Medical Detectives (11 page)

While Spilsbury had been exercised by the murders in Brighton, Keith Simpson was just starting out on his career. As a young demonstrator in pathology at Guy’s Hospital in 1934, Simpson prospered from some of the antagonistic feelings that were directed at Spilsbury, as a result of which the Southwark coroner, Douglas Cowburn, declined to give his work to Sir Bernard. It was a perfect example of the jealousy and small-mindedness which ran as a consistent thread through otherwise impeccable professional lives.

The lack of a few more post-mortem examinations would hardly have bothered Spilsbury, who was overworked anyway, and young Dr Simpson was, no doubt, just as pleased to be advancing in his chosen career. Cases in profusion came to Spilsbury in a decade when it seemed that private violence was setting the tone for the war smouldering in Europe. He had taken rooms in central London to be nearer his work, while the family remained at Marlborough Hill. He still did most of his own clerical administration, although Alan, his eldest son, helped with some of the routine tasks. Spilsbury was one of those individuals who, today, would be called a workaholic.

When the Second World War was declared, Spilsbury was in his early sixties and the already over-worked pathologist saw his younger colleagues disappear into the armed forces, leaving behind them an ever-increasing workload. In May 1940, he suffered a minor stroke which proved to be a harbinger of tragedy to come. Typically, although convalescing, he insisted on appearing in court to give evidence at the trial of Udham Singh, a Sikh who shot dead Sir Michael O’Dwyer, a former Governor of the Punjab, at a public meeting in London. As he recovered his strength following the stroke and began to slip back into the familiar work routine, the Luftwaffe began its daylight bombing raids on London. This onslaught was to have tragic consequences for many families, including the Spilsburys, whose son, Peter, a house surgeon working at St Thomas’s Hospital, was killed by a bomb which hit the out-patients department where he was working.

The effect of the loss of his son was put poignantly by Spilsbury’s biographers: ‘… he was a changed man. It is agreed by all who knew him that he never recovered from the shock of Peter’s death … from that day … he began to fail.’ Like many who are stricken by grief, Spilsbury sought solace by devoting himself to his work. Yet the fates had more sorrow in store for him with the death in 1941 of his sister, Constance, with whom he had stayed at Hampstead after he was bombed out of his apartment in central London. And, then, in 1945, came the cruel loss of his son Alan from consumption.

Spilsbury had made his own singular contribution to the war in 1943 when his expert advice was sought by the planners of the deception which became known as
The Man Who Never Was
. This was the fabled exercise in which a corpse purporting to be that of a British Army Major carrying documents designed to mislead the Germans over Allied invasion plans, was launched from a submarine off the coast of Spain. The corpse selected for the role of dupe was that of a thirty-four-year-old vagrant who had died of neglect and pneumonia.

There was water in the man’s lungs but it was not salt water as would have been the case in a person who drowned in the sea, which is what the Germans were expected to believe. With characteristic forthrightness, Spilsbury told the Allied planners not to worry because, to spot the discrepancy ‘would need a pathologist of my experience, and there aren’t any in Spain.’ What might have been a risky strategy turned out brilliantly and the Germans were deceived into believing the Allies would invade Greece when in fact they landed in Sicily. As the world rejoiced at the cessation of global conflict, Spilsbury’s life lay in ruins, shattered by domestic tragedy.

For six years, since 1941, he had lived in a small hotel at Frognal in north London. The young man who had taken long, solitary walks as an undergraduate, lived a lonely life during his twilight years. He came down to breakfast but was rarely seen at other mealtimes. He divided his time between London’s mortuaries and coroners’ courts and the laboratory at University College in Gower Street, where he often worked late at night. He saw his daughter regularly and, when he was not working, spent weekends with his family and friends.

This was a bearable life during the extraordinary days of the war years, but after he suffered the loss of his two sons, he began to collapse inwardly and to think of his own frailties. At the age of sixty-eight, arthritic and slightly stooping, he looked older than his years, and a lifetime of self-imposed toil started to take its toll. Friends and colleagues noticed how the man with the once sure technique began to fumble and work with hands that had lost their fluent skills. Superintendent Robert Fabian, better known as ‘Fabian of the Yard’, who knew Spilsbury well, commented on the pathologist’s decline after the post-mortem examination he carried out on Alec de Antiquis.

