Arthur Henry Douthwaite
Arthur Henry Douthwaite (13 February 1896 – 24 September 1974) was a British medical doctor, Vice President of the Royal College of Physicians and a prolific medical textbook writer. He was described as the foremost expert on heroin in Britain in the 1950s, or as a leading authority on opiates and he was called as an expert witness for the prosecution in the trial of Dr John Bodkin Adams for the murder of Mrs Edith Morrell. Career Douthwaite was a senior physician at Guy's Hospital, and an Honorary Physician at All Saints' Hospital for Genito-urinary Diseases. Douthwaite was Britain's foremost expert on dangerous drugs, and was instrumental in dissuading the Home Office from banning heroin for medical use. Dr Douthwaite was greatly respected for his diagnostic skills. One story told of how he had walked into the casualty department in his usual morning dress and greeted the casualty officer, "I am Arthur Henry Douthwaite and I have just perforated my duodenal ulcer, please arrange my admission." According to the story, he had. Bodkin Adams trial In 1957 Douthwaite gave evidence as an expert witness at the trial of Dr John Bodkin Adams for murder. The basis for this trial was described at the time by the trial judge, Mr Justice Devlin as: "It is a most curious situation, perhaps unique in these courts, that the act of murder has to be proved by expert evidence". Douthwaite had been a member of the prosecution team since December 1957 when, together with the pathologist Dr Francis Camps, he had assured the Attorney General, Melford Stevenson and the Director of Public Prosecutions that the amounts of opiates prescribed for Mrs Morrell were fatal beyond doubt, and he also gave evidence to this effect in the Committal hearing. Devlin commented that, having assured the prosecution of the soundness of his opinion, he was determined to stand by it in the trial. Adams had been arrested the previous year for the murder of two widows, Gertrude Hullett and Edith Alice Morrell. He was tried for the murder of the latter and the prosecution, led by Sir Reginald Manningham-Buller, alleged that he had killed her with excessive doses of heroin and morphine. Douthwaite and Michael Ashby were the prosecution's key expert witnesses. However, while Ashby was hesitant as to whether Adams had definitely intended to kill Mrs Morrell, Douthwaite was adamant that there was no doubt that Adams had intended her death. At times Douthwaite's testimony seemed overconfident and even arrogant, and it only succeeded in alienating the jury and the judge. At the start of his cross-examination, Douthwaite accepted the gravity of the murder charge against Adams, but claimed that he could think of "no legitimate reason" for Adams' to prescribe opiates, and could only surmise that it suggested "a desire to terminate life". He admitted later in that cross-examination that his evidence at the committal hearing was given without knowledge of Mrs Morrell's treatment in the first 18 months after her stroke, only that