Serial Killer Doctors

by Patrick Turner

  3 in 1 True Crime Compendium

  SERIAL KILLER DOCTORS

  Patrick Turner

  Epitome of Evil

  Oxford Publishing Ventures Ltd

  SERIAL KILLER DOCTORS

  1 THE ‘LAMBETH POISONER’ -Dr Thomas Neill Cream

  2 JOHN BODKIN ADAMS

  3 HAROLD SHIPMAN

  Epitome of Evil

  1

  THE ‘LAMBETH POISONER’

  Dr Thomas Neill Cream

  As he stood on the trapdoor in Newgate Prison on November 16, 1892, the noose around his neck, Dr Thomas Neill Cream began to speak. ‘I am Jack…’ he started to say, but before he could finish the sentence, the trapdoor opened and he fell through it, leaving the sentence hanging in mid-air, in much the same way as he now was. It was tantalizing. Was he going to say, ‘I am Jack the Ripper’ and finally put an end to the greatest of all criminal mysteries? The killer of five prostitutes in the Whitechapel area of London in 1888 and the man dubbed the Lambeth Poisoner had, after all, several things in common. They both wanted to purge the streets of ladies of the night and they were both heartless killers.

  Cream, however, was serving time for murder in Joliet Prison in the American state of Illinois while the Ripper was conducting his deadly rampage. Or was he? Some sources suggest that he bribed his way out of prison earlier than the stated date. Others claim that he had a double who had taken his place in prison. There was a precedent for this because Sir Edward Marshall Hall, one of the most famous barristers in British legal history, claimed that he had once successfully defended Cream against a charge of bribery by claiming that at the time the offence was committed he was actually in prison in Sydney, Australia. The governor of the jail there confirmed to the court that a man fitting Cream’s description had been imprisoned there at the time, this, despite the fact that Cream had never set foot in Australia. Had it been the mysterious doppelganger the governor was describing? We will never know.

  The enigma that was Thomas Neill Cream was born in Glasgow in 1850 but four years later, his parents emigrated to Canada. His father worked in shipbuilding and the family became prosperous enough to send their son to Montreal’s McGill College to study to be a doctor. He qualified in 1876.

  After graduating, however, he became an abortionist, a trade that although illegal, was very lucrative. At the time, he was in a relationship with a woman named Flora Brooks whom he made pregnant and then almost killed while performing an abortion of his own baby. When Flora’s father heard about it, he forced Cream at gunpoint to marry his daughter. The following day, Cream left Canada and his new young wife behind, sailing to London to continue his medical studies and financing them through further work as an abortionist. He registered at St Thomas’s Hospital but six months later, failed the exams to gain entry to the Royal College of Physicians Surgeons in Edinburgh, obtaining, instead, a licence in midwifery.

  After a year in Britain, Cream returned to Canada where he learned that his wife had died, ostensibly of consumption, but she had been taking medicine that he had been sending from Edinburgh and it is possible that it was this that killed her. He practiced as a doctor in London, Ontario, but carried on his sideline as an abortionist. In 1879, however, he found himself in serious trouble when a young woman named Kate Gardener was found dead in an alley behind his surgery. Kate was pregnant and had been poisoned by an overdose of chloroform.

  Cream, a prime suspect in her death, decided to flee to the United States where he passed the Illinois Board of Health exam, setting up shop in Chicago, tantalizingly close to the city’s red light district which, he presumed, would provide him with plenty of opportunity to demonstrate his skill as an abortionist. In 1888, however, he was investigated in connection with the death of Mary Anne Faulkner whose baby he had aborted. He was lucky; he was not prosecuted due to lack of evidence.

  Further problems arose with the deaths of two of Cream’s legitimate patients. One of them was a spinster who had been prescribed medicine by Cream. The other was a railway worker, Daniel Stott who was being treated by Cream for epilepsy while Cream was having an affair with Stott’s wife. Stott’s death was attributed to natural causes, but following his burial, Cream bizarrely wrote to the coroner stating that he believed the pharmacist had put too much strychnine in the pills he had prescribed to the dead man. Stott was exhumed and, indeed, a large amount of strychnine was discovered in his body. Fearing arrest, Cream fled to Canada but when Mrs Stott turned state’s evidence and placed the blame firmly on her lover, he was arrested and taken back to Chicago. He was found guilty and jailed for life.

