The Documents in the Case (18 page)

She had warned him again and again of the danger attending such experiments, but deceased had great confidence in his ability to distinguish edible varieties of plants from poisonous kinds, and always laughed at any remonstrance.

On being asked whether the deceased was a man who might be considered likely to take his own life, the widow replied indignantly:

‘He had no reason to do such a dreadful thing, and I am sure he was the last person to think of it.’

The witness here broke down and sobbed violently, and had to be assisted to her seat.

The coroner then adjourned the inquest for a fortnight to permit of an analysis of the contents of the viscera and the various articles found in the house.

1. Extract from the ‘Morning Express’ of Wednesday, November 6th, 1929
   

SIR JAMES LUBBOCK ON SHACK POISON DRAMA—‘Accidental Death’ Verdict — CORONER'S WARNING WORDS TO PARENTS—

Startling evidence was given today at the resumed inquest at Manaton on the body of George Harrison, 56 years old, of 15, Whittington Terrace, Bayswater, who was found dead under mysterious circumstances in the lonely cottage known as ‘The Shack’, on Saturday, October 19th.

At the previous sitting of the coroner’s jury, evidence was given by the well-known artist, Mr Harwood Lathom, of his finding of the body on returning with Mr John Munting, author of I to Hercules, from a brief visit to London. Mr Lathom, who had been spending his holiday alone in ‘The Shack’ with Mr Harrison, described the curious bachelor life led by the deceased at ‘The Shack’, and his habit of cooking and eating unconventional dishes of hedgehogs, mushrooms and other natural objects.

HOME OFFICE EXPERT AND ‘DEADLY FUNGUS’

Sir James Lubbock, the Home Office Analyst, was the first witness to be called at the resumed inquest. He stated that he had made an analysis of the contents of the stomach and other organs of the deceased, together with vomited matter obtained from the bedclothes and elsewhere. He had also analysed the remains of a dish of mushrooms and other articles of diet found on the table.

‘From the stomach, the vomited matter, and from the unconsumed portion of the dish of fungus,’ said Sir James, ‘I obtained by analysis a considerable quantity of a substance known as muscarine, which is the poisonous principle of a fungus, Amanita muscaria, or the Fly Agaric.’

Sir James added that, estimating the amount of the poison which had been rejected from the body in the course of the sickness, he came to the conclusion that deceased must have consumed a very large quantity of the poison.

Sufficient to cause death? — Certainly. Muscarine is an exceedingly deadly poison.

What would be the symptoms of poisoning by muscarine? — They vary in different cases. Generally speaking, a sensation of acute sickness would be experienced almost immediately after the meal, followed by violent vomiting and diarrhoea. There might also be a feeling of suffocation and dizziness, sometimes accompanied by blindness. The victim would suffer acute distress and intense depression and fear of death. Unconsciousness might supervene, or there might be violent convulsions and prolonged delirium. Death would probably ensue as a result of respiratory paralysis.

Will you explain that more simply to the jury? — The poison would paralyse the muscles of the throat and chest, and the victim would be unable to breathe and would die of suffocation.

You have seen that Dr Hughes mentioned in his evidence that the pupils of the eyes were slightly contracted when he first saw the body. What conclusion do you draw from that? — I cannot definitely say. Myosis (that is, contraction of the pupils) is characteristic of the effects of certain poisons, including muscarine, but the contraction usually disappears at death, though, curiously enough, in the case of eserine, a pronounced myosis has been found five hours after death. I should regard a slight degree of contraction as consistent with muscarine poisoning, but not, in itself, conclusive evidence one way or another.

Have you ever seen a case of muscarine poisoning? — I have seen perhaps half a dozen cases in my own experience, mostly among children who had eaten the Fly Agaric in mistake for an edible mushroom. One case, I remember, was brought to the hospital too late for anything to be done, and the patient expired in convulsions after a period of unconsciousness. Three or four were treated by the injection of atropin and recovered completely. Another case was not brought to my notice till after the symptoms had cleared up of their own accord; in this case the amount eaten was very small.

