-pills to kill themselves if captured. With the ‘L’ standing for ‘lethal’, these poisons were concealed in objects such as spectacles and fountain pens, which wouldn’t normally attract attention but, if bitten, released a deadly toxin. Cyanide gas was contained in a spray gun fired by a former KGB agent at two Ukrainian nationalist leaders in the late 1950s and in the decade that followed, the CIA spent endless hours devising poison-laden means of assassinating Cuban revolutionary Fidel Castro, including lacing his cigars with botulinum, sprinkling his shoes with thallium salts and contaminating his scuba-diving apparatus with tubercle bacilli. In the event, Castro survived until 2016, dying at the age of 90.

  The world of espionage utilised poison on innumerable occasions throughout Castro’s lifetime, with some notorious instances, such as in the case of Bulgarian dissident Georgi Markov, killed in 1978 when a passing stranger poked him with an umbrella that fired a deadly pellet of ricin. Political assassins and terrorists found new ways to deploy poison, plotting destruction with the use of nerve agents such as sarin and anthrax. Polonium-laced tea brought about the slow and agonising death of Alexander Litvinenko, the former officer of the Russian Federal Security Service, who was photographed emaciated and bald in his hospital bed shortly before he passed away in November 2006. In 2018, Russian dissident Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia were found unconscious on a bench in Salisbury, England, having been poisoned by a Novichok nerve agent. They recovered eventually but further deposits of Novichok were discovered throughout the city, and a 44-year-old woman, Dawn Sturgess, died following contact with a poisoned perfume bottle.

  In recent years poison has seen a resurgence in its cosmetic usage. One of the most toxic substances known to humanity, the bacterium Clostridium botulinum could kill 20 million people with a single gram if it were swallowed. Today, however, we know it better in diluted form as the source of Botox, used to treat serious health issues such as cerebral palsy and multiple sclerosis but also to immoblise facial muscles in order to reduce wrinkles. The employment of poison in pursuit of beauty has extensive roots, taking us back to a time when it was regarded as belonging to the realm of magic rather than science and the Sumerian goddess of healing, Gula, who was also the mistress of charms and spells and often called upon to deal with those who used poison for nefarious means. Hence its widespread use as a plot device in literature, from the scheming witches of Macbeth and their incantation, ‘Double, double toil and trouble/Fire burn and cauldron bubble’ to Madam Bovary’s suicide by arsenic and the poisoned red apple, familiar to all children from the fairy-tale of Snow White. Even a character as seemingly harmless as the ‘mad Hatter’ in Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland has his origins in real-life tragedy: in centuries past, hatmakers treated felt using mercurous nitrate – a form of mercury, the metal that can turn to vapour as if by magic at room temperature. Those vapours inadvertently inhaled by the hatmakers often induced symptoms of mercury poisoning, affecting the brain and nervous system, hence the saying ‘mad as a hatter’.

  But of all those authors turning to poison as inspiration for their writing, none is more famous than Agatha Christie. Her knowledge of poisons arose from the offer of a job at a dispensary while she was working as a nurse in her local hospital during the First World War; thus she became an apothecary’s assistant, which provided her with ample opportunity to learn about toxins. During the Second World War, she volunteered again to work in the dispensary at the University College hospital in London, where she renewed her training. A prolific reader of real-life criminal cases, she based several plots on actual poisoners, including Dr Crippen, whose tale inspired Ordeal by Innocence, published in 1958.

  In a curious circle of influence, the pharmacist who originally trained Christie in Torquay turned up as a villain in one of her most esoteric works, The Pale Horse, published in 1961. This particular novel was mentioned during an Old Bailey trial in June 1962, when it was deliberated as a source of inspiration for the defendant. He denied it, but the book was important in the case nonetheless, having piqued the curiosity of a pathologist who had read The Pale Horse and believed – rightly, as it turned out – that the case he was involved with featured the same unusual poison, thallium, deployed to such sinister effect in the novel. Thallium was never known to have been administered maliciously in British criminal history, but here was a young mind obsessed with it, and other poisons: the 14-year-old Neasden schoolboy, Graham Young.

  6 July 1962

  THE OLD BAILEY

  ‘Thallium used to be used for depilation at one time – particularly for children with ringworm.

  Then it was found to be dangerous . . . it’s mainly used nowadays for rats, I believe. It’s tasteless, soluble and easy to buy. There’s only one thing, poisoning mustn’t be suspected.’

  AGATHA CHRISTIE, THE PALE HORSE

  (COLLINS, THE CRIME CLUB, 1961)

  Prologue

  A CHARM OF POWERFUL TROUBLE

  A

  PUNGENT WHIFF OF sulphur and smoke hung in the air outside the Old Bailey that morning. There had been heavy smog earlier in the week, alarming those who remembered the Great Smog of 1952, which claimed the lives of at least 12,000 Londoners. Despite the passing of the Clean Air Act, another 700 people would die in December 1962, when the same deadly smog shrouded the city again before further legislation was enacted. But the odour in England’s capital was not the only reminder that day of how lethal chemicals could be, especially where existing laws failed or were deliberately circumvented. There was another and much more peculiar portent inside Court No.1 of the Old Bailey.