  Ten years later, he walked through the gates of Joliet Prison, a free man. His brother had pleaded for leniency on his behalf and had backed that up with judiciously placed bribes. But Cream’s life in prison and consumption of drugs had taken its toll on him and, with his thinning hair and watery, yellow eyes he looked far older than his years. But his father had died, leaving him a sizable inheritance and he decided to use it to make a fresh start. He briefly returned to Canada before setting sail for England where, from his home at 103 Lambeth Palace Road, he launched his career as a poisoner of prostitutes. Masquerading now as Dr Neill and claiming to work at St Thomas’s Hospital, he was a regular user of working girls, sometimes visiting three in one night in an effort to satisfy his insatiable sex drive. He often gave pills to the girls with whom he had slept, ostensibly to clear acne, but actually laced with strychnine that would lead to an agonizing death.

  Poisonous chemicals were comparatively easy to obtain in Victorian times. Cream got his strychnine from a chemist on Parliament Street and the only legal requirement was a signature on a register. He had told the chemist that he was a doctor from out of town who was attending a series of lectures at St Thomas’s and had purchased the strychnine in the form of nux vomica in the first week of October 1891.

  On October 13, 1891, 19 year-old prostitute, Ellen ‘Nelly’ Donworth, was found in dreadful agony in Waterloo Road. The daughter of a labourer, Nelly had taken to the streets rather than earn a hard living as a bottle-capper in Vauxhall. That night she told a friend that she was meeting a man and she was seen later emerging from a pub with a man, presumed to be the one she had planned to meet. Later still, a friend found her in Morpeth Place, apparently drunk and incapable. The friend took her back to her digs, but by that time she was writhing in agony. Between terrible convulsions of pain she gasped that she had been given a bottle containing white fluid to drink by a tall man with a squint, bushy whiskers and gold-rimmed spectacles. She was rushed to nearby St Thomas’s but was dead on arrival. It was discovered that she had been poisoned with strychnine.

  A week later, on October 20, 26 year-old prostitute, Matilda Clover, was found in terrible pain in her lodgings in Lambeth Road where she lived with her 2 year-old son. Following her lover’s abandonment of her and his son, she had descended into alcoholism, taking to the streets to earn a living. Ten days previously, she had gone out to meet a man named ‘Fred’ outside the Canterbury Theatre. At around nine, she brought the man back to her room and he left shortly after. In the middle of the night ten days later, Matilda’s neighbours were awoken by terrible screams coming from her room where she was discovered in agony and unable to breathe. A few hours later, she was dead. She had swallowed some pills, she had gasped shortly before her death, given to her by ‘Fred’ to cure her acne.

  ‘Fred’ had, of course, been Cream who had been watched by two other prostitutes as he picked Matilda up the previous week. They would later identify him as ‘Fred’ during his trial. Matilda’s death was, however, ascribed to ‘Natural Causes’ by the doctor who signed her death certificate. He claimed that she had mixed alcohol with a sedative that
he had prescribed to her. No one worried too much about how prostitutes met their maker in those days.

  As he had done in Canada, Cream launched an odd correspondence about the murders. Using pseudonyms, he wrote letters to Lord Russell and a Dr William Broadbent in which he accused them of committing the murders and in which he demanded money for his silence. Dr Broadbent immediately took his letter to the police but when they waited for the blackmailer to come and collect his money, no one turned up.

  Cream followed up these letters with one to the coroner who was working on the Ellen Donworth case in which he claimed to possess vital information. He demanded £300,000 for it but investigators put it down to the work of a madman and filed it.

  Cream was by now in a relationship with a Hertfordshire woman, Laura Sabbatini but was required to go back to Canada so that his father’s property could be divided up amongst the family. He remained there for four months and on his return in April 1892, became engaged to Miss Sabbatini.

