by Robin Odell
In December of the following year, the world of forensic medicine mourned the loss of Sir Bernard Spilsbury. The circumstances of his suicide were tragic but a hint of rancour came through in Sydney Smith’s appraisal of the man; after all, they had endured several bitter clashes. He referred to his rival’s death as, ‘the inquest on his last case of suicide – and there was no room for doubt this time – he was the deceased.’ Although he sincerely mourned his colleague, Smith felt there was really no place for the stubbornness of opinion that was Spilsbury’s hallmark. ‘One might almost hope that there will never be another Bernard Spilsbury,’ he wrote in his autobiography. If it was a wish, it was one which came true, for the up-and-coming medical detectives were men of a different breed and there was not to be another Spilsbury among them.
Smith himself reached the pinnacle of his career in 1949 when he was knighted for his services to forensic medicine and, as the 1950s dawned, he was planning for retirement. His opposite number in the Chair of Forensic Medicine at Glasgow University, John Glaister, was well established and building his own considerable reputation. The two men had worked together on a number of cases and, in 1931, collaborated in the writing of a book on Recent Advances in Forensic Medicine. It was typical of Smith’s attitude to break away from Spilsbury’s tendency towards isolationism and to use his knowledge to help others.
In London, Spilsbury’s old territory, Francis Camps and Keith Simpson were making their mark. Simpson had published his textbook, Forensic Medicine, in 1947, as if to put up a marker in the year of Spilsbury’s death. Although this book seriously challenged Smith’s own contribution to learning on the subject, he was generous in his acknowledgement of the newcomer. Indeed, in due course, Smith handed on to Simpson the editorship of Taylor’s Principles and Practice of Medical Jurisprudence, which he had managed so masterfully for thirty years. Simpson would say of The Patriarch in due course, ‘He was like a second father to me as I grew up in the field of forensic medicine.’
It was part of Smith’s natural gifts as a teacher to encourage the next generation of forensic practitioners and he did so with characteristic generosity. In return, they sought to honour him by seeking his advice in their new enterprises. In the late 1940s, Simpson and Camps led a small group which proposed to establish a British Association in Forensic Medicine. Their idea was to provide a forum wherein forensic specialists could exchange experiences and learn from each other. As Simpson described it in his autobiography, they met at the ‘Bon Accord’ restaurant in Soho and invited ‘the only man who at that time stood head and shoulders above everyone in both academic stature and experience’ to be the first President of the Association. Sir Sydney Smith accepted graciously: the era of the lone expert, personified by the late Bernard Spilsbury, was ended.
Meanwhile, Smith began a trend which his successors would follow in due course; this was to use his expertise internationally to help solve important cases in countries lacking forensic capability. He travelled a great deal during the early 1950s before he retired, visiting New Zealand, the land of his birth, and also Egypt, which had been a kind of promised land for him in his younger days. 1952 was a momentous year, filled with academic engagements and medico-legal casework. He advised on a murder case in Kenya, lectured in Canada and undertook further work for the World Health Organisation.
Despite this busy programme, he found time to fly out to Ceylon to assist his friend and former student, Dr de Saram, who was involved in a difficult murder case in which his professional judgement was severely questioned. ‘The facts of the case were simple,’ wrote Smith years later. Mrs Sathasiran, estranged wife of the former captain of Ceylon’s cricket team, was found dead in the garage of her home in Colombo. Dr de Saram was called and he examined the body about an hour after it was discovered and carried out a full post-mortem on the following day. In the meantime, Sathasiran was arrested and charged with murdering his wife. Ten days after the crime, the Sathasirans’ servant, William, confessed that he had helped his master commit the murder by subduing the victim’s struggles when she was strangled. A key factor in his confession was that William said all this occurred before 9 a.m. and that, by 9.30 he had sold the jewellery stripped from the body and given to him in payment for his services. This statement was corroborated by the jeweller who had bought the articles.
