Poison in the West Country
John Bryant was thirty-eight years of age when he died, a native of Dorset and an ex-soldier. In 1922 he was serving in Londonderry, Northern Ireland, where he became acquainted with Charlotte McHugh, aged twenty, two years younger than himself. She was a woman of doubtful character, little better than a professional prostitute.
Bryant was a good-natured, easy-going man. Either he did not realize the type of woman she was, or she successfully hoodwinked him. When Bryant was due for discharge from the Army she induced him to marry her on the grounds that she was pregnant by him. As their first child was not born until well over a year later this was probably a mere trap. Bryant fell for it. He brought her to England and married her. If he had been unaware of her true nature before, he was not left long in doubt after their marriage.
In 1925 he obtained employment as a farm hand at Over Compton in Dorset and moved into a cottage on the farm. Mrs. Bryant proved herself to be a violent, ill-tempered woman and her loose living caused indignation and disgust among the country folk. In the neighbouring towns she became well known as a prostitute and was called by such names as “Compton Liz” and “Black Bess”.
It would appear that Bryant had no control whatever over his wife. Probably he was scared of her violent temper and vicious tongue, which to a man so easy-going must have been something to avoid at all costs. He did nothing to restrain her from the conduct which was earning her such a foul reputation in the neighbourhood, and they continued to live as man and wife.
The farmer employing Bryant was looking for an excuse to get rid of him. Bryant was a good worker, but the woman’s misbehaviour was such that the farmer could tolerate it no longer. His opportunity came early in 1934, when a gipsy, a horse-dealer, whose Christian name was Leonard, was taken as a lodger by the Bryants. No secret was made of the fact that Mrs. Bryant lived on the most intimate terms with Leonard, and Bryant, obviously, accepted the situation. But the farmer did not. He objected to the gipsy lodging in his cottage and dismissed Bryant from his employment.
In March 1934 Bryant obtained a job at Coombe, near Sherborne, and occupied the farm cottage which went with it. Leonard turned up again and lodged with the Bryants until November 1935.
Mrs. Bryant was in the habit of accompanying the gipsy horse-dealer on his travels far and wide over the West Country, posing as his wife. On one occasion she visited her sister in Plymouth and introduced Leonard as her husband. The sister did not learn until much later how she had been deceived.
In September 1934 she gave birth to a child, of which the gipsy was admittedly the father. Bryant may, or may not, have been the father of her other four children. When she was off with Leonard she left them with him and he seems to have raised no objection, doubtless glad to be rid of her company.
There can be no doubt that Mrs. Bryant was deeply in love with the gipsy and that she regarded her husband as a poor fool who stood in the way of her marriage to Leonard. One wonders why a woman of her character should have bothered about marriage at all, especially when Bryant did nothing to prevent her intimate association with the man she loved. However, she did, and it was this desire which was unquestionably the motive for poisoning her husband.
On Monday, 13th May, John Bryant was taken seriously ill while at work in the afternoon, vomiting violently, followed by severe diarrhoea. He complained of burning pains in the mouth, gullet and stomach and was in great agony. He was carried back to the cottage and the local doctor called. He at once suspected arsenical poisoning, but, on treatment, Bryant made such a rapid recovery that the doctor believed himself to be mistaken in his diagnosis.
Mrs. Bryant was not at home when her husband was taken ill. She had gone off in the morning with her gipsy lover, taking the baby and her eldest son. The other three children were at school in Sherborne and did not come home at midday. She had left food for Bryant, and he was the only person who would be likely to eat it.
Bryant returned to work the next day, apparently little the worse for his sudden illness.
On 6th August he had another attack of the same nature, but again he recovered quite quickly and was able to return to work in a couple of days.
From August to December he remained in good health, going about his duties as a farm labourer in the normal manner. If he suspected that he had been poisoned he said nothing about it to his friends and neighbours, as far as is known. This reservation is made because in this case, as in many other investigations in rural areas, the police were up against the extreme reticence of the countryman. Much of the vital information which they did obtain was gathered only by patient and persistent questioning.