  But his engagement did not deter him from his nighttime pursuits in the dark streets of London’s less salubrious neighbourhoods. One night, he encountered Louise ‘Lou’ Harvey who worked the streets around Piccadilly. She did not believe his story that he was a doctor visiting from America but she spent the night with him, nonetheless. They agreed to meet again that night at Charing Cross.

  Walking along the Embankment beside the Thames, Cream handed her a couple of pills and told her to swallow them. A cautious woman, Lou pretended to put the pills in her mouth, managing to toss them surreptitiously into the river when her companion briefly looked away. Cream made his excuses, saying that he had an appointment at the hospital, but arranged to meet her later, believing that she would, of course, be dead by then.

  Cream resolved to kill two women in one night and after enjoying a three-in-a-bed romp with 18 year-old Emma Shrivell and 21 year-old Alice Marsh on April 11 in a dingy room in Stamford Street, he paid them, gave them each pills for their complexion and vanished into the night. Several hours later, the girls were dying, gasping that they had swallowed pills given to them by a man named ‘Fred’.

  The newspapers went into overdrive, headlines screaming about the so-called ‘Lambeth Poisoner’ and going into lurid details about the murders and the victims. They wondered if Jack the Ripper had returned with a different modus operandi. Meanwhile, the police searched for ‘Fred’ but made little progress.

  Cream now became the architect of his own demise, writing a bizarre letter to a Dr Harper in which he accused his son, Walter, of murdering the two prostitutes and demanded £1,500 for his silence. Harper took the letter to the police who compared the handwriting with one that Cream had given them, purportedly warning Alice Marsh and Emma Shrivell against Dr Harper who, he claimed, had also killed Matilda Clover and Lou Harvey – he still did not know that Lou had survived. Cream’s mistake was to say that Matilda Clover had been murdered, because it had been stated that she had died of natural causes related to her alcoholism and not murder. Furthermore, the two prostitutes who had seen him with Matilda had come forward and were prepared to identify him.

  Thomas Neill Cream was arrested on June 3 and charged with murder.

  Police were baffled by the mention in the letter to the two dead prostitutes, Alice Marsh and Emma Shrivell, of the murder of Lou Harvey. They had no record of anyone by that name having been murdered. Eventually, they found Lou Harvey in Brighton and her story became another vital piece of the evidence that would finally send Cream to the gallows.

  At his trial that began on October 17, he was unable to provide any kind of defence against the overwhelming body of evidence that was stacked up against him. Four days later, the jury took a mere twelve minutes to find him guilty and he was sentenced to die on the gallows.

  2

  John Bodkin Adams

  The headlines were hysterical. ‘Murder Trial of the Century’, they screamed and there were whispers of drugs, homosexuality and government interference. In the dock stood Dr John Bodkin Adams, probably the wealthiest GP in Britain, who had ministered to many notable people including MP and Olympic gold medalist, Lord Burghley, society painter, Oswald Birley, Admiral Robert Prendergast, industrialist, Sir Alexander Maguire and the 10th Duke of Devonshire, amongst others. The prosecution was led by the Attorney-General, Sir Reginald Manningham-Buller, as was the custom in cases of murder by poisoning, and Geoffrey Lawrence QC, one of the most skillful advocates of his day, was acting for the defence. Adams had lost a great many of his patients in suspicious circumstances and benefitted from many of their wills. Was he ‘easing their passing’, as he euphemistically described it, or was it cold-blooded murder? The debate rages to this day.

  The trial began in late March 1957 and Adams was charged with the murder of Edith Alice Morrell. Mrs Morrell was a wealthy 81 year-old widow who had a stroke on June 24, 1948. Partially paralyzed, she was admitted to hospital and two days later was visited by her GP, John Bodkin Adams. He prescribed morphine to her, instructing it be used as necessary, and nine days later took her back to Eastbourne where she lived and he practised.

  On July 9, Adams increased the morphine dosage and added heroin to help Mrs Morrell sleep. The doses increased, but he called a halt to them on November 1, 1950. He then re-instated the doses on November 6. They continued in varying dosages until November 12 when he added Paraldehyde to stop involuntary jerks from which she was suffering. Paraldehyde also acted as a depressant of the lungs and given that heroin does the same thing, it was a dangerous drug to add to her pharmaceutical cocktail.

