DETECTED MANY POISONERS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLV, Issue 13583, 12 September 1908, Page 2 (Supplement)

DETECTED MANY POISONERS.

WONDERFUL CAREER OF ANALYST.

British justice lias lost one of its most able allies in the person of Sir Thomas Stevenson, M.D., the famous senior scientific analyst to the Home Office, who died recently at the age of 70, from heart failure, at his residence, Sandhurst Lodge, Strcatham.

The name of Sir Thomas Stevenson, who was a. native of Rainton, Yorks, and received his knighthood in 1904, will be handed down in the annals of criminology as perhaps the most successful unraveller of poison mysteries of modern times. Ho was certainly the greatest expert on toxicology of our day, and as analyst to the Home Office, a position he held for 27 years, figured in many famous trials, and brought many cold-blooded murderers to the scaffold. A striking personality, tall, with a large flowing beard, and a cool, calm, yet kindly manner, Sir Thomas was an enthusiastic worker in his profession, lie entered the latter as a student at Guv's Hospital, ami took his M.D. degree in 1864. In 1870 he was appointed lecturer on chemistry at Guy's Hospital, and in 1878 lecturer on forensic medicine. Three years later lie was appointed to his important and responsible post at the Home Office. SOME KAMOVS CASKS. The first case in which Sir Thomas Stevenson's name came prominently before the public as an unrivalled detector of Jioisona was the Lamson trial in 1882. *ercy Johns, a lad of nineteen, and a student at Blenheim House, Wimbledon, died suddenly at that establishment on December 3, 1881, and his brother-in-law, Dr. George Henry Lamson, who had visited him the Say previously, was suspected of poisoning him with aconitin, the alkaloid of monkshood, administered in some sugar. No means of detecting this poison by ordinary chemical methods was then known, .but Dr. Stevenson by experimenting on mice with the fluids taken from the victim's stomach was able to conclusively prove that aconitin had been administered to young Johns. On his evidence Lamson was convicted on March 14, 1882, and confessed his guilt on April 27, the day before his execution, admitting that Dr. Stevenson had been absolutely correct iu his deductions. In the case of Catherine and Margaret Higgins. sisters, who were tried at Liverpool on February 9. 1834, for the murder of Thomas Higgins, the husband of Catherine, in order to obtain the insurance money, Dr. Stevenson conclusively proved that arsenic was the poison used. The two women were convicted, and as in the case of Lamson, confessed before their execution, admitting that the poison had been administered exactly as Dr. Stevenson stated it must have been. The last witness called by the Crown in the famous Maybrick case at Liverpool, which began on July 31 and ended on August 7, 1889, was Dr. Stevenson. Asked as to what ho found on examining the organs of the deceased man, James Maybrick, he said, in quiet, unmoved tones, " I found tin irritant poison, arsenic, and can have no doubt that the cause of death was ii"':ikrnt poisoning." There is no doubt that this emphatic opinion weighed heavily with the jury, and led them to record a verdict of " Guilty." • Nothing cooler or more convincing in the way of evidence was ever heard than that of' the great analyst in the trial, on October 21, 1892, of the notorious Neill Cream, for the murder of Matilda Clover. He made point alter point as he explained how he detected the strvchnine in the body of the dead woman, what quantities must havo been used, how it was giveu, and incidentally the awful suffering that must have preceded the death of the victim. Cream, who was accused of murdering three other women, was executed at Newgate on November 15 following. At the trial of Walter Horsford at Cambridge, on June 6, 1898, for the murder of Annie. Holmes by strychnine, at St. Neots, it was Dr. Stevei'son's evidence that put the guilt of the accused beyond possible doubt. 'So. too, in the cases of Mary Ann Ansel!, who murdered her imbecile sister by sending her a poisoned cake, and was executed at St. Albans on July 19, 1899: Chapman, executed at Wandsworth on April 7, 1903, for poisoning Maud Marsh and other women with antimonv; and the Kilbur" Trunk case, when Devereux, on May 20. 1905. was convicted of murdering his wife ami twin children by morphine, it was Sir Thomas Stevenson ' who brought the crimes right home to the guilty parties. One of his last appearances in the wit-ness-box was at the trial of Brinkley, at the Guildford Assizes of July, 1907. He had exhumed and made a post-mortem examination of the remains of Brinklev's victim, and proved conclusively the monster's puilt. Sir Thomas also carried out with Professor Pepper the examination of the remains of Thomas Charles Druce in Hitrhgate Cemetery, and thus put past a doubt the falsehood of the stories alleged anent the Portland dukedom. As editor of Taylor's Principles and Practice of Medical Jurisprudence." Sir Thomas Stevenson recast and practically ; made a new book of that famous work. , and also found time to write many articles i and treatises on toxicological subjects.