Dr de Saram’s examination of the victim led him to different conclusions about the likely time of her death. The extent of rigor mortis in the body indicated that death had occurred between 10 a.m. and noon. It was known that Mrs Sathasiran had eaten breakfast comprising a type of pasta, grated coconut and milk around 8.15 a.m. The state of digestion of this meal as seen in her stomach and intestines, made it apparent that she had eaten breakfast some three hours before meeting her death. This conclusion was broadly confirmed by the temperature of the body. Despite the bland assurances to the contrary conveyed in detective fiction, it is extremely difficult to establish the time of death from the condition of the body, and rarely possible to do so with precision. Taking all factors into account, Dr de Saram’s estimate of the likely time of death was between 10 and 11.30 a.m. which was at variance with William’s confession.
At a preliminary magistrates inquiry, William was pardoned and he agreed to stand as a witness for the Crown against his former master. Sathasiran was sent for trial, charged with murdering his wife before 9.30 on the morning of 9 October 1951. The specific reference to time of death cast a shadow over Dr de Saram’s professional judgement and the prosecution did everything it could to discredit his opinion.
After he had read all the evidence, Smith reconstructed the crime in his laboratory at Edinburgh with the help of defence counsel who had travelled from Ceylon to seek his opinion. He believed the facts showed that after Sathasiran left the house by taxi at 10.35 a.m., an event which was well corroborated, his wife, only scantily dressed, went down into the kitchen where she encountered William. Aged eighteen and only in her employ for a week, William became sexually excited and attempted to assault Mrs Sathasiran. When she resisted, he seized her by the neck, throttling her into unconsciousness, as a result of which she urinated, leaving a tell-tale stain on her petticoat. Smith’s experienced eye had spotted that the extent of the stain was more in keeping with the victim being in a standing rather than a prone position.
As a result of this initial attack, the victim sagged against the doorway, bruising her back and tearing her sari. She had sustained a bruise between the shoulder blades and there were tears in her clothing. Smith told the defence lawyers to confirm whether or not there was a projection of any kind about three and a half feet from the floor, on or near, the kitchen door. His belief was that the murder resulted unintentionally from a sexually motivated assault.
By the time the case came to trial, Sir Sydney Smith was already in his final year’s programme at Edinburgh University. Nevertheless, he flew to Ceylon on 20 May 1952 in order to appear in court on behalf of the defence. One of his first actions was to visit the scene of the crime. On the wall between the kitchen and the garage he found a staple which substantiated his view of how the victim’s back was bruised. The jeweller’s evidence supporting William’s statement about the time he sold the murder victim’s rings and necklace was proved to be perjured. Consequently, the trial progressed chiefly on the testimony of medical experts. Dr de Saram’s reputation took a knock when the Solicitor-General obtained the judge’s agreement to question him as a hostile witness. Moreover, the doctor faced the massed ranks of the prosecution’s experts, representing every conceivable discipline including a Professor of Mathematics.
But de Saram had Sydney Smith in his corner and, as usual, his preparation had been meticulous. He had given instructions for experiments to be carried out on body cooling and the corpses of three executed murderers were obtained for the purpose. Dressed in clothing similar to that worn by Mrs Sathasiran and placed in conditions simulating those of the murder scene, their temperatures were taken every half
hour. The results showed that the bodies lost 5.2 degrees of heat in seven hours. This compared with the murder victim’s loss of 5.2 degrees over ten hours if the prosecution’s estimate of time of death was correct. Smith’s contention, supported by his experiments, was that Mrs Sathasiran died several hours after 9 a.m. which was the time given by William in his confession. This was born out by independent witnesses who claimed to have seen the murder victim and to have spoken to her on the telephone after 10.30 a.m.
Faced with this powerful rebuttal of its evidence, the prosecution presented a mass of information drawn from learned textbooks to bolster their argument. Hoping to wound him, Crown counsel asked Smith why he was prepared to support Dr de Saram in this case while he had refused to accept the evidence of a much more distinguished person, Sir Bernard Spilsbury, in the Fox case. Of course, the two cases could not be compared and, in any event, the role of the forensic expert was to speak with experience supported by fact which Smith had done so admirably. The jury thought so too and brought in a unanimous verdict of ‘Not Guilty’. Feeling elated but tired, Sydney Smith flew back to Britain on 30 May. Turning over in his mind the events of the previous few days, he noted for later inclusion in his autobiography, ‘I had quite forgotten the Fox case until it was mentioned to me at the trial.’
