G. Lathom Browne

POISONING BY ANTIMONY.

The cases under this head are very numerous, and, therefore, difficult of selection. I have given, as the leading cases, full reports, (1), of that of Dr. Pritchard, of Glasgow, tried in the High Court of Justiciary, in July, 1865, for the poisoning of his wife by repeated small doses of antimony, and his mother-in-law by antimony and aconite; (2), of that of Dr. Smethurst (the Richmond poisoning case), tried for the poisoning of his mistress by small doses of antimony and arsenic, at the Central Criminal Court, August 15th, 1859[141]; (3), I have added a report of the Liverpool poisoning case—that of Thomas Waislow, for the poisoning of Ann James, by antimony, tried at Liverpool, August 20th, 1860.

TRIAL OF DR. PRITCHARD.[142]

Before The Lord Justice Clerk (Right Hon. John Inglis), Lord Ardmillan, and Lord Jerviswoode, at the High Court of Justiciary, Edinburgh, July, 1865.

For the Prosecution: The Solicitor-General (now Lord Young), Mr. Gifford, and Mr. Chrichton.

For the Defence: Mr. Rutherford Clark, Mr. Watson, and Mr. Brand.

By the first count of the indictment the prisoner was charged with the murder of his mother-in-law, Mrs. Taylor, by administering to her, between the 10th and 25th of February, 1865, in Battley’s sedative solution, tapioca, porter, or some other medicine or food, to the prosecutor, unknown, tartarised antimony, aconite, and opium, or one or more of them. In the second count he was charged with the murder of his wife by administering the like poisons, or one or more of them, between the 22nd day of December, 1864, and the 25th of March, 1865, in egg flip, cheese, porter, beer, or wine, or some other articles of food, to the prosecutor, unknown. To the relevancy of the indictment several objections were taken, but overruled, and the prisoner pleaded “Not Guilty.”

THE HISTORY OF THE CASE.

Edward William Pritchard, a native of England, and member of the Royal College of Surgeons since 1846, before he came to Glasgow, had been a traveller in the Polar and Pacific Seas, and in the countries bordering the Mediterranean, and first set up in practice at Filey, in Yorkshire, where he married the daughter of a Glasgow silk merchant, by whom he had a family. In consequence of this connection, about 1859 he removed to Glasgow, where, from his writings on several diseases, he became favourably known as a person of superior attainments, and gradually obtained a fair practice. Whilst thus apparently in the enjoyment of popularity and success, he, in 1863, became the subject of much adverse report, from the suspicious circumstances attending a fire in his house, by which a maid servant was killed—the Insurance Company refusing to pay his claim, and the doctor not taking legal steps to enforce its recovery. The ugly rumours about this affair, however, gradually subsided, and his social and professional position was retained, until the sudden death of his mother-in-law, whilst staying in his house to nurse his sick wife, was quickly followed by that of the wife herself. As the mother-in-law was 70 years of age, the statement that she had died of apoplexy was at first accepted. When, however, the death of the wife so quickly followed, suspicion was excited, inquiries were instituted by the police, and on the 21st of March, 1865, Dr. Pritchard was arrested on the charge of poisoning her. A post-mortem examination of her remains had proved that her death had not been due to natural causes, and a subsequent examination of the body of his mother-in-law, exhumed for the purpose, led to the same result in her case. Chemical analyzations of the interior portions of both bodies disclosed in that of the wife the presence of antimony in sufficient quantities to account for her death; and in that of the mother-in-law to reduce the powers of her constitution so far as to increase and facilitate the effects of a narcotic poison.

THE SYMPTOMS.

The details of the progress of the lingering illness of Mrs. Pritchard until her death, and of the sudden seizure of Mrs. Taylor with what proved to be a fatal attack apparently of apoplexy, were given in great minuteness by several non-professional witnesses, servants in the house at the time, pupils of Dr. Pritchard’s, and a girl whom Dr. Pritchard had seduced and promised to marry when his wife died.

Up to October, 1864, Mrs. Pritchard, never apparently a very strong woman, had been in her usual state of health. Towards the end of that month, however, she began to look pale and lose her strength from frequent vomitings, and had to keep her bed, as she believed, from a severe cold, for four or five days. About this time, on her temporary recovery, she went on a visit to her parents in Edinburgh, and there gradually recovered, returning home about Christmas in her former state of health. After a week or so the vomiting returned, and on the 1st of February, 1865, she had a severe attack of cramp. Some few days after, as the prisoner said, Dr. Cowan, a relative, saw her, and prescribed small doses of champagne as a stimulant. However, the vomiting returned, and about midnight on the 8th she was seized with such a violent attack of cramp that, at her request, Dr. Gairdner was called in, who at once stopped all stimulants. Dr. Pritchard told every one that his wife was suffering from gastric fever. Dr. Gairdner, however, could not find any feverish symptoms, and based his advice on their absence, confessing himself “puzzled with the case.” On the 10th Mrs. Taylor, her mother, came from Edinburgh to nurse her daughter. She was a hale, hearty woman, though 70 years of age, but at times affected with severe headaches, as a remedy for which she had been accustomed for some years to have recourse to Battley’s sedative solution. On the 13th, at her suggestion, some tapioca was bought, brought into the house, and left for some time on the lobby table. Of this, afterwards, a cupful was made, and fetched by Mary McLeod, the younger servant, and by her carried up to her mistress’s bedroom. Whether Mrs. Pritchard partook of this or not was not known, but Mrs. Taylor ate a portion of it, and the cook tasted it before it left the kitchen. Both Mrs. Taylor and the cook were violently sick after taking the tapioca, the old lady saying that she feared she was suffering from the same complaint as her daughter. The tapioca had not been tampered with when purchased, but when the remainder of it was analysed it was found to be charged with nearly five grains of tartarised antimony. On the 16th the old cook left, and Mary Patterson came. She found her mistress suffering from continual vomits, and gradually getting weaker—as Mrs. Taylor said, “one day better, and two days worse.” For the next twelve days this state continued, and then a dreadful scene occurred. Mrs. Taylor, who, whilst at Dr. Pritchard’s, had sent for a bottle of Battley’s solution, was violently sick in the evening of the 24th of February, and about nine on that night rang the bell violently, and was found by the servant vainly endeavouring to vomit and asking for hot water to assist her. By the prisoner’s orders this was twice brought, and when on the second occasion Mary Patterson entered the room Mrs. Taylor was sitting in her chair with her head down, apparently insensible, and with her eyes closed. She was lifted into bed, and died in about three hours. Whilst dressing her corpse a bottle, about two-thirds full of Battley’s solution, was found in her pocket, and identified as that which she had last purchased. That this also was pure and free from poison when sold was clearly proved. When, however, it was analysed, it was found to be charged with antimony and aconite. Dr. Pritchard declared that she had died of apoplexy following on paralysis; but Dr. Paterson, who had been called in at the last moment, distinctly declared that there were no such symptoms. An attempt was made by the prisoner to get Dr. Paterson to give the usual certificate of the cause of death, and on his indignant refusal, the prisoner himself filled up the form with the words, “Paralysis for twelve hours, followed by apoplexy,” and the first victim was buried.[143]

Mrs. Pritchard still lingered. She had been sick on the day before her mother’s death, but not for two or three days afterwards. Then, however, the attacks returned, coming on, as before, within an hour or two after her meals, which were uniformly sent to her by her husband—generally by the hands of McLeod. It was during the last three weeks of her miserable existence, that on one occasion he sent to her from the supper table a small bit of cheese, which McLeod tasted at Mrs. Pritchard’s request, when it gave her a burning sensation in the throat, and made her thirsty. At another time he sent her a jug of camomile tea, after taking a wine-glass of which, from time to time, as ordered, she uniformly vomited. At another time, he had some egg-flip prepared for her in the kitchen, and brought down the pieces of sugar for it, taking them, as the witness believed, into his consulting room, where he kept his drugs and poisons, before he put them into the glass. Patterson, who tasted it, was struck with the taste, and Mrs. Pritchard, who drank it, was sick very soon after, and in the following night. In the week in which Mrs. Pritchard died she drank some port wine which Dr. Pritchard had sent up, and again was sick. On the 17th of March, the day before she died, Patterson, who had gone up to her bedroom to speak about some linen, found Dr. Pritchard handing his wife a glass of porter, which she drank. At that time Mrs. Pritchard was in her senses. About five o’clock the bell rang violently. McLeod called Patterson to come up at once. She did so, and found her mistress raving about her mother, and calling on them to leave her and assist Mrs. Taylor; her hands severely cramped—speaking wildly about her children. After her hands had been rubbed, Mrs. Pritchard seemed to get more calm, and Mary Patterson left, having handed the patient’s supper to her husband. Until about half-past one the next morning Patterson heard nothing. Then she was called up by McLeod to get a mustard poultice, which the latter took up to the bedroom, and in a few minutes after the bell again rang violently. She hurried up, and found the prisoner in bed by his wife’s side. Her mistress was dead. The long agony of months was at an end.

EVIDENCE OF THE MEDICAL ATTENDANTS.

Dr. James Moffat Cowan, her second cousin, in consequence of a letter from the prisoner, saw Mrs. Pritchard on the 7th and 8th of February. She was then in the drawing-room, and complained of great irritability of the stomach, combined with an inability to keep down her food, and vomiting for some time back. He visited her rather as an old friend than as a professional man, recommended her to go to bed, and advised small quantities of champagne with ice to be taken at intervals, and as she expressed a desire for food, recommended her husband to try injections of beef tea. She was seized with vomiting during the evening, but when he saw her before he left on the following day, seemed better, and he never saw her again alive. He spoke to the apparent happiness in which she lived with her husband, and to the fact that, after her death Dr. Pritchard, to enable the servants to take a last look at their mistress, had the coffin opened. Mrs. Taylor, with whom he was intimately acquainted, Dr. Cowan described as a person of very temperate habits.

Dr. William Tennent Gairdner, who was sent for during the night between the 8th and 9th of February, immediately after Dr. Cowan left, was told by the prisoner that for some time his wife had suffered from sickness and spasms, and that Dr. Cowan had recommended stimulants, and that she had had champagne and chloroform.

“I found her,” said the witness, “in bed, lying on her back, with a considerably flushed face, and in a state of pretty considerable excitement. She told me of Dr. Cowan’s previous visit and of her wish that I should be sent for, and we had a good deal of general conversation about her symptoms. I found her to a certain extent exhausted, but by no means extremely so. She had a pretty good pulse. There was nothing in her symptoms to indicate immediate danger, and the most remarkable thing about her symptoms was the violent state of mental excitement she was in and the spasms of the hands. She held her hands outside the bedclothes above her head, and I saw that the wrists were turned in, and the thumbs somewhat inverted towards the wrists—a very peculiar state of the hand. I thought she was intoxicated from the combination of champagne and chloroform. When I turned to the fire to warm my hands before feeling her, she called me very unfeeling, and begged me not to leave her, using expressions for which I thought she was not responsible, from her temporary intoxication. I then examined her belly, and asked particularly if there was any chance of her being pregnant,—that being a frequent cause of vomitings,—and found there was none; and, after various inquiries, feeling her pulse and her skin, spoke strongly against the use of stimulants, which I ordered to be at once discontinued until I saw her again. Next day when I saw her, she assured me that she felt better and had had no return of the vomiting, but had still the remains of the spasms in her hands. I repeated my injunctions of no stimulants or medicine, and that her only food should be a plain boiled egg and bread and milk—that is, nothing that could produce sickness or sit heavy on her stomach. I told her that if her stomach had fair play it would digest the simple food I indicated. I was very much puzzled as to what was the matter with her, and, had I been attending her as a general practitioner, should probably have seen her once or twice a day; but there was a doctor in the house, and my habit is to act as a consulting physician, and not as a general practitioner. I had to leave town for a distant engagement, but before I left I wrote to Dr. Pritchard to inquire how his wife was, and received the reply that she was better. I wrote also to her brother, Mr. Michael Taylor, as I was very much puzzled with the case, and asked to be backed up by him in forbidding the use of stimulants. On my return Dr. Pritchard called, and left word that his wife was better, and that I need not call again. I do not think that there was any fever at all.”

In his cross-examination Mr. Clark, in consequence of Dr. Pritchard having said to the witness that it was a case of catalepsy, elicited that Dr. Pritchard was somewhat careless in his nomenclature of disease—“that he spoke occasionally a little at random, and was not a model of wisdom, accuracy, and caution, in applying names to things;” and that, in writing to her brother—who had been a fellow-student with him—“he had not indicated to him that there had been any foul play, but nothing more than improper treatment.”

Dr. James Paterson, who gave his evidence with an apparently strong feeling against the prisoner, a man of very large experience, living within two hundred yards of Dr. Pritchard’s house, had been called in a little before eleven on the night of the 24th of February, to see the mother-in-law.

“Dr. Pritchard,” said the witness, “met me in his hall, and conducted me to the bedroom, telling me that his mother-in-law, whilst in the act of writing a letter, had fallen off her chair on to the floor, and been conveyed upstairs about half an hour before I came. She and his wife, said the prisoner, had partaken of some bitter beer for supper, and soon after both became sick and vomited, and complained of its being more bitter than usual. From the quantity remaining in the bottle they could not have taken more than a third of a pint each.[144] I asked in regard to the previous state of his mother-in-law’s health, and particularly as to her social habits, when he led me distinctly to understand that she drank spirits occasionally. He also stated that his wife had been very poorly for some time with gastric fever, and that, some days previously, he had telegraphed for her mother to come and nurse her. On entering the bedroom I observed Mrs. Taylor lying on the edge of the bed nearest to me on her right side, with all her clothes on. She had all the appearance of a sudden seizure. Mrs. Pritchard, in her night-dress and nothing on her head, and her hair very much dishevelled, was in the same bed, but underneath the clothes, sitting up immediately beyond her mother. Mrs. Taylor was then alive, and she gave me the impression of a healthy-looking old lady, and previously in very good health—rather beyond the usual size, well-formed; a very superior-looking person, not having the slightest appearance of being addicted to the use of spirituous or intoxicating liquors. Her face was rather pale, but the expression was calm and placid. The eyelids partially closed, the lips rather pale and livid; the breathing slow and laborious; the skin cool, and covered with a clammy perspiration; the pulse almost imperceptible, and she seemed to me perfectly unconscious. On my opening up the eyelids, I found both pupils very much contracted. From these symptoms, and judging from her general appearance, my conviction was that she was under the influence of opium or of some other powerful narcotic, and I at once pronounced my opinion that she was dying.

