Эдуард Кавендиш, 10-й герцог Девонширский: Обстоятельства смерти и подозрения вокруг доктора Адамса.

British politician

Edward William Spencer Cavendish, 10th Duke of Devonshire, (6 May 1895 – 26 November 1950), known as the Marquess of Hartington from 1908 to 1938, was a British politician. He was the head of the Devonshire branch of the House of Cavendish. He had careers with the army and in politics and was a senior freemason. His sudden death, apparently of a heart attack at the age of fifty five, occurred in the presence of the suspected serial killer John Bodkin Adams.

He was born in the parish of St George in the East, Stepney, London, the son of Victor Cavendish and his wife, Lady Evelyn Petty Fitzmaurice. In 1908, his father Victor succeeded as the 9th Duke of Devonshire, thus Edward was styled by the courtesy title Marquess of Hartington. Lord Hartington was educated at Eton College and Trinity College, Cambridge. He was, after his father's death, the owner of Chatsworth House, and one of the largest private landowners in both Great Britain and Ireland.

On 26 November 1950, he suffered a heart attack and died in Eastbourne in the presence of his general practitioner, John Bodkin Adams, the suspected serial killer. Despite the fact that the duke had not seen a doctor in the 14 days before his death, the coroner was not notified as he should have been. Adams signed the death certificate stating that the Duke died of natural causes. Thirteen days earlier, Edith Alice Morrell – another patient of Adams – had also died. Historian Pamela Cullen speculates that as the Duke was the head of British freemasonry, Adams – a member of the fundamentalist Plymouth Brethren – would have been motivated to withhold the necessary vital treatment, since the "Grandmaster of England would have been seen by some of the Plymouth Brethren as Satan incarnate". No proper police investigation was ever conducted into the death, but the duke's son, Andrew, later said "it should perhaps be noted that this doctor was not appointed to look after the health of my two younger sisters, who were then in their teens"; The prosecutor was Attorney General Sir Reginald Manningham Buller, a distant cousin of the Duke (via their shared ancestor, George Cavendish). Home Office pathologist Francis Camps linked Adams to 163 suspicious deaths in total, which would make him a precursor to Harold Shipman. Whilst the majority of the Duke's property transferred to the next Duke, his private funds of £796,473 8s. 9d. were willed to his widow Mary Alice, Dowager Duchess of Devonshire.