Book Review: The Magnificent Spilsbury and the Case of the Brides in the Bath

THE devil is in the detail. That's what a keen-eyed forensic pathologist might say. But in Jane Robins' excellent The Magnificent Spilsbury – part-whodunit thriller, part-social history, part-biography – there's delight in the detail too. This is a pacy page-turner underpinned by meticulous primary source research. Frankly, it's a treat.

It begins in the early years of the 20th century, the Suffragettes are agitating, women are staking a claim to nascent careers in teaching and nursing and as secretaries, but still there is a very real pressure on them to find a husband. As Robins explains, "wives had everything companionable and good, while single women were bereft and isolated in a harsher, colder world".

It's against this backdrop that a man such as George Joseph Smith could operate with impunity – meeting women, often as they walked along seaside promenades or in parks, wooing them, marrying them (he did this seven times) and then relieving them of their fortune and even their lives.

The Brides in the Bath murders were one of the sensations of the period. In part this was because of the way in which the women (Bessie Mundy, Alice Burnham and Margaret Lofty) were dispatched, but it was also because Smith met his match in the man who became known as "the real-life Sherlock Holmes", forensic pathologist and expert witness extraordinaire, Sir Bernard Spilsbury.

Before the high-profile murder cases, the bodies dissected on Spilsbury's slab were there as a result of chloroform poisoning (when used as an anaesthetic), tetanus and back street abortions. He kept detailed notes on library cards, which Robins has used to create not just a compelling biography but also a detailed portrait of a key moment for scientific discourse in public life.

Throughout, Robins handles her historical research deftly, keeping the book eminently readable by peppering the narrative with contemporary voices and press reports detailing complaints about women's fashions ("Soon an Act of Parliament will be needed to restrict the size of headgear") and news of the fate of a ship called The Titanic, not to mention the outbreak of war.

Spilsbury did battle with barristers in courtrooms where he applied hard science to slippery crimes, becoming a legend in his own lifetime. It's to Robins' credit that her book, far from being an uncritical paean, is a balanced, scholarly survey as satisfying as a fine thriller.

This article was first published in Scotland on Sunday, April 11, 2010