  Two hundred yards north-west of St Paul’s cathedral, the Old Bailey is named after the fortified Roman wall that once stood on the site. The medieval courthouse was destroyed during the Great Fire of London in 1666; its second incarnation, alongside Newgate gaol, lasted little more than a hundred years. When court and prison were demolished, only the former was rebuilt. King Edward VII opened the new Old Bailey in 1907. Three years later, Court No.1 hosted its first sensational trial, condemning Dr Hawley Harvey Crippen to death for the murder of his wife, Cora Henrietta.

  Other famous and infamous names followed in his footsteps, meeting the same fate, among them Edith Thompson, John Reginald Christie and Ruth Ellis. Eager spectators would willingly spend a night or two huddled on the Newgate Street flagstones to secure a place in the public gallery. A year before our subject entered the dock, all those attending the Lady Chatterley’s Lover trial, in which Penguin Books was acquitted of obscenity, could legitimately claim to have witnessed the beginnings of a moral and cultural revolution.

  And indeed, momentous changes were a
foot in the legal system itself. Campaigners for the abolition of the death penalty attracted support from all quarters, capitalising on the widespread revulsion at the 1955 execution of Ruth Ellis, a young mother who had shot dead her abusive partner. On 6 July 1962, an editorial in the Daily Herald highlighted the Earl of Harewood’s 6,825 signature-strong petition calling for Prime Minister Harold Macmillan to end capital punishment. Reminding readers that certain categories of murder were already exempt from the death penalty sentence, the editorial declared:

  Hanging fewer killers has made NO difference to the murder rate. One thing IS clear. The law as it stands in Britain is totally illogical. A poisoner escapes the rope, yet death can be the sentence for the man who in a fit of anger kills by shooting. To think of altering the law to make ALL killers liable to the death sentence would be putting the clock back. There IS a solution – to do away with the whole ghastly ritual of hanging.5

  The example chosen to demonstrate the arbitrary nature of the law obliquely referred to James Hanratty, hanged three months earlier. Hanratty had been found guilty of the fatal shooting of scientist Michael Gregsten, whose lover Valerie Storie had been raped and shot five times in the same incident but survived. The bloody nature of the A6 murder, from start to finish, made it one of the most controversial cases of recent times, chiefly because many people believed Hanratty to be innocent.6

  The shadow of Hanratty loomed large over the editorial, although he was not named. Nor was the other example identified – the one who ‘escapes the rope’. But the headlines in every tabloid and broadsheet were enough, reporting on the trial that had taken place the previous day, in Court No.1 of the Old Bailey.

  Three loud raps preceded the clerk’s command: ‘Be upstanding in court!’

  A collective scraping of chairs met the directive. Moments later, a side door opened and the judge, Mr Justice Melford Stevenson, swept in, be-wigged and ermined. Born in the Cornish seaside town of Newquay in 1902, Melford Stevenson had been a high court judge since 1957. Two years earlier he had led the defence counsel for Ruth Ellis by staying virtually silent on her behalf. After the death penalty was served, he explained his ineffective approach had stemmed from his client’s instructions: Ellis had told him beforehand that she wished to join her dead lover. Nonetheless, Melford Stevenson remained a controversial figure throughout his career. He was prone to dispensing tough punishments, famously putting the Kray twins behind bars for a minimum of 30 years each in 1969, and frequently delivered harsh sentences of a different kind, describing one young woman’s ordeal as ‘a pretty anaemic kind of rape’ because she had been attacked by her former partner.7 On other occasions he displayed an inappropriate dry humour, telling a defendant acquitted of rape: ‘I see you come from Slough. It’s a terrible place – you can go back there.’8

  The case he was presiding over in July 1962 achieved the greater part of its notoriety in the context of later events. Once the judge was comfortably seated that summer day, assembled groups inside the courtroom sat again. Pools of sunlight spread across the public gallery, which projected out, like a theatre balcony, below the huge glass dome. The seats were filled to capacity with men in suits and open-necked shirts, and women wearing summer dresses with cardigans draped across their shoulders. Several dabbed handkerchiefs to their foreheads or fanned themselves using concertinaed papers.

  In the front row of the gallery sat an exceptionally pretty, dark-haired young woman. The only betrayal of her emotional turmoil lay in how she clutched the hand of the matronly lady at her side. Below them, running perpendicular to the judge’s bench, were the counsel’s stalls, where prosecution and defence sat side by side. A dull thud accompanied each occasion when a member of counsel got to their feet; the green leather seats were like theatre chairs, flipping up to provide barristers with something to lean on while addressing defendant or witness, jury or judge.