There is some reason to think that Bryant might have suspected that his wife was poisoning him, because for some time he had been preparing the Sunday meal himself and doing some of the cooking on other days of the week. But this might well have been due to his wife’s negligence rather than to any suspicion that she was tampering with the food.
It was on the 11th December that he had his third illness and this time it was much more serious. He was seized with violent pains and prolonged vomiting shortly after breakfast, blood being present in the vomit. But as none of this vomit was available to the doctor when he arrived, and bearing in mind that Bryant had already made two rapid recoveries from similar attacks, the doctor did not have enough suspicion to feel justified in reporting the matter to the police.
Once again Bryant recovered, though not so quickly as before. By 20th December he was wishing to sign off the panel and resume work on the following Monday, the 23rd. His wife was, of course, aware of his intentions.
In the early afternoon of Saturday, 21st, he was taken with another attack, writhing in great agony, with all the distressing symptoms of arsenical poisoning. The next day, Sunday, the doctor had him removed to hospital, convinced now that his original diagnosis had been correct after all, despite evidence to the contrary. Bryant died one hour after admission to hospital, the doctor being present at his bedside. He refused to sign a death certificate and reported the matter to the coroner and the local police.
The coroner ordered an immediate post mortem. The internal organs of the dead man were removed and sent to Dr. Roche Lynch for examination, although it was obvious to the local surgeons that Bryant had died of arsenical poisoning. Dr. Roche Lynch confirmed the cause of death and advised a full investigation into the circumstances.
The Chief Constable of Dorset decided that this was a clear case of murder and applied to the C.I.D. for assistance. Chief Detective Inspector Bell and Detective Sergeant Tapsell were assigned to the investigation by the Commissioner of Metropolitan Police and proceeded to Sherborne on 30th December. It has sometimes happened that the calling in of London officers has been resented by the local police and their task made more difficult in consequence. On this occasion the C.I.D. men established immediate good relations with the Dorset police and worked with them in the utmost harmony. Indeed, it is largely due to this co-operation that the case was brought to a successful conclusion.
Mrs. Bryant was questioned and made a statement, subsequently proved to be almost wholly false. It brought another woman to the notice of the investigating officers, a Mrs. Ostler, and the statement was clearly designed to throw grave suspicion upon her.
Mrs. Ostler was a widow with two children, and in poor circumstances. She had recently moved to a cottage close to the Bryants’ cottage and had become acquainted with them. Both Bryant and his wife seem to have helped her with money and food and no doubt she was grateful to them. So that when Bryant was taken seriously ill on the 21st December she responded immediately to Mrs. Bryant’s appeal for assistance in nursing him. Mrs. Bryant said that she was no good at nursing and left Mrs. Ostler to deal entirely with the sick man. Mrs. Ostler gave him his medicine, prepared hot milk, and generally nursed him continuously up to the moment he was taken to hospital.
The investigating officers viewed this manœuvre with the utmost suspicion, because to them it appeared as a calculated and cunning attempt to place Mrs. Ostler in the role of poisoner. As the woman had not come to the neighbourhood until October, she could not possibly have had any hand in the previous attempts to poison Bryant. They questioned Mrs. Bryant, but she stuck to her story, and the C.I.D. men did not unduly press her, waiting for more evidence.
Mrs. Ostler and her two children had since taken up residence with Mrs. Bryant and her family of five. Neither woman had any money and they were forced to apply to the Relieving Officer for assistance. The local police were on the best of terms with that officer and he arranged for the two families to be removed to the Public Assistance Institution at Sturminster Newton.
The cottage now being empty, the police could get to work with a free hand.
One of the first things to be done was to make a search of all the poison registers kept by chemists throughout the West Country. Mrs. Bryant had roamed over a wide area of the West Country with Leonard, the horse-dealer, and the task was likely to prove formidable. As it turned out, the search involved nearly all the Forces of the West and many hundreds of officers, but, at first, without success. It was later discovered that Mrs. Bryant could not write or sign her name, and the search began again. This time success came quickly. A chemist was located in Yeovil who on 21st December had sold a tin of weed-killer to a woman resembling Mrs. Bryant. She had given a false name and signed the register with a cross. he recognized her as a customer who had visited the shop on previous occasions and felt safe in serving her with the weed-killer, but when he was asked to pick ou the woman on a identity parade he failed to recognize her, either from her appearance or her pronounced Irish accent. This was a blow to the police, because however certain they might be that they had traced the source of the arsenic, it was useless as evidence.