“I and Dr. Pritchard retired a little from the bedside, and went to the fireplace, and I then stated distinctly that she was dying. Pritchard said she had frequently had attacks of a similar kind before, but never one so severe. I said, nothing that we could do would have the slightest effect, but that, as a last resource, we might try mustard poultices to the soles of the feet, the calves of the legs, and the inside of the thighs, and as quickly as possible administer a strong turpentine enema. Pritchard at once proceeded to prepare the enema, and said he had a little before given her one, in which he had administered a glass of brandy. The old lady lay apparently comatose, or unconscious; but on being roused a little, and the head and shoulders slightly elevated, there was a degree of consciousness came on, and the pulse became perceptible at the wrist. She had not manifested consciousness before. I directed Pritchard’s attention to the pulse, and he then clapped the old lady on the shoulder and said, ‘You are getting better, darling.’ I looked at him and shook my head ominously, as much as to say, ‘Never in this world.’ A slight fit of retching now came on, and she put up a small quantity of a frothy kind of mucus, immediately after which the ‘coma,’ or insensibility, returned—the breathing became more oppressed, more laboured, and the alvine evacuations were passed involuntarily, I then concluded that the case was hopeless, but Pritchard administered his enema. I then left the room, and went downstairs with Pritchard to his consulting room, and there repeated my opinion that she was in a state of narcotism. Pritchard then said that the old lady was in the habit of regularly using Battley’s Sedative Solution, and that she had a few days before purchased not less than a half-pound bottle of that medicine, and that he had no doubt, or it was very likely, that she might have taken a good swig of it. I know that medicine, but seldom use it. My impression was that she was not what is called an opium-eater, or one that used opium to any great extent. She presented no appearance of that.”

At this visit Dr. Paterson’s attention was forcibly attracted to the appearances presented by Mrs. Pritchard.

“She seemed,” said the witness, “exceedingly weak and exhausted. Her features were sharp or thin, with a high hectic flush on her cheeks, and her voice was very weak and peculiar—in fact, very much resembling a person verging into the collapsed stage of cholera. The expression of her countenance conveyed to me the idea of a kind of silly or semi-imbecile person at the time. At first I was inclined to attribute her appearance to the recent severe attack of gastric fever, which I was told by the prisoner she had had, and her symptoms aggravated, of course, by the great consternation and grief not unnaturally caused by the sudden and alarming condition of her mother. At the same time I must say that I could not banish from my mind the idea, or rather conviction, that her symptoms betokened that she was under the depressing influence of antimony—that conviction came upon me while in her presence, and I could not get quit of it. I did not put a single question to her.”

At half-past eleven Dr. Paterson went home, and about one the next morning he was sent for again, but refused to go, as he was certain he could do nothing, but sent word that he would do so if Dr. Pritchard thought he could be of any use. No answer came, and it was not until the Saturday morning that he heard of Mrs. Taylor’s death, when her husband called on him to ask him to certify the cause of death, and the duration of her disease. This he refused, telling Mr. Taylor that that document was not given to friends of the deceased, but only to the Registrar. Soon after Dr. Paterson received from the Registrar the usual form to fill up, which he returned at once in blank as it came, with this note:—“Dear Sir,—I am surprised that I am called on to certify the cause of death in this case. I only saw the person for a few minutes a very short period before her death. She seemed to be under some narcotic; but Dr. Pritchard, who was present from the first moment of the illness until death occurred, and which happened in his own house, may certify the cause. The death was certainly sudden, unexpected, and to me mysterious.” The words “the cause of death” he rendered emphatic by underlining them. That was the only communication which he made to anyone, beyond speaking about it in his own family. The certificate was eventually given by Dr. Pritchard, assigning as the cause of death “paralysis for twelve hours as the primary cause, and the secondary, apoplexy,” the duration of which had been one hour.[145]

On the 1st of March he met Pritchard accidentally, who asked him to come and see his wife, which he did the next day.[146]

“She was in bed, still very weak and prostrate, and in a weak voice expressed her satisfaction and her gratitude at my calling. Then, in a very earnest manner, she asked me if I really thought that her mother was dying when I saw her. I said most decidedly I did, and had told Pritchard so. She then clasped her hands, looked up, and feebly exclaimed, ‘Good God, is it possible!’ and burst into a flood of tears. I put some questions then as to her mother’s previous state of health, especially if she was habitually addicted to the use of Battley’s solution. She told me that her mother’s health, generally speaking, was good, but that she suffered occasionally from what she called neuralgic headaches, and for relief of these attacks she did take a little Battley’s solution; but she added that she could not be said to be in the habitual use of that medicine.

“I then questioned her about herself. She told me that for a considerable time past she had suffered very much from sickness, retching, and vomiting, with severe pains in the stomach and throughout the bowels, accompanied with purgings, great heat and uneasiness about the throat and mouth, and a constant urgent thirst. I examined her tongue; it was very foul, and of a lightish brown colour. Her features were still very sharp and deeply flushed. Her pulse was weak, contracted, and very rapid. Her skin was moist, but defective in animal heat, and altogether she presented the appearance of great general prostration. Her eyes were watery, but clear and intelligent. I prescribed for her small quantities of brandy and champagne to recruit her strength, and small pieces of ice to relieve the thirst and irritability of her stomach. If she tired of these, she should have recourse to granulated citrate of magnesia as a cooling effervescent drink, and have a mustard poultice applied on the pit of the stomach—these were verbal directions. I also recommended, at short intervals, small quantities of easily digested nutritious food, such as beef tea, calves’ foot jelly, chicken soup, arrowroot, and so on. I then wrote a prescription for 12 grains of camomile, 24 of blue or gray powder, 12 of powdered ipecacuanha, and 6 grains of aromatic powder, to be carefully mixed and divided into six parts, one to be taken daily, to relieve the biliary disturbance and soothe the mucous lining of the alimentary canal. I gave her the prescription, and told her to show it to Pritchard when he came home.”

From then until the day before her death the witness did not see Mrs. Pritchard. On the 5th of March Dr. Pritchard had called on him, and reported that his wife was better for his advice, but still very weakly, and her stomach irritable, and had been strongly advised by Dr. Paterson to continue the treatment he had recommended.

“On Friday evening,” continued the witness, “Dr. Pritchard called upon me personally and requested me to come and see his wife. I did so. She was in bed in a sitting posture, supported by pillows, and I was very much struck with her terribly altered appearance. She seemed quite conscious. I went up to her bedside and she caught my hand, and I could see a half-smile of recognition on her countenance. She very soon began to mutter something about her having been vomiting. Dr. Pritchard was standing beside me, and he volunteered to say that she had not been vomiting—that she was raving. She complained of great thirst, and Pritchard poured some water out of a carafe into a tumbler and gave it her, and she drank it. I observed her countenance very much changed from what it had been when I saw her last. Her cheeks were hollow, sharp, pinched-looking, and still very much flushed. There was a peculiarly wild expression: the eyes were of a fiery red and sunk-looking. Her pulse was very weak and exceedingly rapid. Her tongue was a darkish brown colour, very foul; and she immediately began to grasp with her hand as if to catch some imaginary object on the bedclothes. She muttered something about the clock, but there was none in the room. I expressed my surprise at the great change and alarming appearances, and asked Pritchard how long she had been confined to bed since I saw her. He said only since morning, that yesterday and yesterday afternoon she was in the drawing room amusing herself with the children. I again expressed my surprise at her alarming condition. He said she had not slept for four or five nights, and I replied that we must endeavour to procure some refreshing sleep. We went downstairs, and I then prescribed 30 drops of solution of morphia, 30 drops of ipecacuanha wine, 10 drops of chlorodyne, and an ounce of cinnamon water, to be taken every four hours if the first dose did not give relief. Pritchard wrote the prescription at my dictation. I said it was unnecessary; it was simple, and he might mix it himself. I was anxious to save time, and give relief as soon as possible. He said he kept no medicines but chloroform and Battley’s solution; he did not keep a small stock for any emergency, which I thought strange.[147] I then left the house, and at one o’clock the next morning a message came that Mrs. Pritchard was dying, and in less than three minutes after another that she was dead. I never entered Dr. Pritchard’s house except on the occasions I have mentioned. I never told him that I thought his wife had taken too much wine, and I never recommended Dublin stout for her.”[148]

The cross-examination of Dr. Paterson was confined to two points, the grounds on which he held that Mrs. Taylor had not the appearance of having been in the habit of using opium, and his conduct in not disclosing to some member of her family the impression he had formed that Mrs. Pritchard was being slowly poisoned by antimony. “When a person is in the habit of taking opium to a great extent,” he said, “you generally find that they are not very good in colour. They are generally thin in features and hollow about the eyes—in fact, not of a healthy appearance. Mrs. Taylor being stout and healthy-looking, my impression was that she was not an habitual consumer of opium, though she might take it occasionally as medicine.” On the second point he stood on professional etiquette as a consulting physician, and not the regular medical attendant, insisting that he had no right to revisit his patient unless sent for, and saying that he believed he should never have been called in the second time had he not accidentally met Dr. Pritchard in the street.

“His first impression arose simply from seeing Mrs. Pritchard at the time of her mother’s fatal seizure, when he formed his diagnosis from the symptoms that were present, just as he was in the habit of forming his opinion of any patient he saw for the first time—judging from symptomatology, the science of the signs of disease. It was not his duty to interfere in the family without being invited, as there was another doctor in the house, and he did the best he could by apprising the registrar when refusing to sign the certificate of Mrs. Taylor’s death. Had he been called in consultation with another medical man, he should have felt it his duty to state his medical opinion; and had there been a post-mortem examination of Mrs. Taylor’s body at the time, he believed that in all probability the drugging of Mrs. Pritchard with antimony would have gone no further, at least at that time.”

When called in the second time on the 2nd of March, he said:—

“I believed her to be suffering under poisoning by antimony,” and I prescribed accordingly. I saw her alone, but I did not give her any indication of what I thought her ailment. I did not mention antimony or poison in the slightest. I did not give her any idea that she was labouring under any but a natural disease, because the treatment which I prescribed for her, provided she got nothing else, was in my mind quite sufficient to have very soon brought her round, taking it for granted that my advice was carefully walked up to. I did not mention to Dr. Pritchard that his wife was being poisoned by antimony. It would not have been a very safe matter to have done so. I did not go back the next day to see if my advice had been acted on. I did not consider that she was my patient at all. I had no right or title to go back and see her. In any case where a consultation is held, the consulting physician has no right to go back to see the patient; it would be a breach of the etiquette of the profession.”[149]

On re-examination Dr. Paterson stoutly adhered to his opinion that his being called in to see Mrs. Pritchard was purely accidental, and that it would not have been very natural to have communicated his suspicions to the husband.

PURCHASE AND POSSESSION OF MEDICINES AND POISONS BY THE PRISONER.

The prisoner, when it was suggested by Dr. Paterson that he should mix in his own consulting-room the prescription, on the 17th of March, told the doctor that he did not, like other medical men, keep in his house a small stock of medicines for any emergency. It was, however, proved that in the presses in his room were at least five-and-thirty bottles of medicinal preparations, and several papers and bottles of poisons; and that he had been a constant purchaser of poisons, and especially of Fleming’s tincture of aconite and tartarised antimony, from September, 1864, to as late as the 16th of March, 1865.[150] According to the witnesses for the prosecution, the quantities of antimony and tincture of aconite bought by him were largely in excess of the amounts sold to other medical men, though not so according to the experience of two druggists called by the prisoner. Anyhow, as will be seen by the list in the note, the purchases were larger than could have been required in any ordinary practice. Besides the phials and papers subsequently proved to contain poison, in one of the presses was a bottle labelled Battley’s solution, which was found to contain an appreciable quantity of antimony, to the extent of 1·5 of a grain per fluid ounce, and the remainder of the tapioca to be charged with 4·62 grains of antimony to the pound. A phial containing 3·5 grains of tartarised antimony, and three others containing tincture of conium, and six other phials with small portions of tincture of aconite, conium, and digitalis, were found in the prisoner’s cupboard. In the chloroform, no metallic poison was discovered; but in a small wooden box with a screw cover were 15·5 grains of tartarised antimony and arsenious acid (the common poison of arsenic), in nearly equal proportions; 35 grains of tartarised antimony in a pasteboard box, and about ten drops of aqueous solution of corrosive sublimate were found in a quart wine-bottle.[151]

MEDICAL AND CHEMICAL ANALYSES OF THE BODIES OF MRS. TAYLOR AND MRS. PRITCHARD.

Mrs. Taylor.

On the 29th and 30th of March the exhumed body of Mrs. Taylor was medically and chemically examined by Dr. Maclagan, the professor of medical jurisprudence in the university of Edinburgh, and Dr. Henry Duncan Littlejohn, surgeon of the Edinburgh police. In accordance with the admirable practice of the Scotch courts these experts gave in formal certificates “on soul and conscience,” which were read in court before any personal examination was allowed. The medical report, after detailing the healthy condition in which the different portions of the body were found, concluded by stating that the examiners “had not been able to discover in the body any morbid appearances capable of accounting for death, and that they were of opinion that the cause of death could not be determined without chemical analysis, and that for that purpose they had secured the alimentary canal and its contents, the heart and some of the blood, the liver, the kidneys, the bladder and uterus, and a portion of the brain,” which had been entrusted to Dr. Maclagan, of whose report the substance is now given:—

“Contents of stomach, amounting to five ounces, having been first tested for vegetable poisons, and then for meconic acid, without success, ‘the residues of the above process were tested for mineral poisons; and a preliminary trial, by Reinsch’s method, having revealed the presence of antimony, I subjected the whole to a process by which I was enabled to determine the amount of this metal (process then described). Assuming, for reasons afterwards to be given, that the antimony existed in the form of tartar emetic, the amount of this represented by the sulphuret which I obtained from the stomach was a little more than a quarter of a grain (0·279).

“Contents of intestines.—The whole contents were evaporated at a gentle heat on the water-bath, and a dry residue obtained, weighing 430 grains. Ten grains of this, by Reinsch’s process, yielded a characteristic deposit of antimony. To determine in what form this antimony existed, other ten grains were treated with distilled water, the solution filtered, and the fluid subjected to Reinsch’s process. A characteristic antimonial deposit was obtained, thus proving that this metal was present in a soluble form. There are only two soluble forms of antimony met with in commerce. One of these, the chloride, is a dark-coloured, acid, corrosive fluid, totally unsuited for internal administration. The other is what is known scientifically as ‘tartarised antimony,’ and popularly as ‘tartar emetic,’ a colourless substance possessed of comparatively little taste, and in daily use as a medicinal agent. I have no doubt it was in this form that the antimony had been taken, which I found in the alimentary canal of Mrs. Taylor. I endeavoured to determine the amount of antimony in the contents of the intestines, but the deposit was too small to enable me with confidence to make it the subject of a quantitative determination. No arsenic was found.

