Dorset Murders (26 page)

The report from Dr Roche Lynch had, as expected, confirmed that Frederick Bryant had died from arsenic poisoning, so the investigating officers broadened their search to check the registers of every chemist's shop in the area. They also visited glove factories at Yeovil, where red arsenic was commonly used in the tanning of animal skins. Two particular chemist's shops attracted their attention. One in Sherborne had recorded a purchase of poison at the end of April 1935, just a few days before Bryant's initial bout of sickness. The second, in Yeovil, had sold a tin of weed killer on 21 December, the day on which Charlotte was absent from home for three hours on the pretext of collecting Fred's medicine.

By now, police had both Charlotte Bryant and Lucy Ostler in custody as prime suspects for the murder of Frederick Bryant. An identity parade was arranged in which the Yeovil chemist tried to pick out the woman who had bought poison from his shop shortly before Fred's death, signing the register with a cross. He was unable to identify either Charlotte or Lucy as his customer.

Both women had consistently denied any knowledge of the cause of Fred's death. However, it must have dawned on Lucy Ostler that she was under threat of prosecution for his murder as she asked to make another statement.

This time, Lucy gave a version of events that directly conflicted with Charlotte's statement. She told the police that, on the night that she had stayed at the cottage to assist with Bryant's nursing care, she had woken at 3 a.m. to hear Charlotte coaxing her reluctant husband to take a drink of meat extract. Shortly afterwards, she had heard him vomiting and, within twelve hours, he was dead. Charlotte had told officers that she had been so exhausted that she had slept through the night without waking. In fact, Lucy Ostler had mentioned the next morning that she had got up several times during the night to give Fred Bryant a drink of water – Charlotte maintained that she hadn't heard a thing.

In her second statement, Lucy also told police that, soon after Bryant's death, Charlotte had pointed to a tin in the cupboard saying, ‘I must get rid of that'. Lucy's description of the tin matched that of the Eureka brand weed killer that the Yeovil chemist had sold to the unidentified woman. A few days later, Lucy had found the burned remains of a tin of a similar size in the ashes under the Bryant's boiler. She had thrown the ashes into the yard.

After revising her statement, Lucy Ostler was released from custody and, on 10 February 1936, Charlotte Bryant was formally charged with administering poison to her husband Frederick John Bryant and wilfully murdering him. She denied the charge.

At Sherborne Police Court, she was eventually committed for trial at the next Dorset Assizes. Prior to her hearing before the magistrates, she was permitted to see her children for the first time in weeks, playing with them for an hour or so in an anteroom.

Chralotte Bryant's trial opened before Mr Justice MacKinnon at Dorchester on 27 May 1936. Immediately, Solicitor-General Sir Terence O'Connor KC, for the prosecution, addressed the court, telling the jury that this would not be a case in which he could say that on a certain day, at a certain place, the accused woman went and bought some arsenic and took it home before putting it in her husband's tea, milk or whatever. Much of the evidence against her was circumstantial, but nevertheless strong.

Nobody was in any doubt that Frederick Bryant died as a result of the administration of arsenic and his wife had a motive for wanting him dead, that motive being Leonard Parsons. O'Connor pointed out that the one weakness in the evidence against Charlotte was that nobody had been able to show that she had ever purchased poison.

Among the first witnesses to testify were various neighbours of the Bryants who spoke of attending Fred during his bouts of sickness, including Lucy Ostler who stated that she had heard Charlotte say several times that she hated Fred.

On the second day of the trial, Leonard Parsons was called to the witness stand and caused some consternation in court when he was unable to understand the questions put to him about the nature of his relationship with the accused. Asked on what terms he was with Mrs Bryant, Parsons simply looked blank. O'Connor rephrased the question. ‘Have you been intimate with Mrs Bryant?'

‘I cannot understand', responded Parsons.

O'Connor tried again. ‘Did you live with her as man and wife?'

‘No', replied Parsons promptly.

In the end, O'Connor was forced to ask his question in much baser terms, which Parsons finally understood. ‘Oh, yes', he replied enthusiastically, going on to say that he had enjoyed sexual relations with Charlotte from 1933 to 1935, something that Charlotte had consistently denied in her statements to the police.

Parsons told the court that Charlotte had wanted to marry him and that, more than once, she had asked if he would marry her were she to be widowed. According to Parsons, his answer had always been no.

Parsons denied that he had once taken a bottle into the Bryant household, the contents of which fizzled when poured onto a stone. He also spoke of trying – and failing – to buy arsenic to use in the treatment of a sick mare. He was refused the poison at the chemist's shop in Sherborne because he was not known to the proprietor. He had even applied to the police to be allowed to purchase a small quantity of arsenic, but had been turned down.

Insurance agent Edward Tuck spoke of meeting Charlotte Bryant in 1934 and being told by her that she would like to insure her ‘old man'. Having called at the cottage and seen how ill Frederick looked, Tuck didn't pursue the sale any further. However, he did tell the court of giving Charlotte Bryant and Lucy Ostler a ride home from the hospital and of Charlotte's strange remarks on that occasion about poisoning.

