Herbert Rowse Armstrong

Herbert Rowse Armstrong (13 May 1869 - 31 May 1922) was an English lawyer and army veteran who was the only solicitor in British history to be executed for murder. He had been convicted of poisoning his wife with arsenic and attempting to poison his business rival Oswald Martin.

Biography

Armstrong was born in Devon in 1869. He gained a law degree at Cambridge University and qualified as a solicitor in 1895, moving to Hay-on-Wye, Breconshire, in 1906. He married Katherine Friend the following year and they had three children. Armstrong became a partner at the local law firm Cheese & Armstrong before both his partner and the partner's wife suddenly died within days of each other in 1906, leaving Armstrong as the sole owner of the practice. Both had been fit and healthy.

Armstrong served in World War I and achieved the rank of major. He had numerous affairs while on tour, including a long-term mistress in Dorset. However, he was forced to return to his wife when the war ended. Mrs. Armstrong was infamously controlling and domineering, forcing her husband and children to adhere to a strict list of rules and berating them if they did not do so, even in public. This, combined with his mistress in Dorset, convinced Armstrong to be rid of his wife.

In May 1919, Mrs. Armstrong fell ill. She recovered, but fell ill again in August 1920 with an unknown illness that left her with vomiting, fever, partial paralysis and hallucinations. She was treated at the Barnwood Hospital for six months before being deemed well enough for release in January 1921. However, upon returning home she almost immediately fell ill again with the same symptoms and died exactly a month after her release on 22 February. Armstrong appeared cheery and upbeat at her funeral and upon returning home the first thing he did was open all the curtains, which the servants had closed as a mark of respect. Armstrong inherited all his wife's money and possessions based on a will supposedly written a month before her death, which superseded a previous will leaving everything to the children.

Soon after his wife's death, Armstrong became involved in a property dispute. The details are unclear, but Armstrong had somehow ended up owing £500 to Oswald Martin, his only business rival who was representing the opposite side. During this dispute, an unlabelled box of chocolates was anonymously sent to Oswald Martin and served at a dinner party, where Martin's sister-in-law ate some and fell ill. She survived, and the chocolates were found to contain arsenic. Armstrong was suspected but no evidence was found. Despite his suspicions, Martin agreed to have dinner with Armstrong a few weeks later on 26 October 1921. Upon returning from the meal, Martin became violently ill but recovered. Dr. Thomas Hincks believed that Martin was suffering ill effects from something he had eaten, most likely something Armstrong gave him as nobody in his house had suffered any ill effects after eating all the same things as him. Martin's urine samples were sent for examination and tested positive for arsenic poison.

Armstrong was arrested in December on suspicion of attempted murder. A packet of arsenic was found in his pocket and many more in his house, which he claimed to have bought in order to control dandelions at his house. His wife's body was exhumed and an autopsy determined she had died from arsenic poisoning. Armstrong was charged with his wife's murder, coming to trial in April 1922. He claimed at trial that his wife had been depressed and had likely committed suicide, but forensic expert Sir Bernard Spilsbury testified that the lethal dose of arsenic must have occurred within 24 hours of death, by which point she was almost completely paralysed. She would have had to leave her bed, go downstairs, take the arsenic and then go back upstairs and return to bed without her husband or any of the nurses in the house seeing. The prosecution also pointed to Mrs. Armstrong's last words - "Please, do not let me die. I have so much to live for." - as evidence that she did not want to kill herself. Furthermore, the will Armstrong had produced leaving him everything was found to be a forgery and Armstrong's claims that he had bought the arsenic to kill dandelions fell apart because it was December and there were no dandelions.

Despite the strong prosecution case, most observers believed that Armstrong would be found not guilty because all the evidence against him was circumstantial. They were wrong; Armstrong was found guilty of his wife's murder on 13 April 1922. An appeal was dismissed and Armstrong was hanged at Gloucester Prison on 31 May 1922, maintaining his innocence to the last.