“The Blood.—From one ounce a characteristic antimonial deposit was obtained.

“The Liver.—By operating on 1000 grains of this, I obtained a quantity of sulphuret, indicating that the whole liver contained one grain and one-tenth (1·151) of tartar emetic. I also examined the other solid organs and tissues removed from Mrs. Taylor’s body, in each case following Reinsch’s method, and in each case obtaining on copper a characteristic antimonial deposit. I thus found that there was more or less of antimony present in the muscular substance of the heart, the spleen, the kidney, the coats of the stomach, and of the rectum, the uterus, and the brain.

“Lastly. As Mrs. Taylor’s body had been exhumed, I thought it my duty to examine some of the earth in which it had been interred, though this was superfluous, from the fact of the soil being dry, and the coffin entire: it was not found to contain a trace of soluble antimony, and was therefore incapable of impregnating with this metal any body buried in it.”

Mrs. Pritchard.

On the 21st of March a similar examination was made of the body of Mrs. Pritchard three days after death by the same medical men, who reported “that it presented no appearances of recent morbid action beyond a certain irritation of the alimentary canal, and nothing at all capable of accounting for death.” They had therefore secured for chemical analysis those parts of the body which they deemed likely to disclose the cause of death. As a portion of this analysis had been conducted during the temporary absence of Dr. Maclagan in London by Dr. Gamgee and Dr. Littlejohn, previously to the report being read they were called to prove that Dr. Maclagan’s report of what they had done in his absence was correct. The following was the substance of the report of the chemical analysis:—

“(1.) Contents of stomach amounted to little more than ½ an ounce, and free from all odour of any poisonous drug. Not a trace of any vegetable poison or of antimony was found.

“(2.) Urine.—The presence of antimony having already been ascertained in a portion of this secretion, the remainder (7 ounces) was employed to determine the quantity. The process followed was that by which antimony is obtained in the form of the sulphuret, after destroying the organic matter by means of hydrochloric acid and potash. The quantity was readily weighed, and found to be rather more than one-tenth of a grain (0·1078). This corresponds to nearly one-fourth of a grain (0·121) of tartar emetic.

“(3.) The Bile.—A little more than ½ an ounce of this fluid was obtained from the gall-bladder. By Reinsch’s process 50 minims readily gave an antimonial deposit. The remainder (4 drachms) used to determine the amount, yielded sulphuret of antimony corresponding to more than one-tenth of a grain (0·121) of tartar emetic.

“(4.) The Blood.—1 ounce, by Reinsch’s process, readily gave evidence of the presence of antimony.

“(5.) The Liver.—The weight was 36 ounces, a portion of which, weighing less than 4 ounces (1460 grains), by Reinsch’s process, gave sufficient antimony to coat rather more than four square inches of copper foil. (This experiment was satisfactorily tested by another process described in the report.) As to quantity, 1,000 grains gave of sulphuret of antimony 0·1234 grains, corresponding to a quarter of a grain of tartar emetic, making the whole amount contained in the liver almost exactly 4 grains (3·93 grains).

“I next examined the remainder of the solid organs removed from the body of Mrs. Pritchard, and found more or less antimony in the whole of them.

“I also examined certain articles of clothing and bed-linen handed to me by the officer, and in the stains on four of them—the chemise, two sheets, and a toilet-cover, on which was a stain as of wine—I found antimony. From these experiments I have been led to the following conclusions:—

“(1.) Mrs. Pritchard had taken a large quantity of antimony in the form of tartar emetic.

“(2.) Having regard to the absence in her body of any morbid appearances sufficient to account for death, and to the presence in it of a substance known as capable of destroying life, her death must be ascribed to the action of antimony.

“(3.) That it is most unlikely that this poison was taken in a single large dose. Had this been the case, I should have expected to have found some more decided evidence of irritant action in the mouth, the throat, or the alimentary canal.

“(4.) That from the extent to which the whole organs and fluids of the body were impregnated with it, it must have been taken in repeated doses, the aggregate of which must have amounted to a large quantity.

“(5.) That from the large amount found in the liver, from its ready detection in the blood, and from its being found passing so copiously out of the body by the bile and the urine, it is probable that some of the poison had been taken at no greater interval than a period of a few days previous to death.

“(6.) That I am inclined to believe that it had not been administered, at all events in any great quantity, within a few hours of her death. Had this been the case, I should have expected to have found at least some traces of it in the contents of the stomach, and more in those of the intestines; whereas none was found in the former, and the amount found in the latter seems to be amply accounted for by the bile impregnated with the poison discharged into them from the liver.

“(7.) That the period over which the administration had extended cannot be determined by mere chemical investigation, but must be deduced from the history of the case, with which I am unacquainted.”

Dr. Maclagan then stated what portions of the bodies he had handed to Professor Penny for further analysis, and described the result of his examination of the solid residue obtained from Mrs. Pritchard’s body by the process adopted by Dr. Gamgee and Dr. Littlejohn.

“I determined the presence of mercury, and found a considerable quantity of antimony remaining in it. I got a clear fluid by operating on that residue with chlorate of potash and hydrochloric acid; and then passing sulphuretted hydrogen, I got a precipitate of a dirty orange colour, which was collected, washed and boiled in strong hydrochloric acid. The yellow colour disappeared, and the precipitate became black. The hydrochloric solution was then mixed with water and tartaric acid, and it gave an orange precipitate which, when collected and weighed, amounted to 0.082, equal on the whole to 1.265 of sulphuret of antimony—rather more than a grain and a quarter—in the whole of the solid residue. This was in addition to what had been found in the intestines after the precipitate had been obtained by Dr. Gamgee and Dr. Littlejohn. A grain and a quarter of sulphuret of antimony is equal to two and a half of tartar emetic; the amount of tartar emetic in the whole of the intestines would be about five grains and three-quarters (5.712).”

In cross-examination, Dr. Maclagan deposed to the discovery of about the three hundredth part of a grain of mercury in the 50 grains of sulphuret; that in some cases he was not content with the mere presence of the deposit on the foil, but boiled the copper foil in potash—namely, with the contents of the intestines and with the liver—but otherwise was content with the coloured deposit.

Dr. Frederick Penny then gave in his reports on the portions of the bodies of Mrs. Taylor and Mrs. Pritchard, given to him by Dr. Maclagan. The following is the substance of the report in Mrs. Pritchard’s case:—

“Dried Contents of Intestines.—By the first process employed an abundant black precipitate was obtained, which by proper treatment was separated into sulphide of antimony and sulphide of mercury. The sulphide of antimony, which was obtained of a fine orange-red colour, was washed, dried, and weighed. Its weight corresponded to a quantity of metallic arsenic equal to 2.1 grains in one thousand parts of the dried contents of the stomach. The same sulphide was found to be readily soluble in sulphide of ammonium, and also in hydrochloric acid; and the acid solution, when poured into water, gave a white precipitate, and when boiled with copper ribbon deposited a violet-coloured coating on the surface of the copper. The coated copper, on being heated in a glass tube, gave no distinct crystalline sublimate. All these results are eminently characteristic of sulphide of antimony when thus treated.

“The sulphide of mercury gave metallic mercury corresponding to 3 grains in 1,000 grains of the dried contents of the intestines. The report then states how these tests were confirmed by further experiments on the solution by Reinsch’s test supplemented by that of Marsh.

“Stomach, by the same methods, yielded antimony in appreciable proportions, equal to 0.5 of a grain in 1,000 parts, but no mercury; that it was afterwards treated for morphia and aconite, but not a trace of these substances was obtained.

“Liver found to contain antimony equal to one-tenth of a grain in 1,000 parts, but no mercury.

“Spleen yielded antimony in about the same proportion as the liver, and also contained mercury in well-marked quantity.

“Kidney about the same proportion as the liver, and a minute trace of mercury.

“Heart yielded antimony in a proportion rather larger than that found in the liver, and less mercury than in the spleen.

“Brain yielded antimony in less quantity than the liver, and no mercury.

“Blood yielded a small quantity of antimony, and a faint trace of mercury.

“Rectum, antimony in less quantity than the liver, and no indications of mercury.”

In the case of Mrs. Taylor, Dr. Penny reported:—

“That all the articles submitted to him (liver, stomach, heart, kidney, rectum, blood, and dried contents of intestines), and subjected to analysis, contained antimony; (2), that the contents of the intestines contained the largest proportion of antimony (0.583 parts in 1,000 parts); next, the liver and stomach (0.047 of a grain in 1,000 grains in each); then the blood, and, in less quantity, the heart, kidney, and rectum; (3), that part of the antimony in the contents of the intestines was in a form soluble in water; (4), that the kidney was the only article in which mercury was detected; (5), that neither the stomach, nor the contents of the intestines, contained aconite or morphia in quantity sufficient to be detected by known chemical processes; (6), that the articles subjected to analysis contained no other metallic poison than antimony and mercury as reported above.”

Dr. Penny also handed in his reports of the examination of the contents of the cupboards in Dr. Pritchard’s consulting room, the substance of which has already been given. In the first of these reports, that of the 17th of May, Dr. Penny had stated that he was at present engaged in testing the bottle of Battley’s solution (in which he had discovered antimony) for other substances, the result of which inquiry he now detailed:—

“I looked for mercury and other metals. I searched for aconite, and also for conium. I found aconite. This is tested chiefly by the taste of the abstract obtained by evaporation, and by its physiological action upon small animals. A portion of the fluid was evaporated to dryness, and the extract thus obtained was very carefully tasted, or its effects upon the tongue and on the lips ascertained by applying them to it. The effects were a tingling and benumbing sensation—characteristic of aconite. To another portion of the extract, dissolved in water, ammonia was added, and a precipitate was separated and examined in the same way, after being dissolved in diluted hydrochloric acid. The benumbing and tingling sensation produced by that precipitate was very slight. But the ammoniacal liquid, after the separation of the precipitate, was treated with hydrochloric acid, and evaporated, and the sensation produced by this residue was very strong.

“With a view to ascertain the character of aconite when mixed with Battley’s solution, I mixed known quantities of tincture of aconite with Battley’s solution, treating the mixtures in the same way. I took Fleming’s tincture and the results were precisely similar; but when the proportion of aconite was equal to 5 per cent., the sensation was by no means strong; but when it was in the proportion of 10 per cent., it gave a sensation, though the same, much stronger than that of the liquid in the bottle. I draw the conclusion, therefore, that in this solution the proportion was between 5 and 10 per cent. I purchased genuine Battley’s solution at several establishments in Glasgow, including that of ‘Murdoch Brothers,’ and was satisfied that none of them contained either antimony or aconite.”

Dr. Penny then detailed his experiments with pure and impure Battley’s solution on rabbits. Genuine Battley, when injected under the skin, did not kill; 40 grain drops from the bottle found in Mrs. Taylor’s dress did.

The Battley’s solution used by Dr. Penny was not purchased from “Murdoch Brothers,” but he had purchased and analysed some from that house, and it was exactly similar to that which he had used. He had also been present when the same experiments as his were tried on rabbits by Dr. Maclagan, in the presence of Drs. Christison, Gamgee, and Littlejohn, with the same result as in his experiments. Dr. Penny was then examined on Dr. Maclagan’s report of his post-mortem examination of Mrs. Pritchard’s body, and on the symptoms exhibited by her from the time she was taken ill in 1865 down to her death. Replying purely as a chemist, and not as a medical man, he declared them to correspond with the action of tartar emetic or tartarised antimony. He further accounted for the presence of the small portions of mercury by the administration of Dr. Paterson’s powders, Hydrargyrum cum creta, shortly before death. In Mrs. Taylor’s case he considered the vomitings to be the result of the antimony, which had been traced by the analyses, and repeated the conclusions, already given, to his reports on both bodies.

Dr. Maclagan, who was recalled, declared that the whole of the symptoms in Mrs. Pritchard’s case, from Christmas, 1864, until her death—the sickness and vomiting, muscular depression, irritation of the bowels, and cramp in the stomach—were symptoms of poisoning by antimony, and could not, as a medical man, suggest any natural disease to which they were due, that he could assign as the cause of death. He had never seen antimony when rubbed into the skin (referring to the prisoner’s statement that he had done so for a swollen gland in his wife’s neck) produce any constitutional effect. The fact of Mrs. Pritchard some years ago having taken antimony internally for inflammation of the eyelids would not account for the symptoms; and he agreed with Dr. Penny that the traces of mercury were due to the powders prescribed by Dr. Paterson. “There was nothing in the case,” he added, “to indicate to a medical man of ordinary intelligence that she was suffering from gastric fever, or any other fever”; and he adhered to the conclusions already given in his report, that she had been poisoned by minute doses of antimony in the form of tartar emetic given at intervals over a long period of time.

Dr. Maclagan attributed Mrs. Taylor’s death to something more than antimony—some powerful, depressing poison.

“The symptoms,” he said, “might be produced by aconite—being found with her head fallen on her neck, and hardly observed to breathe, her pulse almost if not absolutely imperceptible, and the dozing, torpid state in which she lay, were such as would result from aconite. Though he might know in a case that aconite had been taken, he might not be able to find it by chemical analysis: these organic poisons—all the alkaloids—are very often not found, though known to have been taken. The administration of opium might diminish the effect of antimony in causing vomiting and purging, but its depressing effect on the muscular system would still remain; and if opium, aconite, and antimony were being administered at the same time, he should anticipate symptoms such as appeared in Mrs. Taylor’s case. Taking the symptoms and the results of the post-mortem examination together, the idea of apoplexy was satisfactorily excluded from his judgment; and assuming the correctness of Dr. Paterson’s description of the symptoms he saw, he should not have concluded that it was apoplexy, nor did he think any other medical man would have. He was satisfied with the presence of aconite in the Battley’s solution, without the experiments on the rabbits, which only confirmed it.”

The cross-examination of this witness was directed to the question whether the symptoms in Mrs. Taylor’s case did not indicate poisoning by opium, probably arising from an overdose of Battley’s solution.