Dr Roche Lynch gave evidence about the scientific tests he had conducted, both on Frederick Bryant's internal organs and on items removed from the cottage. He stated that, when presented with Bryant's organs for testing, they showed a remarkable degree of preservation, something that was characteristic of ingestion of arsenic. The poison was present in every organ tested and, in total, he estimated that the body contained 4.09 grains of arsenic, the normal lethal dose being between two and four grains. Furthermore, the concentration of arsenic in the dead man's fingernails suggested that the poison had been administered over a period of time, rather than as a single dose.

Roche was then cross questioned by Joshua Casswell, counsel for the defence. While conceding that, of the 146 items taken from the Bryant's cottage, 114 were found to contain no arsenic at all, Roche went on to say that the concentration of arsenic in the ashes from the Bryant's boiler was so abnormally high that something containing the poison had to have been burned there. He denied Casswell's suggestion that Bryant might have been accidentally poisoned, having eaten without washing his hands after he had been dipping sheep.

The following day, Charlotte Bryant herself took the stand. ‘I cannot tell you poison' [
sic
], she stated firmly, while clutching the Bible tightly in her hands. ‘I never had any weed killer in the house'.

On the fourth day of the trial, the jury retired, returning after an hour with a verdict of ‘Guilty'. Mr Justice MacKinnon asked if Charlotte had anything to say before he passed judgement upon her.

‘I am not guilty, sir, not guilty', she told him.

As sentence of death was passed upon her, Charlotte let out a long, pitiful moan. ‘Not guilty' she said again, before collapsing in tears in the dock. She was half carried away from the court, her loud sobbing being heard long after she left the courtroom.

When counsel for the defence, Mr Casswell, returned to his London office on the following Monday, after having enjoyed a short holiday with his family, he found a letter awaiting him, with a further copy of the same letter sent to his home address.

‘If I am right in supposing that you were the defending counsel in the case which ended at Dorchester Assizes on Saturday last', the letter read, ‘would you please communicate with me as soon as possible because I have something to put before you arising out of that part of the evidence in the judge's summing up relating to the normal percentage of arsenic in coal ashes . . . ' The letter continued in a similar vein and was signed by Professor William A. Bone of the Imperial College of Science and Technology.

Casswell immediately made contact with Professor Bone and received a second letter from him, in which Bone claimed that Dr Roche Lynch's evidence on the normal proportions of arsenic found in domestic fires was seriously flawed.

It was an established fact, wrote Bone, that the normal arsenic content of house coal was not less than 140 parts to the million and, more usually, around 1,000 parts to the million. Lynch had stated in court that the ashes from the Bryant's boiler had contained 149 parts of arsenic to the million and, rather than being unusually high and suggesting that something containing arsenic had been burned there, the arsenic content was substantially less than might normally have been expected, suggesting evidence to the contrary.

Having obtained a written statement from the professor, Casswell immediately appealed the conviction, adding that he would be taking the unusual step of asking Professor Bone to appear before the Court of Appeal so that they could hear for themselves what he had to say. The hearing was fixed for 10 July and Casswell was heartened when contacted by the Solicitor-General, who told him, ‘Lynch has made a dreadful blunder'.

However, any optimism that Casswell might have felt was dashed by the Lord Chief Justice, Lord Hewart, who dismissed the appeal and flatly refused even to listen to Professor Bone, who was waiting outside the court of appeal to testify.

Questions were quickly asked in Parliament about whether the Home Secretary, Sir John Simon, would consider introducing legislation to ensure that any verdict reached on mistaken evidence should be subject to inquiry on appeal. Caswell, sitting in the Stranger's Gallery of the House of Commons, was astounded by Simon's reply.

Referring specifically to the case of
Rex v. Bryant,
Simon assured the house that both the appeal judges and the trial judge were of the opinion that Professor Bone's information did not affect the validity of the jury's verdict and that, even if Lynch's evidence were wrong, the remaining evidence against Charlotte Bryant was so strong that it could be conclusively determined that no miscarriage of justice had occurred.

No one had told Charlotte Bryant of the desperate efforts to secure a reprieve on her behalf, since her defence counsel did not want to get her hopes up. Hence, she remained confined in the condemned cell, where, for the first time in her life, she learned the rudiments of reading and writing. Shortly before her execution, she made a will in which she left the sum of 5
s
8½
d
to be divided equally between her five children. It was the first ever document that she signed with her own name rather than with her mark.

She had made one final effort to secure a reprieve of her death sentence, sending a telegram to the new king, Edward VIII. ‘Mighty King. Have pity on your lowly, afflicted subject. Don't let them kill me on Wednesday'. Unfortunately for Charlotte, the Home Secretary felt unable to advise the King to spare her life and she was executed at Exeter Prison on 15 July 1936.

At the time of her execution, a Mrs Van der Elst from Kensington, a notorious campaigner for the abolition of capital punishment, drove up to the prison in her car and allegedly broke through a cord, which was barring one of the entrances. She was promptly arrested and charged with causing a breach of the peace and obstructing a police officer in the course of his duty. Magistrates dismissed the first charge against her and fined her the sum of £5 for the second. Mrs Van der Elst paid her fine and, at the same time, handed over an equal amount as a donation to the police sports fund. She announced her intentions of starting a fund, with £50,000 of her own money, to provide for the children of people who had been murdered or executed, and added that she planned to take care of Charlotte Bryant's children and pay for their education and upbringing. In the event, after Charlotte's death, the Dorset Public Assistance Committee formally adopted her five children.