Medical Murders On Door Duty George McGraw, Frank McLuskey

East Kilbride Rotarians curiosity was satisfied when speaker Dr Barry Adams-Strump, a member of MPTS medical practitioner’s tribunal service, opened his talk on Medical Murders stating Britain has the highest number of murders committed by medical doctors. Doctors were able to successfully avoid being charged with murder on the basis they can attend family and furnish a death certificate. All that was required was an ingratiating manner and a bag full of poisons. Dr Robert Clements was thought to have murdered his 4 wives and signed the death certificates. A botched post-mortem was carried out by Clements and a Dr James Houston diagnosing myeloid leukaemia. A second post-mortem was carried out on his 4th wife where it was discovered she had died of morphine poisoning. When police came to arrest Clements they found he had committed suicide and later Dr Houston also committed suicide when he found he had missed the presence of morphine. Barry continued with descriptions on further murders carried out by Doctors Thomas Neill Cream, William Pritchard, Pierre Bougrat, Harvey Crippin and John Bodkin Adams and he could have kept going but time had run out. Rotarian Jack Blackwood thanked Barry for an extremely interesting talk and he would have liked to hear more had the time not passed so quickly.