In the meantime the gipsy, Leonard, had to be found. His true identity was known to the local police, who had a commitment warrant out against him for bastardy arrears. His description was circulated and he was located at Cellompton, Devon. He was brought back and questioned. He admitted freely his relationship with Mrs. Bryant, and it was plain to the C.I.D. men that though he may have been the cause of Bryant’s murder he had had no hand in it, and did not even suspect what had been happening. He did, however, admit that on several occasions Mrs. Bryant had asked him if he would marry her if she became a widow. He had told her that he had no intentions of marrying any woman, and this had depressed her. When he had finally broken with her she had hidden his boots and trousers in an endeavour to force him to stay with her.
The gipsy was eliminated from the enquiry and turned over to the Dorset police.
Mrs. Ostler, when interviewed, proved to be a difficult witness. She realized that she had been placed in an exceedingly ugly position. The fact that many of the local people suspected her more than they did the wife did not help the police to induce her to talk. They had to question her with patient persistence time and again before they obtained what they hoped was the fully story.
She said that on the afternoon of 21st December, when she was nursing Bryant, Mrs. Bryant left her to collect medicine from the doctor’s surgery in Sherborne. She declared that Mrs. Bryant was away three hours. In Mrs. Bryant’s own statement she had said that she was away only one hour. As the police subsequently proved, she went to Yeovil and bought the weed-killer, and Mrs. Ostler’s estimate of the length of her absence was correct.
On 24th December Sergeant Taylor called at the Bryants’ cottage for the bottle of medicine which the doctor had prescribed for John Bryant. This was required for examination, in case there had been some mistake in dispensing, or the medicine had been tampered with. Mrs. Ostler saw the sergeant and gave him the bottle. Mrs. Bryant did not appear but kept out of the way, although she had overheard the conversation. She seemed anxious about the police visit and asked Mrs. Ostler what they could want with the medicine. Mrs. Ostler replied that something may have been discovered in the body that ought not to be there. This statement appeared to worry Mrs. Bryant and she called her eldest son to the outhouse and set him to clear up the rubbish there. She came back to the cottage and from a cupboard in the living-room she took a weed-killer tin which had been used for paraffin and which had originally come from the farmhouse. Behind this tin was another, nearly full, and bearing the name Eureka Weed-Killer. Mrs. Bryant picked up the second tin and said, “I must get rid of this, too.”
Mrs. Ostler was an intelligent woman and she realized that John Bryant’s death was not a natural one, but probably the result of foul play. She was frightened, because she saw at once that she could easily be involved in a murder charge. She protested to Mrs. Bryant that if she had done anything to her husband it would look very bad for her as she had nursed him on his death-bed. Mrs. Bryant made light of her protest and told her to keep quiet about the affair. She went out of the cottage and when she returned without the tin she made the significant remark:
“If nothing is found they can’t put a rope around your neck.”
Some time later Mrs. Ostler pushed the pram into the outhouse and she observed that the copper fire had been lighted and most of the rubbish had been burnt. She did not see the tin of weed-killer again.
On 28th December Mrs. Bryant was unable to get the copper fire to burn properly and asked Mrs. Ostler to look at it. She cleared out the ashes and observed the tin which had been burnt in the fire and which she thought was the Eureka Weed-Killer tin. The paint had been burned off and there was no means of direct identification, but it did impress her as being the same tin. In clearing out the ashes she had thrust her poker through the end and battered the sides of the tin. She threw it, with the ashes, on the rubbish heap, where it was further distorted from its original shape.
All this information was obtained over a series of interrogations, little by little. In all the hundreds of statements which were taken the police had to labour patiently on until they felt satisfied that they had obtained all the information which the person might have. One case is typical of their difficulties, where it took over twenty-four hours, spread over many days, to extract from a fellow farm worker of John Bryant information of vital importance. This man on one occasion, after drinking tea sent out to her husband in the fields by Mrs. Bryant, had been taken violently sick, followed by severe attacks of diarrhoea. It was not that he wished to withhold information from the police—far from it. It was just that he did not remember the affair or realize that it was important. He was, in fact, a man of excellent character and regarded by the police as an honest, convincing witness whose word could be relied upon. It was obvious that as he had been very close to John Bryant he was in a position to know a lot about his private business. So they persisted in their questions until they were satisfied and rewarded by real information.
The police had already taken possession of a number of tins and bottles which had been submitted to Dr. Roche Lynch for examination, but none had revealed the presence of arsenic.
The quest now was for the Eureka tin, as described by Mrs. Ostler. All the old burned and battered tins from the rubbish heap were carefully collected and sent to Dr. Roche Lynch. One, subsequently identified by Mrs. Ostler as the tin through which she had plunged the poker, was found to contain such heavy traces of arsenic that it was obvious that the contents must have been almost pure arsenic. It had been ascertained that Eureka Weed-Killer contained seventy per cent of arsenic, so that this tin was clearly a major discovery.
Evidence of the manufacture of the tin had now to be obtained. There were a number of manufacturers of such tins, but those likely to be concerned were eventually reduced to two. Detective Sergeant Tapsell of the C.I.D. undertook the job and soon ran into a snag. The first manufacturer stated definitely that it was not of his manufacture and gave his reason for being so sure. Sergeant Tapsell tried the second manufacturer with precisely the same result, the same reason being stated, one which concerned the locking of the side seams.
The detective sergeant was not a man to give up. He was quite sure in his own mind that the battered metal he held for identification had been a Eureka tin. He refused to accept failure. After thinking out all the possibilities he went back to the first manufacturer and asked to be shown the actual process of making the tins. Sergeant Tapsell watched very closely and realized that one of his surmises could be correct: that the difference in locking which had caused both manufacturers to reject his tin as one of their own make could be accounted for by the cylinder being accidentally inserted the wrong way on. To test his theory he slipped in a sheet upside down, while diverting the girl operator’s attention. The machine took the sheet and turned out a tin locked exactly as the battered old tin in the sergeant’s possession.
The manufacturer was surprised, but a further demonstration convinced him and he agreed (and later gave evidence) that the burnt tin found on the rubbish heap at the Bryants’ cottage was identical with those made by him for the Eureka Weed-Killer Company.
The police continued with their investigations, taking hundreds of statements, sifting the information, and, where thought necessary, adding to the accumulation of evidence being built up.
Mrs. Bryant lied and hedged throughout. When she came up for trial at the Dorsetshire Assizes, in May 1936, she had a hard time trying to explain away the deliberate falsehoods and contradictions of her evidence, designed mainly to throw the blame on Mrs. Ostler. But the weight of evidence was heavily against her. Mrs. Ostler had not come to the neighbourhood until October 1935, so clearly could have had no connection with the previous illnesses of John Bryant. It was obvious that she had been brought in by Mrs. Bryant with the deliberate intent of implicating her if the crime was discovered.
Dust taken from the shelf where the tin of weed-killer had stood was found to contain arsenic, as did the right-hand pocket of the coat worn by Mrs. Bryant. Dust taken from other shelves did not reveal any trace of arsenic. Soil taken from the garden contained no more arsenic than that taken from other places in the locality. But soil below the rubbish heap contained five times the normal quantity of arsenic.
Coal ash swept from the grate of the cottage contained four portions of arsenic to one million parts of other material, more or less the normal for coal ash. Ashes taken from the copper fire showed fifty times this proportion, as did other ashes from the rubbish-dump fire.
Charlotte Bryant made a very bad impression in the witness-box. When, on the 6th May, she was found guilty of the murder of her husband and sentenced to death, few persons could have disagreed with the verdict of the jury.
—T.C.H.J.