Investigating death as a way of life

FORENSIC pathology would not be everybody's cup of tea. The notion of dissecting human remains, some times inflicted with ghastly injuries, sometimes badly decomposed, and nearly always in an atmosphere of tragedy, would thrill few. Yet it must be done. For the professional pathologist the satisfaction is in helping to determine the cause of death in suspicious cases and, as often as not, in supplying crucial information as to whom might be responsible for the death.

But forensic pathologists, while often at the centre of the news, rarely like to talk to the media. Their work certainly excites interest among the public, but perhaps they feel that discussing it openly is not in the public interest. However, one of Britain's leading forensic pathologists, Dr lain West, has co operated in the preparation of a book about his work.

Dr Iain West's Casebook deals with some of the better known cases on which he has worked since he first became involved with this area in 1974. It is not an easy read. But it will sell because nothing quite fascinates the human imagination as murder most foul.

There is a lot of tragedy in this book and a lot of lurid detail. It is not for the squeamish. Those repelled by films such as Reservoir Dogs, Seven or Polanski's Macbeth will not like it.

But there is much more to it than ghoulish fascination or that awe, inspired by the cool clinical descriptions of the most appalling suffering and death. In fact its section on international terrorism should be compulsory reading for those among us who remain ambivalent about political violence. This is not to make a political point, just a human one.

No human being ought to die in the manner of Mrs Jean Shattock at the Grand Hotel in Brighton on October 12th, 1984, for instance. The Tory Party Conference was taking place, most of the British Cabinet were in residence, including the Prime Minister Mrs Thatcher. An IRA bomb went off at 2.54 a.m. Five people were killed, many were badly injured and the hotel was extensively damaged.

Mrs Shattock was in the bathroom of room 628 when the bomb went off in the adjoining bathroom of room 629. It took the best part of two days to find her body. "She'd been blown through several walls, across a corridor, and was in the remains of a wardrobe in another bedroom towards the centre of the building on the sixth floor," Dr West recalled.

This is how he described her body "She had many pieces of shrapnel driven into her body, including pieces of cast iron and ceramic material. The ceramic material had not been the result of contamination of the body surface but had been driven into her body tissues as a result of the explosion." Fragments of tiles on the dividing walls between the two bathrooms "had been driven into her body ... The extensive flash burning which had resulted from radiant heat and the direct burning of her left hand would be consistent with the fireball caused by the explosion..."

Then there was the Harrod's bombing on December 17th 1983. Six people were killed, including three police. Caroline Cochrane Patrick, who was shopping, had been blown through a Harrod's window by the explosion.

"There were multiple punctuate and round grazes and lacerations over the whole of the back of the body," Dr West wrote, "with multiple deep lacerations on the back of the arms and thighs with slicing lacerations passing through the upper right thigh, mid left thigh and through the mid left calf where there were extensive compound fractures."

American tourist Kenneth Salveson suffered "extensive destruction of the body by bits of flying metal and a good deal of burning and charring". Mr Salveson died instantly from "a shrapnel projectile in his brain".

HERE is how Dr West described the body of Philip Gedes, another young shopper at the store that day.

"There was a huge defect on the front of the chest wall measuring 9 by 12 inches, with exposure of broken ends of ribs, breastbone and lacerated remains of the chest and abdominal organs. The heart was shredded and two pieces of thin wire were removed from the remains of the heart. One piece of wire was removed from the right lung." The body was "packed with fragments of shrapnel and debris"

Policewoman Jane Arbuthnot (22) was discovered to have 45 separate pieces of shrapnel in her body, one of which had pierced through her stomach and another through her chest.

Or there was the Hyde Park bombing, which occurred on July 20th, 1982. Four soldiers and seven horses from the Queen's Horse Guards were riding through Hyde Park for the daily changing of the guard ceremony at Whitehall. At 10.40 a.m. a car bomb, packed with nails, was detonated as they passed.

Dr West examined the body of 23 year old troop commander Lieutenant Anthony Daly. "There was a large gaping lacerated wound on the back side of the right chest about 3 inches below the armpit. It exposed ragged black underlying muscles and subcutaneous tissue. A nail transfixed the skin on the back of the right calf and pieces of nail protruded from either side of the right ankle."

Corporal Major Roy Bright (36) was standard bearer. He and his horse Waterford were both killed. His brain "had been traversed by a bent nail which appears to have travelled horizontally through both cerebral hemispheres cutting a path from the right to the left the nail terminating in the left perietal region. Lance Corporal Vernon Young (19) did not die immediately. In his case "the vault of the skull was fragmented with pieces of bone missing. Most of the floor of the front section of the base of the skull was fragmented with numerous bone fragments missing."

Trooper Simon Tipper (19) suffered "extensive comminuted fracture of the vault and base of the skull with a large gaping defect to the right side and back of the head, exposing brain which was spilling free. The brain was extensively lacerated. I removed pieces of metal from the scalp, skull and brain. I removed a piece of black thread like material from the substance of the brain".

One can only speculate at the condition of the bodies of those two men killed in the Canary Wharf bomb last February.

But this book is not just about the victims of IRA atrocities. Its canvas is much wider, covering cases such as the post mortem on Robert Maxwell, the Hillsborough disaster, the Kings Cross fire, various murders, serial killings, gangland killings, deaths of people being held in custody, victims of the spy world, and also Saddam Hussein's use of chemical weapons.

JUST as interesting to an Irish readership as his autopsy reports on the Grand Hotel, Harrods, and Hyde Park victims is Dr West's chapter on the death of Karen Reilly for which Private Lee Clegg was jailed.

Dr West did not so much choose forensic pathology, it chose him. In 1974 he decided to try forensic medicine for a year. He went to work at St Thomas's Hospital in London and he's been involved with the area ever since. "It's been a long year," he says, looking back.

He was born in Glasgow and attended medical school in Edinburgh, graduating in 1967. In 1984 he moved to Guy's Hospital in London, where he is head of forensic medicine. His wife Vesna is also a pathologist.

Remarking on how forensic medicine is different today from the past, he says there was less of it then. "They seemed to deal with more cases of poisoning than we do ... we also have the benefits of the dramatic developments in the fields of forensic science and medicine. The forensic scientist makes a major contribution the most homicide cases nowadays a relatively rare state of affairs 60 or 70 years ago.

On how he copes with some of the more distressing cases he has to handle, he explains. "You detach yourself, but it is difficult to detach yourself completely from some cases." Indeed there is no discussion in this book of his personal reaction to the horrors he has seen except in one instance, in 1984.

It involved the badly battered body of four year old Jasmine Beckford. Her body had 40 injuries to the head and face, and was covered from head to toe in bruises. Her deformed left thigh was ulcerated and there were burns on her hands. She died from brain injuries, after three or four heavy blows to the head. Her 25 year old father was later sentenced to ten years for manslaughter. Her mother was sentenced to 18 months imprisonment for cruelty.

Discussing his own response on seeing the child's body, Dr West says. With Jasmine, it was a pretty instantaneous reaction, almost disbelief. It was, How can a child get into this state, in this day and age, in this country? But you must put those thoughts on one side."

The evil that men do...