A Passion for Poison

by Carol Ann Lee

  Although Graham had apparently decided on delivery driver John Durrant as his next victim, and ruled out Jethro Batt due to friendship, before the week was out he had changed his mind, leaving his fellow Hadlands employee – and friend – in agony.

  Batt had worked at Hadlands for five years as a self-employed prototype electronic wireman; for the past 18 months he had been employed in the Imacon test department of the laboratory. He and Graham had hit it off within a month of the younger man beginning work in the stores. Batt lived with his wife and children in Harlow but was originally from West Hendon and, as such, the two of them struck up what Batt referred to as an ‘exile friendship, as none of the other workers to my knowledge came from that district of London’. From then on, they would converse on a wide range of subjects, although Graham usually turned them round to his own favourite topics: Nazi Germany, poison and true crime. ‘He often spoke of people like the Acid Bath Murderer, Jack the Ripper and [John] Christie. He seemed disgusted at the stupid mistakes [Haigh, the Acid Bath Murderer] made, which enabled the police to catch him. Most of his conversations turned to the macabre.’ Batt nicknamed his new friend ‘the Keeper of the Black Museum’ and admitted finding Graham depressing at times: ‘I’d just walk away because of the macabre nature of his conversations.’482

  Other colleagues had similar conversations with Graham, including Eric Baxter, quality-control engineer, who described Graham as ‘a compulsive talker. He was impressed by the method Christie used to murder his victims. He knew all the dates and even the number of layers of wallpaper on the kitchen walls at Christie’s home in Rillington Place.’ Baxter also recalled Graham’s occasional habit of taking a nip from a flask at midday and asked him why he did it: ‘He said it gave him confidence. When I asked him why he needed confidence, he replied, “Ah, you don’t realise.”’483

  But of all his colleagues, Batt was the one whom Graham regarded as more than simply a co-worker with whom he got along. Batt often visited other parts of the factory, including the stores and production department, usually working until 7pm and, earlier that month, Graham had also begun to stay behind, telling Batt it was to catch up on paperwork and because his bus didn’t arrive until 7:30pm. Batt would then offer to give him a lift home to Hemel Hempstead. The only other person around at that time was May Bartlett on her cleaning duties. During the last half an hour, the two men would have coffee together and chat. Batt remembered one conversation in particular:

  He said to me something on the lines of that you could obtain this liquid and introduce it into their drink and by gradually increasing the dose it would cause a heart attack and that it would cause death. He further said that the death would seem normal and any ordinary doctor would diagnose natural causes and murder would never be suspected. I’m not sure whether he said this liquid was colourless or odourless, but the person taking it would never notice it. I remember particularly saying to him, ‘You rotten bastard.’ I said this more or less meaning how would he think of such a thing. I remember him gesturing with his hands and saying, ‘You can read it in the books’ or something like that.484

  Usually Batt made the coffee but, to his surprise, on Friday, 15 October, it was Graham who did it, both during the day and later in the evening when they shared their last drink together. Batt tended to make coffee for them around 6:30pm, but Graham brewed up just before 6pm. Norman Smart was on his security rounds when he spotted Graham in the small kitchen of the canteen with the tea trolley at his side. The kitchen was normally out of bounds except for the women who worked there; Norman asked him what he was doing, to which Graham replied that he was making coffee for himself and Jethro, and did Norman want one too? As Norman shook his head, Graham nodded at a picture on the wall, which showed a handsome vintage motor, much like the green racing car in the 1953 film Genevieve. ‘Isn’t that a fascinating picture up there, Norman?’ he said.485 The older man glanced at the picture and agreed, then left Graham alone.