His confrontation with Spilsbury had, after all, occurred over twenty years before and, now, approaching his seventieth year, he was shortly to retire. He attended the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II at Westminster Abbey on 2 June 1953 and recounted an amusing incident which occurred afterwards. Unable to find a taxi to return him from the abbey to his hotel, he walked, attired in his university robes, through the crowds of Piccadilly. His scarlet gown and black velvet berette caused some excitement and drew the remark, ‘here comes a bloody bishop’, from a bystander.
Sir Sydney retired from Edinburgh’s Chair of Forensic Medicine in 1953 and, with the praise of his colleagues and students ringing in his ears, set off with his wife to Lebanon and Ceylon on behalf of the World Health Organisation. While he was relieved of the burden of teaching, his retirement was really only a matter of administrative nomenclature. After nine months abroad, he returned to Britain and was honoured at Edinburgh by being presented with his portrait painted by Sir William Hutchinson, President of the Royal Scottish Academy. It was a fitting tribute to a man whose association with the university spanned half a century. In 1954 he was elected Rector of the University, an honour which he deeply appreciated.
While in Montreal in August 1954 on a world tour, he suffered a minor heart attack and was ordered to rest for a few weeks. He had already agreed to assist in an arsenic poisoning case in New Zealand and, despite the setback in his health, confirmed that he would give evidence for the defence at the re-trial of James Wilson due to start in Auckland in October. Wilson had been tried earlier but the jury could not agree on a verdict.
There was no greater authority on arsenic poisoning than Sydney Smith and from his review of the medical evidence in this case, he did not believe Wilson poisoned his wife. When he gave evidence he was asked what his experience was in regard to arsenical poisoning. He mentioned his time in Egypt and answered in a matter-of-fact way, ‘I don’t suppose I saw more than one a week.’ This was a nonchalant way of saying more than 500! He was the only witness called by the defence and his calm authority won Wilson an acquittal. Mrs Wilson’s death remained a mystery but it was known that she was devoted to self medication. Analysis of her hair and nails showed that she had ingested small doses of arsenic over several months. It was thought that she might have dosed herself with arsenic as a treatment for a skin rash. The only book in the house was a well-thumbed copy of Domestic Medical Practice which contained a reference to an arsenical preparation for skin rashes.
The Smiths continued their world tour, visiting Australia and Ceylon, and spending three months in Egypt, before finally returning to Britain in 1956. Political aggravation fuelled by fierce nationalism was brewing under President Nasser and the world’s attention was drawn to the future of the Suez Canal. The tense atmosphere was reminiscent of their first time in Egypt nearly forty years before but they were greeted with friendly Egyptian hospitality everywhere they went and left the country before the hostilities over Suez began.
Smith acknowledged that while murder was of great interest to the public, it was only of minor significance so far as general crime was concerned. In more than thirty years of specialised practice in forensic medicine, he had seen many great advances in scientific methods – indeed he had pioneered some himself. He acknowledged that his professional career had provided him with great interest but low remuneration. Recalling a case in which his opinion had been instrumental in securing a not guilty verdict for a man charged with murder, he recorded the discussion which resulted over payment. The accused man’s solicitors wrote to him asking him to state his fee. His suggestion that one hundred guineas would be appropriate prompted a letter pointing out that medical and scientific specialists usually only charged about ten guineas. Smith returned their letter having written on it the question, ‘What is your client’s life worth?’ He received his cheque the next day.
The last case in which Sydney Smith took an active part was one that called on an area of specialised knowledge with which he had become acquainted during his time in Egypt. The Welsh Mummy case, as it was termed by the newspapers, caused headlines in 1960 when the mummified body of a woman in her sixties was found in the cupboard of a house at Rhyl in North Wales. The body was identified as the remains of Mrs Frances Knight, a semi-invalid who had been a lodger in Mrs Sarah Jane Harvey’s terrace house in the seaside town.
