CRIM I / 206/ 58186
REX V BYWATERS & THOMPSON
REPORT
[Autopsy of Percy Thompson by Bernard Spilsbury]
Sir Bernard Spilsbury around the time of the autopsy of Percy Thompson
On Friday November 3rd 1922 at 11 a.m. I made a post-mortem examination of the exhumed body of Percy Thompson at the City of London Cemetery, Manor Park.
Dr D. J. Drought, Divisional Police Surgeon, was present at the examination.
The coffin was of deal with brass fittings and was airtight.
A brass plate on the coffin lid bore the following inscription:
Percy Thompson
Died 4th Oct.
1922
Aged 32 years
A putrefactive odour was detected on removal of the coffin lid.
The body was identified in my presence as that of Percy Thompson by Dr Drought and by Divisional Detective Inspector Francis Hall.
EXTERNALLY:
The body was that of a well-nourished man.
Putrefaction was advancing.
There were incisions of previous post-mortem examination along the trunk and across the head.
There were three stab wounds on the body each a clean cut wound having a surface measurement of 1” to 2”.
One wound was situated on the right side of the neck a short distance below and behind the angle of the jaw: it passed upwards and inwards and penetrated into the floor of the mouth.
The third wound was situated on the right side of the neck, a short distance below and in front of the second wound: it passed directly inwards as far as the oesophagus in which there was a long cut: the right common carotid artery was opened in this wound.
There were several superficial cuts on the front of the abdomen and on the right arm.
INTERNALLY:
The skull and the coverings and blood vessels of the brain were normal: the brain was very decomposed but no changes were found in it. The spinal column and cord were intact.
The heart was slightly enlarged the cavities were slightly dilated and the muscle was pale. The mitral valve was slightly thickened.
The arteries were healthy.
The lungs were decomposed: they appeared to be healthy: the air passages were healthy.
The peritoneum appeared to be healthy.
The liver was soft and very decomposed.
The spleen was very decomposed.
The kidneys were soft and decomposed.
The bladder was normal and contained a little urine.
The suprarenals and pancreas showed no disease.
The mouth was normal apart from the penetrating would on the right side of the floor. The tongue was uninjured.
The stomach had been opened and was empty: its wall was stained red with patches of green due to decomposition. There were no signs of poisoning and no scars were visible in the wall.
The small and large intestines were normal and no scars were found in their walls: their contents appeared to be normal.
The genital organs were normal.
The liver, kidneys, stomach wall, small and large intestines with their contents, and a portion of the urine were reserved for Analysis and on November 4th I handed them to Mr John Webster F.I.C. at St Mary’s Hospital.
On subsequent microscopic examination I found slight fatty degeneration of the heart muscle, liver and kidney.
I also examined microcosmically the contents of the vermiform appendix but I found no fragments of glass.
CONCLUSIONS:
The cause of death was heart failure due to loss of blood from the three stab wounds in the neck, the principal wound being the one which had opened the carotid artery.
I found no indications of poisoning and no changes suggestive of previous attempts of poisoning
I detected no glass in the contents of the intestine.
The fatty disease of the heart muscle, liver and kidney may have resulted from disease, but no disease was found in the body which would account for these changes.
(Sgd) Bernard H. Spilsbury
M.B. B.Ch. Oxon
Lecturer on Morbid Anatomy & Histology
St Bartholomews Hospital
Honorary Pathologist to the Home Office
1 December 1922
BERNARD SPILSBURY ON EDITH THOMPSON
Spilsbury thought that Edith Thompson was innocent of the charges brought against her, according to the authorised biography of the distinguished Home Office pathologist by Browne and Tullett:
‘It is a fair inference that among those who did not believe her [Edith Thompson] to be one [a murderess] was a witness at the trial whose knowledge of human behaviour was even then exceptional. In Spilsbury’s copy of The Trial of Frederick Bywaters and Edith Thompson (by Filson Young: see SOURCES) these passages are marked by him.
From Filson Young’s Introduction:
She wished him to believe that there was nothing she would stop at; though, in fact, she had no intention whatever of running the risks that such attempts would have involved
By keeping these letters Bywaters brought ruin to the writer. She kept none of his; she was too loyal for that.
I think the defence made another mistake in not having the whole of the letters put in as evidence instead of that portion of them selected by the prosecution.
In my opinion, the real explanation of the passages relating to definite attempts on the husband’s life by means of poison, glass, &c., is that these two people were playing in their letters a very dangerous kind of game, in which Mrs Thompson’s too fertile imagination cast her for the role of that tragic heroine with whose existence in fiction she was very familiar.
From the cross-examination of Bywaters:
As far as you could tell, reading these letters, did you ever believe in your own mind that she herself had ever given any poison to her husband? — No, it never entered my head at all. She had been reading books.
