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How could a parent poison their child?
The second case featured in this episode is from 1955, when the death of a baby illustrated the fact that when there is the possibility of poisoning, no drug can be excluded from investigation.
On Friday the 22 July 1955 in Portsmouth, a family doctor rushed to answer an emergency call. A five month old baby, Terence Armstrong, was very ill. The child’s mother, Janet Armstrong, said that Terence had been difficult to rouse and had been a bad colour.
The baby had already been visited that morning and had not been thought sick enough to send to hospital, but when the doctor arrived at the house at 1.30pm the baby had just died.
The doctor could not see why the little boy had died so suddenly, and unable to complete a death certificate he notified the coroner. The body, the baby’s pillow and his bottle were sent for examination to the local pathologist.
A child’s curiosity, or foul play?
Upon first inspection no foul play was clearly apparent. Initially it was thought that the baby could have died from eating poisonous berries. However the pathologist assigned to the case was troubled by the presence of the synthetic dye eosin.
He knew that eosin was used in colouring drug capsules, most commonly the sleeping powder Seconal; a powerful barbiturate that would never be prescribed to a baby. The forensic scientist spent five days working on the baby’s vomit stained pillow. Finally he positively identified one fiftieth of a grain of Seconal. From the stomach contents he detected one third of a grain.
The Armstrongs denied ever having had Senocal in their house, and subsequently the Home Office issued an exhumation order and the tiny coffin was dug up early one morning from the Portsmouth cemetery. Senocal was found in the baby's decomposing organs, and it was estimated that Terence had swallowed between three and five capsules; a dose large enough to kill a baby within an hour.
It also transpired that Terence was not the first child the Armstrongs had lost. Only the previous year another baby son had died suddenly.
A woman scorned
A year passed, but the police didn’t forget the Armstrongs, and when Janet applied for a separation order, a police detective was waiting for her outside the court.
Janet, distressed that the separation order had been refused, made a statement to police admitting that at the time of Terence's death there had been Senocal capsules in the house. Her husband had been taking them himself, but told Janet to get rid of them before the police arrived following Terence's death.
