Herbert Rowse Armstrong - Rex Versus Herbert Rowse Armstrong

Rex Versus Herbert Rowse Armstrong

The trial of Major Armstrong for the murder of his wife began at Hereford before Mr Justice Charles Darling on 3 April 1922. Armstrong was defended by Sir Henry Curtis Bennett, one of the leading criminal trial barristers of the day. Public and media interest was enormous. A year earlier there had been a trial near Hay of another solicitor, Harold Greenwood, for the murder of his wife by poison, supposedly disguised as an illness. Greenwood had been acquitted. Also, the fact that the three men who brought the charges to the police included Armstrong's business rival and the latter's father-in-law looked suspicious to some people. It was believed by some that Armstrong was being framed. But despite the widespread belief that he would be acquitted, the prosecution case was a strong one. Katherine Armstrong's body was riddled with arsenic and at the time of her death the ingested quantity must have been far higher, and Armstrong had made huge purchases of arsenic. The defence had somehow to make the jury believe that Mrs Armstrong had committed suicide by getting out of bed, going downstairs and helping herself to arsenic without anyone seeing or hearing her; or that massive doses of arsenic had somehow got into her system some accidental way. All witnesses confirmed that towards the end she was almost paralysed. Dr Bernard Spilsbury insisted that the fatal dose must have been taken within twenty-four hours of death, and the family GP Dr Hincks affirmed that for Mrs Armstrong to have taken it herself was "absolutely impossible."