Forty Years of Murder: An Autobiography

by Keith Simpson

Book Overview

Christie, Hanratty, The Krays ...murderers haunt the mind. We read about them in the press with horrified curiosity and, if we're lucky, this is as close as we get. But Home Office Pathologise Keith... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 024553198X
• ISBN13: 9780684163345
• Release Date: January 1978
• Publisher: Scribner Book Company
• Length: 328 Pages
• Weight: 1.24 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Gruesome autobiography of British pathologist

As British Home Office Pathologist, Professor Keith Simpson spent forty years in the investigation of both famous and obscure murders. The violent death of King Ananda of Siam was one of his most famous cases. At the opposite end of the notoriety scale was an incident involving the murder of a Shoreditch girl whose sister flung a bread knife at her. As a pathologist, Simpson saw it all and wrote about it in clear, robust prose that does not spare his reader the gruesome details.The introductory chapter to "Forty Years of Murder" is "Why choose Pathology?"Professor Simpson goes on to answer his own question with a great deal of relish, even quoting John Wesley: /Ah, lovely appearance of Death, /What sight upon earth is so fair? /Not all the gay pageants that breathe /Can with a dead body compare./If you can imagine the autobiography of Sherlock Holmes as ghost-written by Rabelais, you will acquire a good notion of Professor Simpson's style. However, the best way to get an impression of the man and his methods is to read "Forty Years of Murder." (Skip the black-and-white photographs if you are squeamish.) Simpson concentrates on several interesting cases, but also gives his reader a fascinating overview of homicide investigations as practiced in Great Britain (with a few side trips to Thailand, Portugal, Canada, and the Caribbean) from the late 1920s through the 1960s.In Chapter 19, "The Innocence of Dr. Bodkin Adams" there is an eerie foreshadowing of the recent case of Dr. Harold Shipman, the most prolific serial killer in British criminal history. This Greater Manchester doctor was sentenced to life in prison for murdering fifteen of his middle aged and elderly women patients by lethal injection. The police believe he may have killed as many as 150 patients during his thirty-year career. Dr. Bodkin Adams in "Forty Years of Murder" proved to be innocent of killing his elderly patients, but Simpson says doctors are in a particularly good position to commit murder and escape detection. "Their patients, sometimes their own fading wives, more often mere ageing nuisances, are in their sole hands." A sudden "grave turn for the worse" or even death is for them alone to interpret.One wonders whether the murderous Dr. Shipman would have escaped detection as long as he did, if Professor Simpson had still been the British Home Office Pathologist.

Gruesome, gory but good reading

Not for the squeamish!!!!! A well-written, first-hand account of many murders, both famous and not so famous. Included are the stories of Haigh (the vampire killer), Dr. Bodkin Adams, Christie and Evans (posthumously pardoned) Lord Lucan (where is he??), the notorious Kray twins, the A-6 layby murder and the King of Siam. Also mentioned are several unusual deaths including a patient suffocated by an angry matron, a boy who bled to death after stepping on a glass during a drunken rampage and a pregnant woman who was found dumped in a canal. Several murders involved Canadian soldiers who murdered local women after they became pregnant. Worst of all were the unsolved child murders. A funny story emerged when Dr. Simpson was on his way to the lab with a severed head in a package. A suspicous policeman refused to believe what was inside or who Dr. Simpson was and screamed for sanity when the head was slowly bought out of the parcel... Dr. Simpson asked the young constable "Would you like me to ring Scotland Yard for confimation"? to which the bobby replied "No, I've seen enough, I believe you sir"!!

Brilliant by a even more brilliant Professor

I was lucky enough, at the time when the book was written, to have not only read it when the author was alive but also to meet him during one of his Police "investigations" and he willing signed my copy but, without any blood on it!! Being a serving Police Officer then, as now, he willing signed my copy. This man had, in his lifetime, been to many a morbid and disgusting scene that the average person would have fainted at.

Gruesome, fascinating autobiography of a police pathologist

As British Home Office Pathologist, Professor Keith Simpson spent forty years in the investigation of both famous and obscure murders. The violent death of King Ananda of Siam was one of his most famous cases. At the opposite end of the notoriety scale was an incident involving the murder of a Shoreditch girl whose sister flung a bread knife at her. As a pathologist, Simpson saw it all and wrote about it in clear, robust prose that does not spare his reader the gruesome details.The introductory chapter to "Forty Years of Murder" is "Why choose Pathology?""You might well ask what could possibly persuade any young doctor, unmarried and without ties, to take up the study of the dead - the diseased, mutilated, sometimes even dismembered dead, whose bodies seem to come to light at such odd hours and in such queer places."Professor Simpson goes on to answer his own question with a great deal of relish, even quoting John Wesley: "Ah, lovely appearance of Death, /What sight upon earth is so fair? /Not all the gay pageants that breathe /Can with a dead body compare."If you could imagine the autobiography of Sherlock Holmes as ghost-written by Rabelais, you will acquire a good notion of Professor Simpson's style. However, the best way to get an impression of the man and his methods is to read "Forty Years of Murder." (Skip the black-and-white photographs---and the cover for that matter, if you are squeamish.) Simpson concentrates on several interesting cases, but also gives his reader a fascinating overview of homicide investigations as practiced in Great Britain (with a few side trips to Thailand, Portugal, Canada, and the Caribbean) from the late 1920s through the 1960s.In Chapter 19, "The Innocence of Dr. Bodkin Adams" there is an eerie foreshadowing of the recent case of Dr. Harold Shipman, the most prolific serial killer in British criminal history. Just this week, the Greater Manchester doctor was sentenced to life in prison for murdering fifteen of his middle aged and elderly women patients by lethal injection. The police believe he may have killed as many as 150 patients during his thirty-year career. Dr. Bodkin Adams in "Forty Years of Murder" proved to be innocent of killing his elderly patients, but read what Simpson has to say about physicians:"Doctors are in a particularly good position to commit murder and escape detection. Their patients, sometimes their own fading wives, more often mere ageing nuisances, are in their sole hands. 'Dangerous drugs' and powerful poisons lie in their professional bags or in the surgery. No one is watching or questioning them, and a change in symptoms, a sudden 'grave turn for the worse' or even death is for them alone to interpret."One wonders whether the murderous Dr. Shipman would have escaped detection as long as he did, if Professor Simpson had still been the British Home Office Pathologist.