A Passion for Poison

by Carol Ann Lee

  I felt it absolutely necessary that he learn to back down and accept a few things so I refused to allow him to “resign”. The battle went on for five months, during which time I refused him all other employment and he refused to go back to Handicrafts. Eventually he went back and has been on the move since then. He tends to come forward far more frequently for interview, is beginning to gain an interest in having treatment. He has at times been quite aggressively tense but has not at any point got up to any sort of his old mischief.301

  One thing was clear: Graham was thinking about a life beyond Broadmoor, which, although the authorities failed to recognise it, revolved around his fixation with poison. On 2 October 1967, he wrote to the Secretary of the Pharmaceutical Society, blithely unaware of how his past and present might affect his future aspirations of becoming a chemist. Giving his address as ‘Kent House, State Hospital, Crowthorne, Berks’, he announced:

  Dear Sir,

  For some considerable time, prior to my admittance here, I was an ardent student of both pharmacology and toxicology. However, due to the stresses and strains placed on me by my almost incessant studying of these subjects, I became the victim of a nervous breakdown, which necessitated my hospitalisation here.

  Now however, that my discharge is in the foreseeable future I would be greatly obliged if you would inform me of certain obstacles to what was to have been my intended career, had I not had the misfortune to place myself in my present unenviable position.

  As the offence with which I was initially charged was involving the misuse of certain highly toxic drugs, am I liable to be refused university entrance with a view to resuming what would this time be an entirely scientific interest in pharmacology?

  My second question, and one that is to me of far greater importance, if I succeed in obtaining a degree in pharmacology, is the Pharmaceutical Society likely to refuse me membership, on the grounds of my previous lapse?

  I would be greatly obliged if you would be so kind as to inform me of these points at your earliest possible convenience. Also, I wish to know whether the journal issued by the society can only be purchased by members of the same.

  Hoping to hear from you soon, I remain,

  Yours faithfully,

  Graham Frederick Young.302

  Unfortunately for Graham, the Pharmaceutical Society were fully aware that he was a highly unsuitable candidate. With extreme tact, they responded that he presently lacked the entrance requirements of three A levels and three years’ university study, adding that the disciplinary committee would have to inquire deeper ‘into the circumstances of your conviction’.303 Graham knew he was beaten and made no further attempts to become a legally operational chemist.

  Summer 1967 marked the end of Graham’s fifth year in Broadmoor. Accordingly, he was transferred to the more relaxed conditions of Block 2 and given more freedom to wander about the hospital grounds. Later, Winifred came to realise this was the time when her brother began actively plotting what he needed to do in order to obtain his freedom without raising suspicions. He quietly borrowed psychology books from Broadmoor’s library and observed how others behaved before they were permitted greater privileges and transferred to the parole ward. Within a short while, he had become the model of good behaviour and the epitome of how the hospital’s treatment and care could turn a patient’s life around. Transferred to semi-parole surroundings, in February 1968 his mask slipped when he was again involved in a quarrel with a nurse with whom he had clashed shortly after his admission. Udwin recounted the incident: ‘He evolved a revenge which had as its basis another poison scare, which was so obvious as to be a practical joke. He was once again demoted and was considerably shaken by this to the point of settling down very rapidly.’304

  Graham’s revenge took the form of a notorious incident that has been re-told many times with several variations on the nature of the offence. What actually happened was recounted by Joseph Fuller, who was present at the time. Fuller was part of a group of inmates given responsibility for running the dining rooms in the block; they decided to wash down the paintwork and three packets of Manger’s sugar soap was provided. The group got to work on the ceiling, leaving two packets on top of a kitchen cupboard. When the first packet was empty, Fuller looked for a second but saw that the others had gone. Graham had been loitering beforehand and Fuller immediately sought him out. He found Graham in his usual hiding place: the washroom. Graham had a habit of seeking refuge in there and pulling faces at himself in the mirrors. Fuller confronted him about the soap and he denied taking it. Certain that he was lying, Fuller attacked Graham, who ‘stood there and took it all without a word’ before admitting he had poured both packets of sugar soap into the water boiler and kitchen tea urn.305 One of the other men in Fuller’s group made an official complaint regarding Graham’s actions, which could have resulted in the poisoning of the 97 men on the semi-parole block. Both the water boiler and tea urn had to be thoroughly scoured, but a certain nervousness remained among everyone who had to use them.

