by Ray Black
His apartment was searched and they found antimonium, thallium and aconitine, but what was even more incriminating was the discovery of his diary, which showed him to be a cold and calculating murderer. In the diary he had described in a scientific way the amount of toxin he had administered to his victims, the effects it had, and whether he would allow them to live or let them suffer an excruciating death.
When Young was questioned about his diary, he said they had nothing to do with reality and that he was planning to write a novel, but later he did confess.
Young’s case went to trial at St. Albans Crown Court in July 1972 and lasted for ten days. He pleaded not guilty to the charges, still claiming that his notes were for a novel that he was writing. He was found guilty and was convicted to life imprisonment. While he was in the dock he told his warders that if he was found guilty he would break his neck on the dock rail, however, when the verdict was ready out he did not carry out his threat. His life sentence ended on August 1, 1990, at Parkhurst prison, where he died of a heart attack at the age of forty-two.
THE MOTIVE
It appears the only motive Graham Young had for the murders was that it gave him the power he yearned over other people’s lives. It was possible that he didn’t see his victims as human beings, but thought of them more as laboratory experiments. When he was finally charged with the murders and several more attempts of murder, he pretentiously reacted that he could have killed them all, but that he chose to let some of them stay alive!
Thomas Wainewright
By the age of thirty Thomas Wainewright was an extremely popular and successful gentleman in the literary and artistic circles of London society.
By the age of forty he was working on a chain gang in a Tasmanian penal colony alongside thieves and murderers. Wainewright went from being a poet and a painter . . . to a poisoner!
Born in Chiswick, West London, Thomas Wainewright, who was orphaned at an early age was adopted by his grandfather, Ralph Griffiths. They lived at Linden House, Turnham Green. His grandfather was the founder and editor of London’s first literary magazine The Monthly Review, and the young Wainewright soon found himself in the midst of London’s high society and the Romantic revolution. It was a world of dandies, dilettantes, poets and artists, and with his artistic temperament and incredible wit, Wainewright was in his element.
Thomas attended art school where he showed a talent as a draughtsman, but even at this early stage of his life he was already showing signs of being a little maladjusted. He joined the forces for a little while, but was forced to leave because of his love for whisky, and the fact that he had become a hypochondriac. He was now living at 48 Great Marlborough Street and he had turned his hand to painting, and even managed to have a few exhibitions. It was around this time that he discovered that he had a talent as an art critic and through his contacts he met many celebrities, including Wordsworth and William Blake. However, his glamorous lifestyle was starting to get expensive and within a few years he found himself in financial difficulties. Wainewright made his living by selling paintings and the occasional dodgy art deal, which gave him an income of around £175 a year, but it was certainly not enough to support his extravagant lifestyle.
In 1821 he married, shy and extremely poor Frances Ward. By 1822, Wainewright had turned his artistic talents to forgery, counterfeiting his signature on documents which allowed him immediate access to some of his inheritance which was being held for him in a trust fund. In 1824, again using his skills as a forger, he managed to get his hands on the full amount of his legacy, £5,250. However, due to his already accumulating debts, this money did not last long and he resorted to borrowing money from loan sharks and friends, and once again ended up in arrears.
THE DEATH OF HELEN ABERCROMBIE
In 1828, Wainewright and his wife Frances, convinced their bachelor uncle, George Edward Griffiths, to let them come and live with him at Linden House. Linden House was a huge property and stood in two acres of ground off Chiswick High Road (the site today of Linden Gardens). Within one year of them moving to Linden House, Griffiths died suddenly, and his estate – now considerably reduced in value – was passed to Wainewright, who was by this time in debt up to his ears. His next move was to invite his mother-in-law and his wife’s two half-sisters, Helen and Madeleine, to make their home at Linden House. In 1930 he took out a hefty life insurance with Palladium and Eagle offices, on the life of Helen, which only covered a short period of between two to three years. When Wainewright tried to increase the sum of the insurance to £5,000, his mother-in-law, Mrs. Abercrombie, objected. Conveniently for Wainewright, she died very suddenly in great pain from a mystery illness. Without his mother-in-law’s objections, Wainewright was able to increase the insurance on Helen’s life to £20,000.
Then, suddenly, Helen was taken ill with a strange illness, and died in extreme pain on December 21, 1930, at the age of only twenty-one. The symptoms of her brief illness were described by her nurse as being identical to those of her mother and George Griffiths.
The most widely accepted story of the death of Helen Abercrombie is that she was poisoned with antimony, causing her to be taken ill with symptoms of extreme stomach pains and vomiting. However, at the same time, the Wainewright’s served a particularly indigestible meal, and this provided an alternative explanation for her sudden sickness. After a couple of days and a visit from a doctor, Helen was fed with a jelly that had been laced with strychnine. The bitter taste of the strychnine would have been masked by the sweet jelly, and she may well have been told that the powder was a part of the remedy. A powder named ‘black draught’ was used regularly in the nineteenth century as a laxative, so there is no reason to think that Helen would have had any suspicions. Unfortunately, due to her already weakened state, Helen died almost immediately.
