A Brief History
On July 23, 1943, an English lad of 19 had enough of his disabled dad’s abuse and blew up the 47 year old in his bath chair. The incident, famous in Britain as the Rayleigh Bath Chair Murder, has to be one of the first and perhaps only incident where someone killed their dad with an anti-tank bomb, thereby arguably meriting a ranking on our list of unusual deaths!
Digging Deeper
Archibald Brown lost the use of his legs at age 24 due to a motorcycle wreck and was confined to a wheeled “bath chair.” Although he was attended by nurses he was demanding and mean to his wife and son, petty and abusive verbally and physically.
On top of the family discord, Archibald had taken a sweet eye to his latest nurse, Doris Mitchell. One day the nurse and Mrs. Brown (also named Doris) came home to find the 19 year old Eric coming out of the house seeming strangely upset. As they got Archibald dressed in pajamas and into his chair, the nurse wheeled the disabled man away when a massive explosion engulfed Archibald and the chair, both of which were blown to bits.
Mitchell survived the blast, but with injured legs. Investigators first considered enemy action as World War II was raging and England was a common bombing target for the German Air Force. Quickly discounting any activity by the Germans, investigators found the blast was caused by a “Hawkins Grenade,” a type of anti-tank bomb. As Eric had access to an armory as a member of the Army he became a prime suspect. Eric confessed to the murder, having put the bomb under the bath chair seat cushion. Eric claimed the abuse he had taken from Archibald was the reason for the murder. Eric was found to be insane and was locked away until 1975.
As with many other odd cases, people seem to have no limit to their imaginations when it comes to finding ways to kill someone else. Question for students (and subscribers): What bizarre cases do you know about? Please let us know in the comments section below this article.
If you liked this article and would like to receive notification of new articles, please feel welcome to subscribe to History and Headlines by liking us on Facebook and becoming one of our patrons!
Your readership is much appreciated!
Historical Evidence
For more bizarre murders, please see…
Unsolved Mysteries: Bizarre Murders. Alchemy / Millennium, 2005. DVD.
The featured image in this article, a photograph by Rwendland of a Bath chair in the Roman Baths museum store: St John’s Museum Store, Upper Bristol Road, Bath, is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.
You can also watch a video version of this article on YouTube:
