A Passion for Poison

by Carol Ann Lee

  Quietly spoken, Miss Southworth was compelling as she spoke of the tragic circumstances surrounding her client’s formative years – which were, in truth, still forming – but defending Graham was not an easy task. There were no witnesses for the defence, and the two doctors engaged by the prosecution were formidable and damning as they delivered their professional opinions. Dr Christopher Fysh was one of two eminent psychiatrists to have interviewed Graham at length during his time on remand. Bluntly, Dr Fysh told the court that the defendant suffered from a psychopathic disorder that left him ‘prepared to take the risk of killing to gratify his interest in poisons’, illustrating his point with Graham’s lament, ‘I miss my antimony. I miss the power it gives me.’14 Asked for his thoughts on the boy’s immediate future, Dr Fysh replied: ‘In my opinion he requires care in a maximum-security hospital. There is accommodation for him at Broadmoor.’15

  ‘The boy uses the word “obsession”,’ interjected Melford Stevenson. ‘What do you think about that?’

  Fysh reiterated: ‘Poisons have tended to take an extremely prominent place in his mind because of the sense of power they gave him. He considers himself very knowledgeable about the effect of poisons.’

  ‘Can you express a view as to the prognosis?’ queried the judge.

  ‘I feel it is bad.’

  ‘Does that mean that this behaviour is likely to be repeated if the opportunity were available?’

  The psychiatrist replied without hesitation: ‘I think it is extremely likely.’16

  Miss Southworth rose to question the witness. Asking him to bear in mind the quantities of poison dispensed by her client, she asked, ‘Dr Fysh, do you accept that Master Young knew what a fatal dose was?’

  ‘In some cases, yes,’ the psychiatrist said. ‘But in others . . . no.’

  ‘Do you agree that he has not the killer instinct?’

  Fysh thought for a moment before responding: ‘I would say he is rather prepared to take the risk of killing.’

  Miss Southworth turned to look at Graham, sitting serenely in the dock. ‘Is it not possible,’ she suggested, ‘that normal treatment in a hospital rather less forbidding than Broadmoor might be suitable?’

  Dr Fysh shook his head. ‘At the request of the Ministry of Health, the boy was examined by Dr James Cameron of the Maudsley hospital. Dr Cameron came to the conclusion that he was far too dangerous to be in even that hospital.’17

  Miss Southworth had no further questions.

  A report compiled by Dr Donald Blair, Harley Street physician and consultant psychiatrist for several institutions, was then presented. Dr Blair had interviewed Graham at length and always found him ‘quiet, placid and frankly cooperative’.18 He described their sessions in detail, referring to the boy’s ‘obvious intelligence’ and the manifest ‘emotional satisfaction’ gained from administering poison. The defendant had read ‘extensively’ about toxicology and was interested in literature on ‘criminology appertaining to poisoning’.19 Contrary to the prosecution’s assertion that Graham’s stepmother had died of natural causes, Dr Blair pondered whether the gradual amounts of antimony dispensed in her meals ‘could have been in any way responsible’.20

  He was unequivocal in his diagnosis:

  On all the evidence available, there seems to me little doubt that, in spite of his high intelligence, he has an inherent defect in his personality, or in other words, he has a psychopathic personality. This youth is at present a very serious danger to other people. His intense, obsessive and almost exclusive interest in drugs and their poisoning effect is not likely to change and he could well repeat his cool, calm, calculating administration of these poisons at any time. He is in my estimation not suitable for care in an ordinary mental hospital and requires the special facilities available for supervision and treatment in a criminal mental hospital such as Broadmoor. The prognosis in his case is dubious but, on the evidence available, seems to me at the moment to be very bad.21

  Detective Inspector Edward Crabb was the final witness for the prosecution. He outlined the police investigation into Graham’s activities, adding that Frederick Young, the boy’s father, had sold the family home and moved in with his sister. ‘I think the family is apprehensive about having the boy back,’ he confirmed, before stepping down.22

  Miss Southworth then spoke again on behalf of her client, emphasising that while Graham had possessed significant quantities of poison, he had never administered a lethal dose. Bravely, she asked the court to look upon him in the same light as ‘a drug addict, to be pitied for his obsession’.23 Cussen then declared that pharmacists known to have sold poison to the defendant would be ‘the subject of an inquiry’.24

  Melford Stevenson turned to Miss Southworth. He asked whether, taking into account the uncontested medical evidence, she agreed that there was ‘no practical alternative to Broadmoor’ for the boy.25 Miss Southworth reluctantly concurred.