The convulsions were characteristic with strychnine poisoning, which would have been readily available from any apothecary. Also, it has been reported that Wainewright had several books on poisons in his library.
Helen was a normal, healthy, young woman until, that is, the life insurance policies were fully taken out. However, the insurance company was suspicious about the nature of Helen’s death and refused to pay out for the life insurance. Wainewright immediately borrowed £1,000 and instructed a solicitor to sue the insurance company, but his reputation by now had taken a serious blow and there were widespread suspicions about the three deaths in his family. He decided it would be a good idea to lie low for a while, and fled in the spring of 1831 to Boulogne. His career during the next five years is a little uncertain, but he was known to have spent some considerable time in prison at Paris. Also, and probably of no surprise by this time, that a man that he shared lodgings with died suddenly in great pain from a mysterious illness, Wainewright inheriting £3,000 as his only beneficiary.
In June 1837 Wainewright returned to England. Shortly after his arrival in London he was arrested in a Covent Garden Hotel by Forrester, the Bow Street runner, using a warrant obtained against him by the Bank of England for a forgery which he had committed in 1826. His previous attempt at trying to sue the insurance company had failed, and Wainewright was now known by the nickname of ‘Wainewright the Poisoner’.
He was tried at the Old Bailey on July 6. He was found guilty of forgery and was sentenced to transportation to Van Dieman’s land (Tasmania) for the rest of his life. While he was awaiting transportation in Newgate prison, he apparently confessed to the murder of Helen Abercrombie, stating that it was her ‘thick ankles’ that had offended him. Also, while in Newgate, it is reported that an actor and author by the name of Charles Dickens was sitting chatting with some friends. He spotted Wainewright and was heard to shout, ‘By God it’s Wainewright’, and the party of literary companions were horrified to find one of their number amongst the scum of London.
Unlike many others, Wainewright actually survived the transportation. Initially he worked as a hospital orderly and and it was said that he painted a number of
pastel and watercolour portraits while he was a convict at Hobart Town. He painted portraits of many of the local dignitaries and their families, and these pictures are considered to be his most accomplished work as an artist.
Thomas Wainewright died in hospital at Hobart in the year 1852 aged fifty-eight.
THE PSYCHOLOGY
It is very difficult to form any sort of realistic picture of the psychology of someone like Wainewright. It appears that the most important thing in his life was to try and retain the status of a gentleman at whatever cost. Perhaps it is this rather tragic display of dignity that provides us with a little insight into the mind of Thomas Wainewright. Throughout his life it appears that his social position, whether it was in the prestigious circles of London society or in a prison cell, was something in which he put the utmost significance. While he was in Newgate prison it is reputed that he said:
I will tell you one thing in which I have succeeded to the last. I have been determined through my life to hold the position of a gentleman. I have always done so. I do so still. It is the custom of this place that each of the inmates of a cell shall take his morning’s turn of sweeping it out. I occupy a cell with a bricklayer and a sweep, but they never offer me the broom!
(Wilde, 1927)
Indeed, it was his strive to maintain his social standing that drove him to forge, defraud, and quite possibly murder. While all his crimes seem to have been precipitated by extreme financial difficulties, the truth of the matter is that it was his love of extravagance that forced him to be in this position time and time again. He was a victim of his own pride, and perhaps it is a little easier to understand when you study the type of world in which he lived.
Where There’s A Will . . .
This story shows the cases of two deadly doctors who killed their patients for monetary gains.
The first case we will study is that Dr. John Bodkin Adams and the second Dr. Harold Shipman.
At first glance there are many similarities between the case of Dr. John Bodkin Adams and Dr. Harold Shipman, who both preyed on their elderly patients in order to extort money from them. For that reason I am writing about the two ‘doctors of death’ in one case history, and we will start with Dr. Adams.
DR. JOHN BODKIN ADAMS
John Adams was a bachelor and teetotaller, with a lust for money and high-living. He had a passion for cars and at one time owned three Rolls Royces. His friends and neighbours often wondered how he managed to finance such a lavish lifestyle. He was short and plump in stature – just 5ft 5in tall and weighed almost 18 stone. He was bald, with a rather pink, podgy face, small eyes and wore horn-rimmed spectacles. He had a rather daunting habit of rolling his eyes upwards, leaving only the whites showing. He was a master of the bedside manner and completely charmed his ageing women patients. He was Irish and was a member of the Plymouth Brethren, who are small groups of Christians with a deep and rich history. Adams’ practice was in Eastbourne in the South of England, and although his medical knowledge was limited, he was extremely popular with his patients. As well as administering to their medical needs – at half a guinea a visit for his wealthier clients – he would also stroke their hands, comb their hair and, on occasion, even caress their breasts. In addition to this he offered comfort in the form of his faith by kneeling in prayer before entering a patient’s room.
On the night of Sunday 22, 1956, the Eastbourne coroner was woken by a curious phone call from Dr. Adams. He was after a favour from the coroner and wondered if he would be prepared to arrange a private post mortem for one of his patients. The coroner refused his request, stating that he was not prepared to deviate from his normal practice. He asked Adams when his patient actually died, to which the doctor replied, ‘The patient is not dead yet’. The coroner was so shocked by the response that he sat bolt upright in his bed.
