OVER SEVEN THOUSAND POSTMORTEMS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 21646, 17 May 1932, Page 8

OVER SEVEN THOUSAND POSTMORTEMS

FAMOUS PATHOLOGIST DEAD MANY MURDER CASES RECALLED. Dr Robert Matthew Bronte, the famous pathologist, who took part in many prominent murder trials, died at his home at Harrow on March 21. He was 52, and an Irishman. He had been in Middlesex Hospital with heart trouble for some time, and was moved to his home a few days before his death. Recently, Dr Bronte, putting together the records of his cases, estimated that he has made over 7000 post-mortem examinations. Yet he was the most cheerful and charming medical man one could wish to meet. Before he went to London he was the official pathologist for the Irish Government, and was in Ireland during the rebellion. - During the war Dr Bronte served as an Army medical man. On one occasion he was in a front-line dressing station when German wounded prisoners were brought in. One of them was the son of his former landlady in Munich, whore he had studied medicine, and they had played together. Dr Bronte, although retained by the police and the Crown in criminal cases, frequently gave evidence against the prosecution. He differed from Sir Bernard Spilsbury in the trial of Norman Thorne for the murder of his sweetheart on a poultry farm at Crowborough. The prosecution Held that Thorne killed his sweetheart, and then dismembered the body and buried it. Dr Broute declared in favour of Thorne's own story that the girl had committed suicide by hanging. Thorne was convicted, but nothing would shake Dr Bronte’s belief. Deceased was against the Crown in the trial of Sydney Fox for the murder of his mother in a Margate hotel. He was also a leading figure in the Croydon arsenic poisoning mysteries.