Medical Detectives

by Robin Odell

  Access to ancient mummified material also enabled him to obtain perfectly preserved samples of hair to add to his already large collection. Indeed, his work on the subject had by now been set out in book form, comprising an atlas of 1,200 micro-photographs, with a very long title. A Study of Hairs and Wools Belonging to the Mammalian Group of Animals, including a Special Study of Human Hair, Considered from the Medico-Legal Aspect, was published in Cairo in 1931. The expense of printing the book was undertaken by the Egyptian Government and the author gratefully dedicated the work to King Fuad. Like his predecessor, Sydney Smith, he was invited to meet the King at the Abdine Palace which he found richly carpeted and full of pomp. The necessity for their father to wear court dress and a tarboosh on such occasions inevitably reduced the Glaister children to a state of girlish giggles.

  Like his fellow forensic practitioners, John Glaister found that crime seemed to follow him even while on holiday. He and his wife were in Cyprus in 1928 when an important case came to trial involving two doctors accused of performing an abortion. As soon as Glaister’s presence on the island was known, he was asked to help prepare the case for the Crown. A twenty-four-year-old Cypriot woman had died following an alleged attempt to induce an abortion. She had been treated in a clinic in Nicosia where she died following surgery which had resulted in a perforation of the uterus and caused a haemorrhage. Twelve hours later, without explanation, a man delivered the young woman’s body wrapped in a sheet to her parents’ home. Her history was that she had been having problems with menstruation and doctors prescribed tonic medicine and internal syringing. No suggestion was made that she might be pregnant, but her mother was advised that an operation was needed to scrape the uterus. It was this operation, poorly carried out, which had resulted in the woman’s death. The post-mortem examination indicated that she was pregnant and that the surgical procedure performed by two doctors at the clinic amounted to an attempted abortion. The jury also took this view with the result that one doctor was found guilty of manslaughter while charges against the second doctor were dropped on grounds of insufficient evidence.

  It was while on holiday in Cyprus the following year that John Glaister took another decisive step in his career. ‘Old John’ had written to tell him that he had decided to retire after thirty-three years in the professorial chair at Glasgow. There was thus an opportunity for the son to apply for the vacancy created by the father’s departure, although he realised it was a hard act to follow. He acknowledged that ‘Old John’ was, in all respects, a living legend, yet the challenge was there and he was eminently qualified to succeed. He applied for the Regius Chair of Forensic Medicine to the Secretary of State for Scotland and awaited developments. Asked if he would be willing to attend for interview, he replied that he would let his application speak for him.

  During the last weeks of their holiday in the Troodos Mountains in Cyprus in September 1931, John Glaister received a cable informing him that he had been appointed to the chair. ‘Young John’ had come of age and was now truly his own man. There were regrets at leaving Egypt but, from a professional point of view, he found the climate too deferential. While many men would have been flattered to command such admiration, John Glaister found it uncomfortable; ‘Every man now and again needs to be told he is talking nonsense – even if only to give him the chance to prove himself correct,’ he wrote later. So, after three years in the land of the Pharaohs, the Glaisters said their farewells and left to return to Scotland. Egypt had been but a brief interlude although, as events turned out, the connection had not been broken.

  John Glaister was aware of the sort of remarks his succession to his father’s position might provoke. But in truth, his professional credentials and reputation were beyond criticism and he had firm ideas about the future direction of forensic medicine. Certainly ‘Old John’ did not linger at the university to offer advice or, worse still, to interfere, ‘… he left the building and never returned to it,’ said his son. Glaister realised that he would inevitably face opposition from the Old Guard, those who had been in practice while he was still a student, but he resolved to plot a course that would further both the independence and international outlook of his professional calling.

  There was an early clash when he was privately taken to task by a Procurator Fiscal on account of his practice of sometimes appearing as a witness for the prosecution and, on others, for the defence. The Procurator told Glaister he objected to him giving evidence against the Crown doctors and ordered him not to do so again, threatening that he would not be asked to appear for the Crown in future. John Glaister was horrified at what he had been told and he invited the Procurator to repeat his instructions in the presence of witnesses. This was greeted with a sullen silence and the professor left, marking his disgust by slamming the door.