“I saw,” said the witness, “no precise indications of poisoning by opium, though I cannot say that she had not taken some. I think aconite was the leading feature in the final part of the case. The symptoms described by Dr. Paterson did not, in my mind, indicate poisoning by opium or laudanum at all. They were not inconsistent with her having taken opium, but they were not consistent with her having been poisoned by it, and with the ordinary symptoms. The symptoms of aconite predominated. If she had taken opium alone I should have expected to find the pulse full and slow, and probably the breathing laborious and stertorous. Though these were absent, I could not say that she had not taken opium, particularly if she had been accustomed to its use.” When reminded from the judge’s notes that Dr. Paterson had described the breathing as “laborious,” he said, “It does not make much, indeed not any, modification of my view, because the condition of the pulse showed the action of aconite on the heart. Laborious breathing is an indication of many things besides opium.” When reminded that Dr. Paterson spoke of her being in a state of “coma,” he admitted that that generally indicated opium and not aconite, but added that here “it was more oppression than true coma,” and assumed that Dr. Paterson did not use the word scientifically, but as many persons did to describe insensibility. “But,” said Mr. Clark, “you pointed to the absence of ‘coma’ as indicative of poisoning by aconite.” “I spoke of her,” replied Dr. Maclagan, “being in a torpid condition, which I think was connected with the weakened state of the circulation and not from fulness of the brain. Opium, like aconite, is a vegetable poison, and is absorbed into the system: a person may be poisoned by it without any trace remaining in the stomach or the system capable of being detected by chemical analysis. All mineral poisons are more easily detected, but I am not prepared to give into the statement broadly that a person cannot be poisoned by antimony without it being capable of detection, though I cannot recollect such a case. The quantity here found in both cases was considerable. The expectation is that the chemical analysis will detect it, but there may be exceptions. The fact that Mrs. Taylor’s eyes were contracted is an indication of poisoning by opium, but it also occurs in aconite, though the cases vary a good deal in that respect, from people, as I think, having observed the symptoms at different stages; and the probability is that contraction had been produced at first, and then relaxation at the time all the muscular parts became relaxed—namely, at the time of death. Aconite is applied externally in neuralgia.”[152]

Dr. Littlejohn, who was next called, concurred in the opinion that there was nothing to indicate gastric fever in Mrs. Pritchard’s case, and that her death was due to the continuous administration of small doses of antimony from the commencement of her illness to the day of her death, and that the result of the chemical analysis was such as he should, on that supposition, have expected. On the cause of Mrs. Taylor’s death he was not so certain.

“It seemed to me,” said the witness, “that she might have died from a dose of antimony administered shortly before death, or else from some sedative narcotic poison. I have no difficulty in saying that she died of poison, but only as to the particular poison which killed her. I am inclined to believe that the symptoms in her case were mixed to some extent, like the symptoms of narcotic poison, and to some extent like the symptoms of antimony. There was nothing to show that she died of apoplexy, and the post-mortem examination did not indicate any such. In the failure of circulation and great depression and spasms, and the state of insensibility, I recognise the action of antimony; in the later stages of antimonial poisoning we have generally great insensibility. The hot taste in the mouth and burning sensation in the throat after taking the bit of cheese suggest a large dose of antimony, and also suggest a strong dose of narcotic poison—they suggest many things besides cheese. That it caused violent sickness in the case of one of the servants for some hours is quite consistent with antimonial poisoning. In large quantities it would produce a burning sensation in the throat. I have tried it in large quantities, and the secondary sensation is always in the throat, and it did produce a burning sensation. That the egg flip gave the same effect in the case of the servant points to the use of antimony or some substance resembling it. Various other emetics might produce these effects. Egg flip is a convenient medium for administering antimony, as it readily dissolves in it, and sufficient antimony could be dusted on loaf sugar to produce sickness. Sugar is very porous, and antimony, being a white powder, could be dusted over it, and a large quantity absorbed in it—sufficient, not to kill, but to keep up the illness.”

In cross-examination, the witness adhered to his opinion as to the suitableness of egg flip when the hot water had been poured on it, as a medium for antimony, and to the possibility of a sufficient quantity to produce sickness being conveyed into the cup on two pieces of loaf sugar. Though he had not made any special experiments to support this opinion, he considered himself, from his special acquaintance with tartar emetic, entitled to answer in the way he had done. He did not consider opium as a sedative but as a narcotic, and, in his opinion, aconite was a sedative narcotic. There was nothing impossible for Mrs. Taylor to take opium, and for that to contribute to the symptoms.

Dr. Paterson, who was re-called, was quite confirmed in his previous opinion of the cause of Mrs. Pritchard’s death from the evidence he had heard. Mrs. Taylor’s death, he thought, had been caused by opium, but there might have been some other narcotic combined to him unknown, and he thought that aconite and opium combined would contribute to the effect and hurry the termination; but he never in his practice had seen any person poisoned by such a combination. He had not the slightest suspicion of antimony, and the narcotic effect was such when he saw Mrs. Taylor that he did not believe that he could recognise the effect of antimony. The narcotic effect would overpower the other, and laudanum would interfere with the usual effect of antimony. What he called stertorous breathing was rather oppressed breathing—snoring and stertorous breathing were the same thing. “By coma,” he added, “I meant insensibility—it means that, especially insensibility under opium; and my impression was that it was opium alone, or some of its preparations: it might be morphia.” Now that he had heard of the discovery of antimony in the body, he believed the death to be due to a combination of antimony and opium, a smaller dose of the latter being likely to have a greater effect, in consequence of the condition of the body produced by the former. If the opium contained upwards of five per cent. of aconite, the effect, he considered, would be much more rapid and more likely to be fatal.

On the conclusion of the medical testimony witnesses were called to prove that at two banks in Glasgow, where Dr. Pritchard had accounts, these were overdrawn on the 20th of March—that he borrowed to the extent of £255 on his life policy, the last advance being as late as the 13th of May—that his mother-in-law had advanced him £500 towards the purchase of his house, and that under her will he would be entitled, in the event of the previous death of his wife, to the interest on two-thirds of her property for the benefit of his children until they attained twenty-one years, and then “for his own use as he might consider proper.” Letters of Mrs. Taylor and Dr. Pritchard were identified, in one of the latter being an entry under February 7th, “Dr. J. M. C. here; on February 8th Dr. J. M. C. left”—namely, Dr. Cowan.

THE PRISONER’S STATEMENTS.

In accordance with the Scotch practice, two declarations were made by Dr. Pritchard before the sheriff, one on the 22nd of March, and the other on the 21st of April. The first declaration was as follows:—

“I have always attended my wife in all her ailments of every kind during the whole period of our married lives, now fifteen years, and some of these illnesses were very severe; but I never saw her so ill as she was on the occasion which terminated fatally. As far as my judgment goes, her last illness was gastric fever, which commenced about the beginning of the present year. I gave my wife no medicines during her illness excepting wine, champagne, and brandy, to support her strength; and I gave her no medicines at all. I trusted to nature to right itself, with the assistance of these restoratives. During the last six weeks her power of sleeping entirely went away. In order to procure sleep I gave her, at the commencement of her sleeplessness, a small quantity of chloroform, but it entirely disagreed with her, and I discontinued it. I then called in Dr. Gairdner, professor of medicine in the university, and he visited and saw her several times; and he continued to attend her till her old medical friend, Dr. James M. Cowan, returned, and he came from Edinburgh to see her.[153] I then wrote to her mother to come and nurse her, and she arrived about the 11th of February last; and her arrival had a beneficial effect upon Mrs. Pritchard for some time, but still the sleeplessness continued; and shortly after her mother’s death, which happened on the 25th of February, she relapsed and became much worse, and very apprehensive about herself, and she suggested to me the adoption of a medicine with which her mother was very familiar—Battley’s solution of opium—but I declined to give her any without first consulting Dr. J. Paterson, who lived close by. I saw him, and consulted him, but he did not see Mrs. Pritchard on that occasion, and he did not approve of using the solution of opium. He prescribed granulated citrate of magnesia, calomel, mercury, and chalk, and I acted on his advice and administered the medicine, and it seemed to have a beneficial effect.[154] Some time after, finding her sleeplessness still continued, I, at her own suggestion, applied a solution of atropine to the external parts of the eye, and it had a little effect for some time, but the effects soon ceased. After her mother’s death, she became rapidly worse; indeed, I ascribed her decease to the agitation consequent on her mother’s death. At the time of the last event she was strongly impressed with the idea that she would herself die at the same time as her mother; in fact, she did die on a subsequent day at exactly the same hour. On the night preceding her death she was apprehensive that, unless she got sleep, she should not get through the night. I went for Dr. Paterson, who came immediately and sat for a considerable time by the bedside, and afterwards dictated a prescription, which was made up at the Glasgow Apothecary Company’s shop at Elmbank-street. It will be found in my desk at home. It was for two draughts to be given four hours after the first if it did not succeed. She got the first draught as prescribed by Dr. Paterson about ten o’clock, but she said after drinking it that it was not half strong enough, and asked if she might have some of her mother’s medicine. I refused to give it her, and said I dare not do it. I gave her a glass of port wine, and sat carefully watching for a short time. I then went down stairs and had supper, and, after being absent for some time, returned to see if she had got to sleep. I found her awake, and she wished me to give her something to make her sleep. I refused, and she then asked me to come to bed, as I must be tired with the weary nights of watching. It was then about twelve o’clock. I tried to persuade her that I should sit up to watch her till past the time when her mother had died; but to please her I got into bed, and almost immediately I fell asleep from the state of exhaustion I was in; was awoke by her pulling at my beard, and found my wife struggling to get into bed. She appeared to have got out of bed. She said, ‘Edward, I am faint.’ I assisted her into bed, and asked her how long I had been asleep, but she answered, ‘Don’t speak; look! do you see my mother?’ I said ‘No, it is only a vision; only imagination,’ and asked if she felt pain. She said she felt cold, and I need try no more skill; that I had failed this time, and that she was going to her mother. I got alarmed and rang the bell violently, and the youngest servant came. I desired her to make a mustard plaster as quickly as she could, and on that my wife turned round and said, ‘Edward, I’m in my senses; mustard plasters will do no good,’ and almost immediately she fell back in my arms and died. The servant came with the mustard plaster, and found her in that position. I did not give her any other medicine at that time except a little brandy applied to her lips.[155] During the whole course of her illness I never gave her any antimony, nor any medicine in which there was any preparation of antimony. Antimony is a poison, but it is used occasionally to subdue inflammations, and I applied it to her neck, in October last, when she was plagued with a swelling gland in the neck. I rubbed it in externally on that occasion, and I have never given her any antimony since. On that occasion I recommended change of air, and I gave her a little bottle of antimony with her for the same purpose of rubbing in behind the ear. She went to Edinburgh at that time, and she returned to Glasgow very much better, and I have never seen the bottle of antimony since she got it away with her. There was a considerable quantity of antimony in my repositories at the time of my wife’s last illness, as I used it extensively in my practice, and it was kept in a cupboard of which I had the key, but which was not always locked. I did not see any of it brought out, or lying about, during her illness. The cupboard where the antimony was is in the consulting-room on the ground flat, and she was so weak on the day of her death—Saturday—and on the Friday preceding, that I do not think she had strength to have gone to the cupboard herself. My wife took the antimony internally on one occasion when she had a tendency to inflammation of the eyelids. This was years ago, and I never knew her to use it internally, except on this occasion. I never administered antimony to her internally on any occasion, nor any other substance calculated to injure or destroy life.”

In the second declaration, made on the 21st day of April, 1865, he confirmed the correctness of the former one when read to him, denied the charges as laid in the indictment, and elected to make the following voluntary statement with reference to Mrs. Taylor’s death:—

“I never administered poison to her. I did, and I do believe, that she died from paralysis and apoplexy. I have no further statements to make, and by the advice of my agent will make none, with the exception that I am entirely innocent of the charge preferred against me.”

Being asked by the Procurator Fiscal whether he ever administered or caused to be administered to the said Jane Cowan or Taylor tartarised antimony, declares:—

“My agent recommended me to say nothing, and I decline to answer the question, and, as I act under my agent’s advice, it is unnecessary to put any further questions.”

EVIDENCE FOR THE DEFENCE.

With this evidence the prosecution was closed late on the third day, and on the next the defence was opened by calling witnesses on the Prisoner’s behalf.

Dr. Michael Taylor, Mrs. Pritchard’s brother, had seen her on the 28th of February, a few days after his mother’s death, when she objected to Dr. Gairdner again visiting her, and to following her brother’s advice to have a nurse, as she did not like strangers about her. He also identified as her writing two letters from Edinburgh to her husband at the time of her visit to her parents in November, in which she spoke of the slowness of her recovery and her inability to go out, except two or three times.

Mr. Simpson, a partner in Duncan & Co., Chemists, in Edinburgh, remembered Dr. Pritchard, some four years ago, purchasing Battley’s solution at their shop, and that shortly afterwards other purchases of this compound were frequently made in his name by one Thomson, whom he recognised, down to the beginning of 1865. Fairgrieve, another chemist in Edinburgh, spoke to repeated purchases of this compound by or for Mrs. Taylor for several years before her death, once in a 5-oz. bottle, but generally in bottles of 2 oz.[156]

Two other witnesses proved that they consulted Dr. Pritchard for affections of the ear, and that to the first he gave a bottle labelled “poison—2 drops in each ear every night,” and to the other a tonic of glycerine and strychnia; the object being to account for the numerous poisons found in the cupboard in his consulting room.[157] Dr. McHattie proved that there were not the necessary drugs in the cupboard to enable the Prisoner to make up Dr. Paterson’s prescription,[158] and afterwards his eldest son certified that his father and mother lived happily together, and his daughter, who lived chiefly with her grandparents, that they were fond of each other. The evidence for the defence then was closed.

THE SOLICITOR-GENERAL’S SPEECH.

In addressing the jury on the evidence, the counsel for the prosecution drew their especial attention to (1) the fact—not contested and not contestable—that though none of the medicines prescribed by the medical attendants on both of the ladies had contained any preparation of antimony, antimony was found in their bodies—in that of Mrs. Pritchard in such proportions as could only be accounted for by a long continuous administration of that drug—in Mrs. Taylor’s sufficient to so reduce her system as to increase the operation of any narcotic poison; (2) that the notion of this having been taken by accident was excluded even by the prisoner’s own statement, and that the idea of suicide was entirely at variance with the characters of the sufferers, and in the case of the wife with the fact that suicides do not choose “a long, lingering, and painful death;” (3) that the prisoner had in his possession the means of administering poison as well as the opportunities; (4) that in the three cases in which symptoms of antimonial poisoning were felt by those who tasted the cheese, the egg flip, and the tapioca, the prisoner had the opportunities of dealing with these articles of food before they were sent to his wife; (5) that in the remnant of one of them—the tapioca—antimony to a large extent was found; (6) that in a bottle of Battley’s solution found in the pocket of Mrs. Taylor after her death aconite in deadly proportions was detected; and (7) that there was a pecuniary motive, paltry as it might be represented to be, to induce the prisoner to commit both these murders.[159] Who, then, he said, put the antimony into the food? who put that and the aconite into the Battley’s solution?