  Batt took the cup from Graham when he returned. He had felt ‘queasy’ during the day and had a metallic taste in his mouth, which he described as a ‘horribly bitter tang’, much like the aftertaste of a filling at the dentist’s.486 He recalled: ‘I took one sip of the coffee, say just one mouthful. There was something about it, I don’t know whether it was too strong or what, I remember remarking to him about it and he jokingly said, “What, do you think I’m trying to poison you?” Within about 20 minutes I had to go outside. I wanted to vomit, but I couldn’t. I tried to make myself sick, but I just couldn’t. I think I mentioned something to him about feeling dodgy.’487

  At 7pm, they left the factory together in Batt’s car. The laboratory worker felt ‘bilious’ all evening, with stomach pains ‘just in the area of the navel’ and ate a light meal.488 He slept well, nonetheless, but when he woke up early the next morning to take his daughter to her ballet lesson, his legs had begun to ache all over. In the afternoon he felt ‘shattered’ and when he joined his father in the pub, as he always did at the weekend, he could only manage one pint instead of his usual four. On Sunday, the pain in his legs was still present and he had stomach ache ‘but not really severe’.489 He decided to walk the two-thirds of a mile to the White House pub, hoping that might help get his legs working properly again and to give himself an appetite, but he found he could only drink a couple of small beers and a tiny amount of food. In the evening, he couldn’t face either food or drink.

  David Tilson had similar problems that weekend. On Saturday night, he felt better than he had for a few days and went to a party where he had a few drinks and arrived home around 4am the following morning. On Sunday afternoon, he suddenly found that his legs began to stiffen, particularly around the ankles and knee joints, and his toes were still partially numb from the previous Saturday. When he woke up on Monday morning, he had chest and stomach pains and a sore throat. He managed to get an almost immediate appointment with his doctor, who told him he had a throat infection and was generally a bit run down. Dr Donald Richardson recalled his patient ‘complaining of a generalised aching and pains in the neck, a state of diarrhoea was also complained of. At this stage I gave a routine examination and found an inflamed throat and slightly enlarged neck glands.’490 He prescribed penicillin, but Tilson was unable to sleep that night because of the pain.

  Jethro Batt also visited his doctor that morning. He explained to Dr Oswald Ross that he had discomfort in his stomach, distention and wind. The doctor gave him a prescription for a medicine to ease his flatulence and Batt headed in to work, where he remained until 7pm as usual, even though he felt distinctly uncomfortable and had pains in his legs, especially when he stood up or sat down. On the journey home that evening, Graham questioned his friend about his symptoms and offered some advice before saying goodnight.

  In the back bedroom of 27 Maynard Road that night, Graham retrieved his diary from beneath the bed and reached for a pen:

  October 18th. Several new developments. D’s symptoms have considerably worsened over the weekend. The paraethesia [sic] and anaesthesia now render it difficult for him to walk at all, and apparently this morning he was unable to walk up the stairs. He was not at work of course, but telephoned in to explain his absence. Later in the morning he called back to notify P that his doctor now diagnosed a ‘glandular complaint’. How much further the illness will progress is difficult to say at this stage. A second development, and one which I now regret, is that J has been afflicted. The administration was Friday night and, as only part (approximately one third) of the dose was ingested it is difficult to say how severe the resultant illness will be. The symptoms have been slower to manifest themselves than in the case of D but have been gradually appearing during the afternoon. J complains of an insidiously spreading muscular ache, accompanied by stomach pains and flatulence. The latter symptoms, however, are probably due to a mild stomach germ which seems to be currently doing the rounds.

  He added: ‘I have a touch of it myself.’491

  Chap
ter Sixteen

  YONDER SOFT PHIAL

  T

  HE MYSTERIOUS SPATE of illnesses at Hadlands had every-one talking by mid-October. Those who were already suffering found themselves rapidly getting worse, while others also began to fall sick. David Tilson recalled struggling to get out of bed on Tuesday, 19 October, because the pain was virtually unbearable. He forced himself in to work but deteriorated further while there: ‘My legs began to pain me a lot more and my concentration was going. I still had this constant pain in the stomach which later that day seemed to spread to my chest, quite shallow.’492 He vomited twice that night, despite only drinking water all day, bringing up bile and then retching to the point of exhaustion.

