Medical Detectives

by Robin Odell

  Dr Adams had the good fortune to be left legacies by many of his grateful patients. A thousand pounds here, a few hundred there, enabling him to live comfortably, looked after by a housekeeper and employing a chauffeur. Undercurrents of gossip had begun to circulate in 1935 when a patient died and left him £3,000. A drip-feed of innuendo and knowing looks persisted for the next twenty years. Matters came to a head in July 1956 following the death of fifty-year-old Gertrude Hullett. She had been treated by Dr Adams, who prescribed barbiturate sleeping pills. The doctor drew suspicion to himself by writing to the coroner about what he termed a ‘very peculiar case’, and seeking to make arrangements for a private post-mortem for his patient, who was not yet dead. The coroner was surprised and, no doubt, shocked when he learned later that Adams had been left money and a Rolls-Royce by Mrs Hullett.

  The lady died on 23 July and Dr Adams certified death as due to cerebral haemorrhage. A post-mortem was ordered and Francis Camps found that Mrs Hullett had taken a fatal dose of barbiturates, amounting to 115 grains. The coroner’s inquest returned a verdict of suicide and Dr Adams came in for some sharp criticism from the coroner who reprimanded him for ‘careless treatment’. The press seized on the suspicions building up around the Eastbourne doctor and all but accused him of murder. Deaths of his patients over the preceding twenty years were brought into view and speculation was rife. The police had been carrying out enquiries and taken an interest in the death in 1950 of eighty-one-year-old Edith Morrell. Dr Adams had been treating her for arthritis with heroin and morphine to relieve the pain. In her gratitude, she bequeathed her car and some silver cutlery to her doctor. When he was informed of the public interest in Mrs Morrell’s death, Dr Adams said, ‘Easing the passing of a dying patient is not all that wicked. She wanted to die. That cannot be murder.’ On 19 December 1956, Dr Adams was arrested and charged with murdering Edith Morrell.

  The police had applied for exhumation orders in respect of two former patients who had died while under the doctor’s care. He sought help from the Medical Defence Union who asked Dr Keith Simpson to maintain a watching brief as far as the exhumations were concerned. In the event, only one body offered any prospect of a useful autopsy and Camps and Simpson agreed that cerebral thrombosis was the cause of death which confirmed what Dr Adams had recorded at the time. From the investigators’ point of view, it was a pity that the murder charge was brought in connection with Mrs Morrell’s death. The fact that she had been cremated made the prosecution’s task more difficult. Crucial evidence at Dr Adams’s trial at the Old Bailey was given by the nurses who had attended the old lady. Their recollections of what had taken place six years previously appeared to be at variance with notes made in the nursing logbooks.

  The outcome of the trial was generally regarded as a triumph for Geoffrey Lawrence QC who exploited weaknesses in the prosecution’s case. His ruthless cross-examination of Dr Arthur Douthwaite, a colleague of Keith Simpson’s at Guy’s, was pivotal to the proceedings. The doctor said there was no justification for administering barbiturates to patients following a stroke and his evidence unequivocally pointed the finger at Dr Adams whose intention in prescribing drugs for Mrs Morrell was ‘to terminate her life’. But counsel was able to show from her medical records that four doctors had seen her on different occasions and all had prescribed morphia. He also pointed out that Dr Adams had made fewer visits to his patient and administered less morphia than was supposed. Keith Simpson’s view was that ‘subtle pressure’ had been put on Dr Douthwaite to give his testimony against Adams, who declined to take the witness stand. This meant that evidence relating to patients other than Mrs Morrell was not permitted. Hence it was not possible for the nurse in attendance on one of them to repeat what she had said at the time: ‘You realise, Doctor, that you have killed her.’