  The judge then indicated that the defendant should stand and Graham rose to his feet in the dock. Melford Stevenson cleared his throat, then committed Graham to Broadmoor under Section 66 of the 1959 Mental Health Act. He added a restriction order preventing his release before a period of 15 years without the express authority of the Home Secretary, ‘because such people are always dangerous and are adept at concealing their mad compulsion which may never be wholly cured’.26 Graham would be the youngest patient sent to Broadmoor since 1885, when ten-year-old Bill Giles was admitted after setting fire to a haystack. Giles had passed away only three months before Graham’s trial, having spent the remainder of his 87 years within Broadmoor’s walls.

  Graham left the dock without acknowledging his tearful sister and aunt in the public gallery. He was led through the warren of cells and corridors beneath the courts to an iron-barred enclosure where all convicted persons were held, like cattle in a pen, to await dispersion. Some wept, others fought and shouted, but the majority slumped silently, in a state of ‘catatonic gloom’.27

  Graham stood among them, ignoring the jostles and cries. He kept his gaze locked upon an inconspicuous spot on the ceiling, privately exulting.

  Because for all the combined machinations of family, school, doctors, police, forensic experts, remand centre staff, psychiatrists and the legal brains of the most famous court in England, his greatest secret remained concealed, the evidence having literally gone up in smoke.

  At the age of 14, Graham Young had committed the perfect murder.

  1947–1962

  NEASDEN

  ‘I avoided my own friends and acquaintances, yet the loneliness of my existence was insupportable.’

  AGATHA CHRISTIE, THE PALE HORSE

  (COLLINS, THE CRIME CLUB, 1961)

  Chapter One

  A DEADLY SENSATION WITHIN

  ‘A

  CHUBBY LITTLE BOY – we nicknamed him Pudding,’ recalls Winifred Young with an older sister’s typical candour in her 1973 memoir Obsessive Poisoner.28 There were eight years between the siblings, a period which spanned the Second World War and brought about irrevocable familial change.

  Their roots were primarily in London, where Winifred and Graham’s paternal grandmother, Hannah, had endured a spell in Holborn workhouse as a child. A determined spirit, before the age of 20 she was head of her own home in Finsbury, where she took care of her younger brother and worked as a skilled French polisher. Hannah married jewellery-repair specialist Ralph Frederick Young on Valentine’s Day 1904 and they settled in St John’s Wood.

  The next few years were tumultuous. Hannah bore two sons in quick succession: Ralph in 1905 and Frederick in 1906. One year later, she was widowed when her 28-year-old husband died suddenly. Shortly afterwards, she met William Davis, a delivery driver three years her senior. They married in 1909 and their daughter Winifred was born the following year.

  The family unit was strong, with Hannah’s second husband proving a loving father to all three children. A special bond grew between the brother and sister with such similar names, Fre
d and Winifred. For the rest of their lives, they stayed fiercely supportive of each other, with Winifred’s compassion and practicality acting as an unassailable wall to hold back the worst of the storms her brother Fred faced in the years to come.

  The young family moved to Edinburgh shortly before the First World War. William joined the army, returning safely when the conflict ended. They relocated to Aberdeen, where all three children picked up the local accent. After finishing school, Fred found work in a grocery shop and fell in love with the girl literally next door: Margaret Conboy Smith, daughter of a trawler engineer. Known to everyone as Bessie, she was a pretty, dark-haired young woman who worked as a housekeeper until her marriage. The wedding was held on 8 December 1936 at St Peter’s Roman Catholic church in Aberdeen, half a mile from the street where the couple had lived as neighbours. The groom was 30, his bride 22. Three years later, Bessie gave birth to a daughter whom they named in honour of the sister they both adored: Winifred Margaret. Bessie was a devoted mother and Fred a loving, if physically unaffectionate, father.