This tragic case, in which de Antiquis, an heroic member of the public, was shot dead by armed raiders in a London street following a robbery at a jewellery shop in April 1947, proved to be a watershed in the criminal use of firearms. It also turned out to be Spilsbury’s last big case. He seemed perplexed when he could not find an exit wound for the bullet which had been fired into the victim’s head. It was Fabian who solved the puzzle by picking up the bullet which had lodged in the entry wound and fallen out during examination. Whatever effect this may have had on those present, there can be little doubt that it further undermined Spilsbury’s own sense of diminishing confidence in his abilities.

Sir Bentley Purchase, one of Spilsbury’s closest associates for many years, had observed his friend’s failing powers during the previous year when he had inadvertently submitted two separate reports for the same post-mortem examination. For a meticulous man like Spilsbury who had denied himself the support of secretarial assistance all his working life, preferring to rely on his own resources and power of memory, this must have further dented his pride. Purchase and other coroners did their best as loyal colleagues to give him cases in central London in order to minimise his need to travel and the fatigue that went with it. He suffered from insomnia and, it is thought, he had another stroke while alone in his hotel room. His arthritis grew worse and he was prone to bronchitis – he was a man coming to the end of his tether, both physically and mentally.

The signs that he was preparing to end it all were present but acquired significance only in retrospect. It had long been Spilsbury’s practice to order his post-mortem forms in batches of 500. In 1947, he put in an order for only 200. As he used them up, they became like leaves falling from his tree of life. He was down to a mere handful of forms when he decided to terminate his life. He had already written to his friend, Dr Eric Gardner, who was on holiday in Switzerland, telling him that by the time he received the letter, ‘it would be all over’.

The day he chose was 17 December 1947. It began with the scrupulously observed routine of a man of habit. He breakfasted at his hotel and went to the garage at Hampstead to pick up his car. He drove first to St Pancras coroner’s court and then back to Hampstead, where he carried out his last post-mortem on a woman who had died while undergoing a surgical operation. In the afternoon, he returned his car to the garage at Hampstead, gave the staff Christmas tips and told them he would not need the car again before the holiday.

When he went back to his hotel, he had to ring the bell to gain entry, for he had left his front door key lying on the dressing table in his room. He explained that he had forgotten something. Then he went to his laboratory at University College in Gower Street where he destroyed various papers and documents. He also used his last post-mortem form to record his findings in the examination he had made earlier in the day. Uncharacteristically, he sealed it in an envelope with an explanatory note, addressed to Sir Bentley Purchase, and posted it himself. After dining early at his club where he handed the hall porter the key to his private locker, saying he would no longer be needing it, he returned to the Gower Street laboratory at 7.30 p.m.

At about 8.10 p.m., a technician at the hospital returning to his workbench noticed a light on in Spilsbury’s room and smelled gas. He knocked, and when he received no reply, tried the door which was locked. He called a watchman who opened the door with a pass key. They found Spilsbury lying on the floor. He was still alive and artificial respiration was attempted. By the time that Purchase arrived, following an urgent summons, efforts at revival had failed and his friend expired within the shadow of the filing cabinets containing his records of thousands of cases.

Sir Bentley Purchase presided over the inquest, a sad affair at which most of the participants were friends or professional associates of the dead man. Police Constable Shreeve, the coroner’s officer at St Pancras, who had known Spilsbury for twenty-five years, had observed his declining powers in the post-mortem room. And Mrs Evelyn Steel, his daughter, who had seen her father regularly right up to the end, said he had spoken of being tired. Dr R.H.D. Short, pathologist at University College Hospital, found that Spilsbury had died of coronary thrombosis and carbon monoxide poisoning.

Purchase asked if Spilsbury’s heart ailment was necessarily a fatal condition. Dr Short believed that it would eventually have resulted in death. He added, ‘It is quite certain that a person of Sir Bernard’s knowledge and attainments would be bound to realise its dangerous condition himself.’ There was no suicide note, other than the intimation given in his letter to Dr Gardner, but his every action on the final day of his life was that of a person tidying up in preparation for the end. Purchase could give but one verdict which was that Spilsbury had taken his own life. Holding back his grief, the coroner added, ‘I am quite sure this was not the Sir Bernard who had made such a reputation. His mind was not as it used to be.’