  Francis Camps was called to give evidence on the thirteenth day of what, at that time, was the longest murder trial conducted in Britain. He was asked by the Attorney-General, Sir Reginald Manningham-Buller, to deal with questions related to cremation and the role of a second doctor or medical referee. The pathologist outlined the procedure which required two doctors to sign a form authorising cremation. He said that where the deceased had expressed a wish to be cremated, it had become the practice to carry out a post-mortem because, as he very succinctly phrased it, ‘cremation is the final act’. Asked about the feelings relatives might have regarding the need for post-mortems, Camps gave a careful reply to the effect that in circumstances where relatives might prefer burial in full knowledge that a deceased person had made a bequest in favour of the attending doctor, the medical referee, or second doctor, would automatically notify the coroner. His comments would have resonance forty years later when another medical practitioner, Dr Harold Shipman, was tried for murder.

  On 10 April 1957, Dr Adams was found not guilty. He resigned from the National Health Service, although he continued to live in Eastbourne. He was struck off the Medical Register and there was public disquiet when the Director of Public Prosecutions declined to proceed against the doctor with other accusations of murder. Many believed that Adams murdered for gain, while other, more charitable commentators, suggested he simply practised euthanasia. The doctor regained his medical registration in 1961 and resumed his practice in Eastbourne where he died, aged eighty-four, in 1983.

  Dr Adams certainly benefited from his years of medical practice. At the time of his death, his estate was valued at over £400,000 and he earned £10,000 from a national newspaper for his life story. A sale of his possessions raised £12,000 and the doctor’s medical bag bearing his initials went for £92. Unusually in a murder case, the trial judge, Patrick Devlin, wrote a book about it, called Easing the Passing, published in 1985. He retired early, reportedly because he found his work tedious, and died in 1992.

  Francis Camps had been appointed Reader in Forensic Medicine at the London Hospital in 1954 and two years later collaborated with his friend, Bentley Purchase, to produce a textbook, Practical Forensic Medicine. Described as ‘the most famous coroner of his day’, Purchase began his career in the late 1950s and shared Camps’s no nonsense approach to their work. This joint effort was the first indication of their determination to put forensic investigation on the map and was a springboard for greater things to come.

  According to his biographer, Robert Jackson, Camps was not a particularly effective lecturer. He tended to be over-enthusiastic and was easily blown off course by minor diversions. He did, though, have what observers described as a wicked sense of humour and was not always popular with his students. On one occasion in 1963 when he spoke to undergraduate members of the Chemical Society at Southampton University, it was apparent that he had not prepared too well. He brought with him a hastily assembled collection of projection slides which he used as prompts for a rambling account of practical forensic medicine. Unsurprisingly, many of his illustrations were of partially dissected or decomposing corpses on the mortuary table. This had a startling effect on some unsuspecting members of his audience who fainted in their seats or made a dash for the exit. Calls were put out to the St John’s Ambulance for assistance. While he was, possibly, not the most gifted of lecturers, Francis Camps compensated with his organisational and writing skills.

  Meanwhile, routine forensic investigations proceeded apace and he frequently found himself in opposition to Keith Simpson. This was so in a case which captured headlines in July 1955 with the death of five-month-old Terence, the son of John and Janet Armstrong. It was supposed that the boy had eaten poisonous berries from the garden given to him innocently by his three-year-old sister who had also eaten some. She was sick but otherwise not ill.

  A post-mortem carried out on Terence showed the presence in his stomach and trachea of red skins, presumed to be remnants of the berries. The doctor was not able to give a cause of death and the inquest into the boy’s death was opened and then adjourned. The parents were interviewed by the police and officers were surprised by the apparent lack
of grief. Twenty-five-year-old John Armstrong, a Navy Sick Bay Attendant at the Royal Naval Hospital at Haslar in Portsmouth, lived with his twenty-year-old wife, Janet, and their two young children at Gosport. Detectives had their suspicions that the cause of death was not the berries and arranged for the skins retrieved from the child’s body to be sent to Scotland Yard’s Forensic Laboratory. Tests showed that there was a significant quantity of the drug, Seconal, in the sample. The supposed red berry skins were in fact the gelatine coating of Seconal capsules. Dr Lewis Nickolls, chief scientist at the laboratory, estimated the child had consumed about five Seconal capsules. The drug was a powerful barbiturate normally prescribed to assist sleeping.

