DR PHILIP CROSS was a happily married retired army surgeon, 62-years-old, when she walked into his life. A young woman of only 20, Evelyn Skinner, known as Effie, was not particularly beautiful. Pretty, she radiated softness, vulnerability and possessed an ethereal quality that impacted immediately upon the aged doctor, who recounted to his prison warder, ‘It was as if I was struck by a thunderbolt.’ He had not been looking for love, but it certainly found him and Mrs Cross was to suffer the tragic consequences.
Dr Philip Henry Eustace Cross and his wife Mary, known by her middle name of Laura, enjoyed 18 years of married life together. They met in the summer of 1869 when Dr Cross was in Ireland on leave from army service in India. Laura was from an Irish family of good social standing and, after a whirlwind courtship, the couple married in August of that year at St James’ Church, Piccadilly in London. The match did not amuse Laura’s parents, the Marriotts. Cross was 22-years older than his new wife, with only his modest army pay on which to survive.
The wedding was rushed as Dr Cross had to embark for Montreal, Canada, to rejoin his regiment. Mrs Cross was soon bored with army life and went home. Having served the Crown on five continents as an army surgeon and reaching the rank of major, Cross felt much the same as his wife and successfully sought an honourable discharge.
Retiring to Ireland on a pension of £250 a year, Dr Cross became financially secure when his wife inherited a small legacy and dutifully handed it over to her husband. A property was bought and the doctor began a fairly comfortable life of hunting, shooting and fishing, while his wife concentrated on raising their growing family.
There were ups and downs as in any relationship, but no strains were evident to outsiders. Mrs Cross bore five children, three girls and two boys. The children proved a handful, two of them suffering from epilepsy. The family home, Shandy Hall, in the hamlet of Dripsey, near Coachford village, County Cork was fine, if rambling and everyone appeared content with their lot. The doctor seemed settled and relaxed in his retirement. And so he was until Effie caught his eye.
For the first time, Dr Cross realised his life was only satisfactory. He wanted bliss. Burning with desire for Effie, he was convinced she could give him the joy he now desperately sought. The lass that had entered his life became a secret obsession and he watched her keenly, waiting only for the opportunity to prove his masculinity and capture her sweet young heart.
Effie had joined the Cross household in October 1886 as the children’s governess. A neighbour, Mrs Caulfield, who knew Miss Skinner to be ‘modest and gentle’, recommended her. As the new governess settled in, Dr Cross quickly let his infatuation show. Her youth and sparkle enraptured him. The other servants, and soon the neighbours, began to notice. One day, as Effie chatted to him about the children, he bent over and kissed her, half expecting her to repel him, run away or tell his wife. Effie did nothing of the sort. She remained at Shandy Hall, perhaps due to straitened circumstances or because of a growing affection for her ageing suitor. Possibly her motives were more mercenary. Believing he now had a chance to win Effie’s love Dr Cross pursued Miss Skinner ardently. The young woman responded positively.
It took Mrs Cross only a few days to discern the faraway look in the eyes of her lovesick husband and the growing intimacy between him and the young governess. Laura Cross knew she could not compete with Effie on looks or youth. Fearing Dr Cross might make an fool of himself, her or their family she took preemptive action and sacked her employee. At first her husband seemed to concur. ‘Perhaps it would be a good thing, if that’s how you feel about it. I’ll give Miss Skinner a cheque in lieu of notice and say she must leave at once,’ he told his wife. Inwardly he was bereft and Effie shattered. She packed her bags and left for Carlow. Had Mrs Cross believed that she had nipped any shenanigans in the bud she was completely mistaken.
On a pretext of attending the races, Mrs Cross’ husband trailed lustily after the woman of his dreams having arranged to tryst with her, not in Carlow but in a Dublin hotel the very next day. Effie registered as ‘Mrs Osborne’ and was soon joined by ‘Mr Osborne’ who insisted on a double bed for him and his ‘wife’. His luggage was labelled ‘P. X.’ but the hotel manager, Mr William Poole, thought little of it at the time. After all, it was none of his business.
In Dublin, Effie gave herself to her elderly amour and the lovers shared five days and nights together. Dr Cross felt ecstatic, but it was not enough and could never be enough. Effie Skinner was his world now and he would stop at nothing until he could not only possess her sexually, but also make her his wife. He thus plotted the death of his devoted, innocent and loving spouse.
