Comprehensive, exhaustively researched and impressively impartial account of Graham Young and his crimes.
A Passion for Poison is an utterly fascinating account of the life and crimes of Graham Young, the so called schoolboy poisoner, whom in 1962 and at the age of fourteen stood trial in the Old Bailey charged with poisoning a school friend and family members. Found guilty and diagnosed with multiple personality disorder, he was sent to Broadmoor from where he would eventually be released in 1970 and go on to obtain notoriety for a workplace poisoning epidemic that culminated in four life sentences. Yet surprisingly, Graham Young and his sensational story are not the common knowledge that many notable crimes are, and the revelatory aspect of this book, along with the enduring fascination of poisoning, make this a treat for readers with even a passing interest in true crime. Clearly extensively researched, Carol Ann Lee gives the reader the details they need without becoming overwhelming and she has the flair of a fiction author, thus bringing the subject and circumstances to life and giving both a sense of the man and the ordeals of his victims. The book is also impressively even-handed and Lee gives as much weight to the experiences of the victims and family of Graham Young as the man himself, placing his crimes in the context of the UK legal history and explaining how they went on to influence the system.
The youngest patient to be sent to Broadmoor under the Mental Health Act, right from the start Young was a curiosity given the fact that there was very little malice behind his actions with his victims selected primarily by propinquity. Even his forgiving family recognised and accepted his peculiar obsession with pharmacology and the macabre despite Young readily admitting he knew his actions were wrong. His step-mother’s death was wrongly attributed to natural causes at the time and for Young it was an early indicator of the potential for getting away with his interference. The book sheds light on his upbringing and the family dynamic, with Graham closer to the aunt and uncle that he lived with after the death of his mother than his father and step-mother, Molly. A voracious reader from early on with a fervent interest in the occult and Nazi ideology, a chemistry set for passing his eleven plus exam encouraged Young to concentrate his efforts, with antimony (closely related to arsenic) his early toxin of choice. Already aware that the death penalty has been abolished for those who kill by poison and with chilling vision of going down in history, Young boasted to school friends about the power his powders gave him.
After convincing the psychiatrist’s at Broadmoor that he was no longer a danger to the public and ‘cured’, much to the scepticism of his family, he was released in 1970 and via a government training centre obtained the skills necessary to gain employment as an assistant storekeeper at the photograph instrument maker, Hadlands. It was at his workplace, with the tasteless, soluble and relatively easy to purchase chemical element of thallium, of which little was known at the time, that he went on to do the most damage with by spiking the drinks of his workmates and ultimately being sent to HMP Parkhurst. The second half of the book concentrates on the years after Broadmoor, the shocking lack of supervision and coordination in Young’s after-care and the complete absence of background his new employers were given on the years which he managed to ascribe to a breakdown following the loss of his mother. Lee gives a terrific overview of how Young interacted with colleagues, his life outside of work and the sustained campaign of poisoning that he undertook until his eventual discovery.
The youngest patient to be sent to Broadmoor under the Mental Health Act, right from the start Young was a curiosity given the fact that there was very little malice behind his actions with his victims selected primarily by propinquity. Even his forgiving family recognised and accepted his peculiar obsession with pharmacology and the macabre despite Young readily admitting he knew his actions were wrong. His step-mother’s death was wrongly attributed to natural causes at the time and for Young it was an early indicator of the potential for getting away with his interference. The book sheds light on his upbringing and the family dynamic, with Graham closer to the aunt and uncle that he lived with after the death of his mother than his father and step-mother, Molly. A voracious reader from early on with a fervent interest in the occult and Nazi ideology, a chemistry set for passing his eleven plus exam encouraged Young to concentrate his efforts, with antimony (closely related to arsenic) his early toxin of choice. Already aware that the death penalty has been abolished for those who kill by poison and with chilling vision of going down in history, Young boasted to school friends about the power his powders gave him.
After convincing the psychiatrist’s at Broadmoor that he was no longer a danger to the public and ‘cured’, much to the scepticism of his family, he was released in 1970 and via a government training centre obtained the skills necessary to gain employment as an assistant storekeeper at the photograph instrument maker, Hadlands. It was at his workplace, with the tasteless, soluble and relatively easy to purchase chemical element of thallium, of which little was known at the time, that he went on to do the most damage with by spiking the drinks of his workmates and ultimately being sent to HMP Parkhurst. The second half of the book concentrates on the years after Broadmoor, the shocking lack of supervision and coordination in Young’s after-care and the complete absence of background his new employers were given on the years which he managed to ascribe to a breakdown following the loss of his mother. Lee gives a terrific overview of how Young interacted with colleagues, his life outside of work and the sustained campaign of poisoning that he undertook until his eventual discovery.