The body had been discovered by Mrs Harvey’s son, who was painting the interior of the house. He opened a cupboard on the landing which, from the time of his childhood, had always been kept mysteriously locked. Among all the cobwebs and dirt, he saw a human foot protruding from a mound of clothing on the floor. The police were called and Dr Gerald Evans, the pathologist, found a human body, the shrunken flesh of which he described as being hard as a statue. As it emerged later, the body had been holed up in the cupboard of Mrs Harvey’s house for twenty years.
Sarah Harvey told the police that Mrs Knight was very frail when she came to board with her. She suffered from rheumatism which affected her mobility and caused her a great deal of pain. She found her lodger one night on the floor of her room – ‘I am in an awful lot of pain and would rather be dead’, she was claimed to have said. Later, when Mrs Harvey called in on her, she found her dead. The landlady’s reaction was to drag the body out to the landing and put it into the cupboard. She hung up a few fly papers and wrapped an eiderdown around the corpse. When she locked the cupboard, she had effectively entombed Mrs Knight’s remains for twenty years. So firmly rooted was the body to the floor of the cupboard that a garden spade had to be used to prise it free.
Apart from a number of discrepancies in Sarah Harvey’s story, and a few obvious questions such as, why did she not report the death of an ailing lodger to the authorities, there was the awkward discovery of what appeared to be a ligature around the dead woman’s neck. It looked like murder, and sixty-five-year-old Mrs Harvey was charged with its commission.
Dr Francis Camps was called in by the defence after Sarah Harvey had been committed for trial at the Assize Court in Ruthin, Denbighshire. He enlisted the help of Sir Sydney Smith who, apart from his wide experience as a pathologist, probably knew more than anyone at the time about the medical aspects of mummification. This condition is unusual in Britain but is by no means rare. Indeed Camps caused quite a stir when he said that he probably encountered some four mummies a year.
Sarah Harvey’s landing cupboard, the doors of which permitted air to pass through, provided ideal conditions to induce mummification in the body of a frail, emaciated woman. Dr Evans’s scientific work on the body and his pathological report were highly praised. He described a piece of ‘coiled string-like material’ found on the
left-hand side of the neck in which there was a groove. The prosecution case was that Mrs Knight had been strangled with a stocking by Sarah Harvey for the purpose of acquiring her lodger’s £2 per week alimony. Mrs Harvey had shown herself to be something of a schemer and had indeed regularly collected Mrs Knight’s alimony after she was dead.
The defence believed that Mrs Knight died of natural causes, probably from disseminated sclerosis, and that the groove in her neck was no more than a post-mortem change and was not due to a homicidal ligature. Smith and Camps believed that the significance of the stocking lay less in its indications of murder than in the old wives’ remedy of wrapping a sock or stocking around the neck at bedtime to cure a chesty cold. They believed that, following death, Mrs Knight’s body underwent putrefaction in the normal way which included the decomposition of fly eggs and destruction of the soft tissues by maggots. As the skin overall dried slowly, that under the stocking was kept moist with decomposition products, causing the neck to swell. Under those conditions the loosely tied stocking caused a groove or depression to form around the neck. Sir Sydney was able to support this interpretation from his experience and to provide photographic evidence.
Dr Evans’s conclusion that it was not possible to ascertain the cause of Mrs Knight’s death together with the known view of the defence experts that there was an innocent explanation for the stocking around the neck, brought the trial to an end on the fifth day. Perhaps the presence in court of so eminent a witness as Sydney Smith persuaded the prosecution that they were not on firm ground. Mrs Harvey was, consequently, found not guilty of murder but was convicted of falsely obtaining money, ostensibly for Mrs Knight, by pretending that she was still alive. She perpetuated this fraud from May 1940 until April 1960, a foolishness for which she was sentenced to fifteen months’ imprisonment.
