Bloody Hand!

Special Features

The trial of Daisy de Melker (South Africa’s most notorious poisoner) who was charged with murdering a couple of her husbands to benefit from their wills and found guilty of murdering her son; George Joseph Smith and the famous “bodies in the bath” murder trial; Dr Harold Frederick Shipman who is believed to have murdered some 230 of his patients over a twenty-five-year period; and the billionaire Howard Hughes (was he murdered, and did he in fact leave a will?); and many other fascinating trials. Professor Kahn’s usual superb use of language, and now in a captivating and entertaining, often racy, style appropriate for this topic. 43 illustrations of some of the personalities featured. Extraordinary individuals all of them. Some the most cold-blooded of killers.

Table of Contents

Murder Most Foul
Uxoricide, matricide, patricide, fratricide and the mariticidal wife
A clutch of murderous or possibly murderous medicos
Murder to benefit from an insurance policy
A further farrago of homicidal females
Dirty Work With A Will
Failure to destroy a will
Concealment of a will
Doctored will
Forgery and falsification of a will

About the Author

The late Professor Ellison Kahn held the degrees of BCom, LLB (University of Witwatersrand) and LLM, LLD (University of Natal). The honorary degree of LLD was conferred on him by the Universities of Cape Town, the Witwatersrand and Natal. The doyen of writers on the law in South Africa, he was the author, co-author or editor of 13 books on the law, and he published many articles in books and legal periodicals in South Africa and abroad. While he previously compiled books on legal humour to leaven his more scholarly writing, this was his first book on real-life crime.

Professor Kahn was Professor Emeritus of Law and Honorary Professorial Research Fellow of the University of the Witwatersrand, where he was a member of staff from 1948 and a professor of law from 1954 to 1989, and of which he was a Deputy Vice-Chancellor from 1972 to 1981. From 1967 to 1972 he was Dean of the Faculty of Law, and from 1987 to 1988 Dean of the Faculty of Commerce. He was a Senior Counsel of the Republic of South Africa and a Barrister of the Middle Temple, London. In 1987 he was elected an Associate Member of the International Academy of International Law of Paris/New York. The Society of University Teachers of Law presented him in 1989 with its gold medallion for services to academic excellence, law teaching and legal publications.

He was associated with the editing of The South African Law Journal, for 50 years (surely a record that is unequalled in the world, and will perhaps remain unequalled), having been associate editor from 1950 to 1958, joint editor from 1959 to 1967, and editor from 1968 to 1999.