  Graham was placed in isolation as a punishment. There he met criminal Roy Shaw, who remembers:

  We became friends when he asked me to look after him because another inmate had threatened him. He was an interesting bloke, although I can’t say I understood him. He was a mine of information and knew a thousand ways of poisoning people and talked about it openly. He had a few visitors, one of whom was his sister, the one he’d tried to poison. She used to bring him homemade cakes. When he came back to the ward, he always offered me a slice, but I always declined and he would laugh. He had a wicked sense of humour and every day when the tea urn was brought on to the ward he would chuckle and ask me, ‘What’s your poison, Roy?’ Shortly after, Graham was moved to another part of the hospital and I never saw him again.306

  The incident was one of two in which Fuller remembered involving a tea urn. On another occasion Graham squirted Harpic toilet cleaner into the staff common-room tea urn and was afterwards banned from brewing tea there. Otherwise, Graham settled into life on the block, which was less regimented than in the hospital proper. Patients were woken at 7am and expected to be washed and ready within the next half an hour. Hot water was available for tea in the kitchen until 7:50am, after which there was a voluntary recreation period, with patients allowed to wander the tree-lined airing court until breakfast at 8:15am. Work began at 9am and patients made their way to jobs in the gardens, shoe shops, laundry, etc. Tea break followed at 10:15am and lunch was served in the block at noon. Work continued from 2pm until 4:15pm, with another tea break at 4:30pm, after which their time was their own until bed at 8:45pm.

  Although the authorities believed that Graham was showing signs of improvement, Fuller was unconvinced:

  I saw him many times walking on a straight course with eyes staring unseeingly in front of him, and woe betide any member of the staff who had the misfortune to be in his path; that unfortunate would be bowled over as [if] he never existed. He was obviously suffering from delusions of grandeur and a pseudo-superiority complex which had become progressively worse during his ‘growing up’ period in Broadmoor. He had also become more progressively psychotic and ambitious in his intention to destroy his fellow men.307

  The ‘sadistic, cruel and evil streak’, which Fuller recognised in Graham from their earliest encounters, had evolved into ‘a rigorous self-sufficiency which silently oozed aggression’.308 His persistent adoration of Nazism was symptomatic of his lack of emotional responsiveness or feeling for those around him. Fuller declared that, in the six months they were together on the semi-parole block, Graham was ‘the most unpopular inmate of that block because of his strange and icy aloofness and complexities of character’.309 Wherever Fuller happened to be, he would know Graham was nearby if he heard his distinctive hoot, ‘dry, chilling laugh coming from deep within his throat, invariably followed by a smirk of utter contempt’.310

  In April 1969, Patrick McGrath supported Graham’s parole plea on account of his havin
g made ‘so much progress’.311 Less than six weeks later, Graham had his parole card rescinded for several days, due to reasons unknown. But it is patently obvious that the authorities believed him to have turned over an entirely new leaf, with Udwin stating that:

  during the 18 months [Graham] has been regularly under treatment, he has continued to make progress to the point now where the staff confidently accept him as improved and where his relationship with them is entirely changed. It was noteworthy in a recent disturbance in the ward that nursing comment was emphatic that Young was actually spending hours trying to talk a disturbed patient out of further mischief. His relationships with nursing staff have changed to the point where there is now a degree of friendship possible, where he will accept rebukes and not sulk, more often than not, and where he has achieved a good working relationship with the Handicraft instructors. There is no doubt in anyone’s mind that he had made vast progress . . . 312

  This was again confirmed by McGrath in July 1969, when he too recorded that Graham had made ‘exceptional progress’.313 Both men were pleased to hear that he was now taking a keen interest in his work in the tailor’s department of handicrafts, where he displayed a natural talent for needlework.