  After just a few months in his new post John Glaister was asked by the University Principal if he would be willing to return to Egypt to lecture for a three-month period every year. The Egyptian Government had written to the university making this special request and it was agreed that he could be released during the non-teaching term. The Glaisters’ return to Egypt was a pleasant experience, marred only by bad news from home. Muff had to return to England to see her brother who was dangerously ill, leaving John to see out the rest of the tour on his own. While at sea on board the Orontes bound for England in 1931, he received a cable informing him that both his father and mother had died. They succumbed at home within hours of each other from a virulent influenza epidemic which was raging in Britain. ‘Old John’s’ passing and a sense of a chapter closing persuaded John Glaister to give up his arrangement with the Egyptian Government and despite attempts to dissuade him he stuck to his decision.

  He threw himself whole-heartedly into his work at the university using his experience and quiet authority to guide a generation of students whose professional calling would one day take them into the witness box. It was a lonely place, he told them, and one where any hint of posing would be seen for what it was. ‘I’ve always tried to be as natural as possible when giving evidence,’ he wrote, in the belief that professional stature and a thorough knowledge of the subject were the chief requirements. He extolled the virtues of being concise, a habit he had picked up from ‘Old John’ whose answers to the probing questions of counsel frequently consisted of a string of affirmatives and negatives. He believed that the witness who sought to expand on his answers was a boon to opposing counsel; as the maxim had it, ‘A witness in saying more than he ought frequently says more than he means’. Above all, he believed in the powers of accurate and close observation. A sensible working philosophy for the forensic expert was that things are not always what they seem.

  In 1935, John Glaister’s approach to forensic medicine was put to the test in a sensational murder case involving a member of his own profession whose criminal activities spilled over into Scotland. The story began on 29 September when a young Edinburgh woman visiting Dumfriesshire crossed a bridge on the Edinburgh-Carlisle road. Glancing down into the stream running in a ravine beneath the bridge she saw what she thought was a human arm protruding from some sort of wrapping material. Susan Johnson returned to her hotel at Moffat and told her brother what she had seen. Alfred Johnson went to the spot and made a closer inspection; he discovered various human remains wrapped in newspapers and pieces of clothing. He called the police.

  When the area was searched by officers of the Dumfriesshire Constabulary, four bundles were recovered, each containing portions of a human body together with other pieces strewn about the ravine. One bundle wrapped in a blouse contained two upper arms and four pieces of flesh; another consisted of a pillowcase, the grisly contents of which included two upper arm bones, two thigh bones, two lower leg bones and nine pieces of flesh. A third parcel wrapped in a piece of sheet enclosed seventeen pieces of flesh, and a fourth contained part of a trunk and the lower parts of two legs including the feet. There were also two heads, one of which was wrapped in a pair of child�
��s rompers. These were the immediate discoveries but, as the police extended their searches, further portions of bodies were retrieved. Nearly a month later, a foot was found at a point nine miles distant from the original discoveries and, later still, on 4 November, a right forearm and hand wrapped in newspaper were discovered.

  Among the remains were portions of various newspapers including part of the Sunday Graphic, dated 15 September 1935. This was to prove particularly significant as it was a special ‘slip’ edition of the paper published only in the Lancaster district. Consequently, the attention of the police was immediately directed towards Lancaster and, at the same time, it became known that a Scottish newspaper had reported as missing a Lancaster woman who had disappeared three weeks previously. She was Mary Jane Rogerson, employed as nursemaid in the household of Dr Buck Ruxton who had a medical practice at Lancaster. Rogerson’s disappearance had been notified to the police and it seemed a sinister coincidence that the doctor’s wife was reported as having left him. Officers contacted Mary Rogerson’s stepmother who identified the blouse that had been used to wrap some of the human remains. The garment had a patch under one arm which she had sewn in place for her stepdaughter.

