FINE PATHOLOGIST

Evening Post, Volume CXXV, Issue 22, 27 January 1938, Page 27

FINE PATHOLOGIST

BERNARD SPILSBURY

A NEWER SHERLOCK HOLMES

WORK FOR JUSTICE

What is. the secret that gives - Sir Bernard Spilsbury, famous pathologist, his outstanding place in Britain's Courts of justice? His position was! assailed recently by a K.C., who de-! clared, "he has become, almost auto-1 matically a god in these courts." Here is the story of Spilsbury—the detective of science- on whose words the fate of the murderers depends, says a writer in the "Winnipeg Free Press."

"In my opinion, and as a result oi a careful examination of the body, Mrs. Rosaline Fox^died from strangulation by manual pressure."

The entire Court, from Mr. Justice Rowlatt, his thin lips set in a straight line, his eyes unsmiling, to the placid policemen at the doors, listened with rapt attenton.

For with those words Sir Bernard Spilsbury was sealing the doom of Sidney. Albert Fox, charged with the murder of his 63-year-old mother in a Margate hotel bedroom, after insuring her life for £1000.

/Fox had set the room on fire, hoping to remove air traces of his crime, and in his favour was the fact that no external marks of violence showed on the old lady'fc throat. But Sir Bernard's evidence revealed two inexorable facts. •

First, there was no trace of soot in the dead woman's windpipe or carbon monoxide in her bipod, proving that she ceased breathing before the fire started. Secondly, tin; bruises inside the throat told their grim tale of pressure slowly applied until life was extinct.

Sidney Fox, author of what became known as the "Room 66" crime, duly paid the penalty on the gallows, though. he died without confessing. That was seven years ago. A GREAT REPUTATION. A few weeks ago St. John Hutchinson, ICC., appearing for the defence in a manslaughter case at'which Sir Bernard gave evidence, said of him: "He has now become almost' automatically a god in these courts, because no one is ever allowed to disbelieve what he says." Sir Bernard may not be a god, but he deservedly enjoys the reputation of being the greatest pathologist Britain has ever known since the detection- of crime became an exact science. He

is a qualified barrister as well as a doctor. He conquers by patience and thoroughness—virtues he has brought to such a pitch that he can hang a man by a single'hair. His first step to fame was during the Crippen case. The late-Sir Edward Marshall Hall's brilliant oratorical, powers were fast winning over the jury, finding a plausible explanation for the disappearance of Bell Elmore; accounting for Crippen's flight to Canada with Ethel le Neve, disguised as a boy.

All the prosecution had to go on was a small piece of skin about six inches square. On that piece of wrinkled skin Spilsbury's microscope detected scar tissue. He knew what part of the body the skin came from, knew also that Crippen's wife had been operated on in just that part. The little doctor, who before his flight had calmly shown police officers over his house, taken them down to the very cellar under which Mrs. Crippen's gruesome remains were buried, heard sentence of death pronounced on him. One of Sir Bernard's simplest and most conclusive tests was during the case of George Smith, known as the Brides-in-the-Bath murderer. A widower three times by his own hand, he resorted to the .callous expedient of drowning each successive wife in her bath, having first insured her for large sums. ■■ , j None of the exhumed1 women showed any signs of violence having been done to them, and the onus fell on Spilsbury of.finding how Smith had killed three women without encountering the slightest resistance from any of them.. THE METHOD DISCOVERED. This he did by filling a bath with water and getting one of-his assistant nurses to lie in it. He then took hold of her feet and gave a sharp upward pull, drawing her head under water. The sudden immersion acted like a blow and rendered her almost immediately unconscious. The, girl had; to be taken out at once and revived, or she would certainly have died in the same way as Smith's unfortunate brides. ■ . He again demonstrated the uncanny accuracy of his work when Mollie Phillips was found dead on Exmoor in 1931. There were doubts about her death. Her skeleton, with one arm missing, was discovered; in a marsh, and nearby a hair was picked up. Sir Bernard .concluded from his examination of the hair that it had belonged to Mollie Phillips. It matched some hair found on the toothbrush she used the day before her disappearance, but the absence of roots showed that it had probably been bitten off by an animal. He similarly accounted for the girls missing right arm, and established that she had fallen over; a boulder downwards and been smothered.