“Who, then,” continued the Solicitor-General, “was the murderer? For there was a murder—a deliberate, cold-blooded, cruel murder—committed in that house. Who was it? We know the inmates. There were the two students of medicine. I suppose you may lay them aside as having nothing to do with it. Suspicion does not attach to them, neither had they the opportunity. The servants change in the course of the enacting of this dreadful tragedy—all but one. Catherine Lattimer was there until the 13th of February. The poisoning went on after she left—the deaths both occurred after she left. She was not the poisoner, nor was there a breath of suspicion about her. Mary Patterson comes on the 16th of February. The poisoning, indeed, goes on after she comes; but it had commenced long before—weeks before. We, therefore, lay her aside. There was Mary McLeod, a girl under seventeen, the only remaining grown person in the house during the whole course of the administration to which I need refer. I need not take any notice of the children, who were the only other inmates of the house. See, then, to what we have come. There was a murderer in the house—a murderer practising the dreadful art of slow poisoning from the end of December till past the middle of March. The only two grown persons, except the boarders, who were in the house during that time—the only two who had access to the patients—were the prisoner at the bar and Mary McLeod. This is narrowing the case to a very short question. I have excluded every other idea from the case, by fair, legitimate, convincing argument, upon evidence that is not open to dispute. I have excluded the notion of natural death. I have established the fact of death by poison. I have excluded the idea of death by accident, by suicide, by the administration medicinally. You are shut up, therefore, to murderous administration.... I find that the only two who had access to these miserable victims, and had any opportunity to perpetrate the murders with which they are charged, were the prisoner and this one girl. Now, pray, consider, with respect to the wife, upon the question whether or no the prisoner is not the man clearly proved by irresistible evidence to be so, what was the nature of the murder? It was a murder in which you almost detect a doctor’s finger. It is gradual poisoning—poisoning so as not to kill but to weaken; leaving off for a day, and then resuming again—one day better, two days worse. During the whole time the patient exhibited the symptoms of vomiting and purging, the result of the action of antimony. You have that going on for a long time under the very eye of a medical man, the husband of the victim, who was in close attendance upon her. Do you think anybody else—do you think a girl of seventeen could have done that deed? She knew nothing about antimony.[160] If she did not do it, the prisoner must have done it. And what is his case? His case respecting his own wife, who was thus demonstrably being poisoned by inches under his very eye during this long period—what is his case? “I thought it was gastric fever,” he says. Gastric fever! Nobody could have thought it was gastric fever. Nothing like gastric fever in it. Nothing like anything except what it was—slow, cruel poisoning, which brought, in the course of two or three months, this poor woman to the grave, with such an amount of poison in her body.”

Referring, then, to the false statements made by the prisoner in the case of Mrs. Taylor—that she had tumbled off her chair in his consulting room in a fit, and been carried up to bed, when it was proved that she had walked up to her bedroom from his consulting room—had during the evening called to one of the servants to go out and get sausages for supper—had had no tumble or fit, and that the doctor himself knew nothing about her attack till the bell rang violently three times—that hot water had been taken up by the servant to make her vomit—the strange statement to Dr. Paterson before the bottle of “Battley” was found in Mrs. Taylor’s pocket, that she had purchased half-a-pound of it a few days before—the false certificate of her death, “paralysis for twelve hours and apoplexy for one hour,” when there was no paralysis except the paralytic affection caused by the aconite, and that was not before she went upstairs at nine o’clock in the evening, only four hours before her death: then referring to the tapioca purchased entirely for Mrs. Taylor’s use, into which antimony was put by some one; the Solicitor-General said:—

“Keep in view that the method of poisoning alleged against the prisoner here is not the giving a dose that would kill, but the introducing it into the food in such quantities that the taking would not kill, but produce sickness merely—the intention being to produce and continue the sickness for months, the fatal termination then supervening. A poisoner in this way practises the dreadful art successfully, and could not be very apprehensive of even himself or any one else taking the food accidentally, as it would only make them sick. He knows that to produce death it will be necessary to continue it for a long time. Into this tapioca antimony is introduced—sufficient to produce sickness in anybody taking it, but not death. But Mrs. Pritchard does not get this tapioca. It is taken by Mrs. Taylor, and she is seized immediately by symptoms of poisoning by antimony. She is sick in the same way—I think she expressed it—as her daughter was; because the effects were the same. That tapioca was not put away, as it might be required again; and if Mrs. Pritchard had wanted tapioca again, she would have got that, and the poisoning would have been carried on by its means. If anybody else got it, it would be a misfortune, but not much more. And who could have introduced it but the master of the house, who was an adept in such a mode of poisoning.—I do not know how many, if more than one, partook of poisoned food; but some food had been poisoned. I take that for granted, and that it had been taken by one of the boarders, Connell, I think. But that is not presented as part of the case. He was one day more or less sick. The prisoner does not seem to have been alarmed about it—he does not seem to have been alarmed even when he himself was sick upon some occasion in February. He knew very well there was no occasion for alarm, for sickness was the end of it; that it would require a long sickness in order to produce anything like a fatal result.”

Briefly, then, reviewing the points he had made, the Solicitor-General concluded his exhaustive address.

THE DEFENCE.

Mr. Rutherford Clark, in the opening of his speech, urged on the jury that the enormity of the double crime required it “to be proved by evidence strong, clear, overwhelming, that brought home to their minds and consciences, without the slightest suspicion on the testimony, the guilt of the prisoner,” and that “the motives assigned for it were not such as could ever have, in the slightest degree, actuated any human being to the commission of such hideous offences.” Whilst he could not deny that he had the opportunity of committing the crime, he contended “that it went a very short way—indeed no way at all—in even suggesting or indicating his guilt.”

“If,” he said, “you find a case where crime is committed, and where the person charged with committing it has made an opportunity for himself—has been zealous in obtaining opportunities—then opportunity is of the greatest possible importance and the strongest possible evidence; but to say that he has opportunity in this case is nothing more than to say it was likely, as indeed it was true, that the husband who was attending the sick bed of his wife, should carry to her some of her meals, and send up others with her meals. But that he should do so is, I am sure, nothing unnatural—nothing to suggest guilt. It would have been frightfully suggestive of guilt, if, instead of sending up these meals, and taking them up himself, he had always chosen some other agent to carry them up and to administer the food she was taking. If that had been the case, I should have been inclined to say that the Crown would have had a case much more strong to indicate guilt, than they have when, as it is stated here, that he was administering to the comfort of his wife while upon her death-bed.”[161]

On the point that the prisoner was in possession of the means of poisoning, “he was,” he said, “by profession a doctor, and had, no doubt, as most doctors have, considerable quantities of drugs in his possession. Whether he had more than most medical men kept in their houses was a matter of opinion, but it was absurd to suppose that he accumulated these large quantities of most powerful and destructive poisons—a minute dose of many of which would have been fatal—for the purpose of murder.”[162]

“But,” continued Mr. Clark, “it is not unimportant, in considering this question, and it is very important especially in considering the argument of the Solicitor-General, that these poisons were kept, not in any locked press, but, on the contrary, within the reach of the household. It is a remark I have made, that there was not one of the poisoned articles of food which ever reached the lips of Mrs. Taylor or Mrs. Pritchard without passing through other hands than the prisoner’s, and it is odd enough that, in regard to each of them, the person who administered it and who carried away the food left, is this girl, Mary McLeod. It will not do for the Solicitor-General to say, ‘I have established that one of two persons must have committed these crimes,’ and that you can trace the particular finger of the medical man in connection with them. Probability will never support a conviction. It will not do for him to say, as regards the death of Mrs. Pritchard, that it was the act either of the prisoner or Mary McLeod, and that it was not likely that a girl of under seventeen would have the skill to do it. Do you not think that he shrinks from the onus of proof when he accepts this convenient mode of getting rid of the difficulty, as he must prove that it is one of those two who did it. He must prove by evidence that it was not Mary McLeod or some one else in the house, and it was only by showing that it was not Mary McLeod, that he can bring this charge home, to the prisoner.” [Mr. Clark then noticed that the question was put to Lattimer whether she put anything into the tapioca, but that that question was not put to Mary McLeod.] “It is a singular omission in the case of the Crown, which necessarily depends upon being able to select between those two persons, whom the Solicitor-General stated were the only two who could have committed the murder, that they did not venture to put the question to exclude upon her evidence the fact that she might have been guilty. And this is all the more strong that I shall trace every article of poisoned food immediately through her hands.”[163]

Subsequently he reviewed the evidence as to each of the three poisoned articles of food.

“Let us see,” he said, “about this tapioca:—it was suggested, apparently through Mrs. Taylor, that Mrs. Pritchard would like some. Accordingly some tapioca is brought by a little boy, and it is brought in, and received by Mary McLeod. She says she placed it for some short time on the lobby table. Catherine Lattimer says Mary McLeod took it down to her, but Mary says Mrs. Taylor did. Now the suggestion of the Crown is that the prisoner put antimony in this tapioca, so nicely adjusted to the quantity bought as to produce sickness leading to death, but not so as to produce death itself. It would certainly have been of some importance to have shown that he had any opportunity of administering or putting any poison into it, but it is not proved—there is not a shadow of evidence that he had any opportunity, or to show that he was in the house at the time. He was a man accustomed to exercise an active profession, and, of course, would naturally be out at that period of the day; but at all events it is not shown that he was aware that his wife desired tapioca, or that his mother-in-law had ordered it. It is not even shown that there was the least possibility of his introducing antimony into that bag. It is prepared and carried up by Mary McLeod to her mistress, who declines to take it, and it is taken by Mrs. Taylor, who was taken ill after partaking of it.”

Again, as to the poisoned bit of cheese:—

“It is spoken to by Mary McLeod. She tells you she had taken up the tray for supper, and that on it was the cheese and other things which were placed on the table at which Dr. Taylor and the other inmates of the house are sitting; that she came out, and that, on returning again, Dr. Pritchard handed to her a piece of cheese to take to her mistress. She did not see him cut off the piece of cheese, but he handed it to her sitting at the table; and it is perfectly obvious it must have been cut off the cheese eaten by the family at supper. If he placed antimony upon it, it must have been in the presence of the persons at supper—a piece of yellow cheese which must have indicated the powder of tartarised antimony, if placed upon it.[164]—It was not asked if it were possible to put this tartarised antimony upon the cheese while sitting at supper. I leave you to judge if it were possible. It was taken up oddly enough—I cannot help noticing the coincidence—by Mary McLeod. She says she ate part of it, and that it did her no harm; but the residue was taken down into the kitchen and eaten by Patterson, and she suffered from vomiting.”

Again, as to the poisoned egg-flip:—

“The doctor comes and tells his servant to prepare some, a thing not unnatural to be taken by a person with a delicate stomach, and for a medical man to order. But it is said this was a plot for Dr. Pritchard to get in his drugs in this way. He supposes that he went through the dining-room and got the sugar, and then into the consulting-room, and then into the pantry, and dropped the pieces of sugar, on which he had put antimony, into the egg. Does he give any proof of this? Does he suggest anything more than suspicion? The Crown seems to have doubted whether he could on the sugar have put in so much antimony as to have produced the effects which the servant girl says she suffered. Dr. Littlejohn thought it possible, but he had never tried the experiment. A possibility at the best—a large possibility—that he could have put in the drug. Was the egg-flip capable of producing the effects which are said to have been caused by it? ‘Barely possible,’ according to Dr. Littlejohn. What is its history: does it pass through his hands? No. It was left by Patterson in the pantry, and Mary McLeod came down for it to the kitchen. She was told it was in the pantry, and she goes up to bring it down again. There, again, you have Mary McLeod intervening in the matter, notwithstanding the dilemma on which the Solicitor-General placed his case: she it is who carries it up to the bedroom, and she it is who administers it to the patient who is suffering there. There is another remarkable thing in this case. The amount of antimony introduced must have been a very powerful dose, because, taking only a teaspoonful of the egg-flip as Patterson did, she lay vomiting and suffering all night. Mrs. Pritchard took a wine-glassful, and vomited for about half an hour afterwards. Surely if a strong woman took only a teaspoonful, and a weak woman a wine-glassful, she would have been destroyed by the poison that had so powerful an effect on the former.”[165]

Again, with reference to the bottle of Battley’s solution found in Mrs. Taylor’s dress after her death, into which it was suggested that the prisoner had put the aconite and antimony discovered in it, said Mr. Clark:—

“He knew, no doubt, that she was taking it, but it is not in the least degree proved that he knew where it was, in what bottle it was, or where Mrs. Taylor kept the bottle. Mary McLeod did know, for she bought it for Mrs. Taylor. But what is the ground of suggestion that aconite had been put into that bottle before Mrs. Taylor had it? All that you have is that Drs. Maclagan and Littlejohn say there was, and that they were contradicted by the person who actually observed its effects. And what became of this bottle? It was found on her person after her death. Is it possible to suppose that he had the means of getting at the bottle before her death to introduce the poison? How could he? It was carried about her person, and there is not the slightest suggestion that he ever had access to it; and yet you are asked to act upon that suggestion, because it is said, ‘You may probably trace the administration of a medical hand.’ No: probabilities are not in this case. It is proof, and proof alone, that we can go on. What was the history of the bottle? It was found in her clothes, no doubt, when the body was being dressed by Patterson and Nabb, and even they did not know the very great quantity, perhaps, that this old lady had taken. But still more, supposing that she should take no aconite, she had taken sufficient of the mixture to account for her death. Assuming that the highest mark on the bottle, as taken by Dr. Paterson, is a correct one, it would come to be not less than 2¾ ounces that had been taken. It was shown that the bottle was put by for some time; but if it was taken away after the murder, that is of very little consequence. If he had put antimony in it, would it not have been very easy for him to have thrown the bottle aside? But instead of that, we have him expressing his surprise to these two women that she had taken such a great quantity. He takes away the bottle, and brings it back again, and there it remains until examined by Dr. Penny, who then finds that it contains some aconite and antimony. But where is the shadow of a proof that he put it there? The bottle was lying open—was not locked up in any way: it remained in the house from the death of Mrs. Taylor till after the prisoner was apprehended, more than a month afterwards. Any person in the house might have access to it, and yet all that can be suggested to prove that the prisoner put in this antimony and aconite before her death was contained in the observation of my learned friend, that you could trace, or that you could probably trace here, the finger of a medical man.”[166]

The false statement in the certificate of death, Mr. Clark attributed to a desire of sparing the feelings of the husband. He did not justify the morality of the act, but, looking at the circumstances, asked the jury “if there was any degree of guilty knowledge when he asked Dr. Paterson to inform his father-in-law of the cause of death, and he was only forced to take that step by his refusal.” With Dr. Paterson’s manner in the witness-box he naturally dealt in the most severe language of reproof and censure.