Such cases are not always fatal? — By no means. If the proper treatment can be given immediately, the prognosis is favourable. Without such treatment, however, and where a large quantity of the poison is consumed, recovery would be less likely.

The Coroner: In your opinion, what was the cause of death in the case of Mr Harrison?

Sir James Lubbock: I have not the slightest doubt that he died of poisoning from muscarine, taken in the dish of fungus submitted to me for analysis.

Sir James further added that the Fly Agaric, Amanita muscaria, was frequently found in woods and sheltered places, and was liable to be eaten in mistake for another member of the same family, Amanita rubescens, or Warty Caps, an edible fungus which it very closely resembled.

Reference was made to the Government publications, Edible and Poisonous Fungi, and to the book Neglected Edible Treasures, written by the deceased, and pictures of the fungi in question were passed round among the jury.

Questioned with regard to the eggs, bread, coffee, whisky and other articles of diet found in ‘The Shack’, Sir James said he had subjected them all to careful analysis, without discovering anything of a deleterious character.

DECEASED SEEN GATHERING FUNGI

Dr Hughes of Bovey Tracey, who performed the autopsy, said that he had found the heart of the deceased very greatly dilated, a symptom characteristic of poisoning by Amanita muscaria.

Harold Coffin, a labourer, gave evidence that he had met with deceased on the morning of October 17th. He had a satchel slung over his shoulder, and appeared to be searching for something on the ground. The time would be about 8 a.m. Deceased was then entering a small wood situated in the valley below Manaton. The witness had frequently seen deceased wandering about the country, sometimes with a sketching-easel and sometimes gathering plants and roots. Deceased had sometimes conversed with the witness about making a meal of unnatural things, such as nettles and toadstools, and witness had always supposed him to be a little peculiar in his head.

Henry Trefusis, a carrier, stated that he had delivered a loaf of bread, a pound of shin of beef and other provisions to ‘The Shack’, at 10.30 a.m., on Thursday, October 17th. Deceased had called out to him from the outhouse to put the goods on the window-sill. As far as he could see and hear, deceased was then in his usual health and spirits.

Mr Lathom, recalled, confirmed his previous statement that Mr Harrison had spoken to him on the Wednesday evening about his intention of gathering fungi the next day, and had mentioned a name resembling ‘Warty Hats’ or ‘Warty Caps’.

The coroner, in summing up the evidence to the jury, laid stress on the danger of experimenting in unusual articles of diet. It was notorious, he said, that other nations, such as the French, were accustomed to eat many natural products, such as frogs, snails, dandelions and various kinds of fungi, which in this country were considered unfit for human food. Such experiments, when conducted by highly expert persons, might sometimes turn out well, but, on the other hand, nobody was infallible, and undoubtedly a wise caution was in most cases to be preferred. Sir James Lubbock had cited some very sad instances of unfortunate children who had succumbed to the effects of accidentally eating those dangerous toadstools which unhappily grew in such great profusion in many parts of the country, and he would like to urge on all parents the advisability of strictly forbidding their boys and girls to tamper with anything which they might pick up on their rambles. The present case would serve as a terrible warning, which he hoped would not soon be forgotten. It was most unfortunate that, owing to the remote situation of ‘The Shack’ and the unlucky absence of Mr Lathom in London, there should have been no help at hand when the deceased was overtaken by this terrible accident. The circumstances of his lonely and agonising death were such as to arouse the deepest compassion for the widow and son of the deceased.

The jury, after a few minutes’ consultation, brought in a verdict of Accidental Death, due to poisoning by Amanita muscaria. The foreman said that the jury desired to express their deep sympathy with the bereaved family. They would also like to add a rider to the effect that teachers in the schools of the surrounding districts should be encouraged to warn their pupils against the eating of toadstools, and that charts displaying the various kinds of poisonous fungi should be hung in the classrooms.

[An article on Fungi, by Professor Brookes, the distinguished naturalist, will be found on p. 8.]

