Medical Detectives (9 page)

It was not long before the two pathologists were again pitched into the arena as opponents. Between April 1928 and March 1929, three members of the same family in Croydon died of arsenical poisoning. Edmund Creighton Duff was a former Colonial civil servant who had retired to Surrey in the same community as his mother-in-law, Violet Sydney, a barrister’s widow who lived with her unmarried daughter, Vera. Fifty-nine-year-old Duff died at his home on 27 April 1928 after a brief illness. The family doctor was puzzled by his symptoms but suspected food poisoning. At the post-mortem, Dr Robert Bronte took samples of the body organs for analysis but found no evidence of poisoning. Death from natural causes was duly confirmed.

In February 1929, Vera Sydney was taken ill with severe vomiting and died within forty-eight hours; gastric influenza was diagnosed. Three weeks later, her mother, Violet Sydney, still grieving the loss of her daughter, was herself taken ill with similar symptoms. The family doctor diagnosed food poisoning. Mrs Sydney’s son, Thomas, who also lived in Croydon, perhaps anxious about his own well-being, sought further medical advice. Bacteriological tests on the dead women proved inconclusive and the family did not feel inclined to pursue the matter any further. Yet the occurrence of two sudden deaths in the same household within such a short period excited attention in official circles and the Home Office ordered an enquiry.

The bodies of Vera and Violet Sydney were exhumed from their graves at Croydon Cemetery on 22 March 1929 and Spilsbury carried out the post-mortem examinations. The most notable and immediate observation was one that had echoes of the Armstrong case. After six weeks’ burial, the body of Vera Sydney appeared to be remarkably well-preserved. Inflammation of the stomach and urinary tract in both sets of remains, considered in light of the symptoms the women had experienced, suggested arsenical poisoning.

Confirmation of this tentative diagnosis came from analyses carried out by Dr John Ryffel, one of the Home Office analysts. He found 1.48 grains of arsenic in Vera Sydney’s body and 3.48 grains in that of Violet Sydney. Arsenic present in her hair and nails indicated that the older woman had been ingesting the poison over a considerable period. Traces of arsenic found in the tonic medicine prescribed by her family doctor indicated the vehicle by which she had probably been poisoned.

Attention now focused on Edmund Duff whose remains had been interred for just over a year. Despite the fact that analyses carried out at the time had proved negative for traces of poison, an exhumation order was granted. On 18 May 1929, notebook in hand, Spilsbury appeared at the graveside at Queen’s Road Cemetery and was soon joined by Dr Gerald Roche Lynch, Senior Official Analyst at the Home Office. Spilsbury carried out the post-mortem in the presence of the analysts, Dr Bronte and the Duff family’s doctor. The experts made their reports and, after high-level legal consultation, a second inquest was ordered in respect of the death of Edmund Duff. Meanwhile, the inquest on Vera Sydney was still proceeding. The inquests on the three deceased members of the Duff and Sydney families were held separately and, with various adjournments, dragged on for five months. The coroner, who declined to accept advice from the Director of Public Prosecutions to hold the inquests together, was heavily criticised for creating confusion. And, when it came to the inquest on Duff, confusion indeed reigned supreme.

Spilsbury related the facts of the post-mortem examination that he had carried out, noting that the body bore the marks of the incisions made during the first such examination. He also pointed out that most of the organs were missing. The inflamed condition of the intestines left in the body suggested some form of gastro-intestinal irritation and this was consistent with the symptoms suffered by the patient during his illness. The well-preserved condition of the body was also remarked on. Dr Roche Lynch then gave the results of the analyses he had carried out on the organ and tissue samples which Spilsbury had removed from the corpse. He had calculated there was a total of 0.815 grains of arsenic in the tissues. Taking all the circumstances into account, he concluded that Edmund Duff had died of acute arsenical poisoning.

This had the effect of putting Bronte on the spot because the possibility of arsenical poisoning had not featured in his report of the first post-mortem examination. He had, though, jotted down the letters ‘AS’, signifying arsenic, on the carbon copy of his report, denoting that he had considered the possibility. While this may have appeared to be an afterthought, worse was to come when it seemed that part of another body had become mixed up with the organs removed from Duff. Bronte had no answer for this except to suggest that someone had interfered with the sealed specimen jars. At any rate, it was confirmed that tests on the organs purporting to be those of Edmund Duff had been carried out at the London Hospital Medical School, with negative results for arsenic. Bronte agreed that his original finding of death from natural causes was wrong and confirmed that he now believed Duff had died from arsenical poisoning.

Spilsbury’s opinion was that Duff had ingested a fatal dose of arsenic within twenty-four hours of death. The likely vehicle seemed to be the bottled beer he had drunk with his supper after returning home from a fishing holiday. The chicken he had consumed was ruled out because his wife had eaten the same meal and not been unwell. Sir Bernard was closely questioned by William Fearnley-Whittingstall, the young barrister representing the Duff and Sydney families. The twenty-six-year-old advocate gave the pathologist a hard time in what was described as a brilliant piece of advocacy. He attacked the basis of Spilsbury’s opinion that Duff took in the arsenic with his beer. They sparred over the pros and cons of the chicken as the purveyor of the poison, discussed the intricacies of digestion and debated the effect that Duff’s feverish cold might have had on events. At the end of it all, Spilsbury remained adamant that the arsenic had been ingested via the beer. This, of course, cast suspicion on the family or, at least, on someone close.

The coroner’s jury concluded that Edmund Duff had died from arsenical poisoning, wilfully administered by some person or persons unknown. A similar verdict had been reached at the inquest into the death of Vera Sydney, but in the case of her mother, Violet, the jury was unable to decide whether she had been murdered or had committed suicide, although they were sure that arsenical poisoning was the cause of her death. In a full account of the Croydon poisonings, written in 1975, Richard Whittington-Egan concluded that the murders, which had thus far remained unsolved, were committed by Grace Duff, Edmund’s wife, who hated her spouse and wanted to eliminate him. According to this thesis, she poisoned Violet and Vera Sydney simply for gain.