“I do not believe,” he said, in concluding his remarks on this witness, “he saw any symptoms of poisoning, or he would have acted as any other medical man would have acted—unselfishly, nobly, and generously in this matter. And when you see that this is inconsistent with the whole conduct of the profession to which he belongs, I ask you to disbelieve many of the statements he makes. You cannot rely on these statements, given with a bias, for he tells you what is incredible, or only credible at the loss of his own honour, which I am sure he will strive studiously to guard. He has become a partisan in this matter altogether, and forgot what is due to his position and his profession. All that can be said of Dr. Paterson is this,—that he speaks about the prisoner, of his mother-in-law, and speaks further about what he said of her falling; yet even after all, this is merely an account of a circumstance given by him some months, or, if you like, a month after the case occurred. And because the prisoner made some statements not exactly consistent with the truth as now disclosed on the evidence, are you to believe, on Dr. Paterson’s statement, and upon his statement only, that these statements were made so as to show guilty knowledge. I can quite understand that after there is proof of administration you may support that proof by evidence of falsehoods which the prisoner may tell, if you have reliable evidence to prove that they were stated. But when you have no evidence of administration of poison, then the evidence is all the other way; then I think you cannot eke out the probabilities of the case by appealing to these probabilities, or to the falsehoods depending on evidence like that here, as showing conclusively, beyond a reasonable doubt, that this prisoner was the person who committed that foul crime upon the person of his mother-in-law.”

Having thus commented on the evidence given for the prosecution on all the leading points of the case, in masterly, if not convincing arguments, in conclusion the prisoner’s counsel dwelt on the admitted terms of affection in which he lived with his wife and children—on the impossibility of believing in his commission of such a cold-blooded murder, on the evidence adduced. “The whole evidence of the Crown,” he said, “hangs upon probability, and can never justify you in believing, in the first place, that he was capable of committing the crime; and, in the second, it is hardly conceivable that anything so unnatural should be committed by such a man.”

THE JUDGE’S CHARGE.

On the fifth day, the Lord Justice Clerk summed up the evidence in this protracted trial with great minuteness, in the course of his charge reading to the jury nearly the whole of the evidence, and meeting the various objections to its relevancy offered by the prisoner’s counsel. There were three points, he said, for their consideration. (1.) Did the two ladies, or either of them, die from poison? (2.) If aye, was that poison administered for the purpose of destroying life? (3.) Was it the prisoner who administered it?

On the first point, after calling their attention in detail to the medical and analytical evidence in the case of Mrs. Pritchard, that she died from slow antimonial poisoning, he said, did not appear to have been contested by the prisoner’s counsel, and, upon the evidence, he did not think it admitted of a doubt. As the evidence showed that it was not from a large dose of antimony taken lately before death that she had died, the idea of accident or mistake was excluded. That it might have arisen from unskilful treatment by the prisoner was negatived by his assertion that he had never administered antimony to her, except once externally in October last, which could have nothing to do with the state in which the intestines were found in March. The idea of suicide by slow poisoning, even if there had been any hint of a suicidal tendency on Mrs. Pritchard’s part, was equally inadmissible: she must, if killed by antimony, have had it administered to her for that purpose. In Mrs. Taylor’s case, into the details of which he fully entered, one was almost forced to the conclusion that her death was brought about by the combined action of aconite, antimony, and opium. As to the idea of accident in her case it was inconsistent with the fact that the Battley’s solution was pure when bought. “Was it then,” he added, “by accident that these two subtle poisons, aconite and antimony, found their way into her medicine-bottle: if not by accident, did she put them there herself, or had she any knowledge of such things as to enable her, if she were willing, so to poison herself by using her own medicine? There was no appearance of that, and the character and conduct of the old lady, her natural condition both of body and mind as you heard it described by the witnesses, is such as not to suggest the idea of suicide in her case as a possibility at all. Consider, then, with reference to both deaths, whether you can arrive at the conclusion, or whether you can resist the conclusion, that the poison by the means of which they were deprived of life was wilfully given to them for the very purpose of destroying life.”

Passing then to the third question, “Was the poison of which these ladies died administered to them by the prisoner?” the Lord Justice Clerk went with great minuteness through the painful details of Mrs. Pritchard’s long and lingering illness, the symptoms which it exhibited, the prisoner’s misrepresentation of it as gastric fever, when the medical men proved that there was no fever in the case, but clear signs of antimonial poisoning, and the various acts of the prisoner during it which were put forward as showing that he had, and that he used, the opportunities his position offered, for the purpose of administering the poison. The interest of this portion of the charge, as well as of that relating to the symptoms and death of Mrs. Taylor, and the prisoner’s conduct in relation to it, depends so entirely on the judge’s method of marshalling the evidence, already reported, that it could not be satisfactorily given except verbatim. Many of the remarks of the learned judge, on these points of the evidence, have already been reported in the notes. It will therefore be sufficient to give, here, his remarks on the question of motive, and on the suggestion of the prisoner’s counsel with regard to Mary McLeod.

“In regard to the matter of motive, I would suggest to you that the motive that his pecuniary difficulties would be relieved by the death of Mrs. Taylor, does not seem to have been made out satisfactorily. You will consider the evidence, but I confess I do not think it worth while to set it before you again. Then, the question comes to be, was there a motive? What is there in the shape of a motive that may be supposed to account for the perpetration of two such horrid crimes? That is the way it was stated, and ably stated, by the prisoner’s counsel. But there are some considerations applicable to that part of the case which I am bound to suggest to you. The absence of motive, in the ordinary sense of the word, is not a very uncommon thing in the experiences of a criminal court. In truth, the existence of any adequate motive for the perpetration of a great crime is a thing impossible. Still there may be what is called an intelligent motive—the existence of some foul passion, or some immediate and strong excitement, which, in a moment of half frenzy, drives a man to the commission of murder. These are all very evident and intelligible incentives to crime. But when we find that, in the opinion of the prisoner’s counsel, there is no motive, it means no more than this, that the motive has not been discovered. There must have been a motive or incentive, and yet we may never discover what it was. You are never in a condition to say that there was no motive, but only that the motive was not discovered; and the motives of human action, we know from history and experience, are often inscrutable. Another motive or incentive has been suggested—the illicit relation between himself and Mary McLeod. This is a very important part of the case undoubtedly, and one to which you are bound to give due attention. The prosecution suggests that the existence of that intercourse was the reason or the desire that led him to get rid of his wife. If that was the incentive, I do not think there will be much difficulty in explaining the incentive to the commission of the other murder; because her presence in the course of the chronic poisoning of his wife would have been a great obstruction and interference with his plans.[167] But it is for you to say whether it is a sufficient motive. It is a fair question for your consideration, and I should desire you to turn your minds to it very seriously; keeping only in mind this view, that even supposing you find it impossible to assign an intelligible motive for the commission of one or both of these murders, the absence of evidence of motive is not sufficient reason for acquitting the prisoner, if you are satisfied from the other evidence in the case that he was guilty. Motive, after all, can but create a presumption one way or another. It is not evidence of the fact of murder, that a man has an obvious motive to commit it; and just as little can the absence of proof of the existence of a motive be a reason for finding the prisoner not guilty, if the evidence of the fact of the murder be satisfactory against him.”

Again, after having shown how no imputation could rest on the servants Lattimer and Patterson, the learned judge thus dealt with the imputation thrown out by the prisoner’s counsel against Mary McLeod:—

“He has said that there was another girl there who stands in a very different position, and that it appears, singularly enough, that whenever an article of food was to be carried to Mrs. Pritchard, Mary McLeod’s is the hand that bears it. In short, if I understand aright his theory, it is Mary McLeod who caused these murders, and he invites you to choose between her and the prisoner, and to pronounce upon a balance of probabilities which of the two it was. This is a very painful position for you to be placed in. If it be necessary that you should decide absolutely between the two it must be done. At the same time the prisoner’s counsel did not seem sufficiently to advert, in considering the point, to the possibility that both might have been implicated, and, if that was so, I suppose we should have little doubt which was the master and which was the servant; and, although the one might be the active hand that administered the poison, if two were concerned, you would have very little doubt who was the actor, and who set on the other. And, in fact, if you should arrive at this conclusion, every article that the prisoner’s counsel alluded to for the purpose of throwing the guilt on Mary McLeod would be an article of evidence to implicate the prisoner at the bar. But I do not desire you to take this theory. On the contrary, I think it quite right that you should consider on the balance of probabilities, as has been very well said, which of the two is the perpetrator of this crime; and in considering this, it is necessary for you to advert to this—that the poison was administered in doses—in doses any one of which was insufficient to kill, but which was quite sufficient, in the agony it produced, and by the gradual reduction of the strength of the patient, at length to lead to a fatal termination. Is it conceivable that a girl of fifteen or sixteen years of age, in the position of a servant maid, could of herself have conceived and executed such a design, within this house, under the eye and subject to the vigilance of the husband of her victim, himself a medical man? That is very hard to believe. On the other hand, if you can suppose that the prisoner was the person who conceived and executed this wicked design, it is not so difficult to believe that Mary McLeod may have been the perfectly unconscious instrument of carrying out his purpose—suspecting nothing, knowing nothing of what was being done, and seeing nothing but great kindness on the part of the prisoner to her mistress, and seeing them dying, not rapidly as in the case of Mrs. Pritchard, and though rapidly in that of Mrs. Taylor, still in a way the prisoner accounted for as a medical man. You may understand easily enough that a girl in the position of Mary McLeod might be made the unconscious means of carrying out these designs, and perfectly innocent on her part. But there is no difficulty in this question. If you are satisfied that murder was committed, somebody did it. Some of them are plainly innocent, and therefore the probability of guilt is reduced to two. Of these two, one or both of them are guilty of this deed.”

Then with a remark on the suggestion of the prisoner’s counsel, that Mrs. Taylor died of an overdose of opium in the Battley’s solution, the learned judge left the case to the jury, who, after about an hour’s deliberation, found the prisoner “Guilty,” and he was sentenced to death.

After his conviction, in the hopes of exciting commiseration, Pritchard drew up a confession implicating Mary McLeod, but the transparent falsehood failing to gain for it any credence, he was induced to put forward a second, and, subsequently, a third and apparently full confession of his guilt. In this last he made the following statements: “I am guilty of the death of my mother-in-law, Mrs. Taylor, and of my wife. I can assign no motive for the conduct which actuated me, beyond a species of ‘terrible madness,’ and the use of ‘ardent spirits.’ I hereby freely and fully state that the confession made on the 11th of this month (implicating McLeod) was not true, and I confess that I alone, and not M. McLeod, poisoned my wife in the way brought out in the evidence at the trial. Mrs. Taylor’s death was caused according to the wording of the indictment and the main facts brought out at my trial. I hereby fully acknowledge and now plead wholly and solely guilty thereto, and may God have mercy on my soul.” He was executed on the 27th of July, at Glasgow, in the sight, it was reported at the time, of nearly one hundred thousand persons.

THE RICHMOND POISONING CASE.[168]

Before The Lord Chief Baron Pollock, at the Central Criminal Court, July 7 and 8, and August 15 to 19, 1859.

For the Prosecution: Mr. Serjeant Ballantine, Mr. Bodkin, Mr. Clerk, and Mr. Mereweather.

For the Defence: Mr. Serjeant Parry and Mr. Giffard.

FIRST TRIAL—July 7 and 8.

Thomas Smethurst, Æt. 48, surgeon, was indicted for the wilful murder of Isabella Bankes. The prisoner was a person of small stature and insignificant appearance, with reddish-brown moustaches, probably older than he stated, and, though appearing careworn, maintained great self-possession throughout the proceedings, and especially during the second trial.

HISTORY OF THE CASE.

Serjeant Ballantine, in stating the case to the jury, said it was alleged that the prisoner took away the life of a fellow creature by poison, and likewise contrived to throw around the means employed to destroy life some more than ordinary difficulties in the way of the detection of the crime; that in order to effect this purpose he had availed himself of the knowledge he possessed, and made use of a slow irritant poison, which he had administered with his own hands, until, by the accumulation of poison and irritation, she died.

The prisoner was represented to be a member of the medical profession: he had considerable knowledge of medicine, and was known as Dr. Smethurst. He was a married man, and had a wife considerably older than himself now living. At the time when he should first refer to Dr. Smethurst, he was living with his wife in a respectable lodging-house in Bayswater. While they were living there, in the autumn of 1858, Miss Isabella Bankes also came there to reside. She was a lady of delicate constitution,[169] and possessed of property under her own control of between £1,700 and £1,800, and a life interest in £5,000, which, at her death, went to other members of her family. The result was that an intimacy sprung up between the parties. In November of that year, the landlady, considering that there was too great intimacy between Miss Bankes and the doctor, spoke to her, and, in consequence, she left the house. On the 9th of December, Miss Bankes and the prisoner went through the form of marriage at Battersea Church, and, two days after, commenced to reside at Richmond. From a letter to his wife found on him when in custody, it was evident that the doctor did not intend this to be a permanent marriage. Until the 28th of January, 1859, nothing was heard of them; then Miss Bankes’s sister Louisa received a letter from her, but not dated from the place where they were living. On the 15th of February, the sister received another letter from her. At that time they were living in Old Palace Gardens, Richmond. Miss Bankes was then in good health, but, about the 28th of March, her illness commenced. On the 3rd of April, Dr. Smethurst determined to have medical advice. The landlady advised Dr. Julius, as he and his partner, Dr. Bird, were the most eminent practitioners in Richmond. They were accordingly called in. The former treated her for diarrhoea, in the usual way, the complaint from which he understood she was suffering, taking his account of her symptoms from Dr. Smethurst. Dr. Julius all through consulted with the prisoner, who took a most active part in the matter, and sometimes pressed upon him the use of various medicines. He, however, was only on two occasions allowed to be alone with his patient. On the 15th of April, on the landlady at Old Palace Gardens asking a few shillings more rent, they removed to Alma Villas—Miss Bankes so weak that she had to be taken in a cab and carried upstairs. Dr. Julius, when he found that his remedies had a contrary effect to what was intended, asked Dr. Bird to see her, but did not mention his own suspicions, though they were very strong. On the 18th of April Dr. Bird saw her, prescribed for her, but with the same result as his partner. At this time she was sinking, and becoming continually weaker. On that day the prisoner wrote a letter to her sister Louisa marked “private and confidential.” It stated that her sister was very ill, and wished to see her: she was to ask for Dr. and Mrs. Smethurst, and not to breathe a word of the contents of the note to anyone. The sister was not at this time aware of the marriage, and had her own views of her sister’s conduct. She went, however, and found her sister in a very feeble state. The deceased said to her, “Oh, don’t say anything about it; it will be all right when I get well, won’t it dear?” turning to Dr. Smethurst, who said, “Yes, it will be all right soon.” Dr. Smethurst showed every kindness and attention to the deceased during her illness, and to the time of her death she treated him with love and affection. Miss Louisa, however, was never allowed to be for a moment alone with her sister. Whilst she was there the prisoner gave the patient a saline draught, and she vomited immediately, and complained of its bad taste. Miss Louisa offered to make some tapioca, but the prisoner objected on the ground that there was not any milk. She then offered to make some arrowroot, but again he objected on the ground that the landlady might not like it. That evening the sister left, and next day wrote to the deceased, to which letter she received the following reply from the prisoner:—“After your departure, dear Bella had a very bad evening and night of it, purely from the excitement of seeing you, and the fatigue consequent thereon. Vomiting and purging set in at a fearful rate, which of course prostrated her greatly. The doctor at once forbade any visitors for the present, or he would not be responsible for the effects attendant thereon.” The prisoner had no doubt made such representations to Dr. Bird as induced him to say that she had better not receive visitors for the present. On subsequent days the sister received other letters from the prisoner postponing her intended visits from time to time; describing her sister’s condition, and mentioning that he had insisted on having a consultation with “Dr. Todd, the first physician of the day, and the two regular attendants who were the first doctors in the place.” One of these letters was dated April 30, but made no mention of his having on that day instructed an attorney in Richmond to draw up a will upon what he said was a draft by a barrister in London, but was really entirely in his own handwriting. On the following day (Sunday) he called on the attorney, and, representing that the case was urgent, induced him to come to the lodging, where the will was formally executed. By this will the whole of her property was left to the prisoner.[170] The consultation with Dr. Todd took place, and he agreed with other medical attendants that the patient was suffering from unfair treatment. The prisoner, however, on the 29th, wrote to the sister that Dr. Todd not only acquiesced in what was being done, but recommended a perseverance of the treatment, with some slight additions of his own. This was not the fact, but the prisoner was not made aware of the suspicions entertained by the medical attendants. They, however, caused the evacuations of the deceased to be tested, and the result was so confirmatory of their views, that they communicated with the police, and the prisoner was arrested. A number of bottles containing drugs and medicines were taken possession of, and on his person was found the following letter to his wife, sealed and stamped for post:—

