COURT WORK OF SCIENTIST

Press, Volume XCII, Issue 27794, 20 October 1955, Page 6

COURT WORK OF SCIENTIST

Career Of Professor James Webster (From the London Correspondent of “The Press”) LONDON, October 12. Murder has been the business, and the hobby, of Professor James M. Webster for 25 years. In that time he has assisted British police in solving many murders and his expert evidence has aided the defence also in saving the accused’s life. Now, at 57, ill-health has forced him to retire from his job as Home Office pathologist and Director of the West Midland Forensic Science Laboratory in Birmingham. The professor has provided evidence in some of the leading murder trials in recent years and his work has earned such praise as “the best detective of them all” and “one of the most brilliant men in Britain today.” The former M. 1.5 Chief, Sir Percy Sillitoe, once said, “If Professor Webster had worked in London at Scotland Yard he would have gained a reputation as great as that of Sir Bernard Spilsbury.” It was the professor’s devotion to police work that wrecked his health. In June he investigated the murder of a 10-year-old girl found buried in a wood at Coventry. He was out all night in pouring rain, was drenched to the skin and his health worsened. But the night had its compensations. His evidence helped hang the man who had murdered the child. A Scot, Professor Webster became in 1929 the first police surgeon in Sheffield and set up the first forensic laboratory there. His chief Constable at that time was Sir Percy Sillitoe. In 1937 he moved in Birmingham and had his first major case—the murder of a 10-year-old girl. He helped send a man to the gallows. From that time, he was involved in every major case in the Midlands and he travelled more than 30,000 miles for his work.

In 1948 he gave evidence before a coroner’s jury that an old woman found dead in Hingeston street, Birmingham, had been strangled. The jury disagreed and returned a verdict of death by misadventure. Two years later, another old woman was found dead, a man was arrested for murder and confessed to the previous killing as well.

Professor Webster has not always been on the side of the prosecution, however. In the 1948 trial of James Camb, accused of murdering the actress. Gay Gibson, and throwing her

body out the porthole of a liner on the high seas, he gave evidence for Camb. Although the accused was sentenced to death, he was later reprieved. Although Professor Webster retired as a “crime doctor” he will remain as professor of forensic medicine and toxicology at Birmingham University and will continue with his duties as a police instructor.