SIR B. SPILSBURY

Wanganui Chronicle, 27 December 1947, Page 5

SIR B. SPILSBURY

FAMOUS PATHOLOGIST DIED RECENTLY FIGURED IN MANY MURDER TRIALS. Were Sir Arthur Conan Doyle alive to-day to answer the question, “Whom do you consider, in real life, most nearly approximated to your conception of Sherlock Holmes?" there is little doubt that he would answer, without hesitation, “Sir Bernard Spilsbury." The cables recently told of the death of London's great crime doctor, chief pathologist of the Home Office, and one of the world’s greatest authorities on crime detection. Sir Bernard Spilsbury was found dying in a gas-filled room of the University College Hospital, London, and in spite of artificial respiration, lie died an hour later. “The infallible witness,” was the description applied to Sir Bernard by the noted criminal advocate, Sir Edward Marsh").! Hall, who after many clashes with him declared, “Spilsbury is a man of dispassionate intelligence, who cannot be shaken.” The Ixmdon newspapers, in their obituary notices, describe Sir Bernard as a “real-life Sherlock Holmes,” and recall that he brought a new technique to the investigation of crime. Publishers are reported to have offered large sums for his memoirs, but he always refused to write them for profit. He was, in fact, engaged in preparing them before his death, but they were to be circulated only among his medical colleagues. “ALMOST A GOD.” For more than 30 years Sir Bernard figured in every important murder case in Great Britain, and such was his standing that a few years ago his position was assailed by a K.C. who complained “he has become almost a god in these Courts.” Many great men have passed across the criminal stage. Some have gained infamous renown among the ranks of the lawbreakers; some have received honours for their forensic ability, and a few (for their kind does not willingly seek the limelight) have captured the public eye for the brilliance and relentlessness of their pursuit of the wrong-doer. Although one of the world’s greatest authorities on crime detection, Sir Bernard Spilsbury never permitted his sense of humanity to be blunted. In that lay much of his greatness. He was intensely human, and invariably gave an accused man the benefit of any legitimate doubt which might occur. DRASTIC EXPERIMENT. Nearly 50 years ago, as a young student at Oxford, he gassed himself with carbon monoxide to find out e rtain things which the medical profession of the day did not know. Three decades later Scotland Yard was called in to investigate the case of Sidney Fox. This young man came very near to committing the perfect crime when he suffocated his mother ,an invalid, with her pillow, and then set the bedroom on fire. He knew the cause of her death would be asphyxiation.

Who, he argued, would be able to prove that this asphyxiation was not due to the smoke of the fire? Sir Bernard Spilsbury, cool, detached, and ruthlessly efficient, provoked a sensation in Court when lie told the jury he had learned from blood tests of the victim that she was no longer alive when the fire started.

"I happen to be well acquainted with tlie effect of carbon monoxide poisoning on the body,” he remarked. MAIN WORK UNKNOWN. The great pathologist’s first step to fame was during the Crippen case, which captured the imagination of the world. The late Sir Edward Marshall Hall’s brilliant oratorical powers were fast winning over the iury, finding a plausible explanation for the disappearance of Bell Elmore, and accounting for Crippen's flight to Canada with Ethel le Neve, who was disguised as a boy. t All the prosbeution had to go on was a small piece of skin about six inches square, but on that piece of wrinkled skin Spilsbury’s microscope detected scar tissue. Sir Bernard knew what part of the body the skin care from, and knew also that Crippen's wife had been operated on in that area. The jury was convinced. One of Sir Bernard’s dramatic demonstrations 1 almost ended in tragedy. George ; Smith, Notorious as the sinister groom in the “Brides in the Bath” case, was on trial, and certain aspects of the case were somewhat obscure. AN ENIGMA It was suspected that Smith had drowned his brides as they were taking hot baths, but just how a man of inferior physique could have murdered more than one strong young woman in this manner without people in adjacent rooms hearing a single cry or sound of struggle was an enigma which perplexed Scotland Yard. A woman assistant of Sir Bernard was requisitioned for an experiment Donning a nathing costume, she entered a oath. The scientific Sherlock Hclmes then grasped his subject by both ankles and drew them up suddenly over her head. Automatically, her body slid dowr. towards the centre of the bath and her head went under water. While her legs were firmly held aloft she was unable to raise her head above water by using her arms. Acting like a blow, the sudden immersion rendered tlie girl almost immediately unconscious and she had to be taken out at once and revivedFINAL TOUCHES. In many notorious criminal trials tlie very tall figure of the famous scientific investigator entered file witness-box to sway the final issue. It was Sir Bernard Spilbury's evidence that convicted Seddon, the North London poisoner. It convicted Voison, the butcher. It brought home the murder of an invalid wife to file dapper Herefordshire solicitor, Major Armstrong. Others whose conviction came about largely as a result of his work included By waters, lover of Mrs. Thompson, who stabbed her husband to death; John Norman Thorne, who killed a young woman, cut her body in pieces and burled it in his chicken run, and Patrick Mahon, who dis.membered Emily Kage, in a lonely bungalow, and later got rid of the various portions of the body by throwing them out of a railway carriage. At tlie Old Bailey, experienced practitioners learned to take Sir Bernard seriously. It was only inexperienced counsel who tried to handle

him roughly, and they often retired beaten. MAIN WORK UNKNOJVN. Yet the chief work of the great pathologist remained unknown to the wide public familiar with him as a witness. For years he was a lecturer at St. Bathoiomew's Hospital. His subjects were morbid anatomy and histology. He was also lecturer in medicine and toxicology at the London School of Medicine for Women, an examiner for his own University of Oxford, and for the Universities of London, Edinburgh, and Manchester. Early In the war Sir Bernard's second son, Peter, who had only recently qualified as a doctor, was killed when a bomb fell on St. Thomas's Hospital. His eldest son died a year ago.