  Attention turned to Dr Buck Ruxton, an Indian born in Bombay who had Anglicised his name. He had gained his medical qualifications in India and London and had spent time in the Indian Medical Service. He met his future wife in 1927 and they lived together in London. Although her former marriage was dissolved, she and Ruxton never married. The couple moved to Lancaster in 1930, where he established himself in medical practice at 2 Dalton Square.

  Dr Ruxton, it appeared, had asked the Lancaster Borough Police several times for their help in finding his wife. He expressed annoyance at veiled suggestions which he believed were being made in the press connecting the discovery of human remains in Dumfriesshire with her disappearance. ‘This publicity,’ he informed the Chief Constable, ‘is ruining my practice.’ He seemed distressed at times, tearfully enquiring if it was not possible to publish a denial that there was any connection between the two occurrences in order to ‘stop all this trouble’. Ruxton was arrested on 13 October and charged with the murder of Mary Rogerson, an accusation which he vigorously denied. After several remands, he was also charged with murdering his wife, Isabella.

  John Glaister had already been called in to examine the remains of what appeared to be two bodies. After Ruxton’s arrest, he visited the house at Dalton Square, Lancaster, with his colleague Dr Gilbert Martin and arranged for a number of articles including pieces of the house itself to be taken to the forensic laboratories at Glasgow for detailed examination. Particular attention was paid to the bathroom, wherein it might be supposed that the bodies had been dismembered for subsequent disposal. Glaister was nothing if not thorough; Item 7 was labelled ‘bathroom door’, Item 9a, ‘linoleum, bathroom floor’, Item 23a, ‘bath and fittings entire’, Item 75, ‘trap from waste pipe and bath’. The bathroom at 2 Dalton Square was virtually dismantled in its entirety and removed to his laboratory.

  While Glaister and his team were looking for evidence of blood traces on the artefacts taken from Ruxton’s home, his colleague at Edinburgh University, Professor James Couper Brash, was attempting to reconstruct the bodies, of which the various remains had once been part. Brash was an anatomist and, from the start, Glaister had been convinced that specialist skills would be required to solve this unusual case. Two large, coffin-like boxes had been constructed at Glaister’s instructions to convey the remains from the scene of discovery. The boxes were labelled ‘Body No. 1’ and ‘Body No. 2’ and their contents allocated on the basis of the best decisions that could be made on the spot. Of the two likely destinations, Edinburgh or Glasgow, the former was geographically closest and it was there that the grim freight was taken in a police van.

  Brash found that Head No. 1 had four complete cervical vertebrae attached to it, while Head No. 2 had five vertebrae attached. The upper portion of trunk found among the remains included two cervical vertebrae so that, on the logic that the body normally had seven cervical vertebrae, he assigned the trunk to Head No. 2. The two sections of spinal column fitted well together and their matching characteristics were confirmed by X-ray. The vertebrae attached to Head No. 1 were generally smaller than those on Head No. 2 which tended to support his judgement about where the trunk belonged.

  By a painstaking process of fitting bone to bone and piece to piece in all the possible permutations, the two bodies began to take on some semblance of form. Early on, the anatomical experts had concluded that the dismemberment of the bodies had been carried out by someone with medical and anatomical knowledge. The bodies had been cleanly disarticulated at the joints; there was little damage and no evidence that a saw had been used. The sole instrument used in the dismemberment was a knife.

  The nature of some of the mutilation confirmed the use of medical knowledge. An illustration of this was the removal of the larynx from the head of Body No. 2. The size of the larynx is a means of determining the sex of an otherwise unidentified corpse as this structure in the neck is usually a third larger in the male. It was apparent that the person who carried out the dismemberment was using medical knowledge to destroy those parts of his victims’ bodies which might aid their eventual identification.

  The doctors had agreed at an early stage in their examination that both bodies were female. This was an important point of confirmation for the police in pursuing their case against Dr Ruxton. The final reconstruction of the bodies indicated that Body No. 1 was a woman aged between eighteen and twenty-five years, weighing about 105lb with a height of less than five feet. Body No. 2 was a woman aged between thirty-five and forty-five years, weighing between 126lb and 140lb and with a height of a little less than five feet five inches. These characteristics broadly matched those of the two missing women; Mary Rogerson was aged twenty and Isabella Ruxton, thirty-four years.

  Vital though this reconstruction work was, it still fell short of providing positive identification. So the work of medical detection proceeded and the murderer’s cunning became ever more apparent. For example, there was a piece of skin missing from the right forearm of Body No. 1 in a position where it was known Rogerson had a distinctive birthmark. Similarly, Body No. 2 had tissue missing from the big toe on the left foot where Mrs Ruxton had a bunion. Casts were made of the feet of the two bodies and tried for size in the shoes of the missing women – they fitted in both cases. Vaccination marks and dental histories were also checked, along with any other individual characteristics that would help to build up the bigger picture.

  Fingerprint examination was an obvious means of identification but the mutilated condition of the bodies made this nearly impossible. The fingertips had been completely severed from the hands of Body No. 2, although there was a left hand for Body No. 1. By scouring the house at Dalton Square over an eleven-day period, detectives found matching prints. A number of right hand fingerprint impressions were also found but proved valueless for several weeks until the right hand of Body No. 1 was located by the search team still working in and around the original discovery site. Although badly decomposed and having shed the outer layer of skin, it proved possible to visualise fingerprint impressions on the under layer of skin, or dermis, by means of photography. A perfect match was thus obtained with a thumbprint found at Dalton Square. Glasgow detectives had their work corroborated by the FBI in Washington DC and, thus, were able to satisfy themselves and, ultimately, the court, that Body No. 1 was Mary Rogerson who at one time had lived in the Ruxton household at Lancaster.

  There remained the questions posed by the two heads. While photographs existed of both women, no comparison of skull and portrait had been attempted before in a criminal investigation. Undaunted, Glaister had a life-size print made from the negative still in the portrait photographer’s possession. In the original photograph, Isabella Ruxton had been pictured wearing a tiara and a diamante-trimmed evening dress. These articles, which were still ava
ilable, were used to ensure that the life-size print was true both optically and geometrically. Next, life-size negatives of the skull of Head No. 2 were superimposed on the portrait. The outcome was a stunning match between the two, although John Glaister’s conclusion was typically restrained; ‘The result convinced us,’ he wrote, ‘that skull No. 2 could have been that of Mrs Ruxton, but not of Mary Rogerson.’

  Applying this technique to Mary Rogerson proved more difficult, mainly due to the lack of a good portrait photograph. There were two snapshots of her, one of which pictured her against a backdrop of an iron gate in a low brick wall. Ascertaining that the location was outside a house in Morecambe, Glaister urged the police to find it and arrange for it to be photographed. His wishes were duly carried out, thereby making it possible to enlarge the young woman’s head in the snapshot to life size. The results of superimposing the negative of skull No. 1 on the portrait photograph were less impressive than in the case of Mrs Ruxton but nevertheless showed a close comparison. As Glaister put it, ‘We could not say that the skulls were positively those of the dead women. But the probability had been established.’

  As the various aspects of the investigation proceeded, there was much toing and froing between Glasgow and Edinburgh. John Glaister noted that the Lancaster police officers at Dalton Square had ‘blinked’ when he told them he wanted to move whole parts of the house to Glasgow. Because of the intense public curiosity in the case, the blinds of the house were kept drawn so that the investigators could at least work in privacy. The disadvantage of this, as daylight faded, was that at times they were practically working in the dark. This resulted in at least one amusing interlude when a detective working in the house for the first time appeared in a state of panic convinced that he had found a body. While groping in the dark for a light switch in the drawing room his hand had touched the cold features of a marble bust which was part of the furnishings of the room.