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According to some – a compassionate doctor devoted to his patients. In the opinion of others – a greedy trickster and serial killer. John Bodkin Adams – British internist and anesthesiologist – was suspected of killing 163 people by giving them a lethal dose of drugs. Many of them rewrote part of their property to him. “They were dying anyway” – he explained. Was the Eastbourne physician “just” a controversial euthanasia performer or a ruthless killer looking for posthumous gains?
- John Bodkin Adams was a British internist who treated mainly the elderly
- He was suspected of administering poison or a lethal dose of painkillers to 163 people
- The doctor was the beneficiary of the will of almost half of his patients
- In the trial for the murder of one of his patients, he was acquitted; this judgment is still controversial today
- You can find more such stories on the TvoiLokony home page
The sensational trial of John Bodkin Adams
April 1957 was very exciting for the inhabitants of Eastbourne on the English Strait. Not only has their city been made famous throughout the country for several months (admittedly infamous, but always public), but now it has become the center of electrifying events with a criminal history in the background. Here, in a nearby court, the trial (it will soon turn out to be the most expensive and longest murder case in the UK to date – it lasted for «as long» 17 days) of a local doctor accused of double homicide.
The investigation into his case started in July of the previous year. It all started with an anonymous phone call announcing that a widow had died unexpectedly while undergoing treatment by Dr. John Bodkin Adams. The investigation was entrusted to a notorious detective who was investigating the murder of two teenagers from Teddington. Herbert Hannam found that of the 310 death certificates prepared by Adams over the past decade (1946-1956), 163 are at least suspect. Most of them contained the cryptic statement that the patient had been given a “special injection” before his death. Only the doctor knew what substance the syringe contained – Adams reportedly even asked the nurse to leave the patient’s room during the injection.
The investigation didn’t go the way the detective had planned. The greatest obstacle was medical secrecy, which significantly narrowed the circle of witnesses. Officially, there was no reason why the British Medical Association (BTM) could not exempt doctors from professional secrecy in this particular case, but the objection was categorical and sustained for weeks. Adams had many friends at BTM, so it was suspected that he was not only protected by his colleagues, but also informed in detail about the progress of the investigation and the content of the report, containing Hannam’s findings so far, which was sent to the Society as an argument for the submitted application.
The policeman was investigating the case on other levels at the same time. He quickly determined that Adams was getting financial benefits from the treatment and death of his patients. The horrendous home visit bills and counterfeit prescriptions were nothing compared to John Bodkin Adams’s involvement in the making of sick wills. Subsequent analysis of the doctor’s documents and bills showed that the doctor was inherited (or from grateful relatives of the deceased, acting in accordance with their last wish) money and numerous valuables (including a clock, typewriter, infrared lamp, antique chest with a set of silver cutlery or even a car).
He himself claimed that he was not keen on money, and patients voluntarily saved him a part of their property as remuneration for work for which he was allegedly unremunerated. In this case, he showed a lot of cunning, because a high salary was associated with the need to pay a large tax, receiving an inheritance – on the contrary. He persuaded the opponents in a different way: if you do not have a family, donate your property to charity, but just in case – after all, there are so many scammers! – give me an instruction, I’ll take care of it personally after you leave. There was even an anecdote in the community saying that if you make Dr. Adams the beneficiary of the will, you won’t live long. Seniors – because they were the largest group of patients of the Eastbourne doctor – apparently did not discourage them, because Adams’s name was eventually in the wills of 132 people. No wonder he quickly became the richest doctor in the UK.
When his house was searched in November, the doctor was composed. «You will find nothing here» he was to tell the policemen. He was wrong. In the kitchen cupboard, the detectives discovered two bottles of morphine, supposedly intended for two already deceased patients of the doctor. None of them were listed in the medical records of the sick, and Adams did not keep records of dangerous drugs. To the detectives waiting for an explanation, he was to say that it was no wickedness to mitigate dying. “She wanted to die,” he added, referring to Edith Alice Morrell, whose murder was suspected.
When he was arrested a month later, he remained stoic. After hearing the charges, he only said: “I don’t think you can prove it was a murder.”
John Bodkin Adams – a greedy trickster
John Bodkin Adams, born in 1899, has always aroused extreme emotions. He came from a conservative Protestant family in the small town of Randalstown in Northern Ireland. He quickly – as a 15-year-old – lost his father – a preacher in the local congregation of Plymuck brothers. Samuel Adams managed to convey to his son his commitment to religious values (John has actively participated in the life of his community throughout his life), but also a passion for… motorization. Evidence of its cultivation was that Adams invested in more means of transport used at work. He first traveled to his patients by bicycle, then by scooter, and finally by luxury cars.
He was considered a loner and nerd by Queens faculty in Belfast, although he did not graduate with honors. It was probably largely due to the illness he contracted at that time, but also to the unexpected death of his only brother, William, who died of the Spanish flu pandemic that prevailed at the time.
- The editorial office recommends: Spanish woman – what do you not know about the greatest epidemic in history?
After graduation, he unexpectedly received an offer to undergo an internship at a hospital in Bristol. Adams did not live up to his hopes – he simply had neither the talent nor the flair for academic medicine. His patron, surgeon Arthur Rendle Schort, tactfully offered him a job advertisement in the city on the English Strait. A young intern decided to apply for the position of an internist in Eastbourne. There his career flourished, but also one of his main character traits: greed and a taste for luxury.
It took him seven years to reach the position of almost allowing him to buy his dream home in an upscale neighborhood in the city. Almost, because he borrowed some of the money to buy a villa with 18 rooms from one of his wealthy patients, William Mawhood. Besides, he had no qualms about regularly inviting himself to his house, dining at his house, and shopping on his credit. After the death of his “sponsor”, he stole a 22 carat pen from his wife’s dressing table. Caught red-handed, he replied with his own calmness that he must have some memento of William.