  Few members of the public would have recognised the City dignitaries or underemployed members of the Bar who occupied the benches behind counsel, but there was no mistaking the all-male press, seated either side of the dock, jotting down preliminary details in shorthand squiggles. Old hands at trial, they knew not to expect a long day in court: the jury box was empty.

  For several minutes, the room was quiet, save for the low hum of central heating, an occasional creak of wood and the odd, stifled cough. But then came the sound of footsteps, faint at first, somewhere beneath the court. As the steps grew louder, a diminutive figure flanked by uniformed guards slowly emerged from the panelled stairwell inside the dock.

  All those in the public gallery instinctively leaned forward. The young woman clutching the hand of the matronly lady tightened her grip. In the press benches, veteran Daily Express court reporter Arnold Latcham craned his neck for a clearer view, as did Peter Harris of the Daily Mirror. The two men were accustomed to the many tragedies, horrors and sometimes inexplicable stories that played out in the Old Bailey, day after day. Crime reporters were not easily shocked, but the copy every man turned in that day reflected the unusual nature of events relayed before them.

  The defendant spoke just once. He confirmed his name and address in suburban Neasden before pleading guilty to three charges of unlawfully and maliciously administering ‘a noxious thing’. He then sat near the front of the dock, which was raised to bring it almost level with the judge’s bench across the court. It was impossible not to regard him as looking slightly lost, for the dock itself was vast – 16 feet by 14 feet, with reinforced glass on three sides – built to accommodate ten or more defendants in cahoots. But it was his age, too, that cast him bumpily adrift in a sea of legality: Graham Frederick Young was 14 years old.

  The Daily Mirror’s Peter Harris described him simply as ‘dark-haired and pale-faced . . . expressionless’ throughout proceedings.9 Writing ten years later, Arnold Latcham remembered: ‘He sat there, that summery July 5 in 1962, cross-legged and relaxed in the dock, in neat navy school blazer and grey flannels.’10 It was most unusual attire for those brought up from the cells beneath the Old Bailey. Graham was yet to undergo a growth spurt or two: small but lanky, he wore his black hair combed smartly to the right above an angular face, with narrow eyes that raked coolly over the judge, counsel and reporters, who unanimously labelled him the ‘Boy Poisoner’. Only the public gallery escaped his impassive gaze; he kept his eyes carefully averted from the two women holding hands.

  A movement on the counsel bench soon caught Graham’s attention. Mr Edward James Patrick Cussen stood, smoothing down his black robes with a practised hand. Not quite 60, Limerick-born Cussen had worked during the war as legal adviser to MI5, initially from an office inside Wormwood Scrubs. In 1944, he famously interrogated P G Wodehouse regarding a number of Nazi-funded radio shows that the popular Jeeves & Wooster author had broadcast to the United States. Now one of six Treasury Counsel at the Old Bailey, Cussen had established himself as stern, but scrupulously fair, and was even said to receive Christmas cards from prison inmates.

  Briefly summarising Graham’s childhood (since there was little more to the defendant’s life than that), Cussen then outlined the extraordinary circumstances which concerned the court: that the boy had, over a period of several months, administered antimony and potassium tartrate to his father and a schoolfriend in family meals and packed lunches respectively, and had laced his sister’s morning cup of tea with belladonna. The motivation behind the three charges was most unusual: neither jealousy nor avarice, nor wishing his victims dead. No, Cussen explained, the boy in the dock had merely wanted to observe the effects of each substance on the three individuals. Even the prosecution felt compelled to admit that there was no real malice involved in what Graham had done, rather that he took ‘a strange and dangerous interest’ in poisons, having amassed a remarkably comprehensive knowledge of such things.11 Cussen offered a potted history of the symptoms suffered by each victim, who were all extremely fortunate to have survived. The boy’s father had been left with permanent
liver damage, while no one could presume to imagine the psychological trauma involved. Cussen then referred to ‘Exhibit 25’, extracting a typewritten sheet from the sheaf of papers before him. He read Graham’s police statement in full to the court, beginning:

  I have been very interested in poisons, their properties and effects since I was about 11 years old. In May last year – 1961 – I bought 25 milligrams of antimony potassium tartrate from Ries Limited chemists on Neasden Lane. Within a couple of weeks, I tried out this poison on my friend, John Williams . . . 12

  Two sentences hung particularly heavy in the air: ‘The doses I was giving were not fatal, but I knew I was doing wrong. It grew on me like a drug habit, except that it wasn’t me who was taking the drug.’13

  Cussen finished reading the statement. He told the court that, although Graham had referred to poisoning ‘foods at home’, they should be mindful that the unexpected death of his stepmother some months before had been due to natural causes, as confirmed by a post-mortem.

  Cussen sat down. Miss Jean Southworth, aged 35, led Graham’s defence. Born in the Lancashire town of Clitheroe, Miss Southworth had worked as a codebreaker at Bletchley Park during the war and overcame many obstacles to practise at the Criminal Bar, where some chambers refused to have a woman on the premises. She would eventually become one of the first English female judges.