  The Armstrong family now came under scrutiny and it was discovered that the couple’s first son had died in 1954 from broncho-pneumonia. Their home at Gosport was searched with no suspicious consequences. Meanwhile, authority had been given for Terence Armstrong’s body to be exhumed. Keith Simpson conducted the post-mortem examination and concluded that the boy had died of a massive overdose of Seconal. Detectives checking on John Armstrong and his duties at Haslar Naval Hospital found that a cupboard containing dangerous drugs had been broken into several months previously and, among the items missing, were Seconal capsules.

  On 1 September 1956, over a year after Terence Armstrong’s death, his parents were arrested and charged with murder. By this time, Mr and Mrs Armstrong had separated and Janet admitted there was Seconal in the house which her husband took to help him sleep. On his instructions she had disposed of the remaining capsules. The Armstrongs were committed for trial at Winchester when Norman Skelhorn, a future Director of Public Prosecutions, appeared on behalf of Janet, and Francis Camps was retained to assist the defence.

  John Armstrong denied all knowledge of how his son was poisoned. Janet said that he had the opportunity when he returned home for lunch on the fatal day, to be alone with his son. She also confirmed that there had been Seconal in the house. Each party blamed the other in a ‘cut-throat’ defence. The jury found John Armstrong guilty while Janet was acquitted. The death sentence imposed on John was reduced to life imprisonment and, a month after the trial concluded, his wife admitted, via the pages of a Sunday newspaper, that she had given her son one capsule of Seconal to help him sleep. In his autobiography, Keith Simpson recorded his pleasure at not being ‘bested by Camps’, as he put it, and recorded that three years later, ‘the boot was on the other foot’ when he assisted in the defence of Sergeant Marcus Marymont, and Camps helped the prosecution. Simpson, at least, appeared to relish his adversarial contests with Francis Camps.

  Two cases involving poisonous elements – phosphorus in one, and arsenic in the other – commanded Camps’s involvement in 1958. While arsenic had, for centuries, been a favourite lethal agent used by poisoners, phosphorus poisoning is relatively uncommon. Mary Wilson lived in County Durham in the delightfully named district of Windy Nook. Four men in her life who she took as either husbands or lovers died in suspicious circumstances and earned her the title of ‘The Poisoner of Windy Nook’. Sixty-six-year-old Mary was an unprepossessing woman with red hair and, from all accounts, a person with a mean streak. She also harboured a passion for romance. Her early life was spent in service to a family in the industrial north east of England. She married the son of her employers and, when he died, she switched her attentions to the man who lodged at the house. He also died soon afterwards. Few questions were asked about the deaths of two elderly men in the same house and the local doctor believed they had both died of natural causes.

  In 1957, Mary met Oliver James Leonard, an elderly retired estate agent of modest means, who lived in lodgings. They married in September but Leonard fell ill with a severe cold and died two weeks later. He had consulted a doctor because he was feeling unwell and a death certificate was issued as a matter of course. Mary Wilson benefited from her late husband’s estate to the tune of £50, which was all the money he possessed. Her next move was to respond to an elderly retired engineer who was looking for a housekeeper. She went to live with him and they were soon married. Ernest Wilson, Mary’s new husband, became ill through eating liver, or so she said when she sent for the doctor. The next day, two weeks after they had married, Ernest died. Death was certified as due to heart failure.

  Far from playing the role of a grieving widow, Mary indulged in black humour, suggesting to the undertaker that he quote her a wholesale price for a coffin. As rumours began to circulate, she told acquaintances, ‘I didn’t mean to kill them. They were dead already.’ This was presumably a reference to the fact that they were all elderly men. By raising the stakes against herself with unwise utterances, Mary Wilson soon found herself talking to the police. As in the case of Dr Bodkin Adams, the circulation of rumours can be the springboard for enquiries in cases of suspected poisoning.

