Bernard Spilsbury
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Sir Bernard Henry Spilsbury (May 16, 1877 – December 17, 1947) was a British pathologist. His cases include the Brides in the Bath Murders, the Dr Crippen case, Brighton trunk murders, the murder on the Crumbles case, Podmore Case and the Vera Page Case. He also had a critical role in developing Operation Mincemeat, a deception operation during World War II.
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[edit] Personal life
Spilsbury was born on 16 May 1877 at 35 Bath Street, Leamington Spa, Warwickshire. He was the eldest of the three children of James Spilsbury, a manufacturing chemist, and his wife, Marion Elizabeth Joy.
On 3 September 1908, Spilsbury married Edith Caroline Horton. They had four children together: one daughter, Evelyn, and three sons, Peter, Alan and Richard. Two of his sons, Alan and Peter, would die during the course of the Second World War, the former from ill-health, the latter during the Blitz.
The deaths of his children, to whom he was devoted, was a blow from which Spilsbury never truly recovered. Coupled with his depression over his declining health, it was believed to have been a key factor in his decision to commit suicide by gas in December, 1947, in his laboratory at University College, London.[1]
In later years, his dogmatic manner and his unbending belief in his own infallibility gave rise to criticism; even in the later years of his life, judges began to express concern about his invincibility in court and recent researches have indicated that his inflexible dogmatism led to miscarriages of justice.[2]
[edit] Career
Educated at Magdalen College, Oxford, where he took a BA in natural science in 1899, and an MA in 1908, he then studied at St Mary's Hospital in London, he specialised in the then-new science of forensic pathology.
The case that brought Spilsbury to prominence was that of Dr Crippen in 1910, where he also gave forensic evidence in the trial about the likely identity of the human remains found in Crippen's house. Spilsbury concluded that a scar on a small piece of skin from the remains pointed to Mrs Crippen as the victim. He appeared at the trial of Herbert Rowse Armstrong, the solicitor who poisoned his wife with arsenic. He gave convincing evidence of how several women were murdered in their baths, and so helped convict a serial killer in the Brides in the bath trial. He was also involved in the Brighton trunk murders, and although the accused man, Mancini, in whose flat the torso of murdered prostitute was found, was acquitted at the trial, Mancini confessed to the killing just before his own death, many years later, so vindicating Spilsbury's evidence. He was able to work with minimal remains, such as that involved in the "Blazing car murder", when a near destroyed body was found in the wreck of a burnt-out car near Northampton in 1930. He gave evidence of how the man had died, although the victim was never identified, and so helped convict Alfred Rouse. He confessed his guilt before being hanged.
During his career Spilsbury performed thousands of autopsies, not only for murder victims but also of executed criminals. He was able to appear for the defence in Scotland, where his status as a police pathologist in England and Wales did not matter. Spilsbury was knighted in 1923. He was a Home Office approved pathologist, lecturer in forensic medicine in the University College Hospital, London School of Medicine for Women and St. Thomas' Hospital. He also was a Fellow of the Royal Society of Medicine.
On June 12, 2008 BBC Radio 4's afternoon play "The Incomparable Witness" by Nichola McAuliffe was a drama about Sir Bernard Spilsbury, 'the father of modern forensics'.
[edit] References
- Douglas Browne and E. V. Tullett - Bernard Spilsbury: His Life and Cases (1951)
- Colin Evans - the Father of Forensics
- J.H.H. Gaute and Robin Odell - The New Murderer's Who's Who, 1996, Harrap Books, London