It, was hair, again, that enabled him to decide that the dismembered body found in the Grand Junction Canal, at Brentford, in 1935, had nothing to do with a pair of legs discovered under a railroad carriage seat at Waterloo.

Spilsbury became so experienced in his pathological work that, in the case of William Podmore, murderer of Vivian Messiter, a Southampton, garage proprietor,.... his evidence-, 'bordered almost on the magical.; ■

Messiter's body lay undiscovered for two months in his garage, yet at the end of that time the Home Office pathologist was able to tell exactly in what position the victim had stood when Podmore struck him with a hammer. When Messiter was found, his assailant was already in Winchester prison, serving six months for petty theft, secure, as ?he thought, from discovery. ..-• ; ' HIS FINE PRECISION. Given a derby hat, Spilsbury, with the .precision of a Sherlock Holmes, correctly deduced Albert Crewe, a well-known barrister practising at the Central Criminal Court, whether the wearer had died from accident, suipide, or murder. ; One might think that a man whose life is compounded entirely of other people's tragedies, who every day of the week comes into contact with ugly and violent death, would find his own sense of humanity blunted. Bu|; such is far from being the case. '; ■-■..;";.

Sir Bernard is intensely human, and invariably gives an accused man the benefit of any legitimate doubt that may occur. He is probably England's busiest man, conducting on the average at least seven post-mortems a week, each to the decimal. ; pqint of thoroughness, yet. has been ■, known to travel 1200 miles in eight days to give evidence in different cases."/' : '~

The Bench and Bar have nothing but praise for his exceptional faculty of explaining technical points in the simplest possible manner, leaving no juryman in doubt as to his meaning. At the same time, when on the witness stand, there is noman more difficult to confuse during a crossexamination, as many a counsel knows to his cost. Spllsbury never allows himself to be drawn into the smallest admission that may contradict his point, and he usually keeps about two jumps ahead of his questioner. He has no use for hearsay evidence, preferring to find out everything for himself; ONCE GASSED HIMSELF. . When a student at Oxford he actu-, ally gassed himself ' with _" carbon . monoxide fumes to fina our their exact effect on the human body. He de-| scribed the experiment as having' "a i good deal of unpleasantness about itj The sense? be"gin to fade." ■ ' ■"' ;

On another occasion he insisted on going down a manhole where a work-

man had been asphyxiated, because he wanted to get a clear idea of the conditions under which the man had'died before giving evidence at the inquest.

' In March, 1936, Sir Bernard came into contact with the dreaded enemy of all patholbgists—septic poisoning contracted during a post-mortem examination. There was grave danger that his arm would have to be amputated, but an operation was performed in time. He quickly recovered.

In his own estimate Sh; Bernard is always right, hjit every stage of his career can be said to have joined his point of view. He has yet to make a mistake. > V<- - .At 58, Spilsbury has been described as one of England's handsomest men. Tall, broad-shouldered, '[ and slim waisted, he has kind/humorous eyes and1 the complexion of a young man living in the open. : •,

His square-jaw, precise manner, and well modulated, voice all betoken exceptional character and. will-power—a will-power that has conquered the heavy strain thrown on him by his work. Known affectionately as "Spils" to his friends, his hobbies are walking and—thrillers.

Since the Brides-in-the-Bath case,' at least 15 notorious murderers have, paid the extreme penalty as a direct result of Spilsbury's evidence. Besf remembered among them are: Major Armstrong, the Welsh solicitor, who poisoned his wife with small doses tof arsenic; By waters, lover of Mrs. Thompson, who stabbed her husband to. death; John Norman Thome,::the Crowborough murderer who killed i Elsie Cameron with a blow, cut her body in ,'pieces,"and buried it in his •chicken '/ run, .. and the,, handsome, debonair Patrick Mahon, the man with the hypnotic gaze, who' committed a similar crime when he murdered and dismembered Emily Kaye in a-'lonely bungalow near Eastbourne. In this' case, Spilsbury's work in establishing 'the exact cause of death. was more difficult, because Mahpn had got rid of various portions of the unr fortunate/woman's body by throwjng them' out of a railroad carriage.