Background

Following the publication of Berger's initial report at least one UK clinician recognised the potential clinical value of the findings, should they be replicated. Frederick Golla was a neurologist at the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery (NHNN) in London and head of the Central Pathological Laboratory at the Maudsley Hospital.^{Reference Cooper and Bird4} The latter role included oversight of laboratory investigations carried out for London's mental hospitals and of psychiatric research in the capital. After Adrian published his co-authored paper, Golla asked him if he could recommend a young scientist to work on the potential clinical value of the EEG. Adrian suggested a 25-year-old Cambridge scholar whose fellowship research had run into difficulties: William Grey Walter.^{Reference Walter5}

Walter accepted the job and, after building his own EEG equipment, began recording at the Maudsley Hospital. Golla provided patients from the wards at the Maudsley and Walter soon demonstrated the alpha and other rhythms. In one patient, however, only slower rhythms were detected. Walter suspected a fault in his equipment until Golla revealed that the patient was not from the Maudsley but the NHNN, a patient believed to have a brain tumour.^{Reference Walter5} Following that finding, Walter and his equipment moved to the NHNN and, soon after, he published the first ever paper demonstrating the value of the EEG in localising brain tumours, followed by other papers, including studies of the EEG in epilepsy.^{Reference Walter6} He also gave talks on the new investigation at clinical meetings and following one such, in 1938, he was contacted by a psychiatrist, Dr L.A. Parry, who asked whether there was a portable version of the test equipment. He had a patient awaiting trial for murder whose defence rested on a diagnosis of epilepsy and EEG evidence might usefully support this. Having just built a portable version of his equipment, Walter agreed to make a recording in the prison (Natasha Walter, personal communication). He first sought permission from the Hospital Secretary, who agreed and, believing the story might interest the local press, contacted the Daily Sketch, one of London's large-circulation newspapers. A reporter and photographer were duly dispatched to interview Walter. The reporter agreed to be photographed having his EEG recorded and was duly impressed: ‘Mr Walter [ … ] showed me his almost magical brainwave machine yesterday in the little room in Maida Vale Nervous Diseases Hospital where he perfected his invention’. The resulting article, headlined ‘Mind-wave machine will be evidence first time in murder trial to-day’ went on to describe Walter as a ‘meteoric young scientist who has revolutionised brain healing’ and also suggested that the EEG was his discovery.^{Reference Nicholson7} The article was published on the first morning of the trial.

The crime^8–10

On 22 November 1938, JD, a 46-year-old unemployed ice-cream salesman, cycled to his allotment. On the way he was observed to speak to a young boy and girl, then cycle off with the 4-year-old girl, PO, perched on his crossbar. He later recalled ‘saluting a man and as I did so a blackness came over my eyes with terrible pain. I remember nothing more until I came to sitting on a seat with my head in my hands’. PO disappeared and 3 days later her body was discovered on the same allotments, partially covered by a blind. She had been strangled, but was otherwise unmolested. JD claimed to have no memory of the period before he returned to his senses, but he was the last person with whom she was seen and was charged with her murder. In view of the episode he described, his defence had him assessed by a local psychiatrist, Dr L.A. Parry. JD had been discharged from the army as medically unfit a year after joining up in 1914. He believed he suffered about 12 epileptic fits at that time. No previous psychiatric history was noted, but his uncle and an aunt had spent time in asylums. His defence subsequently rested on a diagnosis of epilepsy, the offence occurring during an ‘epileptiform episode’ in which his reason was impaired; his plea would be ‘guilty but insane’. Walter's EEG recording did, indeed, show the features seen in other people with epilepsy, with slowing over the frontal lobes, and so JD's defence team decided to use Walter as a witness for the defence.

The trial

The trial began on 8 March 1939 at Lewes assizes and Mr Justice Charles, presiding, took some persuading to allow Walter's testimony, drawing analogy between the EEG and other inadmissible evidence based on ‘instruments supposed to tell if a man were telling the truth or lies’.¹⁰ Defence counsel conceded this was ‘rather unusual evidence’, continuing ‘but Mr Walter has used an instrument which, I believe, is useful to find an abnormality in a person’. ‘Used by a man who is totally unqualified,’ responded the judge (i.e. not a physician). Defence counsel replied that Walter was a physiologist and so qualified in the use of the new EEG machine. The EEG-based evidence was finally heard, but the judge then turned to the publication of the Daily Sketch article that morning, saying, as reported in The Times: ‘it was said to be an almost magical brain wave machine, as to seduce a jury, perhaps, into giving a verdict in accordance with the machine and against the true evidence’.⁹ He considered its publication, in advance of the trial, ‘a gross contempt of court’ and said he intended to cite Walter and the Daily Sketch editor with contempt. Only when the editor sent an abject apology the following day, accepting responsibility for the error, was the threat withdrawn. However, in a subsequent press interview the judge described the article itself as ‘a cheap puff for this Mr Walter. It attributes to him matters which when he came to set upon his oath he had to deny the truth of [ … ] it was invented by someone in Jena ten years ago and he has simply been dabbling away with it without any sort of medical information or education at all. He is simply a Master of Arts at Cambridge’.¹⁰

The outcome of the trial was recorded in the Metropolitan Police file:

The Trial of Lunatics Act 1883 provided for the jury to return a verdict of ‘guilty of the act or omission charged, but insane as not to be responsible, according to law, for his action’, often abbreviated, as in this case, to ‘guilty but insane’. The Act was passed at the request of Queen Victoria, who had been the target of attacks by mentally ill individuals and demanded the previous ‘not guilty’ verdict be changed as a deterrent.^{Reference White11} The police file concludes with this comment from a senior officer: ‘I have read herein about the “mind machine” or the “brain tester” and the judge's remarks. I doubt whether we shall hear any more about this machine in subsequent murder cases’.⁸ JD remained in Broadmoor until his death in 1953. The case records are closed to the public until 2068, but were examined by hospital records staff, at my request, to determine whether the original EEG record or a report were present: neither was found.

Walter's own account

Shortly after his court appearance Walter moved, with Golla, his chief, to a new post at the Burden Neurological Institute in Bristol, where he was to remain for the rest of his career. He died in 1977 and towards the end of his life wrote an unpublished autobiography which includes his recollections of the above events (I thank Natasha Walter for permission to quote from the autobiography here). On recording the EEG in Lewes prison he wrote:

He goes on to describe

Walter therefore appeared to forget that the article was based on an interview he gave to a journalist whose EEG he was photographed recording. It should be noted, however, that Walter suffered a severe head injury in 1969, which may have impaired his recall.^{Reference Walter12} On the trial, his account is more accurate: