by Robin Odell
Once the interiors of parts of the rooms had been re-assembled in his forensic laboratory at Glasgow University, Glaister had all the time and light he needed to carry out his detailed examinations. His insistence on removing a large section of staircase from the house led to another amusing situation. In order to reach the top of the house, it was necessary to climb a long ladder, stretching almost vertically through three floors. Having ascended to the top with a colleague to work in one of the uppermost rooms, he found himself stranded because it proved impossible to come down without help to guide his feet onto the rungs. As the policemen who were stationed below had gone off to lunch, he had to wait for an hour and a half until they returned.
Having ready access to parts of the rooms reconstructed in his laboratory paid dividends in terms of the detailed examinations he was able to carry out. He tested numerous stains for human blood and found positive results on the stairs and in the bathroom. His report was meticulous. For example, Item No. 9a – ‘linoleum, bathroom floor’ – consisted of two portions; of his examination of the larger piece, he recorded, ‘A. There are two areas of brownish staining situated 9’ and 15’ respectively from the extreme left end facing bathroom cupboard.’ These and general scrapings were removed, labelled ‘A’, and were submitted to microscopic, chemical and spectroscopic tests for blood pigment with positive results for mammalian blood. They were further submitted to the serological test with positive result giving indication that the blood was human.’
The report signed by John Glaister and Doctors Millar and Martin confirmed that human bloodstains were present throughout the house. They were on and around the bath and hand-wash basin, on and under the bathroom linoleum, on the stairs and banisters, on the stair carpet, on a leather coat belonging to Dr Ruxton, on his wife’s corsets and even on the chamber pot in Mary Rogerson’s bedroom. Glaister acknowledged that dismembering a human body was a formidable task and he thought that, allowing for a murderer equipped with skill and the proper instruments, eight hours would have been needed to complete the job.
While the doctors had been engrossed in their examinations and tests, the police had been pursuing their side of the investigation which included an analysis of Dr Ruxton’s movements and behaviour. It appeared from entries in his diaries that he and Isabella frequently engaged in bitter arguments. There was ample evidence to indicate his jealous and sometimes violent character. He uttered threats and abuse to his wife in the presence of witnesses and had menaced her at various times with both knife and gun. On two occasions, the police were called to the house on account of his explosive behaviour. Isabella had threatened to leave him and he let it be known that she had tried to commit suicide.
Friends and relatives alike believed that Ruxton’s jealous attitude bordered on the unbalanced. In early September, a week before she disappeared, Isabella, travelling alone, visited some friends in Edinburgh. They stayed overnight at a hotel and, Ruxton, riven with jealousy, convinced himself that his wife had embarked on an assignation with one of their hosts. Consequently, he followed them in a car in order to satisfy himself on this point. The event passed and, on 14 September, Isabella drove to Blackpool to see the illuminations with her two sisters. She left to return home to Lancaster at about 11.30 p.m. This was the last time that she was seen alive.
Ruxton employed two women to carry out the menial tasks in his house. They normally worked every day of the week but on Friday 13 September the doctor told Mrs Elizabeth Curwen there was no need for her to come back to work until the following Monday. Mrs Agnes Oxley who usually worked on Sundays was informed by a message delivered by her employer to her husband, ‘not to trouble to come down this morning’. At about 9 a.m. Sunday morning, the papers were delivered to 2 Dalton Square. The ring on the front door bell summoned not a servant, as expected, but Dr Ruxton himself who appeared to be in an agitated state. Later in the morning, the milkman called and was dealt with by Ruxton and, at 11 a.m. he turned away a woman who had brought her son along by appointment for a minor operation. He explained that his wife was away and that he was busy taking up the carpets in readiness for the decorators. He invited his visitor to see how dirty his hands were. Shortly after 4.30 p.m., he went to the home of one of his patients, Mrs Mary Hampshire, and asked if she would help him prepare the house for the decorators, because he had cut his hand while opening a tin of fruit.
Mary Hampshire returned to the house with Ruxton, where she observed a strange state of affairs. The doors of the bedrooms were locked and the carpets on the stairs had been taken up and deposited in the yard at the rear of the house. One of the carpets was badly stained with blood and there was also a bloodstained shirt and towels. Ruxton explained that he had tried to burn these articles with the aid of petrol. Earlier in the day, he had called in at the local garage and bought four gallons of petrol in two containers. Mrs Hampshire swept the stairs, cleaned the bath and did some washing before returning home. By way of reward Ruxton gave her the stair carpet and a blue suit which he said had become bloodstained when he cut his hand. The next day he called on Mrs Hampshire and asked her to return the suit so that he could have it cleaned. She declined, saying that as he had been generous enough to give her the suit, the least she could do was to clean it herself. After he left empty-handed, Mary Hampshire examined the garment carefully, finding the waistcoat so heavily bloodstained that she burned it. Close examination of the stair carpet also showed it to be damp with blood. She took it out into the yard and sloshed several buckets of water over the stain in her efforts to remove it.
When Ruxton returned to Dalton Square, he found Mrs Oxley waiting. They went into the house together; she made him some coffee and helped him bandage his injured hand. He told her that his wife’s visit to Edinburgh was contrived and that she had been aided and abetted in her departure by Mary Rogerson who had asked for her wages in advance. Mrs Oxley noted that the stair carpet had been taken up and that the doors of several of the rooms were locked and the keys were not available. Mrs Hampshire called as arranged at around midday. He confided in her that he was the most unhappy man in the world and that his wife had gone away with another man, leaving him with three children to look after. Bitterly distressed he told her that he could forgive extravagance but not infidelity.
On 17 September when Mabel Smith, the charwoman, arrived at the house, she was instructed by Ruxton to start stripping the wallpaper from the staircase wall in preparation for the decorators. The doors which had previously been kept locked were now open, but the daily help was aware of an unpleasant smell in the house. Both Mrs Smith and Mrs Curwen were told to maintain fires which had been started in the yard. Papers and clothing were burned and Mrs Smith saw bloodstained cotton wool in one of the fires. Several persons passing the house late at night saw the fires still burning and one witness observed Ruxton supervising the conflagration. A day or two later, Mrs Curwen was asked by her employer to buy a spray and a bottle of eau-de-cologne, as he had noticed a stuffy smell in the house. When Mabel Smith began the task of emptying the soiled linen basket, she found a white nightdress with a large bloodstain on it. She took the garment and washed it to remove the stain.
Despite all these strange occurrences at 2 Dalton Square, Ruxton kept up a series of excuses and his servants unquestionably did his bidding; in the process, a great deal of valuable evidence was destroyed. But Ruxton maintained his pretences and, on 24 September, was busily complaining of what today would be termed police harassment. His chief complaint concerned questions asked of his servants about the death of one of his patients. All of this, of course, occurred before the discovery of the remains in Dumfriesshire. When he read a report in the Daily Express explaining that part of the remains were those of a male, he turned to Mrs Oxley and said, ‘So you see … it is a man and a woman; it is not our two.’
Ruxton’s edgy behaviour grew worse. On 10 October, he asked Mrs Hampshire about the suit he had given her. She explained that she had it upstairs; ‘Do something a
bout it’, he said. ‘Get it out of the way. Burn it.’ He was also worried about the carpets. Later on the same day, he called at the police station and complained that rumours were damaging his practice; ‘Can nothing be done to stop this talk?’ he asked. He gave the officers a description of his missing wife and also provided a photograph. The next day, he compiled a document called ‘My Movements’ which listed his comings and goings from 14 to 30 September. He made further complaints to the police about the damaging effects of the current rumours. Referring to a report in the Daily Express, which mentioned that one of the bodies had a full set of teeth in the lower jaw, he said, ‘I know of my own knowledge that Mary Rogerson has at least four teeth missing in this jaw.’ Captain Vann, the Chief Constable, might have been forgiven for thinking that the little doctor ‘protested too much’. At any rate, on 12 October, he had Ruxton arrested and placed behind bars, despite his vigorous protests of innocence.
As John Glaister put it, ‘Probabilities, possibilities and facts all woven together formed the circumstantial evidence which was the basis of the Crown case when Ruxton’s trial began.’ He appeared before Mr Justice Singleton at Manchester’s High Court of Justice on 2 March 1936. Some figures of future eminence appeared as counsel, including David Maxwell Fyfe and Hartley Shawcross for the prosecution and Norman Birkett for the defence. A worry that Glaister had was that his estimate of between ten and fourteen days as the time which had elapsed since the deaths of Mary Rogerson and Isabella Ruxton and the discovery of their bodies might be seriously challenged in court. He was mindful that, in Norman Birkett, Ruxton had the services of probably the greatest defence lawyer in the country at that time.
Among the many samples and specimens that he had collected at the scene of discovery, Glaister remembered he had obtained some maggots which lay, preserved for posterity, in specimen tubes in his laboratory. It occurred to him that these unpleasant bluebottle larvae might provide a useful indication of dates. In accordance with his usual custom, he sought expert advice by consulting an entomologist at Glasgow University. Dr Alexander Mearns, without any preamble, told him that the stage of development of the larvae showed they were between twelve and fourteen days old.
Elated with what he regarded as unchallengeable evidence, Glaister took his microscope, together with his slides and specimens to Manchester. He presented his new evidence to the Assistant Director of Public Prosecutions and Crown counsel and was amazed, and probably somewhat annoyed, that they rejected his idea of introducing it in court. What concerned the prosecution team was not the validity of Glaister’s arguments but of its impact on the jury. It was put to him that jurors who had listened to the most horrific evidence concerning the dismemberment of human bodies might weaken at the prospect of hearing about maggots. The worry was that if a juror went sick and was unable to fulfil his duties, the law as it then stood would require a new trial with a fresh jury. Glaister had to accept the combined wisdom of the prosecution lawyers, albeit reluctantly, but he reserved the right to volunteer the evidence if he found it necessary to protect his reputation.
He was called to give evidence on the seventh day of the trial, as he later described it, ‘looking out on benches crammed with a generous representation of members of the Bar, and to the curve of the gallery packed with an array of British and international pressmen’. His evidence was given over two days and his cross-examination by Norman Birkett began late on the first day. ‘This was our first encounter,’ he wrote, ‘and coming under his verbal scrutiny was an experience I’ll always remember.’ Counsel taxed him on the question of the degree of skill used to dismember the bodies. ‘In several cases,’ he said, ‘there are superficial cuts upon the surfaces of the bones. Is that not also an indication of inexpert and unskilful work?’
‘Maybe,’ replied Glaister. ‘I have often done it myself, and if I were working with haste I would not guarantee that I would not do it. It is just a very tiny injury: the superficial surface of the covering cartilage.’
‘Do these matters not indicate that the person who did this was not possessed of any degree of real skill in the matter at all?’ asked Birkett.
‘I do not honestly think I could subscribe to that view,’ replied Glaister.
Counsel also queried the bunion which Mrs Ruxton was known to have on her left foot and its alleged removal as a possible source of identification. ‘Is the condition which you found … not one which is perfectly common for millions of people, on their feet?’
‘It is by no means an uncommon condition,’ answered the witness.
‘Then all you are able to say,’ continued Birkett, ‘is that there is no evidence now of what is called bursitis, and that, in your view, there is a malformation which might be the site of a bunion in life?’
‘Very possibly: highly possible, the seat of a bunion.’
‘You will agree that with millions of people the same thing is to be found?’
‘I would not be quite so extravagant as millions,’ answered Glaister. ‘I would say in a number, of course.’
The expert witness was questioned extensively regarding the bloodstains and their interpretation. It began with the build-up of credentials to which all experts are entitled but which sometimes presages a fall. This was not to be so in Glaister’s case but he knew he had to keep his wits about him. ‘You have been a very diligent worker in that field, and done a great deal of work upon the tests for blood, and also made your contribution to medical science upon the matter for students and colleagues to work upon?’
‘Yes.’
Birkett asked him about the precipitin test and the fact that in the presence of soap it ceased to be reliable. ‘Put in words which may be familiar to you,’ he said, ‘the haze which soap brings is one of the facts which makes it difficult to be sure of the results?’
‘Yes’, answered Glaister, ‘I think that is my own wording.’
Counsel went on to mention the considerable amount of cleaning which had been carried out in Ruxton’s house using soap and, in the case of some of the carpets, considerable amounts of water. His point was that the water would have diluted the blood to a degree sufficient to invalidate the testing procedure and that soap used to clean the woodwork of the staircase would have had a similar effect. Glaister defended the reliability of his tests in the circumstances in which he had used them. Pressed by Birkett about the human protein discovered on the eyelets of the stair rod holders and whether it was distinguishable from the soap used to clean them, the witness drew on the immense detail of the investigations he had carried out. He agreed that, had the debris been taken from the surface of the eyelets, it might be similar to soap but, he added, ‘the debris was taken from the interior of the stair rod holders, and, I, personally, unscrewed these eyelets before I took scrapings.’
Questioning continued in this fashion, teasing and testing Glaister through a myriad of details of which he showed himself to be the complete master. Turning to the condition of Dr Ruxton’s suit, Birkett sought to explain the bloodstains on it by suggesting they resulted from blood splashing during minor operations such as teeth extraction. It was known that Ruxton had on occasions administered anaesthesia in dental surgery. ‘In such an operation,’ asked Birkett, ‘blood, quite naturally, might come upon the suit if it was unprotected by a white overall?’ The witness made it clear that there was no arterial spurting of blood in such an operation but he agreed there might be spitting. Counsel suggested that a patient recovering from an anaesthetic very often spits out blood and Glaister agreed. ‘And if the anaesthetist was near, he is liable to get some blood upon his coat?’
‘Yes,’ was the reply from the witness.
Birkett started to move onto weak ground when he extended his arguments. Referring to operations such as circumcision, he said that unless the doctor wore protective clothing he was liable to get spots of blood on the front of his jacket. He went on to say that it would not be possible to say whether all the stains on the jacket in question ‘came
at one and the same time’. Glaister agreed with this proposition but barely concealed his disgust at the thought; ‘I could not conceive of a practitioner,’ he said, ‘taking part in operative cases with a suit in the condition in which I saw it,’ adding, ‘it would be a potential source of infection in itself.’
John Glaister’s anxiety that he would be pursued on the question of time of death did not materialise. Consequently, the lid was kept firmly closed on his jar of bluebottle maggots. In truth, the case against Ruxton was overwhelming and the scientific evidence was meticulous to the point of perfection. After he had completed his evidence, and with the case at an end, Glaister was invited to dinner by Birkett and they talked in his rooms afterwards, well into the small hours. This was a measure of the distinction which the great defender placed on the professional reputation of the forensic pathologist. In an interview on television years later after he had retired, Birkett was asked whether he had ever defended a person charged with murder whom he knew was guilty. He referred to the Ruxton case in his reply and acknowledged the hopelessness of the defendant’s case; ‘Nobody could read, as I read,’ he said, ‘all the facts the prosecution were going to prove without feeling that, well this is a very difficult case.’
All the facts had been assembled through the cooperation of police forces on both sides of the border and by the skill of numerous medical and scientific experts. The case achieved one of John Glaister’s ambitions which was to conduct the best possible forensic effort through teamwork. The result of eleven day’s presentation of evidence in court was to convince the jury of Dr Buck Ruxton’s guilt. He was convicted and sentenced to death, the jury taking sixty-four minutes to reach its verdict.