  Even Joseph Fuller – who remained sceptical about Graham’s new conformity – sensed that he had grown genuinely close to Dr McGrath, who appeared to be equally eager to be seen as a father figure to the young man. Several inmates teased Graham about his status as McGrath’s blue-eyed boy, which he ignored, but it was clear to everyone that both McGrath and Udwin continued to take a special interest in him and consulted each other regularly on each step forward. Graham’s newfound willingness to form friendships was taken as further evidence of his progress. Although most of his relationships in Broadmoor were largely superficial, he developed an immediate and genuine bond with one newcomer: Dr Christopher Swan, who arrived not as a staff member but as a patient.

  Working from his surgery in Hackney, Swan was 32 when rumours began to spread that the practice was a thriving market for drugs. It later emerged that while he had prescribed only 168 drinamyl tablets (‘purple hearts’) in September 1967, six months later he had 300 new patients on his books, all of whom were drug addicts, and he was dispensing more than 23,000 tablets. He and his unqualified male medical secretary, Stephen Hartford, were drugs trafficking on a large scale, with Hartford selling false prescriptions, often in other patients’ names, on to addicts who, in turn, sold any surplus medications on to other addicts. Swan’s income from that alone was estimated to be around £30,000 annually, in addition to his National Health register of patients and work for other large companies. Swan lived lavishly, with a beautiful home in Forest Hill and two expensive cars at his disposal. He made no attempt to hide his lifestyle, declaring himself ‘the richest doctor of my age in the country’.314

  The deaths of four addicts on Swan’s register led to a police investigation, but no charges were brought against him. When the Dangerous Drugs Act was enforced in April 1967, Swan was no longer able to prescribe heroin and cocaine, but he continued to dole out a huge amount of medication to addicts, including a drug that hadn’t been banned under the new law: methedrine. In a show of defiance, he called a press conference for the re-opening of his surgery under its new moniker, the East London Addiction Centre, and dispensed more drinamyl than ever: 44,000 tablets a month. Alerted to his activities, the Daily Express marshalled a team of ten reporters to carry out one of the most exhaustive enquiries ever conducted by a newspaper; they interviewed a huge number of Swan’s patients before confronting the doctor himself. Swan initially refused to be interviewed but was persuaded to tell his story in an exclusive article, after which the Daily Express ran their own story detailing all of their findings.

  Outraged, Swan arrived at the newspaper offices with three burly men. His threats came to nothing, but Swan and his secretary Stephen Hartford were convinced that John Wall, a former receptionist at the clinic, had leaked secrets to the press. Hartford was an associate of David Gordon, doorman of the Limbo Club in Soho; he had provided him with prescriptions for purple hearts and John Wall, too, had dealt drugs there. Following Swan’s insistence that Wall had blabbed to the press, Hartford arranged for Gordon to stab Wall, but the police descended and, within hours of being charged, both Swan and Hartford were held in Brixton prison. Keen to deter potential witnesses from spilling further secrets, Swan asked another inmate if he knew of a good ‘chopper-man’ to deal with the problem.315 As a result, Swan received a visit in jail from ‘Sid Green’, who was in fact Detective Sergeant John Vaughan, offering his services and acting in a manner that a judge later observed ‘would have deserved an Oscar in another sphere’.316 Unbeknown to Swan, however, Vaughan was recording their conversation.

  Swan’s trial at the Old Bailey in January 1969 was a media sensation. It was revealed that he had flooded the London drugs market with prescriptions for over half a million purple hearts and methedrine tablets. Taking the stand, Swan complained that people imagined him to be a gangster, ‘making lots of money and indulging in sexual orgies with women patients’ when he was in fact simply a ‘father figure’ to addicts.317 Sir Carl Aarvold, senior judge and Recorder of London, sentenced him to 15 years’ imprisonment: seven for inciting Detective Sergeant Vaughan to murder four witnesses, five for contravening the Drugs Act, two for conspiracy to assault John Wall and one for being an accessory to two abortions. Aarvold told Swan sternly: ‘You used your position as a doctor not to spread health and happiness but to bring about misery and illness for your own financial gain.’ Swan’s co-conspirator, Stephen Hartford, was sentenced to two years in prison for his role in the affair.