  In the ten and a half months leading up to Mrs Morrell’s death, Adams gave her a total of 1,629½ grains of barbiturates; 1,928 grains of Sedormid; 16411⁄12 grains of morphine and 139½ grains of heroin. Between November 7 and 12, 1949 alone, according to prescriptions, she was given 40½ grains of morphine (2624 mg) and 39 grains of heroin (2527 mg). The prosecution alleged that this would more than likely have been enough to kill her in itself, despite any tolerance that her body may have developed during the period of her illness.

  She finally died on November 13 and on her death certificate Adams ascribed her death to a stroke. He organized for her to be cremated that same day, acknowledging on the form that he had no financial interest in the death of the deceased. Importantly, this meant that there would be no necessity for a post-mortem.

  It actually transpired that Edith Morrell had left several wills. In some of them, Adams was mentioned while his name was absent from others. Eventually, he was cut out of her will but still received her Rolls Royce, a Jacobean court cupboard and an antique chest containing silver cutlery worth £276.

  He sent a bill for 1,100 visits to the law firm administrating her estate. This amounted to £1,674, although it was later estimated by investigators that he had actually only visited her 321 times.

  The case of Edith Morrell only emerged after police had investigated the death of another of Adams’ patients. Gertrude ‘Bobby’ Hullett was a wealthy 50 year-old widow whose husband Jack had died four months previously. She had become depressed after her husband’s death and had told Adams several times that she could not live without her husband and would like to commit suicide. On July 17, 1956, Mrs Hullett wrote Adams a cheque for £1,000 to pay for an MG sports car that her husband had promised to buy him. Curiously, Adams asked the bank to put the cheque through a special clearance so that it would go into his account the following day, rather than following the usual process which would take until July 21.

  On July 19, another doctor – Dr Harris – was summoned when Adams was otherwise engaged, after Mrs Hullett was found in a coma. When Adams finally arrived, the two doctors discussed the possibility that she might have suffered a cerebral hemorrhage as her pupils were contracted and her breathing was shallow. However, these are also symptoms of morphine or barbiturate poisoning, but Adams neglected to mention to Dr Harris that Mrs Hullett had been suffering from depression or that he had prescribed barbiturates to her.
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  A pathologist, Dr Shera, was called in and suggested they should examine the contents of Mrs Hullett’s stomach to check for narcotics poisoning but the suggestion was ignored by both Adams and Harris. Adams, meanwhile, consulted with a doctor at the Princess Alice Hospital in Eastbourne about how to treat barbiturate poisoning. He ignored the advice he was given but took away with him some Megimide, a new antidote to barbiturate poisoning.

  On July 22, Adams telephoned the coroner to arrange a post mortem but when the coroner asked when the patient had died, Adams told him that she was not yet dead. That same day, Adams administered an injection of Megimide to his patient. Mrs Hullett developed broncho-pneumonia and at 7.23 on the morning of July 23 she died. After her death, it was discovered that she had twice the fatal dose of sodium barbitone in her body.

  As ever, Adams did well in Mrs Hullett’s will. There was another Rolls Royce to be added to the many bequests he had received over the years from his deceased patients. Emily Louise Mortimer, for instance, had died aged 75 in 1946, leaving him £1,950. In 1950, 76 year-old Amy Ware left him £1,000. On this occasion, he again lied, claiming on the cremation form that he would not benefit from her death. Later that same year, he received £200 and a clock from the estate of 89 year-old Annabelle Kilgour. She had fallen into a coma and died shortly after he had started her on a course of sedatives.

  In 1952, 85 year-old Julia Bradnum left him £661. He had thoughtfully gone to the bank with her to help her change her will. She had appeared fit and well the day before she died but after an injection from Adams the following day after she told him she felt unwell, she died. He is reported to have told her as he administered the injection, ‘it will be over in three minutes’. It was indeed, but probably not in the way she expected.