The next day his patient did die. She was fifty-five-year-old Gertrude Hullett, who was a second-time widow. Her second husband was the rich, retired Lloyd’s underwriter, Jack Hullett. Gertrude Hullett was better known as ‘Bobbie’ and was also called the ‘Grande Dame’ of Holywell Mount. She had a vivacious personality and was known to mix with the theatrical set, including the actress Marie Lohr.
The reason Adams had made the strange phone call in the middle of the night, was because his junior partner was suspicious of the senior doctor’s diagnosis of Hullett’s illness, and he had insisted on a post mortem. The younger doctor suspected that there was more to the sudden demise of Mrs. Hullett than Adams had admitted, feeling sure that the patient was dying from an overdose of drugs. It was not only Adams’ partner who was suspicious. The English comedian Leslie Henson even took to calling the Chief Constable of the Eastbourne police to express his concern. He was disturbed by the way Dr. Adams had kept Mrs. Hullett heavily sedated for the four months since her husband had died. He said he had gradually seen her turning into a drug addict, and he felt that although she was going down hill mentally, that it was in fact the pills that were making her mad.
The police carried out some discreet enquiries and found out that just before Mrs. Hullett fell into a fatal coma, she had given her doctor a cheque for £1,000. Three days before that she had made a will leaving her beloved Rolls-Royce to Bodkin Adams. The staff at her Holywell mansion confirmed their boss’s doped state, and one commented that she even staggered down the stairs most mornings as though she were under the influence of alcohol.
To the outside world, the doctor was already rich. He certainly had no need for another Rolls-Royce, for he already had one and several other cars besides. But the police chief was well aware of the gossip that was buzzing around the town. Gossip that linked the doctor’s reckless use of addictive drugs to his rich haul of legacies. Laughingly he was accused of doing his round with a bottle of morphine in one pocket and a blank will form in the other.
The considerable age and relative insignificance of his supposed victims had kept the rumours to a minimum, that is until the death of Bobbie Hullett. This was a completely different story. She was not a frail and solitary pensioner, but a very popular, middle-aged socialite with many connections in the show business world. Bobbie Hullett’s body was the subject of three separate post mortems, and the last one was carried out by a famous Home Office pathologist, Dr. Francis Camps, who specialised in capital crime cases.
The world in large learned the name of Dr. Bodkin Adams on Thursday, July 26, 1956, when he made headline news. Apart from the death of Mrs. Hullett, the demise of three other women, two widows and a spinster, were under investigation. In later issues of the newspapers the headlines read: ‘Six Women In Murder Riddle’ and the case became of major significance when Detective Superintendent Herbert Hannam of Scotland Yard arrived in Eastbourne to head the investigation.
After much delving, the Hullett inquiry came back with the verdict that her death was the result of suicide from an overdose of sleeping tablets. Dr. Bodkin Adams was severely reprimanded for the careless treatment of his patient.
Publicity about the doctor reached a frenzy in the following weeks, with exaggerated reports in the press hinting at his involvement in the death of at least four hundred widows. The local police along with their fellow colleague from the Yard decided to delve deeper into the professional life of Dr. Bodkin Adams. They probed into all the files where elderly patients of the doctor had died, and went to question their relatives. Unfortunately in many of the cases the relatives were already dead, or too old to remember anything with any clarity. Besides that most of the bodies had been cremated or had decomposed beyond the point of being any use for research purposes. Most of the deaths had been recorded by the doctor as the result of cerebral thrombosis or haemorrhage, and their investigations also revealed that most of these patients had been prescribed narcotic drugs.
The picture that emerged of Dr. Adams was far from pleasant. It appeared he was a selfish, avaricious physician of very dubious morality and an insatiable legacy hunter. Statements that the police collected f
rom both solicitors and bank managers proved that Dr. Adams had been persistent in forcing patients to alter their wills in his favour, even to the point of guiding a dying hand. There was evidence of forgery and extortion, and one old lady even remembered driving the doctor from her home when she overheard him whispering to her dying husband, ‘Leave your estate to me, and I’ll look after your wife’.
After much thorough and painstaking research, the police discovered 132 wills amounting to £45,000, that had been bequested to the doctor. This was an immense amount of money at that time. They uncovered cases where the bodies had been cremated, but nothing was mentioned on the cremation form itself about the doctor being a beneficiary under his patient’s will. This omission meant that there was no necessity for a post mortem. When they studied the death certificates it raised even further questions as to the diagnostic capability of this so-called doctor, since an unusually high number were reported to have died of cerebral haemorrhage or cerebral thrombosis.
There were so many cases of sudden decline following the change in a will, that relatives suddenly started to draw the attention of the Yard to other cases. One prime example was that of eighty-five-year-old Julia Bradnum. Her niece told the police that her aunt had come to see her all rosy-cheeked and even walked part of the way. Three days later she was dead, leaving the doctor as sole executor of her new will – with assets of around £4,000. When they heard of the enquiries into the deaths in the town they approached the police and made official statements.