1. Statement by Paul Harrison
   

I was in Africa when the news of my father’s death reached me. The work on which I was engaged was nearly completed, and I at once made arrangements for handing over the concluding portions of the job and returning to England. It took a little time to settle all this and to arrange for my journey to the coast, and it was not till the 6th of January, 1930, that I arrived in London.

From the moment that I heard the cause of death assigned, I was positively convinced that there was no accident about it. My father’s expert knowledge of fungi was very great; and he was a man of almost exaggerated precision in matters of this kind. It was entirely incredible to me that he could ever have mistaken a stool of Amanita muscaria for Amanita rubescens, even in the gathering of it; far more so that he could have peeled and prepared the fungus for eating without noticing the difference. To the average coroner’s jury, accustomed to dealing with schoolchildren and trippers, such a mistake would no doubt seem perfectly natural; but my father was no more likely to take muscaria for Rubescens than to take a piece of cast-iron for a piece of chilled steel. I immediately scouted the whole idea of accident. Two possibilities remained for me to investigate. Either my father, in his unselfish devotion to the worthless woman he had married, had destroyed himself by a painful method which would look like accident and so disarm suspicion; or else he had been murdered. In either case, I was determined that the woman should not benefit by the crime which she had caused.

Feeling as I did towards Margaret Harrison, I could not bring myself to take up my residence in my father’s house. I therefore took a room at an hotel in the Bloomsbury district, which has the advantage of being central, and set myself to examine the problem under all its aspects.

I read and re-read carefully all the newspaper reports of the inquest, and also all the letters which my father had written to me during the last two years. The most important of these latter I have included among the documents submitted to you. There was another, the essentials of which are covered by Mr Munting’s statement, which mentioned that Miss Agatha Milsom had had to be ‘put away’, and that the character of Mr Munting was accordingly considered to have been cleared from suspicion.

I fastened at once upon this incident. I had naturally never believed that Miss Milsom’s version of this episode was the true one. I believed my father to have been quite correct in his original suspicions. Miss Milsom’s illness had, I decided, enabled Munting to pull the wool over his victim’s eyes very nicely. Margaret Harrison and Munting had been corresponding all along, until the convenient decease of my father set them free to come together again after a decent interval.

This suggestion led me directly to the idea of suicide. In some way my father’s eyes had been opened to what was going on; and the agent must undoubtedly have been Lathom. He was Munting’s friend and, deliberately or unconsciously, he must have let fall some words during his stay at ‘The Shack’ which made the situation plain. I thought it probable that this young man had played a double-faced part, and forwarded Munting’s interests under pretence of being friendly with my father. As regards the idea of murder, Munting appeared to have an alibi. His arrival with Lathom on the Saturday night had been witnessed, and I did not think it likely that he could have made any earlier appearance in that sparsely populated district without being seen. It seemed possible that he and Lathom had been confederates, and committed the murder in collusion; but at the moment I was inclined to think that my father had been hounded into self-destruction by this precious pair, or rather trio.

19

It seemed to me that any first step must be to see Margaret Harrison. She would learn before long that I was in London, from my father’s solicitors, with whom I necessarily had business. It was better, therefore, to call on her at once, both to prevent her from suspecting my suspicions and to keep up appearances in the eyes of the neighbourhood.

Accordingly, I went round to Whittington Terrace on the day after my arrival. I sent up my name by the maid (a new girl since my time), and, after a short interval, Margaret Harrison came down to me. She was dressed in deep mourning, very fashionably cut, and came up to me with the gushing manner which I had always so greatly disliked.

‘Oh, Paul!’ she said, ‘isn’t this terrible? How dreadful it has been for you, poor dear, all that long way away! I am so glad you have managed to get home!’

‘If you are,’ I said, ‘it must be for the first time on record.’

Her face took on the sulky look I knew so well.

‘I knew you never liked me, Paul,’ she said, ‘but surely this is hardly the time to bear a grudge.’

‘Perhaps not,’ said I, ‘but it hardly seems worth while to pretend that you are delighted to see me.’

‘As you like,’ she replied. ‘We may as well sit down, anyway.’

She sat down, and I went over and stood by the window.

‘You are staying here, of course?’ she inquired, after a short silence.