  But the world was in turmoil, and on 3 September 1939 Britain declared war on Hitler’s Germany. The entire family, apart from Bessie and the baby, returned to London. Their new home was in Neasden, described by Sir John Betjeman as ‘home of the gnome and average citizen’ in his 1973 documentary, Metro-land.29 By the 1960s, Neasden had come to epitomise the English suburb. Relentlessly spoofed by the satirical magazine Private Eye, which had its origins there, the area has been described as the loneliest village in London, ‘easy to loathe’, with a road that swings ‘like a lasso, looping wider and wider tracts of darkness’.30

  Thirteen miles north-west of Charing Cross, Neasden lies in the London borough of Brent, sliced in two by the North Circular Road that runs from Woolwich in the east to Chiswick in the west. Transport shaped its fortunes and geography, first the trains, then the cars. Neasden was originally a small farming hamlet, but by the early 20th century, scores of manufacturers began relocating their factories from London’s East End to the city outskirts; the ring road was built to bypass London while connecting new areas of industry and providing work for the unemployed following the First World War.

  In 1924, 27 million visitors attended the British Empire Exhibition at Wembley Park. An extended celebration of colonial industry, engineering, horticulture and arts, the exhibition had a new sports ground – the original Wembley Stadium – at its centre. Visitors travelling on electric trains through the leafy suburbs found themselves longing to leave the city. ‘Metro-land’ fulfilled that demand: housing estates were built during the 1920s and 1930s near stations on the line out beyond Neasden. In 1933, the Metropolitan Railway linking the suburbs to central London was taken over by the London Passenger Transport Board; Neasden power station, together with Lots Road power station, continued to supply the network.

  There was no more farmland, just row upon row of neat houses stretching in every direction and all along the North Circular Road as far as the eye could see. There were plenty of amenities, such as the Ritz cinema, a soaring art-deco silhouette that dominated the Neasden High Road from 1935, where a year later the shopping parade opened. Yet while manufacturing boomed, communities were cut adrift by shoddy town planning. The lack of bridges over the river Brent made access between Neasden and Wembley difficult, and the ring road was a concrete moat. But employment was plentiful: Fred and Win initially found jobs at the Air Admiralty factory, where 60-year-old William worked as nightwatchman. The family lived together on Links Road for a short time, while Fred sought a home where his wife and daughter could join him.

  Win became engaged to Enfield-born council worker Fred ‘Jack’ Jouvenat. Twelve years his fiancée’s senior, Jack had grown up in Battersea with his aunt and uncle, who owned the Latchmere Hotel. His first wife had died young, nine years after their wedding. Win’s family loved Jack, and her father William, as a Freemason himself, was delighted to discover that his new son-in-law was a member of the same society.

  Fred swiftly found long-term work with Smith’s English Clocks Ltd at their Cricklewood factory. Part of Smiths Industries, the electric clock-and-watch factory employed 8,000 people in 1939 and was the biggest employer in the area. For many years one of the local bridges bore a sign announcing: ‘Cricklewood: The Home of Smiths Clocks’. During the Second World War, the company produced motor, aircraft and marine instruments, and fuses for shells. Fred was responsible for operating, setting and checking production machinery, an occupation he held until his retirement and which enabled him to take out a mortgage on a new three-bedroom terraced property with a garden at 146 Dawpool Road.

  Bessie and the baby joined him ahead of Win and Jack’s wedding in July 1940. It was the height of the Blitz: living on the outskirts of London, in an area that heaved with industry, was fraught with danger. The wailing air-raid siren was a familiar sound day and night. In August 1940, Fred and his fellow workers were lucky to avoid a bomb that fell on the main instrument repair department. Rockets descended regularly on nearby residential streets, sending people scurrying indoors to their Morrison cage shelters or running for the galvanised steel Andersons in gardens or yards.

  The Youngs, Davises and Jouvenats survived the war unscathed. Close-knit as ever, they all lived within easy walking distance of each other. Fred’s mother Hannah and stepfather William stayed on at 31 Links Road, while his sister and brother-in-law moved to 768 North Circular Road, where their daughter Sandra was born in July 1942. Two years after the war ended, Bessie discovered to her delight that she was pregnant again. But within weeks she had begun experiencing severe chest pains and was diagnosed with pleurisy, an inflammation of the membrane lining the lungs. Her condition worsened. She was admitted to Willesden maternity hospital on Kingsbury’s Honeypot Lane. Built on the grounds of an old smallpox hospital and incorporating three pavilions, it housed women in various stages of pregnancy and their newborns.