As Effie headed across the sea to England, her lover returned home. A friend of his wife, Miss Margaret Jefferson, who informed him that his wife was taken ill on the very day Effie Skinner departed, met him.
Laura Cross had always enjoyed rude health. It was therefore a surprise to all who knew her when she began to suffer from severe vomiting on Friday, 26 May 1887. Her husband attended and diagnosed weakness of the heart, insisting he would treat it himself. Miss Jefferson suggested a second opinion from another doctor but the squire of Shandy Hall would hear none of it, refusing even to seek the aid of a nurse.
Over the next few days, the patient deteriorated. The medicine given to Laura seemed only to make her increasingly ill. She had frequent spasms and could not move her hands or feet. Despite the obvious decline of Mrs Cross, friends and neighbours who enquired of her were cheerily informed that her condition was improving. They were not allowed to see her in person as she supposedly had an ‘infectious fever’. Even her brother-in-law, a clergyman, was turned away. Eventually a Dr Thomas Godfrey was able to examine Mrs Cross. His opinion was that the patient was suffering from a bilious attack and recommended nothing more than a strong purgative. Dr Thomas never returned. When asked about this at his colleague’s trial, Godfrey simply responded that, ‘She was not my patient’. His lack of interest was criticised after the trial of Dr Cross by no less than the Lancet, which not only berated Godfrey’s indifference and incompetence but also expressed concern that within the noble profession of medicine lurked ‘criminals of the deepest hue’.
Mrs Cross died at 1.00am on the morning of 2 June. ‘My poor Laura has just passed away. It’s a happy release,’ Dr Cross told Mrs Jefferson, coldly. The servants were ushered in, unemotionally given the bad news and told to wash the corpse before dressing it in a nightshirt. A funeral was swiftly arranged for the following day and the body placed unceremoniously in a coffin to await its final journey to the graveyard
Mrs Jefferson urged Dr Cross to contact Laura’s brother. The doctor argued indignantly that it would be pointless to write to his former brother-in-law, Sir William Marriott, Tory MP for Brighton, as the gentleman was in England and therefore unable to reach Dripsey in time for the funeral. Dr Cross signed the death certificate, recording his wife’s death as due to ‘typhoid fever’. In the excitement he did not forgot her alleged heart condition and another neighbour was told that ‘angina pectoris’ had caused Laura’s death.
The late Mrs Cross was buried with unseemly haste the following day, rather furtively at 6.30 in the morning, attended by around 20 friends and family members. Laura’s brother was informed that his sister was not interred in the family vault at Carrigrohan, as it was ‘full up’. Rather, she was laid to rest in Magourney Cemetery in nearby Coachford.
Dr Philip Cross made no effort to even appear to mourn the late mother of his children, despite their apparently many happy years together. Soon he sped away from Shandy Hall, boarding a ship on the pretext of breaking the news to his children who were at school in England and as yet unaware that their mother had passed away. It was a pretext. A mere 10 days after the death of his wife, Cross married Effie Skinner. To add further affront the marriage took place in the same church, St James, where he had married Laura two decades before.
They say love is blind. Not so blind that Cross was unaware of what the gossips would say if he returned to Ireland with a wife young enough to be his granddaughter, a couple of weeks after Laura’s death. He decided their marriage should remain secret for the time being. Effie would be re-employed as governess, he would be seen to court her and eventually she would emerge from her cocoon to all and sundry as the new Mrs Cross. By the time Dr Cross reached Shandy Hall, his plans were dashed. Wagging tongues had spread the news before him. Seeing that his new marriage had been rumbled, Dr Cross thought it pointless to keep Effie in London. Who cared if people talked? He and Mrs Effie Cross were in love and that was all that mattered. Any scandal would be short-lived, possibly even a blessing in disguise. He and Effie would live openly as man and wife sooner than anticipated. In fact, the married life of Philip and Effie Cross was to be anything but a long and happy one.
Rumours abounded in County Cork as to the real cause of the ‘illness’ that claimed the life of the first Mrs Cross. The police were neither immune nor inured to such tittle-tattle. They had encountered the somewhat irascible Dr Cross before. In 1885 Dr Cross was prosecuted and convicted of assaulting a farmer, Mr Phil Connell, who objected to Cross hunting on his land. An affray occurred and Dr Cross sliced off Connell’s ear with a whip before riding off. Mr Connell was awarded £200 in damages.