Monday, May 2, 1859.

“My Dear Mary,—I have not been able to leave for town as I expected, in consequence of my medical aid being required in a case of illness. I shall, however, see you as soon as possible. Should anything unforeseen prevent my leaving for town before the 11th, I will send you a cheque for Smith’s money and extras. I will send £5. I am quite well, and hope you are the same, and that I shall find you so when I see you—which, I trust, will not be long first. Present my kind regards to the Smiths and old friends in the house. I heard from James the other day, who said he had called on you, but that you had gone out for a walk. With best love, believe me,

“Yours affectionately,

“Thomas Smethurst.”

The case not being, in the opinion of the Richmond magistrates, strong enough to justify his committal, the prisoner was discharged. On the following day, the 3rd of May, Miss Bankes died, a coroner’s inquest was held, and the result was the re-arrest of the prisoner, and his subsequent committal for wilful murder, for which he was put on his trial on the 7th of July.[171]

EVIDENCE OF MEDICAL ATTENDANTS.

Dr. Julius said:—

“He was called in on the 3rd of April to the deceased, who was represented to be suffering from vomiting and diarrhoea. The prisoner said he believed that her liver was overloaded with bile. The witness prescribed accordingly, but without any abatement of the symptoms. There was no appearance of bile in the evacuations after the third or fourth day that he saw her, yet the symptoms of diarrhoea and vomiting continued, with a burning sensation in the bowels and soreness of the mouth. She complained of a parching throat and a burning thirst. He could not account for any of these appearances from any natural disease, and began to entertain an opinion that something of an irritant character was being administered, and in consequence desired that his partner, Dr. Bird, should see her. Did not communicate his suspicions to Dr. Bird, who, taking the prisoner’s account of the symptoms, and knowing the witness’s prescriptions, adopted his mode of treatment, but with the same want of success. The medicines were varied, but the symptoms continued the same. On this the witness communicated his fears to Dr. Bird, and he on further observation agreed that the patient was suffering from some irritant, of the administration of which they knew nothing. During this period the prisoner always saw the medical attendants, and was always present in the room when they were with the patient, and recommended or dissuaded the use of various medicines. He displayed a considerable knowledge of medicine. On the 28th of April the patient was very ill, and she repeatedly said to Dr. Bird in the prisoner’s presence that she should like some one else to be called in. On the same day the prisoner (who had always expressed a desire that the best medical advice should be obtained) suggested that Dr. Todd should be called in. On Dr. Todd’s arrival, witness gave him an outline of the case and treatment, but did not say anything of the suspicions that had arisen in his mind. Subsequent to Dr. Todd’s attendance witness procured some of the evacuations, and in consequence of the examination of them, thought it his duty to communicate with the magistrates, and the prisoner was arrested, but released on his own recognizances. Witness was unable to ascribe the symptoms to any natural cause, but if small doses of some irritant poison were administered from time to time, it would have accounted for all the appearances that had exhibited themselves. Antimony and arsenic would be the character of poisons likely to produce such results. There was neither antimony nor arsenic in any of the medicines he prescribed for her. The prisoner told him that she was not in the family way. Dr. Todd had prescribed a pill containing a quarter of a grain of sulphate of copper and a quarter of a grain of opium, to which the prisoner objected, as the copper often produced symptoms of poisoning. On the Saturday the prisoner said this medicine had produced intense burning in the mouth and throat, constant vomiting, and fifteen bloody motions—that the burning was from the “mouth to the anus.” In my judgment it could not have produced these effects. The evacuation which I obtained was previous to her taking any of these pills, as they did not arrive until afterwards. When in prison Dr. Smethurst wrote to me three letters for the particulars of the medicines that had been given, which I answered. In the first he also wished to know what solutions of arsenic were kept in our surgery, and in the third letter ashed for the date of the prescription for antimony, which had never been prescribed. He also told me that she had been ill just a week—that previously she had been in very good health, able to take long walks, in fact out a good deal.”

On his cross-examination, Dr. Julius

“Admitted that Smethurst’s communications to him of the symptoms were made in the clearest and plainest manner, and tallied with his own observations—that twice he believed he saw the patient without the prisoner being present; that previous to the 15th of April the prisoner had suggested to the witness that Drs. Hills or Hassell should be called in, and a different treatment—one of a very sedative character, which the witness considered as too powerful, and, therefore, gave in a more diluted form; that witness had not, whilst in attendance on Miss Bankes, the slightest suspicion of her pregnancy, but that, if he had known of it, he should not have made any difference in his treatment, and now that he did know of it, it made no difference in his opinion as to the cause of her death. Whilst admitting that the delivery of a woman who had a first child at the age of forty-three would be very critical, he stated decidedly, as the result of his experience, that the period of pregnancy would be far less critical than in a younger woman. Vomiting was well-known to be an early—the earliest—sign of pregnancy, but diarrhoea was not; and though he had heard of a case in which it was accompanied with diarrhoea, he had not heard of one in which the diarrhoea would not yield to any ordinary treatment, and the life of the mother was only saved by the destruction of the foetus.”[172]

On re-examination Dr. Julius stated that “vomiting in early pregnancy had nothing to do with the burning sensation in the mouth and throat; that the sickness of Miss Bankes was decidedly not of the same character as that of pregnancy, nor was the diarrhoea such as pregnant women sometimes suffer from.” Dr. Bird, and not the witness, prescribed bismuth, acetate of lead, and nitrate of silver.

Dr. Bird, who from service in the Crimea in 1855 had had great experience and opportunity of studying bowel complaints, confirmed the evidence of his partner.

“None of the symptoms were in his opinion reconcileable with any known disease, but were such as could be accounted for from the administration of small doses of antimony or arsenic. The prisoner, he said, told him, on one occasion, that the deceased had seen her sister, and that it had very much excited her, and in consequence witness told him that it would be better if she did not come again. On the 30th he told the prisoner that he wished to take away a portion of one of her evacuations, that it might be examined under the microscope to see if any purulent matter was in it, that we might judge if there was any ulceration of the bowels—that the prisoner poured out a portion into a tumbler, which he tied over with an old newspaper, and that the witness took it to his surgery, marked it No. 2, sealed it with his own seal, and preserved it intact until delivered to Dr. Taylor with the bottle No. 1 which Dr. Julius had obtained. A third portion of an evacuation was shown to him by the prisoner, which he put into a white jam-pot, and marked No. 3. He was downstairs at the moment Miss Bankes died, but saw her every minute or two before that. He gave an ample quantity of every ingredient used in his prescriptions so as to afford a sufficient opportunity for analyzation.”

On cross-examination, he described the various remedies he prescribed, none of which would account for the symptoms, and stated that he formed his opinion that it was a case of slow poisoning by an irritant, not only from what Dr. Julius and the prisoner told him, but from the vomitings, the motions, and the lady’s own account of her symptoms.

Mr. Caudle, the assistant of Messrs. Julius and Bird, described the medicines he compounded, and Dr. Buzzard detailed the transmission of the bottles of evacuations to Dr. Taylor.

POST-MORTEM EXAMINATION.

Mr. Barwell, Assistant-Surgeon of the Charing Cross Hospital, who, with Mr. Palmer, of Mortlake, made a post-mortem examination of the body on the 4th of May, said:—

In his cross-examination, the earlier portion of which was occupied with questions to test the accuracy of the notes of his report, the witness explained that the hardness of the liver, which he observed, was not a stage of Cirrhosis, as he had at first written in his memoranda, “but a normal hardness, nothing extraordinary;” that the use of the term “hard” did not imply that the liver was diseased, but that the term “fatty” does.

Dr. Samuel Wilks, who had subsequently examined the intestines with Mr. Barwell, confirmed his statements as to their condition and that of the liver, and “should think Miss Bankes’ death was most probably to be attributed to an irritant.”

On cross-examination, he allowed that “severe dysentery produces great inflammation of the intestines, particularly of the larger; that inflammation, if continued, results in ulceration and destruction of the tissues; that the cÆcum and rectum would be affected in that way by dysentery, and that dark spots of effused blood are also a consequence of severe dysentery.” His admission, however, rested on his reading, and not from his experience of cases of acute dysentery, as he had seen only “two cases, which they were obliged to call by that name, not being able to arrive at any other conclusion as to the cause of death.”

MEDICAL EXPERTS FOR THE PROSECUTION.

Dr. Todd, Physician to King’s College Hospital, was then called.

On cross-examination, Dr. Todd said:—

“I have never known any case or cases of early pregnancy of a woman of about forty to forty-five years of age in which there has been violent vomiting, violent diarrhoea, and severe dysentery, which no ordinary medicines would stop, and in which the life of the mother has only been saved by the abortion of the foetus. No such cases have come under my cognizance. I think it possible that excessive vomiting and great diarrhoea may be caused by the early stage of pregnancy, and symptoms somewhat allied to those under which this lady died; but I think it quite impossible that pregnancy alone, in an early stage, or in any stage, could, produce extensive ulceration of the bowels. I think, where it is a doubtful case, it is conclusive evidence against the theory that the symptoms were caused by early pregnancy that you found such extensive ulceration as existed in this case.”

Dr. Buzzard, who had been a staff-surgeon in the Crimea, Dr. Copland, and Dr. Bowerbank, who had had great experience of acute dysentery in tropical climates, gave it as their opinion that the symptoms were not reconcileable with that disease, but were those of the presence of irritant poison. Dr. Babington, Physician to Queen Charlotte’s Lying-in Hospital, who had attended more than 2,000 women in their confinement, did not consider that the death was in any way attributable to the fact of her being in an incipient state of pregnancy. On cross-examination, whilst admitting that cases of violent vomiting and diarrhoea in early pregnancy are recorded, said that he did not remember any one of so severe a character as to endanger life; that he did not think that the lady’s advanced stage of life had anything to do with it; that it was a complication generally at a later period of pregnancy; and that a first pregnancy between 40 and 45 years of age was not more critical in the early stage. On re-examination, with reference to six cases of dysentery, in 1841, in which he had made post-mortem examinations, he said:—

“There was not the same amount of sloughing of the cÆcum as in this case, nor destruction of the mucous membrane. The glands were in a different condition. In the dysentery cases, the glands were quite destroyed, and in three of the cases there was perforation of the intestine. The symptoms in all six were different to those in this case; there was no burning sensation of the throat.”

ANALYTICAL EVIDENCE.

Serjeant Parry here called for the deposition of Dr. Taylor made before the magistrates, a portion of which was read. It stated that he had discovered arsenic in bottle No. 21, in which there was chlorate of potass; that the latter was a harmless saline mixture acting upon the kidneys, and that if poison had been given in it, its effect would probably be to carry off the noxious ingredient from the body very quickly, but that by repetition constantly of such a proceeding chronic inflammation would be created which would yield to no treatment, and would end in the death of the patient from exhaustion.

Dr. Taylor then continued:—

“At the time I gave this evidence I firmly believed that arsenic was contained in the mixture and that it had not come from my test, but had been placed there by some one. When before the coroner I expressed my opinion that the death was referable to antimony and arsenic. The finding of the arsenic in the bottle did not have any effect upon the opinion I subsequently formed with reference to the case. The moment I discovered the mistake I had made I informed Serjeant Ballantine. No arsenic was found in the body of deceased. I did not form my theory to account for the absence of arsenic from the tissues of the body, that it had been carried off by the chlorate of potass. It did not enter into my consideration beyond this, that it acts generally as a diuretic. After Dr. Odling and myself had given our evidence relative to finding the arsenic in the bottle of chlorate of potass, we thought it was possible there might be some mistake, and we made other experiments to satisfy ourselves. We made seventy-seven experiments with the same kind of gauze, and in seventy-six no arsenic was discovered: and the only instance in which it was found was in the evacuation in bottle 2.” The witness also said that he could not, after hearing the symptoms and the treatment of the deceased, attribute the death to any other cause than the administration of some irritant poison.

This witness was also cross-examined at considerable length as to the symptoms of slow poisoning by arsenic and by antimony, in which he agreed with the previous witnesses, adding to their evidence the fact of its operation in causing enlargement of the liver, and the deposit of fat in it. Hence the use of sulphide of antimony to fatten the geese used in Strasburg, in the manufacture of Perigord Pies. On the subject of dysentery he could not speak, having ceased to practise as a medical man, and confined his attention to analyses.