  Despite the expert care on hand, Bessie weakened. She developed tuberculosis, suffering weight loss, ragged breathing and fever. Then she began coughing up blood. In the early hours of 7 September 1947, she went into labour. ‘It was a difficult birth,’ her husband recalled.31 The baby, born barely moving and silent, was placed on antibiotics immediately because of his mother’s illness. Winifred overheard her grandmother saying that he was ‘rather delicate’ and then ‘something about him being a blue baby’, although, at eight years old, neither she nor her cousin Sandra understood what that meant.32 The baby recovered, but his mother’s condition deteriorated. It was to be a heartbreaking Christmas: on 23 December 1947, Bessie died of a spinal abscess. She was 33 years old.

  ‘I was left with two young children on my hands and my engineering job to do,’ Fred reflected 25 years later. ‘Winifred went to live with my mother and Graham was taken in by my sister.’33 The baby, named Graham after a Scottish friend and Frederick for his father, bonded quickly with the relatives who gave him a home; he had ‘a normal, loving relationship’ with them.34 Win later described herself as Graham’s ‘second mother’.35 His sister Winifred recalled: ‘Graham was very affectionate as a child. He called my aunt and uncle – Sandra’s parents – Aunty Panty and Daddy Jack and I think he loved them very much.’36 Every weekend, Fred would walk round to Links Road and collect his daughter. ‘My father used to take me round the corner to see Graham,’ Winifred confirmed, ‘and together we pushed him out in his pram. Number 768 was right opposite the swings in the Welsh Harp and it was pleasant to watch the sailing boats on the reservoir.’37

  Graham was a happy toddler, doted on by his sister and cousin. ‘Sandra saw more of Graham to begin with than I did, as they lived together,’ Winifred stated. ‘There were no signs of jealousy between them and they managed to get up to some amusing tricks as a pair.’38 Graham was a very light sleeper; at 18 months old, he would pinch pens from his Uncle Jack’s pocket when he and Win kissed him goodnight, then stand up in his cot to scribble on the bedroom wall while every
one else slept.

  Aged two, however, he developed an illness, which caused some unusual behaviour during his early school years. What began as a simple ear infection was subsequently diagnosed as mastoiditis, an inflammation of the mastoid bone behind the ear. Although a fairly common complaint in children, Graham’s problem was more serious, requiring an overnight hospital stay. Winifred recalled that when the family said goodbye to him, ‘He almost screamed the place down, crying for his Aunty Panty and Daddy Jack.’39 A myringotomy was performed, in which the doctor made a tiny hole in Graham’s eardrum to drain the fluid before putting him on a drip. When his aunt and uncle arrived to collect him, he ‘beamed from ear to ear’.40 The experience left him terrified of any sort of medical procedure. It was also thought to account for the unusual visual symptoms and awkward limb movements he displayed until the age of eight, and later a low verbal IQ result and subsequent electroencephalography (EEG) irregularities detected in the right frontal-parietal region.

  The intense separation anxiety Graham had felt in hospital resurfaced the following year when his father, then 43, fell in love. Hampstead-born Gwendolyne Molly Petley was 28, the daughter of a British Railways police constable and his wife. Known to family and friends by her middle name, Molly, she worked at the Smiths factory alongside Fred and played the accordion at their local pub. She was bright and interested in everyone, with an open face and always wore her hair parted in the centre with two big waves on either side. Her wedding to Fred took place on 1 April 1950 at Willesden registry office and prompted change for all the family.

  Determined to bring his children under one roof, Fred sold the house on Dawpool Road and bought his sister’s home at 768 North Circular Road. Win and Jack, together with their daughter Sandra, then moved back to 31 Links Road to live with Hannah and William (who died the following year). Thus, Graham remained in the only home he had ever known, but with his aunt and uncle replaced by his father and new stepmother, and his sister Winifred taking over from his cousin Sandra. Molly was eager to get along with her stepchildren, but it took a while for her husband’s daughter to accept her. ‘Perhaps I was a bit unpleasant to her at first,’ Winifred conceded. ‘I suppose I didn’t like her taking my mother’s place – you know how it is with children. But as I grew older, we got on very well. On the other hand, Graham really loved her. Unlike me, after all, he had never known his real mother and indeed he always called Molly “Mummy”.’41 Fred agreed: ‘People have suggested that Graham may have nursed some grudge or resentment at being taken away from Winnie. He doted on [Molly] and she on him.’42