In the winter of 1929, Spilsbury featured in his second case of matricide and headed once more for a confrontation with Bronte. On 23 October, a fire at the Metropole Hotel in Margate appeared to have claimed the life of an elderly resident. The fire alarm was raised by Sidney Fox, who was staying at the hotel with his mother, and fellow residents dragged the semi-conscious old lady from her smoke-filled room. Medical assistance was sent for but Rosaline Fox was already dead by the time the doctor arrived. Her son was distraught and between sobs of ‘My Mummy, my Mummy,’ told the hotel manager, ‘She is all I have in the world.’ The inquest on Mrs Fox concluded with a verdict of death by misadventure. She was buried in Norfolk and on the day of her funeral, her son travelled to Norwich to make a claim on her life insurance policy. The insurance company was immediately suspicious and a wire was sent to its head office carrying the message, ‘Very muddy water in this business.’

Sidney Fox was arrested on a charge of fraudulent dealing, while, behind the scenes, the wheels turned very quickly indeed. Scotland Yard detectives were called in and Spilsbury was alerted. On 9 November, the pathologist was at the graveside of Mrs Fox, supervising the exhumation of her body. A post-mortem examination followed and, thus, the die was cast for another medico-legal controversy.

The circumstances of Mrs Fox’s death, coupled with the behaviour of her son, and his established reputation as a fraudster, had provoked suspicion of murder. The initial focus of attention had been the room in which the victim was found and, in particular, the chair which appeared to have been the centre of the fire. The carpet had been burnt underneath the chair and the burning upholstery of the furniture seemed to have been the source of the dense smoke which filled the room. It was strange, therefore, that Spilsbury found no trace of carbon monoxide in the blood nor in the sooty deposits usually found in the air passages when a person breathes in smoke. Absence of such evidence suggested that the victim was already dead and that a cause other than the fire should be sought. It was Spilsbury’s task to search for that cause and he established it, at least to his satisfaction, when he discovered a bruise at the back of Mrs Fox’s throat. His conclusion was that she had been strangled.

Sidney Fox was eventually trapped by the thoroughness of two persons – the undertaker, who hermetically sealed the coffin with putty, and Spilsbury, whose eagle eye spotted a bruise on tissues which would rapidly decompose when exposed to the air. When the case came to trial, the pathologist was confronted by familiar adversaries, J.D. Cassels, who defended Fox on the charge of murder, and, of course, Dr Bronte. For the first time too, he also faced a fellow pathologist of considerable eminence and reputation, in the presence of Professor Sydney Smith who supported the defence.

The prosecution, led by the Attorney-General, Sir William Jowitt, with the aid of Margate Fire Brigade, proved fairly convincingly that a fire had been deliberately started in Mrs Fox’s hotel room. There was a bottle of petrol in the room which Fox claimed he used to clean his clothes. It was known that Mrs Fox had been drinking port bought by her son and the alcohol found in her body suggested that she may well have been asleep when her demise occurred. But how did she die?

Spilsbury was convinced that she had not died of suffocation – the lack of sooty deposits in the air passages effectively ruled that out. His contention that Mrs Fox had been strangled was based on his discovery of a large, recent bruise at the back of the larynx. He demonstrated its position to the court by means of an anatomical model of the human mouth and throat. The bruise was the result of mechanical violence which tore open some of the small blood vessels, indicating, as he said, ‘the conclusions to which I finally came, that death was due to strangulation.’ Questioned about the condition of the hyoid bone which is situated in the larynx and becomes brittle in elderly people, the pathologist confirmed that it had not been broken in this instance. He acknowledged that the hyoid frequently was broken in cases of manual strangulation but, equally, he knew of many cases where this was not so.

The trouble with the bruise on the larynx was its somewhat ephemeral existence. After the organ had been removed from the body which had lain in its airtight coffin, the tissues rapidly putrefied when exposed to the atmosphere, obscuring the bruise and making its existence impossible to demonstrate. Thus, by the time Bronte came to examine the larynx, there was no bruise to be seen. The absence of such an injury that could be shown as a physical entity, made it easier for the defence to argue that Mrs Fox had died of heart failure. But, Spilsbury’s word that he had seen it was sufficient to make it a matter of contention.

Short of accusing his opponent of fabricating evidence, all that Bronte could say was, ‘It was not there when I saw the larynx.’ Sir Bernard would not be moved from his position and his reply to Cassels’s question on the matter put it beyond further debate; ‘It was a bruise and nothing else. There are no two opinions about it’. As Sydney Smith put it in his autobiography, ‘The oracle had spoken. There was nothing more to be said.’

Smith later mentioned an incident in Spilsbury’s laboratory at University College Hospital when he and Bronte were shown the larynx preserved in formalin. ‘I can’t see any sign of a bruise, Spilsbury,’ said Smith with nodding approval from Bronte. ‘No, you can’t see it now,’ replied Spilsbury, ‘but it was there when I exhumed the body.’ Smith recorded that Spilsbury listened attentively and politely to his arguments but added, ‘Had I known him then as well as I came to later, I would have realised why I was wasting my time. He could not change his opinion now because he had already given it.’

Sidney Fox, who, in a devastating admission in court, said that he had closed the door to his mother’s room after discovering the fire and running for help, was found guilty of murder. He was a greedy little man and a poseur of the type that it has been said would sell their own grandmother. In his case, he throttled his mother for the insurance money and his guilt was perhaps so borne in on him that he did not bother to appeal against his conviction.