trap had been sprung.
Dr. John Bodkin Adams
Born: January 21, 1899
Place: Randalstown, County Antrim, Ireland
Killing Span: 1946 - 1956
Number of Killings: 160
Captured: December, 1956
Background
John Bodkin Adams was born just before the turn of the century to a profoundly religious family of Plymouth Brethren of which he remained a member for his whole life. His father, Samuel, was a preacher in the local congregation, though by profession he was a watchmaker. John had a brother, William, who was born in 1903, but died at the age of fifteen from the 1918 influenza pandemic.
Adams graduated in 1921 from Queen’s University in Belfast, although he missed a year of studies due to tuberculosis. His professors thought him a plodder and distant from his fellow schoolmates. From university he was hired straight away by Dr. Arthur Short as an assistant in the British Royal Infirmary. After spending a year there, however, it did not work out for him and he applied for a General Practitioner’s position in a Christian practice in Eastbourne, where he worked for many years while living with his cousin and his mother. In 1929, he borrowed ?2000 from a rich patient, William Mawhood, and purchased an eighteen-room house in Trinity Trees called Kent Lodge.
Adams would regularly invite himself to the Mawhoods' house at mealtime, even bringing his mother and cousin. He also began charging items to their accounts at local stores without their consent. Mrs. Mawhood would later portray Adams to the police as “a real scrounger.” When Mr. Mawhood died in 1949, Adams visited his widow uninvited, and took a 22-carat gold pen from her bedroom dressing table, saying he wanted “something of her husband's.” After that he never visited her again.
Rumor regarding Adams's eccentric methods had started by the mid 1930s. In 1935, Adams inherited ?7,385 from a patient, Matilda Whitton. Her will was contested by her relatives, but the court upheld it; a supplement giving Adams's mother ?100 was reversed, however. Adams then began receiving anonymous postcards about how he was 'bumping off' patients, as he told a newspaper interviewer in 1957. These were received at a rate of three or four per year until the war; they then commenced again in 1945.
Adams stayed in Eastbourne throughout the war, infuriated at not being sought-after by other doctors to be selected for a 'pool system' where General Practitioners would treat the patients of colleagues who had been drafted. In 1941, he achieved a diploma in Anesthetics and worked in a local hospital one day a week where he earned a reputation as a bungler. He would fall asleep during operations, count his money, eat cakes, and even mix up the anesthetic gas tubes, leading to patients waking up or turning blue. His mother died in 1943, and in 1952 his cousin Sarah developed cancer. Adams gave her an injection half an hour before she died.
By 1956, John Adams was one of the wealthiest doctors in England, having enjoyed a successful career. Despite rumors about his ethics and fraudulent wills, he was seen with some of the most influential people in the country, including Members of Parliament, Sir Alexander Maguire, the 10 Duke of Devonshire, Chief of Police Richard Walker, famous painter Oswald Birley, and a host of powerful business people.
Investigation
On July 23, 1956, the Eastbourne Police received an unidentified call about a death. It was from Leslie Henson, the music hall performer, whose friend Gertrude Hullett had died suddenly while being treated by Dr. Adams.
The investigation was turned over from Eastbourne Police on August 17 to two officers from the Metropolitan Police's Murder Squad. The senior officer was Detective Superintendent Herbert Hannam of Scotland Yard, noted for having solved the infamous Teddington Towpath Murders in 1953. He was assisted by a junior Officer, Detective Sergeant Charles Hewett. The investigators decided to focus on cases from 1946 to 1956 only. Of the three hundred and ten death certificates examined by Home Office Pathologist, Francis Camps, one hundred and sixty-three were believed to be of suspicious nature. Apparently, many patients had been given 'special injections' of substances that Dr. Adams refused to explain to the nurses caring for his patients.
Furthermore, it became known that his routine was to ask the nurses to leave the room before injections were given. He would also segregate patients from their relatives, hindering contact between them. On August 24, in an astonishing move, the British Medical Association (BMA) sent a letter to all Doctors in Eastbourne, reminding them of Professional Secrecy – like patient confidentiality, for example – if interviewed by the police. It was obvious the BMA was trying to cover their asses in the event of lawsuits. Lead Detective Hannam was not impressed, especially since any information gleaned would relate to dead patients. He, and the Attorney General, Sir Reginald Manningham-Buller, who prosecuted all cases of poisoning, wrote to the BMA secretary, Dr. Macrae, 'to try to get him to remove the ban.” The gridlock continued until November 8 when Sir Reginald Manningham-Buller met with Dr. Macrae to persuade him of the significance of the case. During this meeting, in a highly extraordinary move, he passed Hannam's confidential one hundred and eight-seven page report on Dr. Adams over to Dr Macrae. Dr Macrae then took the report to the President of the BMA and returned it the next day.
In all likelihood, Macrae photocopied the report and passed it on to the defense lawyers. Certain of the seriousness of the accusations, Dr. Macrae dropped his resistance to doctors talking to the police. In the end though, only two Eastbourne doctors ever submitted evidence.
On 24 November, Detectives Hannam, Hewett, and the head of Eastbourne Central Intelligence Division, Detective Inspector Pugh, presented Dr. Adams with a search warrant under the Dangerous Drugs Act of 1951. When the detectives told him that they were looking for morphine, heroin, Pethidine, and the like, Adams was surprised and said, 'Oh, that group. You will find none here. I have not any. I very seldom ever use them.” Then Detective Hannam asked for Adams' Dangerous Drugs Register, the record of those ordered and used, and Adams replied, 'I don't know what you mean. I keep no register.' In fact, he hadn't kept one since 1949. When they showed him a list of dangerous drugs that he had prescribed Morrell, and asked who had administered them, Adams replied, 'I did nearly all; perhaps the nurses gave some but mostly me.' This contradicted what the nurses' notebooks would show during his trial. Detective Hannam then said, 'Doctor, you prescribed for her seventy-five 1/6 grains of heroin tablets the day before she died,” to which Dr. Adams replied, 'Poor soul, she was in terrible agony. It was all used. I used them myself. Do you think it is too much?'
As the investigators inspected Adams’s cupboards, he walked to another and slipped two objects into his jacket pocket. Hannam and Pugh saw this occur and challenged Adams. He then showed them two bottles of morphine, one of which he said was for Annie Sharpe, a patient and major witness who had died nine days earlier under his care; the other he said was for Mr. Soden, who happened to die on September 17, 1956, but pharmacy records later showed that Mr. Soden had never been prescribed morphine. After his main trial, Adams would also be charged and convicted with obstructing the lawful search, concealing the bottles, and for failing to keep a dangerous drugs register. Later at the police station, Adams told Hannam, “Easing the passing of a dying person isn't all that wicked. Mrs. Morrell wanted to die. That can't be murder. It is impossible to accuse a doctor.” In the