Over the next years, he persistently worked on the reputation of a trickster and dilettante. Along the way, he graduated in anesthesiology, but he worked in the hospital only one day a week, and even then he was more likely to be found in the duty room than in the operating room, where he reportedly dealt with counting money, eating cookies and … sleeping.
A lot of controversy was also raised by the participation of an internist in the treatment of two widows from Eastbourne. He developed such a close relationship with the first of them – Matilda Whitton – that she became friends with his relatives, bought him a new car, and finally disinherited her family and bequeathed all his fortune to him. After her death, relatives tried to seek justice, but to no avail – the inheritance was taken by Adams.
The family of the second patient, Agnes Pike, was more alert. Concerned about the worsening condition of the senior woman, she consulted another doctor, who was surprised to find that he saw no medical reason to administer so much painkillers, including morphine, to Mrs. Pike. The removal of the current doctor from the patient made the patient feel better and enjoyed good health for some time. Perhaps such incidents meant that when the war broke out and doctors set up a special system to which existing patients of medical doctors called for military service were qualified, Adams was excluded from it.
Nevertheless, the internist surrounded himself with a trusted group of friends, and among his fellow physicians he had a reputation as a specialist. Patients also praised him. Eastbourne is a city only two hours away from London, today we would call it the capital’s bedroom, and the seaside climate was favorable for weekend and summer vacations. There were a lot of rich people among Adams’ clients who appreciated the doctor’s discretion and availability (he was said to be on call at any time of the day or night). His rides in two Rolls-Royce cars, which he used to take (he had his own chauffeur) for home visits, and which he personally took his patients for specialist consultations to befriended specialists in London (local doctors resented him for that) became legendary. This is why the people of Eastbourne found it hard to believe that a doctor could kill his patients.
Whether the jury adjudicating the doctor had the same doubts, we will never know. The verdict was delivered after 44 minutes of deliberation, on April 15, 1957. Adams was acquitted.
Under protection
The quick exoneration of the Eastbourne doctor of the murder of Mrs. Morell left investigators astonished, but even stranger was the move of the attorney general to drop the murder of the second patient, Gertrude Hullett. The judge of the Supreme Criminal Court, Patrick Devlin, adjudicating in the first case, wrote in his book years later that it was a “violation of the law”.
However, if you look at John Bodkin Adams’ circle of friends and network of contacts, the jury decisions and the accusations begin to make sense. One of the patients and close friends of the doctor was Roland Gwynne, former mayor of Eastbourne and brother of Rupert Gwynne, a member of the local parliament, among others. Before the trial began, he was seen in a restaurant accompanied by… Chief Judge of the Supreme Criminal Court, Rayner Goddard. It was the Lord Chief Justice who would call Devlin with the unusual request that if Adams is acquitted, he should be released on bail before the trial of the second murder case begins. Devlin was surprised, because in the history of the British judiciary, there had never been a bail for a murder accused.
Gwynne’s protection is so much more likely that his relationship with Adams may have been closer than it seems. The notes of the Daily Mail journalist shed light on this relationship, which shows that they were part of a homosexual love triangle. The author of the notes did not give names, but it was quickly deciphered that Adams, Gwynne, and Richard Walker, the Eastbourne Police Chief, were behind the names of the professions (doctor, judge, and police officer).
Adams’s contacts, however, reached higher. In unknown circumstances, the doctor ended up at the residence of the aristocrat Edward Cavendish, Duke of Devonshire, whom he looked after just before his death and with whom he accompanied in the last hours of his life. It is not known why the prince’s doctor was not present at the time and the coroner was not called after the death certificate. Perhaps Adams did not want him to start snooping around in his practice, because Edith Morell had died less than two weeks earlier (the doctor had not yet suspected that he would be accused of murdering her in a few years, but he had an entry on the death certificate on his conscience, where he wrote that he had no interest in her death while he was the beneficiary of her will). Adams himself signed the duke’s death certificate and determined that the cause of death was a heart attack. Why was no one investigating the matter? The Prince’s sister was the wife of Harold Macmillan, the Prime Minister of Great Britain, who took office during the doctor’s trial. As if that were not enough, Mrs. Macmillan was then having an affair with a politician from the conservative faction of parliament. The acquittal of Adams, who had looked after Prince Edward just a few days after Mrs. Morell’s death, was to help put the case to a halt. Nobody had an interest in finding out the truth.
Last but not least, the Eastbourne physician, a little accidentally, received support from his colleagues. The investigation, and later the trial of Adams, coincided with the turbulent conflict between the British health service and the government. The bone of contention was, of course, finance, but the situation was so tense that any move hitting medical workers could ignite war. The very risk of a doctor being convicted for administering drugs to his patients was a ticking time bomb.
In the end, Adams was charged with other charges: forging prescriptions, making false statements on cremation forms, and violating the Dangerous Medicines Act. The found guilty only had to pay a fine of £ 2400 and court costs. Discharge from the doctors’ register could have been more severe, but the hero of the confusion did not even feel it. Finally, he could rest and spend time traveling and socializing.
The political intricacies surrounding the Adams case have left historians to wonder whether the Eastbourne doctor was a greedy murderer, a cryptanassic sociopath, enjoying his patients’ dependence on him, or a naive physician who carefully understood the need to alleviate his suffering to his patients. . His contemporaries were divided on this issue, and the scale of this division is evidenced by the fact that four years after his acquittal, John Bodkin Adams was re-entered into the medical register and practiced freely. He died in 1983 of heart failure, a complication after a hip fracture. Apparently, until the end of his life, he received money from the legacies of deceased patients.
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