From the cross-examination of Mrs Thompson:
Now, Mrs Thompson, is it not the fact that you knew that Bywaters was going to do something on this evening and that these two false statements were an attempt to prevent the police getting wind of it? — That is not so.
From the Letters:
Yes, I like you deciding things for me. I’ve done it so long for myself.
I want you so badly to lean on and to take care of me to be kind and gentle and love me as only you can.
Other passages marked, the implications of which are favourable to Edith Thompson, are her words to her mother about Bywaters’ letters to her, her outcry in the dark street at midnight when her husband was struck down, and a reference to her passion for the outward conventions of respectability. Also pencilled is Bywaters’ statement that a ‘compact’ mentioned in the letters referred to a suggestion (by her) of suicide. Did Spilsbury believe this? She was as capable of talking glibly about suicide as about murder, without meaning what she said in either case.
On the contra side there are marks against one or two of the ‘poison and powdered glass’ extracts, and a pen has been used to indicate what no doubt was agreement with the general sense of the judge’s condemnation of the intrigue between these two young people. No one will suppose that Spilsbury, with his rigid views on certain moral lapses, felt anything but disapproval of such behaviour. But it did not make Edith Thompson a murderess; and though the judge, the jury, the Court of Criminal Appeal, and the Home Secretary chose to send her to the gallows, the rather cryptic marginalia of their leading medical witness would alone suggest that he knew better where the truth lay. In a letter to the Daily Telegraph (1951), Miss Tennyson Jesse has revealed that Spilsbury ‘considered Mrs Thompson guiltless of any attempt to poison her husband or in any other way to try to get rid of him.’ ‘
(from Bernard Spilsbury, His Life and Cases, Douglas G. Browne and E.V. Tullett: George G. Harrap & Co (1951), pp. 267-8)
John WEBSTER, Bernard SPILSBURY, Percy DROUGHT
At the trial of Thompson and Bywaters, John Webster, senior pathology analyst at the Home Office, Bernard Spilsbury, and Percy James Drought, divisional surgeon to the Ilford police, testified. Here is the transcript of their appearances in court, from Notable British Trials:
JOHN WEBSTER , examined by Mr TRAVERS HUMPHREYS — I am senior official analyst to the Home Office. On 11th October I received Bywaters’ overcoat (exhibit No. 29), and examined it for the presence of blood. I found a large number of stains of human blood on the right and left sleeves of the coat. I also examined the knife (exhibit No. 1), and found that there were several areas which gave reactions for blood both on the handle and on the blade. The traces wore not sufficient for me to say whether it was human blood or not. On 4th November I received from Dr. Spilsbury some bottles and jars containing some of the organs of the deceased Mr. Thompson. In the liver and kidneys I found a small trace of an alkaloid giving a reaction for morphine. The bottle labelled “ aromatic tincture of opium ” (exhibit No. 61) contains morphine. It would be used as a sedative for killing pain, and it is a thing that anyone might properly have in use. Assuming that the deceased used it a day or two before his death, it is possible that a minute trace would be found.
I want to ask you with regard to some matters which are mentioned in the letters. Is hyoscine a poison? — Yes.
Cocaine, potassium cyanide, sodium antimony, tartarate, bichloride of mercury, and digitalin — are these all poisons? — Yes.
Cross examined by Sir HENRY CURTIS-BENNETT — Aromatic tincture of opium is quite an ordinary thing. Up till twelve months ago it could be purchased at any chemist’s, but now it is necessary to have a medical prescription. It is something akin to chlorodyne. If a person suffered with the heart, chlorodyne or tincture of opium would produce relief. Chlorodyne contains traces of morphine.
Dr. BERNARD HENRY SPILSBURY, examined by the SOLICITOR-GENERAL — I am senior pathologist to the Home Office. I made a post-mortem examination of the exhumed body of Percy Thompson on 3rd November. Dr. Drought, a divisional police surgeon was present. The body was that of a well-nourished man. I found cuts in the neck and in the throat. The skull and the coverings of the blood vessels were normal, but the heart was slightly enlarged. So far as I could tell at the time, the other organs of the body were healthy.
By Mr JUSTICE SHEARMAN — The cuts which I found were stabs, with the exception of one on the right arm, which was a cut.
Examination continued — I did not find any signs of poisoning, nor did I find any scars in the intestines. I am aware that glass has been mentioned in this case and in the letters as possibly being administered to Percy Thompson. If glass had been administered I would not necessarily expect to find indications in the organs. The administration of glass, broken or ground, would produce different results. Large fragments of glass if given might produce injury by cutting the wall of the gullet, or the stomach, or the intestines, and if those injuries did not prove fatal a scar or scars might be found on the walls afterwards. If given in a powdered form the immediate effect of the powder would be to produce innumerable minute injuries to the delicate membranes lining the stomach and intestines, in all probability setting up an acute illness ; but if that did not occur, or if recovery followed, the glass would disappear entirely from the system, with the possible exception of that small portion known as the appendix in which it might lodge and remain for a long time.