  Tilson visited his GP the following morning. Dr Richardson found him ‘a good deal worse. A weakness of the legs and vomiting were the general symptoms. I again examined him and found that the muscles of the legs were tender and the attempts of moving the legs were painful, although there was no joint stiffness present. The tendon reflexes were brisker than normal. There was no other neurological disturbance. In view of his poor condition, I admitted him to St Albans City Hospital with a provisional diagnosis of peripheral neuritis.’493

  Tilson was examined by Dr Ann Penny and later senior consultant physician Dr Edward Cowen, who listened as he described feeling numb in his feet and hands, aches in his legs, pins and needles in his extremities, loss of appetite, headache, abdominal pain, nausea, vomiting and diarrhoea. ‘The diagnosis on examination was far from clear,’ Dr Cowan admitted. ‘He seemed to have joint trouble plus or minus peripheral neuritis and the remarkable feature was the weakness in his legs. He received treatment for relief of pain.’494 Despite years of training and experience with patients, none of the medical staff realised that Tilson displayed many of the symptoms of thallium poisoning.

  On the day that Tilson was admitted to hospital, Jethro Batt had risen from bed feeling that his health too had deteriorated. Like Tilson, he was determined to go into work despite the pain: ‘All through the day the pains were very bad, even walking was murder and I felt pretty miserable.’495 Batt valiantly worked his normal hours, sharing a last cup of coffee with Graham before driving them both home. Batt retired for bed almost immediately without any food: ‘My appetite had gone again.’496 Diana Smart was also ill that day. Her husband Norman had taken poorly two days before and was off sick until 26 October. ‘As he was getting better, I was getting worse,’ she remembered.497 She was fine until the afternoon coffee break, when Graham collected the drinks for himself, Diana and Fred Biggs. ‘I had to go home just after 4pm,’ she recalled. ‘I had been sick and vomited then again about 5:30pm. I again vomited – on and off I had this severe stomach pain which seemed to lapse after me vomiting.’498 She was then working entirely in the stores and WIP department, where her duties included keeping a detailed account of goods and equipment such as cameras and electrical components after Graham had received them into the store and Eric Baxter had inspected each item. She spent many hours alongside Graham and Fred, and always took her tea breaks with the two men. At lunchtime she usually headed home, since she lived nearby, but on one occasion before her husband fell ill, the couple shared a meal in the canteen with Graham and were amazed by the way he slathered salad cream over his fish and chips, adding pepper until the food appeared almost black.

  Graham was the topic of a brief, quiet conversation Diana had with Fred Biggs that week. Mild-mannered Fred mentioned that he had tried to give Graham a bit of advice regarding his work, but it had fallen on deaf ears. He warned Diana that Graham might ask her for a loan. Red-faced, she replied that she had already let him borrow from her numerous times that summer. She did add that he always repaid her, but she was reluctant to lend him anymore because he seemed to spend it all in the pub. Every Friday lunchtime he would go for a drink and return fairly hyper, eager to chat between frequent trips to the toilet to empty his bladder. On one occasion she jocularly told him off for spending his wages behind a bar and gave him a little push on his tummy, saying that he was getting a beer belly. Graham took no offence. He grinned at her, then launched into a scientific list of all the ingredients he had ingested during the course of his afternoon drinking session. Diana found it hard to dislike him, however: he was always generous with his cigarettes, enquired after her health and looked after her on more than one occasion when she felt unwell. There was something peculiarly childlike about him; she remembered that he was once very upset when he tried to collect his tea before everyone else and was told to wait his turn: ‘I can still see him walking back into the stores with his two hands in his pockets, looking like a little kid out of school that has just been scolded. “They won’t give me my tea, Diana. May told me to go away and wait for it.” He almost looked as if he were about to cry.’499

