Top life changing books
22 March 2025
Top Books That Changed My Life If there is anything we know for sure at AQUILA HQ, it’s that books
Sir Bernard Spilsbury, generally regarded as the ‘father’ of forensic science in Britain, was so meticulous in his research into murder cases that on one occasion he almost caused a tragic death himself!
Well, that doesn’t sound like a great start. What happened? Ed
The case in question became known as the ‘Brides in the Bath’ and it happened in 1915. Three women, who had been married to the same man – George Joseph Smith – bigamously, had died in their bath tubs in what, at first, appeared accidental drownings. There were no marks on them to indicate a struggle had taken place. Spilsbury firmly believed though that the deaths were suspicious but it took him a while to figure out how they might have happened.
I mean three wives of the same person, dying in the same way. Sounds SUS to me. But was there any way that this could be proven – I presume there was no hard evidence?
Yes, without any marks on the victims’ bodies it was hard to for the police to prove that Smith was responsible, but Spilsbury used scientific reasoning and eventually deduced that if someone stood at the foot of the bath and pulled the person’s legs up sharply, they would slide under the water and, because of the sudden shock of the movement and an inrush of water to the mouth and nose, they would lose consciousness quickly.
Spilsbury passed the information on to the detective involved in the case, Arthur Neil, who decided he would test out the theory before it came to court. Neil called in an experienced female diver about the same age and weight as one of the victims. The diver got into the bath full of water and when the detective tried to push her under there were inevitable signs of a struggle. However, when he pulled her legs up without warning from the foot of the tub she slid under the surface and was unable to recover.
I presume the diver was OK though?
Well… Neil was so pleased that the experiment seemed to be successful that he ignored the fact that the diver was no longer moving. A colleague shouted out a warning and swiftly she was pulled out of the tub. It took Neil and a doctor some 30 minutes to revive her.
Gosh, that’s not a great. Let’s hope she made a full recovery.
And how did the trial go?
His deduction was equally successful when the result of the test was revealed in court months later. It took the jury only 20 minutes to reach a verdict and the perpetrator, George Joseph Smith, was convicted of all three murders.
Another case that Spilsbury was involved in was the 1910 case of Dr. Harvey Hawley Crippen. Crippen had tried to evade capture by crossing the Atlantic to Canada after police believed he had murdered his wife. A body was found buried under the floorboards of their house in London. The ship on which Crippen was travelling was stopped after being sent a message and he was arrested and returned to Britain where he stood trial. It was the first time wireless telegraphy had been used to catch a criminal. Spilsbury claimed in court he could identify the body as Crippen’s wife from a scar on a small piece of skin. The jury accepted this evidence and Crippen was convicted.
Spilsbury was also one of the key witnesses in two other major cases including the case of solicitor Herbert Armstrong and the ‘Blazing Car Murder’. In the first of these, Spilsbury was able to prove that Armstrong had poisoned his wife with arsenic and also attempted to poison a colleague with the same substance. Some of the poison may have been passed on through a box of chocolates.
In the ‘Blazing Car Murder’ the defendant, Alfred Rouse, claimed that the body of a hitch-hiker found in his burnt-out car had been started by the hitch-hiker himself and that it was just an accident. Spilsbury’s evidence showed that the hitch-hiker was already dead when the fire started and that pieces of cloth found inside the car showed they had been doused in petrol. Rouse, who had been wanting to change his identity, was eventually found guilty. Despite modern advances in DNA technology and numerous tests being carried out, the identity of the hitch-hiker has never been established.
Spilsbury was also responsible, working with detectives at Scotland Yard, for initiating the use of ‘murder bags’ containing such equipment as gloves, tweezers, evidence bags etc when SOCOs are investigating a serious crime.
He was knighted in 1923 and became the Home Office approved pathologist and lecturer in forensic medicine at University College Hospital, London and several other hospitals.
Spilsbury did gain a reputation of being dogmatic and his overbearing performances in court gave the impression that he was infallible. He always worked alone, refused to train students and was reluctant to contribute towards medical research.
In 2008 records of many of his cases from the London area, kept in a card index filing system, were found in an old cupboard in a London hospital and were bought by the Wellcome Library. Many believed that he would have used the files to write a book on forensic science but there is no evidence that he actually started it.
Spilsbury was found dead in his laboratory in 1947. He was 70 years old.
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Written by John Davis.
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