IRISH LIVES:JOHN BODKIN ADAMS (1899–1983) was born on January 20th in Randalstown, Co Antrim, the elder son of Samuel Adams, a watchmaker, and Ellen Adams (nee Bodkin) from Desertmartin, Co Derry.
He grew up in Ballinderry, Co Antrim.The family belonged to the Plymouth Brethren, a strict Protestant sect, and religious observance and behaviour were highly regulated. Adams went to school at Coleraine Academical Institution, in Co Derry, before studying medicine at Queen’s University Belfast. He qualified as a doctor in 1921. After short periods working in English hospitals he paid £2,000 to join a practice in Eastbourne, Sussex. He was unmarried and his mother lived with him until her death, in 1943.
Adams became Eastbourne’s most popular doctor, but rumours began to circulate about him when the condition of elderly patients improved after they moved away from his care and when patients left him substantial sums in their wills. Between 1944 and 1955 he came into almost £22,000, some silver and a Rolls-Royce.
On November 24th, 1956, Adams was arrested and charged with the murder of Edith Morell, an elderly widow who had been cremated six years earlier. His trial was one of the most celebrated at the Old Bailey in the 20th century. The newspapers immediately and almost unanimously decided he was guilty.
During the trial, however, the evidence of Mrs Morell’s nurses was undermined by brilliant defence cross-questioning, and the prosecution’s chief medical witness changed his opinion while in the witness box. Adams remained silent throughout. The judge, Patrick Devlin, defended his right to do so and directed the jury to find him not guilty. In an unusual book, written after Adams’s death, Lord Devlin recorded his opinion of the crown prosecutor’s poor handling of the case. Investigators felt at the time that one of the other 17 suspicious deaths linked with Adams might have produced stronger evidence.
He was subsequently found guilty of minor offences to do with irregularities in prescriptions and the poisons register, and was fined and barred from practising for four years. His patients flocked back to him, however, and in later years he successfully prosecuted newspapers for any libellous references. Adams died on July 4th, 1983, leaving an estate of £408,305.
From the Royal Irish Academy’s Dictionary of Irish Biography. See dib.ie for more details