  Swan appealed against his sentence, insisting he had not been fit to plead. It emerged that before he had qualified as a doctor in 1961, his superiors suspected that he had schizophrenia, and evidence of his mental illness was presented at his trial but discounted. Appeal judge Lord Justice Fenton Atkinson was not persuaded either, dismissing his appeal in December 1969 with the damning words that Swan was not ill, but simply ‘a very dangerous and very evil man’.318 But Swan’s lawyers successfully presented further evidence of their client’s mental health problems and, as a result, in February 1970 Swan was sent to Broadmoor.

  He and Graham hit it off immediately, with the younger man fascinated by Swan’s medical background and experiences. ‘Young was always a loner but he changed when Swan came here,’ one inmate recalled. ‘They were always reading medical books belonging to Swan. Young and Swan were inseparable.’319 Graham spoke frequently to his family about Swan, insisting that his trial had been a travesty of justice. When Fred had to go into hospital, Graham telephoned to speak to a nurse, who found him so knowledgeable that she was surprised to learn afterwards that he was not part of the medical profession. He had consulted Swan in order to reassure his family, as he continued to do for some time on all such matters, including his sister’s Caesarean section (she gave birth to her first child, Claire, in 1970) and his Uncle Jack’s gall-bladder operation in early 1971.

  The friendship with Swan went some way towards a decision about Graham’s future, which was being taken behind the scenes at Broadmoor. In March 1970, at Dr Udwin’s request, Winifred and her husband Denis, accompanied by Win and Jack, made an otherwise unscheduled visit to the hospital. Dr Udwin asked to speak to Win alone. She was taken aback when, after enquiring about her own health and that of her family, he told her that in his opinion Graham was ‘cured’. Win sat in stupefied silence as he outlined the reasoning behind his professional opinion, before asking, ‘What’s the job situation like in Sheerness?’ Win realised he was implying that Graham would wish to stay with her after his release. ‘I put him off,’ she recalled, ‘reporting that the job situation was terrible. I felt that Graham was not in any way different from when he was admitted to Broadmoor. I was frightened at the prospect of his return. There is only one word for it: “frightened”. I expressed my feelings to Dr Udwi
n, but I didn’t tell him I was frightened, just that I was apprehensive.’320 Win’s racing thoughts turned to her brother; she knew that Fred would never countenance Graham moving in with them. Then she became aware that Dr Udwin was speaking again: ‘[He] informed me that he was pushing for Graham’s release but that it would have to go before the Home Secretary first. That he would come out on leave first.’321

  On the journey home, Win broke the news to the rest of the family. From Graham’s earliest days in Broadmoor, they had heard a lot about the man he generally referred to as ‘that fool Udwin’.322 Now they discussed, in nervous tones, what might happen if Edgar Udwin got his way. Winifred fails to mention in her memoir whether or not they were aware that Dr Udwin was somewhat of a controversial figure where patients and their release was concerned. Former Broadmoor patient Peter Thompson had a huge amount of respect for Dr Udwin and credits him with playing a major role in his treatment and rehabilitation. Udwin had been central to the successful release of a number of patients, but on two occasions he had incurred the vexation of the Home Office.

  The first of these concerned William Thomas Doyle, who at the age of 17 had taken part in a rooftop siege at Broadmoor. Three years later, he was transferred to a psychiatric unit at Horton, Epsom but was released within a month. Udwin’s report on Doyle described him as ‘no longer a security hazard’, declaring: ‘I do not think he will be a danger to anyone at all.’323 Less than 12 months later he used an iron bar to murder a hospital laundry worker, robbing him to buy heroin. Doyle was returned to Broadmoor, where he was murdered four months later. The second patient, Martin Victor Frape, was transferred from Broadmoor to Parkhurst on Udwin’s recommendation. While in prison, Frape assisted in leading a riot and held a guard hostage at knife point.