  The bodies of Oliver Leonard and Ernest Wilson were exhumed and post-mortems showed that their deaths were certainly not due to natural causes. In both instances, lethal quantities of phosphorus were found. It was noted that Mary Wilson had attempted to deflect suspicion from herself by asking doctors to examine her husbands prior to their deaths. The suggestion was that phosphorus, probably in the form of powdered beetle killer, had been administered in doses of cough mixture.

  Mary Wilson was sent for trial at Leeds Assizes and Francis Camps was briefed for the defence. Supported by four expert witnesses, the prosecution’s case was that both husbands had died of first-stage phosphorus poisoning. The amounts of poison found at post-mortem indicated that relatively large doses were involved. Defence counsel, Rose Heilbron QC, introduced what she described as a novel diversion when she suggested that Mary Wilson’s husbands might have taken aphrodisiac pills containing phosphorus. Such a sexual stimulant was apparently available over the counter for public use. This suggestion inevitably produced laughter in court but the prosecution countered it by saying each of the victims would have had to consume 150 such pills to account for the levels of phosphorus found in their bodies.

  The evidence given by Francis Camps was not based on having examined the victims but on his understanding of the medical reports. Whereas the prosecution experts had theoretical knowledge of phosphorus poisoning, Camps had direct experience. He was extremely circumspect in the opinions he gave, to the extent that his biographer wondered whether it was worthwhile for him to have travelled north. Asked if he would give a cause of death, the pathologist said he believed the post-mortem findings were contradictory and he pointed out the absence of microscopical evidence. On that basis be declined to give an opinion, saying simply, that cause of death was ‘unascertainable’. His reasoning was that other possible causes had not been eliminated. On the face of it, his views seemed to be critical of the experts aiding the prosecution. He also strongly made the point that no autopsy in any case of poisoning could be considered complete without full pathological examination of the relevant adjoining organs.

  Francis Camps’s careful perspective of phosphorus poisoning did not particularly help the defence and Mary Wilson was found guilty of murder. She was sentenced to death but secured a reprieve, as noted in A Calendar of Murder, ‘… presumably because she was an old woman’. The ‘Poisoner of Windy Nook’, who murdered four times for the modest gain of £200, was sentenced to life imprisonment. She died in prison at the age of seventy. Her tally of victims increased as the result of inquests held on the two men she had lived with earlier in her life. In both cases, phosphorus poisoning was recorded. As a footnote, it is worth mentioning Sir Sydney Smith’s comment about phosphorus poisoning which he said declined with the demise of yellow-tipped matches.

  The trial of the ‘Poisoner of Windy Nook’ highlighted some of the deficiencies in the system of presenting forensic evidence in court. Camps was already resolved through his teaching programme at the London Hospital to raise standards, and in 1958 took a huge step forward by setting up the British Academy of Forensic Sciences (BAFS). He did this in association wi
th his friend, the solicitor Sir David Napley. In his memoir, Not Without Prejudice, Napley described their objective which was to overcome the virtual absence of ‘any knowledge of forensic medicine among lawyers and an inadequate level of knowledge among the medical profession’. Francis Camps had been influenced by the work of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences which he had seen at first hand during his visits to the USA. To add to his already busy schedule, he now became Secretary of BAFS.

  In the summer of 1958, Camps was able to indulge his inclination for experimentation in a case of arsenic poisoning. Not for the first time he found himself dealing with the misdemeanours of a serviceman with the rank of Sergeant. Thirty-seven-year-old Master Sergeant Marcus Marymont of the United States Air Force, was based at Sculthorpe in Norfolk, an airfield from which secret reconnaissance flights operated during the Cold War. Marymont lived in married quarters with his wife, Mary Helen, and their three children. They had been in Britain for over two years. The marriage had run into difficulties and Marymont became increasingly attracted by the nightlife of London. He spent a large proportion of his off-duty time away from home, while Mary Helen was left on her own, believing her husband’s absence was due to assignment on temporary duties. In July 1956, at a pub near Maidenhead, the Master Sergeant met twenty-year-old Cynthia Taylor who had separated from her husband after four months of marriage. They danced and were attracted to each other.