The Teacup Poisoner
Poison, that favourite weapon of the Victorian murderer, is a comparative rarity nowadays. It accounts for less than three percent of all criminal homicides in the developed world. Modern science and the fact that the poisoner is usually closely related to his victims makes for ease of detection. There remains, however, the rare but real spectre of a motiveless, psychopathic poisoner with means and opportunity.
In the spring of 1971, 23-year old Graham Young applied for a job at Hadland Laboratories, manufacturers of photographic equipment, at Bovington, Hertfordshire. A neat, precisely spoken young man, he told the managing director, Godfrey Foster, that he had no worked since leaving school because of a nervous breakdown, but was now fully recovered. Foster was impressed and took Young on as an assistant store man.
Young’s immediate boss at Hadland was 60-year old Bob Egle, the head store man. By pure chance an outbreak of gastro-enteritis, so severe that it had become known as the ‘Bovington Bug’, had been sweeping the local community, and when Bob Egle fell ill a couple of months after Young’s arrival it seemed that he had caught it.
Unfortunately, the normally fit and active store man became much more sick than was characteristic of ‘The Bug’; he suffered pains in his chest and back, loss of balance and, eventually, wild delirium. He was taken to the intensive care unit at St Alban’s City Hospital, where he died on 19 July.
Godfrey Foster attended Bob Egle’s funeral, and took Graham Young with his as representative of Bob’s workmates. On the way they spoke of Egle’s disease, and Foster was impressed by Young’s seemingly wide knowledge of medical matters.
A nice cup of tea
Bob Egle’s replacement as head store man was 56-year old Fred Biggs. Towards the end of October, by what appeared to be appalling bad luck, Biggs, too, fell ill. After two days off work he struggled in on Saturday, 30 October, and his assistant Graham Young greeted him with a nice cup of tea. By Monday, Biggs was desperately sick with the same symptoms as Egle; he was taken to the National Hospital for Nervous Diseases, London, where he died on 19 November.
Throughout the winter, another Hadland employees suffered similar symptom’s. Two of them, Jethro Batt and David Tilson, were seriously ill. Fearing that the leakage of chemicals used at Hadland’s was responsible for the tragedies that had hit the formerly happy company, Godfrey called in a team of consultant toxicologists, headed by Dr Iain Anderson.
To reassure the staff, Dr Anderson held a meeting and invited questions. The first questioner was Graham Young, who wanted to know if the doctor didn’t think the symptoms of Egle, Biggs, Batt and Tilson bore all the signs of thallium poisoning?
Dr Anderson was intrigued. Thallium, a relative rare compound, was used at the factory in the manufacture of camera lenses, but its history as a homicide poison was sparse. On checking, Dr Anderson found that many of the victim’s symptoms, numbness in arms and legs, chest pains, loss of hair and delirium, could be equated with thallium poisoning. But how did this young store man know about it? With his suspicions aroused, Dr Anderson asked Scotland Yard’s to check the record of Graham Young. The Yard’s records shocked the John Hadland employees and even startled Dr Anderson.
In 1062, at the age of 14 Graham Young had been convicted of murdering his step-mother by poison and attempting to poison his father, sister and school friend. He had been committed to Broadmoor, the institution for the criminally insane, but had been pronounced cured in 1971 and released.
During his nine years in custody, Young had read every book on chemicals and medicine that the prison library could provide; no-one in authority seems to have noticed the connection between his crime and his ‘inside’ interest. In any case, when he came out and was hired by Hadland’s Young had no difficulty in spotting the potential of the laboratory’s supply of thallium.
Until he 1940s, thallium salts had a limited medical use as a treatment for ringworm and facial hair in women, but were abandoned because of the discomfort a dose of even two grains could cause.
Fatal dose
Twelve grains were the fatal dose, and Young had used slightly more than that to kill Bob Egle and Fred Biggs. He laced their tea with the poison over a period of time, and revelled in their increasing agony. Despite the fact that Egle had been cremated, an analysis of his ashes, which had been buried in an urn, showed a remaining nice milligrams of thallium, the residue of a huge dose.
Young was arrested, and police found a grim but meticulous diary detailing the doses of thallium he had given to each of his victims. The dapper assistant store man appeared to have been conducting a macabre experiment in death, measuring the time between dosage and first discomfort. Apart from Egle, Biggs, Batt and Tilson, Young had given the poison to at least four other people who had escaped relatively unscathed.
In June 1972 Graham Young was charged at St Alban’s Crown Court on two counts of murder, two of attempted murder and four of malicious poisoning, and was sentenced to life imprisonment.
Police had found and confiscated a packet of thallium, “My exit dose,” Young called it, in the lining of his jacket. He had told his warders at the trial that is he was convicted, he would “break his own neck” on the dock rail. In fact, Graham Young survived for another 18 years in Parkhurst Prison, dying there of a heart attack in August 1990.
End
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