  Although Graham was clearly ferociously intelligent, he could be inexplicably scatty and forgetful. Diana usually took no notice, but one afternoon when she wasn’t feeling well, he irritated her by wandering about the stores chatting to everyone instead of getting on with his work. She snapped at him for it and he gave her a strange, glass-eyed glare in return. She remembered the incident because after their tea break that same day, she felt deeply nauseous: ‘I was sick three times from then until I went to bed that night. This was accompanied by pains in the pit of the tummy. On that day I had had my normal drink of coffee at 11am and 3pm. This coffee I had with Graham Young and Fred Biggs in the WIP stores. Young as usual got the coffee for us from May Bartlett. He would either go outside and stand by the trolley in the corridor or collect it from her at the stores hatch.’500

  While Tilson remained in hospital, both Norman Smart and Jethro Batt were too ill to go into work. Batt visited his doctor on Thursday, 21 October, severely depleted by the pain, which had begun to spread, in addition to suffering backache and numbness in his toes. Dr Oswald Ross could find little wrong with him. He prescribed Calpol as pain relief and signed Batt off work for several days. Returning home, Batt headed straight to bed, where his sufferings only increased. ‘I started to get these very bad hallucinations,’ he recalled. ‘I know I had them five nights prior to being admitted to hospital. These were so bad I’d have killed myself if I could.’501 His wife was terrified, feeling that she was losing her husband to ‘some kind of mysterious madness’.502 Searching for a means of explaining the pain, Batt stated: ‘I was beginning to get the feeling that someone had put on the old duelling glove – the metal glove – and had got inside my ribs and were grabbing hold of what was inside and squeezing and twisting it.’503 Batt’s wife remembered with a shudder: ‘That’s when you asked me for a gun, isn’t it? He got to the point of asking for a gun to shoot himself. He was in that [much] agony.’504 He admitted:

  I don’t remember much about the worst three days. But my wife does. She had a terrible time keeping me alive . . . If there had been a weapon beside the bed, a gun or knife, I would have killed myself. The pain was terrible, but that wasn’t the reason. The depressing effect the poison gave me was dreadful. And all the time I was in agony. The soles of my feet were killing me. I used to roll around the house and throw things. I was desperate with the pain. I banged my head against the kitchen wall several times, really hard, with frustration. My wife had a rough time. When my hair started falling out and things happened to my skin and fingernails, I thought, ‘What’s going on? I’m falling apart.’505

  On the day that Batt visited his doctor, Diana too felt progressively worse and left work early, after her second cup of coffee. She had hesitated before picking up her green china mug, sniffing at it. Graham looked at her: ‘What’s the matter?’ She asked him whether it was her coffee or his tea. ‘It’s all right,’ he said, ‘It’s your coffee.’506 But it was too bitter for her and she left half of it in the mug before heading home to be repeatedly sick.

  That evening, Graham picked up his diary and recorded:

  D’s condition continues to deteriorate. He was admitted to hospita
l this morning with paralysis of the legs. The lower peripheral neuritis is now complete. What other nerves, at present inflamed, will become subject to major disfunction is not possible to estimate at present. There is little danger to life, barring unforeseen complications. I may have to put the plan propounded in my entry for October 12th. It will be rather more difficult, however, because he is in St Albans City Hospital – somewhat impossible to me.

  J has also worsened. His symptoms have developed more slowly but he is now experiencing severe pains in the feet and legs, causing difficulty in walking, and further pains in the stomach, back and chest. I feel rather ashamed of my action in harming Jeff [Blatt]. I think he’s a really nice fellow and the nearest thing to a friend that I have at Hadlands. I hope, though I have no faith in it, that he will soon recover.

  D [Diana Smart] irritated me intensely yesterday, so I packed her off home with an attack of sickness. I only gave her sufficient to shake her up, though I now regret I didn’t give her a larger dose capable of laying her up for a few days. Needless to say the drug in question [antimony] is different in nature (though not in toxicity) from that used in the cases of D and J.