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Dr. George
Henry LAMSON
A.K.A.: "The Slight-of-Hand
Poisoner"
Classification: Murderer
Characteristics: Poisoner - Morphine addict
Number of victims: 1
Date of murder: December 3,
1881
Date of arrest: 5 days after
Date of birth: 1850
Victim profile: Percy Malcolm
John
(his 18-year-old handicapped brother-in-law)
Method of murder: Poisoning(aconite)
Location: Wimbledon, London, England, United Kingdom
Dr. George Henry
Lansom was a English physician who, afetr the Crimean War, suffered from
an addiction to morphine and was in need of funds. To bring family
estate funds into his domestic control, in December 1881, he selected as
his victim his 18-year-old handicapped brother-in-law, Percy Malcolm
John.
While visiting John,
and having tea and a Dundee raisin cake, he made a big deal of showing
his relative a new American invention, the gelatin capsule, atating that
it would make taking medicine much easier. To illustrate his point, he
filled a capsule with sugar and asked John to take it.
A few hours later,
after Dr. Lamson left by return train for London, John began to suffer
from severe stomach distress and soon died. Dr. Lamson was eventually
caught and charged, after trying to bribe the newspapers with inside
knowledge of John's dead.
How did the poison get
into the victim? Not in the capsule; Dr. Lamson had carefully tampered
with some of the raisins in the slice of Dundee cake given to John,
using the powerful alkaloidal poison aconite. His reward for this crime
was his death by hanging on April 28, 1882.