An anonymous letter was sent to the authorities accusing the doctor of the dastardly deed of poisoning his first wife. After some weeks, pressure mounted to exhume the body of Laura Cross from Magourney graveyard. Sir William Marriott wrote to Dr Cross asking for an explanation as to the circumstances surrounding his sister’s death. Cross informed his former brother-in-law that, as Laura had died on a Friday and Sunday was the day for ‘Popish’ funerals, she was buried on the Saturday to avoid decomposition in the summer heat, a certainty had he waited until Monday. Such a reply proved unsatisfactory and Marriott demanded that the Royal Irish Constabulary disinter his sister’s body.
District Police Inspector Tyacke decided upon action, despite concerns that members of Dr Cross’ social class were against any proceedings. The coroner, James Horgan, a prominent nationalist solicitor, asked Professor Charles Pearson, of Queen’s College, Cork, to attend and Laura Cross was unceremoniously exhumed from her cold, lonely burial place.
Professor Pearson and his colleague, Dr Crowley, analysed the corpse and found strychnine and 3.2 grains of arsenic in her body. There was no trace of heart disease or typhoid fever. There was, however, evidence that she had been polished off with a pillow. The police soon located the chemist nearby from whom Dr Cross had bought the poison. He was immediately arrested.
Following his arrest, Cross was taken before the local police court and resident magistrate, Mr Gardiner, who asked inspector Tyacke if the accused had said anything upon his arrest. Gardiner then carried out a preliminary investigation. The accused, somewhat shocked, declared ‘there is a god above me who will see the villainy of such a charge’.
Inspector Tyacke explained how he had discovered two bottles of poison in a bedside drawer in Shandy Hall where he also found the diary of Dr Cross in which he stated, matter-of-factly, on June 2 that, ‘Mary Laura Cross departed this life. May she go to heaven is my prayer. Expense of funeral etc., five guineas.’ Hardly the comments of a man grieving or even particularly bothered, by the death of his dear wife. The diary mentioned the failure of Laura’s weak heart from ‘exhaustion’ and how ‘typhoid fever debilitated the poor dear’.
The magistrate had heard enough and explained that ‘in view of what we heard, I must commit you to trial.’ In response, Dr Cross declared himself ‘As innocent as any man in this room,’ to which Mr Gardiner replied, ‘That is something for another tribunal to consider.’
The trial of Dr Cross before the Munster Assizes in Cork town was a sensation. Crimes of passion were not supposed to happen in rural 19th-century Ireland and the public clamoured daily for news of the thrilling revelations revealed in court. Sex and murder is a glorious mixture to a salacious gossip-hungry public.
Dr Cross had been arrested in August and his trial opened on 13 December. The able and tireless Judge Murphy presided, the Attorney General, John Gibson QC, conducted the prosecution and John (later Lord) Atkinson QC defended. Ireland was a restless nation yet for once Home Rule, the Land League and the proclivities of Charles Stewart Parnell, the Irish Nationalist leader, paled into insignificance compared to the goings on at Munster Assizes.
The press were sympathetic to the accused, describing him as ‘upright, of martial bearing, no ordinary man’ and ‘the very embodiment of composure’. Dr Cross pleaded not guilty.
The prosecution opened up with a withering attack from the Attorney General, whose preliminary address to the jury lasted several hours. He pointed out that there was ‘positive evidence that this lady did not die, as he alleges, from either heart disease or fever’. Moving on, Gibson declared the sole motivation of the accused as being the need to gratify his own lust for a young woman he heartlessly seduced. Desire for Miss Skinner drove him to kill Mrs Cross, ‘in order to fly back to his paramour and to elevate her to the position of the wife he had poisoned’. Gibson concluded his opening by declaring the alleged felony ‘exceeded in wickedness, callousness and cowardice, any of the crimes yet dealt with in a court of justice, one of the most horrible that ever disgraced our common humanity’, adding finally that ‘it is for you, gentlemen of the jury, to say whether this wicked intrigue had its origin under the very roof that sheltered his ailing spouse, the mother of his children’.
