"Dreadful and Gruesome"

After they had brought in a verdict of guilty in Manchester Assizes last week, a horror-struck jury of townsfolk and farmers were rewarded in a manner almost unprecedented in the annals of British justice. Cried Presiding Justice Singleton: "I excuse you all from jury service for the rest of your lives because of the dreadful and gruesome details you have been forced to hear."

In these details Britain's Press has wallowed for weeks. In the dirty, smoky Manchester Assizes a special telephone switchboard was set up with private circuits constantly open to the great organs of the a London Press -- "just like in America." In his summing up Justice Singleton told the jury that the Crown had built up and fitted together "the strongest case possible on circumstantial evidence." The verdict of guilty was a blow to Britain's outstanding criminal lawyer, Norman Birkett, K.C. Finally, the wretch found guilty in "Britain's Goriest Murder Case" was a particularly good example of the risks run by overeducating in Britain Indian subjects of the Emperor.

Hakim Bakhtyar Rustomji Ratanji, a high-strung Mohammedan with a natural flair for obstetrics, won his brilliant academic way to Edinburgh in 1927 and in this dingy grey and bleak seat of Scottish learning seduced a waitress by the name of Isabella Van Hess. Student Ratanji was then using the name "Gabriel Hakin," but on marrying his waitress he proceeded to become legally "Buck Ruxton." Soon, as Dr. Ruxton, he became a popular and prosperous gynecologist who delivered hundreds of well-to-do Lancaster mothers and had last week a fine snug house in Dalton Square.

Assuming that the Crown's masterly build-up of circumstantial evidence revealed the facts, what happened last September was as follows:

The excitable Mohammedan had come to believe that Mrs. Ruxton, of whose morals as a waitress he was particularly well aware, was now carrying on with a young lawyer in the Town Clerk's office. Therefore Dr. Ruxton encircled his wife's neck with strong, jealous fingers and, as her screams became faint gurgles and she died of strangulation, the Mohammedan looked up to find staring at him in petrified horror the pretty nurse of his three small children, Mary Jane Rogerson.

To spring like an Indian tiger upon the witness of his crime was Ratanji's instant reaction. A little later Dr. Ruxton got out his scalpels, his knives, his surgical saws. He cut off Mrs. Ruxton's nose, ears, fingertips and toetips -- extremities which to an expert criminal pathologist such as Britain's famed Sir Bernard Spilsbury would reveal traces of asphyxia and indicate that death had come by strangulation. As to Mary Jane Rogerson, Dr. Ruxton figured on fooling police into thinking she might have been a man. With this in mind he detached from her corpse the entire face, stripping it off the skull with his scalpels and completing his attempt at sex-obliteration in the most thorough manner. Later cutting off the faceless head, he wrapped it in an old white blouse which had been patched under the arms. He sawed off arms and legs which he wrapped in sheets from the London Sunday Graphic for Sept. 15 and the Aug. 5 and 7 issues of Labor's Daily Herald. Finally Ratanji went somewhat surgically berserk, butchering and slashing the chunks of flesh that had been wife & nurse and at last contriving to dump the lot into a narrow Scottish ravine appropriately known to local rustics as "The Devil's Beef Tub."

Late that afternoon Dr. Ruxton sent not for his usual charwoman but for a Mrs. Hampshire, a humble soul who was working off a debt to the doctor and might keep her mouth shut. She found, as she afterwards testified, the house a shambles, with straw littered in all the rooms and on the stairs, carpets spread out in the rain in the back yard, and the bath tub stained a curious yellow most difficult to scrub clean. After she had done her work, Mrs. Hampshire had pressed upon her by her Oriental creditor a blue serge suit with bloodstains all over it. Explained Ratanji, "I cut my finger opening a can." The waistcoat was so badly stained that even the frugal charwoman could think of nothing to do with it except burn it.

All this was on Sept. 15 and in Lancaster. Not until Sept. 29 did two ladies stopping at the Buccleuch Arms Hotel, Moffat, Scotland, notice, on strolling near The Devil's Beef Tub, chunks which they as ladies had no stomach to examine. In a decorous way they intimated on returning from their stroll to the Buccleuch Arms that things were not as they should be in The Devil's Beef Tub. Instantly the place was swarming with strong-stomached tourists, Scottish villagers and police inspectors. The services of Sir Bernard Spilsbury were not required. Scotland did its own expert pathological sleuthing at Edinburgh University. Soon, except for the fact that one torso remained missing, there were pieced together by two meticulous Scottish University professors remains of a female of 20, provisionally known as "Body No. 1," and another female of 35, "Body No. 2."

The rest was capable British police inquiry throughout the United Kingdom for citizens who had missed a pair of women. Up to this time Dr. Ruxton's neighbors had credulously accepted his casual references to Mrs. Ruxton's erratic behavior in having gone away for a visit and taken along the children's nurse, without a word to him or any of them.

During the trial there was no direct evidence against Ratanji-Ruxton because nobody had seen him kill or dismember so much as a fly. The Crown produced the patched blouse in which a faceless head had been found wrapped in The Devil's Beef Tub and asked the stepmother of Mary Jane Rogerson to comment upon it as a witness before the jury. "Yes, that is the blouse," said Mrs. Rogerson. "I can tell because I put on the patch. It was an old blouse, but I bought it at a jumble sale for Mary -- she had wanted one, just to put under her costume."

Council for the Defense: You have bought many blouses, have you not, Mrs. Rogerson?

Stepmother Rogerson: Yes, but I have not bought so many at jumble sales. I just bought that one thinking it might come in. I paid a penny for it. Things are nearly always a penny at jumble sales.

This was considered last week the most damaging link in the chain of circumstantial evidence drawn by the Crown about the accused man's neck. On the last day of the trial, Ratanji jittered, wept, frequently wiped with a handkerchief his profusely perspiring hands. Yet there was still no direct evidence. After the jury verdict of guilty, Justice Singleton put on the black cap which in Britain means that sentence of Death is to be pronounced. "The law knows but one sentence," he cried, "for the terrible crime you have committed!"

As he was sentenced to hang by the neck until dead, the Mohammedan seemed stunned. Then suddenly Hakim Bakhtyar Rustomji Ratanji came to himself and without jittering or trembling gave his British judge with upraised arm the salute of Oriental warriors. As two wardens came to lead him from the prisoner's dock, Ratanji gave the same salute to the uncomfortable, astonished British jury.

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