In this case did you find any indications of powdered glass in the abdomen? — No, there were none. I found no indication of the presence of glass either in large pieces or in powdered particles.
Is the negative result of your examination consistent with glass having been administered? —
Some time previously, yes. It is possible that glass in large pieces could have passed through the system without such injury as to leave any signs behind. It would pass away in the food and in the excrement. What I found as the negative result of my examination is consistent also with particles of glass having been passed through the system. As to other poisons, I would not expect necessarily to find indications of poisons if they had been administered some considerable time before. Some poisons would leave no traces at any time even if death occurred shortly after administration. Others would produce effects which would last for a few days, and in the case of a few poisons a few weeks, but after the end of that time there are very few poisons which would leave any indications, except poisons which were corrosive or which were markedly irritant poisons. Neither hyoscine or cocaine is markedly irritant. Cyanide of potassium is an irritant ; it would either kill quickly or recovery would occur within a short time. Sodium antimonyl tartarate is an irritant poison, and I think it probably would be difficult to detect any traces after ten days or a fortnight. Bichloride of mercury is an intense irritant poison and it might show traces for a very long time ; in the kidneys and bowel there might be evidence of it after certainly some weeks and possibly some months after its administration. Digitalin has no irritant effect.
By Mr JUSTICE SHEARMAN — Used in small quantities it is a stimulant.
Examination continued — Morphine would not leave any traces.
Cross-examined by Sir H. CURTIS-BENNETT — Does it all come to this that there has been no trace whatever in the post-mortem of any glass having been administered, either in large pieces or powdered? — That is so.
And as far as poisons are concerned, there is no trace whatever of any poison ever having been administered, except of morphine, which I have dealt with? — That is so.
No trace of any poison being present and no changes suggestive of previous attempts to poison? — Quite. Glass if taken would pass through the gullet into the stomach, and then through the duodenum, and so on through the intestines to the caecum. Off the caecum is the appendix.
On its journey through those parts of the body would not a large piece of glass tend to leave a scar? — It would tend to cut or to pierce the wall. The scar would come afterwards.
You would find a scar remaining afterwards, would you not? — You might do so. I made a very careful examination to see if there was any scar anywhere and I could not find any. There is no outlet from the appendix except the one opening into the bowel. I made a careful examination of the appendix and found no trace at all of glass of any sort, powdered or otherwise. If any of the poisons mentioned in my examination had been given in appreciable doses, illness would have resulted, the degree of illness depending upon the amount. There are not many of the poisons which have been put to me today which would leave any permanent effect at all. Some, of course, would leave a trace for a time.
At any rate there was no trace, either post-mortem or by analysis, of any poison ever having been given? — No.
Dr. PERCY JAMES DROUGHT, examined by the SOLICITOR-GENERAL — I am divisional surgeon to the Ilford Police Division. On 5th October I made, by direction of the Coroner, a post-mortem examination of the body of Percy Thompson. I found on the body, on the left side below the ribs, four slight cuts on the skin. I also found on the front of the chin two slight cuts parallel to one another, two slight cuts on the right side of the lower jaw, and on the inner side of the right arm, at the elbow, there was a cut 3 3/4 inches long. I then found a stab in the back of the neck 2 inches deep and 11/4 inches wide; that was above the clothing. Then there was a stab at the back of the neck slightly to the right 21/2 inches deep and 11/2 inches wide, passing upwards towards the right ear.
By Mr JUSTICE SHEARMAN — These were two separate stabs.
Examination continued — The result of the second stab was that there was about half a pint of blood in the stomach which had come from the artery in the neck, the carotid artery, which had been severed. I should say that the wounds at the back and round the neck required a considerable force. Those at the front were superficial, and did not require so much force. I came to the conclusion from the bloodstains that the assailant was on the footpath when the blows were struck. With regard to the slight wound at the front, the assailant must have been in front and then got round to the back with the deeper ones. The stab that cut his carotid artery is more likely to have been struck from the back than from the front. It would have been possible for the man to walk after the blow that severed the artery was struck, but not for very long. I do not think he would be able to speak very much. I should think that the man would die in about a couple of minutes after the severe stab was delivered. The wounds which I saw could have been inflicted by the knife which is now produced.
Cross- examined by Mr CECIL WHITELEY — In my opinion, the wound on the neck, the fatal wound, was received from behind.
But it is doubtful? — It is doubtful. I am quite clear that the fatal wound was the last blow that was inflicted.
.