In the years that have elapsed since Sir Bernard Spilsbury’s death, it has become fashionable to criticise him. He was a shy and modest man and, if he was regarded as infallible, it was not because he claimed to be. Others, impressed by his authority, thrust infallibility upon him. It is true that his confidence, combined with a natural authority, gave rise to suggestions of arrogance. If he had ever written the book he planned on forensic medicine, he might have analysed the presentation of expert evidence. He might have discussed the balance of doubts and certainties that are the grounds of decision-making and which, no doubt, he always considered in his own cases. He did his agonising in private – that was in keeping with his temperament as a loner. But, when called to give account in court, he swerved not nor vacillated an instant. His opinions were clear and succinctly put, expressing his honestly held interpretation of the evidence at the time. If he was wrong, if his technique was at fault, it was up to others to show cause. Indeed, his opponents did try and frequently failed, witness the various confrontations with Robert Bronte.

The
British Medical Journal
mourned the passing of ‘one of the most distinguished figures in forensic medicine’. Spilsbury was certainly that, and despite his shortcomings, fallibility being one of them, his greatness lay in the new confidence which he injected into forensic pathology. The subject had lain somewhat neglected when he came to the scene at the beginning of the twentieth century, and, in the course of forty years, he raised it to an unprecedented level of public awareness. Forensic science acquired a new status in the medico-legal framework and the role of the expert had been revitalised.

Although he had been the subject of professional jealousy, especially over the incident which precipitated his departure from St Mary’s, Spilsbury, because he was a loner and because he quickly achieved status, did not indulge in the petty behaviour which otherwise tended to marr a great profession. But in the years after his death, when his work was judged by others and his contribution assessed, strong criticism was voiced of his conduct and standing.

Sir Sydney Smith, who had endured a number of encounters with Spilsbury, wrote of his fellow pathologist that, ‘His belief in himself was so strong that he could not conceive the possibility of error either in his observation or interpretation.’ He acknowledged him as a ‘man of outstanding brilliance and complete integrity’ who was ‘so often right that he could be forgiven for being stubborn when he was wrong’. Having said that, he mourned him sincerely. Smith added, ‘One might almost hope that there will never be another Bernard Spilsbury.’

Of course, there never will be, although there have been those who have aspired to his mantle. The bone of contention that his inheritors had with him was that he would not change his mind in face of what they regarded in particular instances as superior logic. As Sydney Smith put it, ‘Once he had committed himself to an opinion he would never change it.’ Once the oracle had spoken, that was that. J.D. Cassels QC, who unsuccessfully defended Sidney Fox, called this ‘an unhealthy state’ and complained at the trial that ‘it will be a sorry day for the administration of justice in this land if we are to be thrust into such a position that, because Sir Bernard Spilsbury expressed an opinion, it is of such weight that it is impossible to question it.’

The fact is that his opinions were challenged all the time, on occasions against almost overwhelming odds, as in the Thorne case, where he was confronted in court by six doctors who argued against him. That his opinions won the day may mean no more than that they were the most convincing. Like many powerful men, he probably was unaware of the strength of his own influence but he was certainly not lacking in conviction. Sneaking admiration for his style came through in Sydney Smith’s remark that, together with Willcox and Roche Lynch, Spilsbury ‘set a high standard for all future medical experts to aim at.’

Keith Simpson was less charitable in his remarks about Spilsbury whom he described as a ‘monolith, alone, aloof, respected but unloved: and unmourned too, when he finally committed suicide, in his tiny laboratory in University College, London.’ Simpson faulted the man for not working or lecturing abroad, for not attending international congresses, not consulting with such contemporaries as Smith or Glaister, for not writing a textbook or contributing to the literature of his subject and for not encouraging students to work with him. It is an impressive list of failures to include in the epitaph of a man whose name was a household word, yet the observations, in essence, are correct. Spilsbury was remarkable in his single-mindedness and his belief in his own powers which was why, in the end, when he saw his strength ebbing away, he took his own life.