Murder Comes to Westminster: The Killing of Pte. A. Buttery

The RCRM Speakers Series has now reached Episode 9, with Doctoral Candidate in history, Heather Ellis. Heather completed her Honours BA at the University of Toronto in 2012 and her MA in History at the University of Waterloo under the supervision of Dr. Geoffrey Hayes in 2016. Her dissertation, “Aftershocks: The Psychological Cost of the Great War”, explores how shell-shocked veterans were cared for by family members, medical practitioners and the government.
As we are approaching Remembrance season, aspects of veteran care in the interwar era will be revealed. Heather Ellis chose to look at a murder case in the psychiatric ward at Westminster Hospital, currently known as Parkwood Institute in London, Ontario. It happened on the morning of June 9th, 1933, when a psychiatric patient, by the name of J. Daston, bludgeoned A. Buttery with a cane in the bathroom. Police were called to the hospital five days later, after Buttery died from his extensive head wound. The homicide prompted an immediate inquiry into the circumstances of Buttery’s death by the Department of Pensions and National Health. Heather will try to answer legitimate questions arising from this story: how did the public react to the violent behaviour of a mentally ill veteran? How were Daston and Buttery portrayed in the inquest and in the press? Was blame laid on the veteran for committing a crime or was his mental state the culprit? Perhaps most importantly, was the veteran or Westminster deemed to be at fault for Buttery’s death? Heather has researched the hospital's archives (and much more) in an attempt to answer these questions. As she is finding information, we will see how the investigation of Buttery’s death —and subsequent public interest—shows that hospital care was never completely contained within the walls of the hospitals. Instead, they constantly negotiated with external forces about veteran care.