Having taken up the entire first day with the Crown’s opening address, the first prosecution witnesses were not heard until the following day. Mr William Poole confirmed that Dr Cross and Miss Skinner had stayed in his hotel prior to the death of Mrs Cross as ‘Mr and Mrs Osborne’. Inspector Tyacke testified that he had found the Dublin hotel bill in the doctor’s pocket-book and informed the court of where and when he had found two bottles containing strychnine and arsenic respectively, the bottles being labelled ‘strychnine’ and ‘dog poison’. The contents of Cross’ diary at the time of his wife’s death were also revealed.
Under cross-examination, inspector Tyacke revealed that he had asked the doctor what the arsenic was for, to be told, ‘sheep dipping’. Warily, Tyacke agreed with Mr Atkinson when pressed if that was indeed an occasional use of that drug. The chemist who sold the arsenic to Dr Cross then took the stand and confirmed that the doctor had purchased it just prior to the deceased’s ‘illness’.
Professor Pearson was probably the key witness in the trial and in his evidence made it clear that poisoning alone caused the death of Mrs Cross. Pearson went on to state that the strychnine and arsenic discovered in her viscera was toxic and there was nothing else found that could have caused death naturally. Judge and jury were given a thorough explanation of the analysis undertaken and shown bottles containing the poison extracted from the victim. The defence cross-examined.
Unflappable, Pearson refused to rise to the bait when Mr Atkinson tried first to trap him into withdrawing statements and then tried to goad the witness into losing his temper. It was Atkinson who broke first, shouting, ‘Do you really know anything you have been talking about?’ Calmly, Pearson responded to this attack on his professionalism by declaring, ‘I happen to know a great deal about it.’ The prosecution case rested after the jury heard of the strange behaviour and goings on at Shandy Hall during the last few days on earth of the late Mrs Cross.
The defence tried its best. Accomplished though he was, Atkinson faced an uphill struggle. His address on behalf of his client was ‘so beautifully delivered, felicitously phrased and closely reasoned throughout,’ that he met with thunderous applause on finishing. Wonderful phraseology is not enough. Hard facts are more important and Atkinson could produce little to discomfit the hard forensic evidence of the prosecution.
Atkinson clutched at straws. He argued that a guilty man would have destroyed or concealed the poisons found at Shandy Hall, which, in any case, could have been brought into the Cross home by anyone. The evidence against his client was ‘purely circumstantial’ and, as a medical man, Dr Cross had access to drugs that would leave no trace. While this argument gained ground for the defendant, Atkinson was deemed preposterous in his insistence that the doctor had no motive, when everyone knew exactly that he had a very strong motive: Effie.
Realising he had gone too far, Mr Atkinson urged the jury to discount the ‘immoral behaviour’ of his client but stretched incredulity when calling for it to be ignored as extraneous to the case before them. He also urged the disregarding of Professor Pearson’s expert testimony, again claiming that it was somehow irrelevant.
Henrietta Cross, sister of the accused, was called to support Atkinson’s view of the Cross marriage as being, if not exactly idyllic, then at least happy until the very end. Henrietta did what she could to support her sibling, but proved to be of little help, confirming that Mrs Cross was unaware of her husband’s infidelity with Effie in Dublin.
On behalf of his client, counsel claimed that Laura Cross had taken arsenic to ‘improve her complexion’. This could not explain her consumption of strychnine. The jury found it hard to believe she would have taken such a lethal poison readily. Of course she could have and may even have done so enraged at her beloved husband’s blatant and obvious infidelity with what his wife saw as a mere slip of a girl. The balance of probability suggested otherwise. How would Mrs Cross have accessed strychnine and why would she want to suffer such a slow, agonising and un-Christian death? Was it an accident? If Laura had taken arsenic in toxic doses by mistake, should her experienced doctor husband not have recognised the symptoms and advised her to stop? Clearly, Dr Cross had motive, means and opportunity to kill his wife. No one else had an incentive to see Laura Cross dead, nor access to deadly poison or indeed the lady herself. The prosecution made sure the jury were continuously apprised of this obvious scenario.
Despite the circumstantial evidence against his patron, counsel for the accused argued his client’s innocence vehemently. For his part, Dr Cross sat impassively in the dock, sometimes arrogantly, not for a minute believing he would be convicted. Prior to hearing the verdict, Dr Cross sent urgently for his solicitor, who thought his client had some vital information to impart at this late stage. Said the doctor, ‘After yesterday’s proceedings my dinner was cold, and I should feel obliged if you would take care that today it will be kept hot!’ Only minutes later he would hear of his gloomy fate.
Having exhausted their modest list of witnesses, the defence rested and, after a week-long trial, on 18 December 1887, Mr Justice Murphy proceeded to the summing up. He reminded the jury that they must ignore the defendant’s ‘immorality’ and ‘callous indifference to the proper decencies of domestic conduct’. They must focus exclusively on whether or not the death of Mrs Laura Cross was ‘due to the deliberate action of her husband’. Justice Murphy advised the jury that a crime had been committed and that they must consider who had motive, means and opportunity. In doing so, attention was drawn to the cold way in which the servants at Shandy Hall were informed of their mistress’s death, the ‘foul adultery’ committed by Dr Cross and young Effie, proven by both witnesses and letters. The jury were then asked to decide whether exhaustion of the heart had carried off the victim and, if so, what caused it. The jury were reminded that, after Laura’s death, Cross ‘hurried with callous and wicked speed to replace the wife not yet cold in her grave’. Finally, the jury were told that if they believed the accused’s first wife had been ‘done to death’ after being poisoned by her husband, then they must find him guilty.
With the words of Mr Justice Murphy still ringing in their ears, it did not take long for the jury to reach the same conclusion he obviously had. After only an hour, the 12 good men and true returned to give their unanimous verdict – ‘Guilty!’
The convicted murderer in the dock was asked if he had anything to say before sentence was pronounced. He had a lot to say. For some 40 minutes he addressed the court, expressing his complete innocence. The only wrong the retired army surgeon had committed was ‘to Miss Skinner’. The speech was so full of denial and self-pity the court grew restless and so he was unsubtly hurried along.
Dr Philip Cross had been convicted of ‘wilful murder’. Only one sentence was possible and the court fell into a deep hush as the judge tremulously placed a black cloth atop his judicial wig. Mr Murphy informed the court that he agreed with the verdict and had to dispense his solemn duty under the law. As Cross listened unflinchingly, sentence of death by hanging was announced.
Dr Cross’ social peers, who had hung around the court for days like a bad smell, had agitated for acquittal. Dr Cross was, after all, one of them. They were acutely embarrassed to see a member of their class convicted of murder. For his part, Dr Cross refused to accept he was doomed and began to petition all and sundry, anyone who would support a reprieve. Several hundred signatures were gathered, mostly from opponents of the death penalty, rather than from those who thought the old doctor innocent and thus unjustly convicted. The Viceroy of Ireland, Lord Londonderry was contacted and asked to show mercy. The petition was returned marked, ‘No grounds’.
In vain, the siblings and offspring of the condemned man tried to avert the inevitable. The Chief Secretary of Ireland agreed to meet them at his office in Dublin Castle. He was sympathetic but could do nothing. Although Philip Cross had been convicted purely on circumstance, few doubted his guilt. To reprieve him would be seen as the ‘toffs’ looking after one of their own. Public opinion strongly supported carrying out the sentence handed down. Justice must therefore be served.
Innocent of any involvement, Effie was devastated to have been the catalyst for so dastardly a deed and refused to visit her murderous husband rotting in his condemned cell. She left Ireland and vanished. Heartbroken at being spurned by his young love, the hair of Dr Cross turned chalk-white overnight as he now accepted the inevitable and steeled himself. He told his warders he feared not death, having faced it many times before on the battlefield. The Dublin press remained sympathetic and would later eulogise that the retired army surgeon ‘faced death with the courage he showed before the trenches at Sebastopol’ more than 30 years earlier. The night before the execution, even Judge Murphy needed consoling, as he confided to his friend Sir Denis Henry (later Lord Chief Justice, Belfast).
A professional hangman, Mr James Berry, veteran of over 120 judicial killings was brought over from England, courtesy of the Home Office. The press, much to their consternation, were banned from witnessing further events unfold. Indignant, they later berated officials who had barred them, accusing them of ‘acting improperly in thus declining to gratify the natural curiosity of the public’. Having missed the enactment of capital punishment, journalists were left to invent flowery and dramatic descriptions of how Dr Philip Henry Eustace Cross met his end.
Still grieving for his lost love Effie, the old murderer was executed on 10 January 1888 and buried in a limed coffin in the grounds of Cork Prison.