On re-examination, Dr. Taylor said that “the half grain of copper, given in the pill during life, would not by any action of any acid in the stomach account for the quantity of arsenic found in the evacuation; that he had examined and found no arsenic in the copper pills; and that though arsenic was found in the sulphate of copper taken from the surgery, there was not a quantity to be seen; there was no arsenic in the bismuth, and no antimony in the medicines. Arsenic is sometimes found in bismuth.”

Dr. Odling, Professor of Practical Chemistry at Guy’s Hospital, who had assisted Dr. Taylor in his experiments, 2Ì”confirmed Dr. Taylor’s account in every respect, and expressed himself satisfied that there was antimony in the body of the deceased. He agreed also in attributing the death to the administration of some irritant poison, and did not know any natural disease that would account for the symptoms spoken of.”

William Thomas Brande, formerly Professor of Chemistry to the Royal Institution, and for fifty years engaged in the practice of chemistry, “had examined a portion of the liquid (the chlorate of potass), and come to the conclusion that it did not contain arsenic. Reinsch’s test for arsenic was reliable where chlorate of potass was not present.” “Our first object,” said the witness, on cross-examination, “was to get rid of the chlorate of potass, or to decompose it so as to render it inert, which we did; and we then examined the liquid in question, and found no arsenic in it.”

To the Court.—“I was not aware that Reinsch’s test would be inapplicable to such a compound, and if I had applied it, and the result appeared as it did to Drs. Taylor and Odling, I should have come to the same conclusion, that there was arsenic in the substance. The matter that has appeared since is to a certain extent new to the chemical world. We have always been aware of the presence of very minute quantities of arsenic in copper, but we have never considered it as interfering in any way until this particular case.”[175]

MEDICAL AND ANALYTICAL EVIDENCE FOR THE DEFENCE.

It will be convenient, as in the previous trials, to report at this period the medical and analytical evidence offered on the part of the prisoner, subsequent to the address of Serjeant Parry. This was devoted to the following points: (1), the absence of some of the well-known symptoms in slow poisoning by arsenic or antimony, or by both; (2), the similarity of the symptoms in this case to those exhibited in cases of acute dysentery; (3), the occurrence of severe diarrhoea, with vomiting in the early stages of pregnancy; (4), that the non-discovery of either arsenic or antimony in the tissues of the body could not be due to its being given in, or with chlorate of potass; (5), the probability that both the arsenic and the antimony found in the evacuations and intestines might be due to the presence of arsenic in the bismuth, and of antimony in the grey powders administered as medicines. In support of these opinions four doctors and analysts, all belonging to what was known as the Grosvenor School of Medicine, were examined, two of whom (Dr. Richardson and Mr. Rodgers) had given evidence for Palmer at his trial, Dr. Richardson then suggesting that Cook’s symptoms were reconcileable with an attack of Angina pectoris, and Mr. Rodgers supporting the view that if strychnia had been given to Cook, it must have been discovered in his body by chemical analysis.

Dr. Richardson, after generally asserting that the symptoms in Miss Bankes’ case were not in the main reconcileable with either slow arsenical or antimonial poisoning, or both, enumerated the following as absent if it was a case of slow antimonial and arsenical poisoning:—

The witness then went on to show, by experiments on two other dogs, that the administration of chlorate made no difference either as regards symptoms, pathology, or the chemical result. Speaking again of the sweating as one of the symptoms in antimonial poisoning absent in Miss Bankes’ case, he admitted that he had seen it only in one case, and that, where it had been given in excess, for a long time, and in large doses medicinally, and that in two other cases of acute poisoning by antimony there was no particular eruption, because, as he said, the attack was not long enough. Such was all the experience he had had in cases of slow poisoning. As to the effects of antimony on the liver, he could only speak from some experiments on animals in 1856-7, and that, in reality, he had no experience at all in slow poisoning, except from experiments on animals. Of dysentery, too, he knew very little; had seen two or three cases, but had never met with it in the early stage of pregnancy; he had met with one between the third and fourth month, but not between the fifth and seventh week. He had analysed the bismuth usually administered in medicine, and had found nearly half a grain of arsenic in an ounce, and, in a case in which 90 grains of that drug had been given at the rate of 5 grains three times a day—for dyspepsia—with Drs. Thudichum and Webb he found about the fiftieth of a grain of arsenic in the urine.

The cross-examination of this witness was mainly occupied by questions about his evidence on Palmer’s trial, and in trying to elicit from him that these canine experiments had been made for the purposes of the present case. The latter he denied, but admitted that he had made them after reading the examinations before the magistrate and the coroner, and that though he did not communicate them to the prisoner, he talked about them so frequently to his colleagues at the Grosvenor School, that he was not surprised at being interviewed by the prisoner’s solicitor and asked to give evidence for his client. As to his evidence on Palmer’s trial, he maintained that he did not endorse the theory that Cook died of Angina pectoris; that he did not negative the idea of strychnia, but at last admitted that he could not deny that he went there to support the theory of Angina pectoris.[176] In the cases of the dogs his analysis was not quantitative: he was content with the fact that the arsenic was present. He negatived the idea that the ¼ of a grain of copper in the pill would produce a burning sensation from the mouth to the anus, but admitted that any irritant given for a long time would unquestionably produce that effect. The form of dysentery to which a lady with such a liver as Miss Bankes’ would be subject, would be subacute, not that arising from poison, but which is prolonged over a very considerable time: not chronic, but something between chronic and acute, but too severe to be strictly chronic; that would not harden the coats of the stomach; would produce a great deal of mischief in the bowels; would not thicken them, but probably lead to a deposit of false membrane: it would not harden them, but a false membrane would; if there was great congestion, the wall would be thicker. He had not acted as an accoucheur since 1854, but was of opinion that sickness accompanied by dysenteric diarrhoea, in the early stage of pregnancy, might have been the cause of all the appearances exhibited in this case. Diarrhoea was sometimes an incident of and caused by pregnancy; the opposite effect, constipation, was not more usual.

On re-examination, the witness qualified his admission as to the effect of the copper pill to this extent, that, “in a patient suffering from violent irritation, arising either from a natural or mechanical cause, sulphate of copper would have a tendency to increase that irritation; and he justified his reliance on the experiments on animals on their forming the great bulk of scientific knowledge in Europe on the subject of poisons and their operation on the human frame, and by the fact that the materials for forming a judgment of the effects of slow antimonial poisoning on the human subject were very bare,” and concluded by saying, that, “after his cross-examination, and his attention having been called to all the points deemed important, he still adhered to his opinion that the deceased lady might have died from natural causes.”

Dr. J. E. D. Rodgers, Professor of Chemistry in Knowle College, but for seventeen years at the Grosvenor School, agreed with Dr. Richardson that chlorate of potass would have no effect in eliminating arsenic or antimony from the human system; that the absence of arsenic or antimony from the tissues, and especially from the liver, would cause him to doubt whether the allegation of poisoning was correct, and that he did not think it possible to find it in the blood and not in the liver, “as the blood in the heart must be regarded as a sample of the whole 28 lbs. circulating in the system, and, if you find the poison in one small portion, you must find it wherever the blood flows.” He confirmed the amount of arsenic said to be in bismuth, and had found antimony in grey powder: should expect to find, in a case of slow poisoning, the symptoms spoken to by Dr. Richardson, and, if he did not find any arsenic in a body from which an evacuation containing one-sixth of a grain came, it would lead him to doubt whether the experiment had been correct.

Dr. J. L. W. Thudichum, Lecturer on Chemistry at the Grosvenor School, and a pupil of Liebig’s, attributed the death to what he called diphtheritic dysentery, of which he had seen two cases, and, on opening the body in one case, found the false membrane from which the disease takes its name. The only medical work in which he had seen this form of dysentery described was Rokitansky’s Morbid Anatomy.[177] It was not, however, at all necessary to find the false membrane, as it might be broken up and discharged, and hearing that shreddy matters were found in the evacuations, would confirm his view. He quite concurred with the previous witnesses as to the symptoms they would expect to find in a case of slow arsenical or antimonial poisoning. He had analysed grey powder and bismuth. In the former he found caustic and carbonate of lime, mercury partly oxidised, silica, with phosphate of iron, arsenic and antimony—more arsenic than antimony; in the bismuth he found both arsenic and antimony—more than a trace—enough to answer the test two or three times—an appreciable quantity. “I dare say,” he said, “there was half a grain in 20 grains. It is almost necessary, from the mode of its preparation, that it should contain arsenic.”

On cross-examination, the witness admitted that he had not made any quantitative analysis, because they were so laborious; had used in his experiment about one-sixteenth of 2 ounces of the grey powder, which he dissolved; neither the grey powder nor the bismuth had anything to do with the death of Miss Bankes, but the fact of bismuth containing arsenic might account for the traces in the evacuation, and if antimony was taken in a medicine it might account for the analysis, but this would depend upon the quantity in the medicine.

Dr. Cornelius Webb, Lecturer on Medical Jurisprudence and Toxicology at the Grosvenor School, and Physician to the Great Northern Hospital, said:—

“From all he had heard deposed to in court he was of opinion that the deceased died from natural causes that might be accounted for—that the fact of her being in an early state of pregnancy ought most decidedly to be taken into consideration; though he did not know of a case, he was of opinion, founded on practical experience and general knowledge, that severe vomiting and severe diarrhoea which would not yield to ordinary treatment may arise from an early state of pregnancy—that Miss Bankes died from dysentery, made worse by the condition of early pregnancy, and that a burning sensation in the mouth is consequent upon dysentery, and the diarrhoea and vomiting of pregnancy. All the symptoms in her case might arise from the vomiting and diarrhoea of pregnancy. The ulceration in the stomach, obliteration and partial destruction of the mucous membrane, the effusion of blood under it, and the dark patchy spots and ulcers and injection generally of the membrane might, as Dr. Wilkes said, arise from dysentery. If the deceased at one time had an affection of the womb, for which she used nitrate of silver (a pint bottle of this was found in her room), it would indicate ulceration of the neck of the womb; and if there had been such a condition of the womb an appreciable time before pregnancy, it might add to the irritation of pregnancy. Unless he found other symptoms, the vomiting, diarrhoea, sensation of the throat and the intestinal canal, accompanied by ulcerous appearances in parts of the body, would not, in his judgment, necessarily lead to the conclusion that she must be the subject of irritant poisoning—unless he found other symptoms, it would not enter his head. In a case of antimonial poisoning he should expect to find a clamminess and cold perspiration of the skin. In arsenical poisoning he should expect to find arsenic in the kidneys and the spleen, as well as the liver; should expect to find it in the liver first—it is the great criterion. And from the absence of these symptoms and appearances in this case, he was fortified in his opinion that she died from natural causes.”

The cross-examination of this witness was mainly directed to his assertion that, “in such a case as this, had he been called in at its early stage, notwithstanding he was told that she was not pregnant, and that her courses were in order, he should have examined the patient for pregnancy, especially if he found that the remedies were useless in stopping the vomiting and diarrhoea.”

“Dysentery,” he said, “was a most common disease, and in such a state as Miss Bankes was, the quarter-of-a-grain copper pill might increase the irritation. Diphtheritic dysentery was a form of idiopathic dysentery, that is, occurring without any particular poison—the Eastern form; there is a dysentery that arises from natural poison, just the same as fever. If I had been acquainted with all the symptoms I have heard described in court, I should not have dreamt of poison.”

Dr. G. F. Girdwood, who had delivered upwards of 3,000 women, strongly supported the view of the death being due to the effects of dysentery, combined with pregnancy. “Idiopathic dysentery would be its proper name—a special disease originating in itself, one single malady, one single suffering. He had had several cases of dysentery at early stages of pregnancy, one of them very severe, in fact, contemporaneous with it—he should say symptomatic of pregnancy: this would be much aggravated by a bilious temperament, and any affection of the liver.”

On cross-examination the witness explained that “in this country idiopathic dysentery assumed a less severe form than in warm climates—was what is called subacute or chronic, and that the state of the cÆcum indicated a case of subacute, not of severe dysentery, of prolonged dysentery, and that it did not necessarily follow that such a case should commence with febrile symptoms.” On re-examination he stated, that “in early pregnancy the dysenteric motions have become bloody, the sign of dysentery which may come on immediately or not; in a day or two in acute dysentery, the result of neglected diarrhoea. Subacute dysentery is frequently the result of neglected diarrhoea, or chronic dysentery—you have acute, subacute, and chronic.”

Mr. James Edmunds, Surgeon to the Royal Maternity Charity, cited a case in his own practice of a woman of about forty years of age, who had been married ten or twelve years, and who in her pregnancy suffered from vomiting, purging, and severe pain in her abdomen, and who, from the post-mortem examination which he made, he was convinced died of dysentery, complicated by vomiting and irritability of the stomach attributable to pregnancy, and purging attributable to dysentery. “Purging,” he said, “was often a symptom at an early stage of pregnancy, and often of impending labour.”

On cross-examination, however, he admitted that when he first attended this woman, when the symptoms first began, she had been pregnant five or six months.

Dr. Tyler Smith, the last medical witness called for the defence, in practice for fifteen years as an accoucheur, said that

“He was acquainted with cases in which excessive vomiting in pregnancy had caused death—where it went on after pregnancy had commenced, sometimes during the whole period, but these were exceptional cases. It would require considerable skill to determine accurately the age of a foetus, as you may have a case in which it may die and remain in utero without development, though no decomposition takes place. He had known one case in which there was a great amount of vomiting and some amount of purging, in which the friends of the lady could not be brought to believe that her husband was not poisoning her. These symptoms might become so violent as to be mistaken for a case of poisoning; the expression on the face in such cases was that of death by starvation.”

On cross-examination, he admitted that though he had seen cases of death in pregnancy from vomiting conjoined with purging, he believed the vomiting to be the great cause of death, and that ordinarily, if dysentery is excessive, abortion is produced. On re-examination, he said “that in the case of a woman of from forty to forty-five years of age, doses of irritant poison were more likely to procure abortion than idiopathic disease.” To a question by a juryman, he said, “any irritating medicine would tend to keep up dysentery.”

With the evidence of a dentist (Pedley) who had attended the prisoner about the middle of February last, and recommended the use of chlorate of potass for foulness of breath, the evidence for the defence was closed.

THE JUDGE’S CHARGE.

The Lord Chief Baron, in his address to the jury, which occupied eight hours and a half, and of which, therefore, only the leading points can be given, said:—

“As to the marriage of the prisoner and the deceased—though in itself a breach of the law and a felony—the jury ought not to allow it to have any weight, excepting so far as it operated, with the other facts in the case, upon the question whether the prisoner was guilty or innocent of the more serious crime laid to his charge. It appeared to him that it was a most important subject for their consideration—the position of the deceased at the time the fatal event occurred, and also what she believed to be her position with the prisoner. In the letter she wrote to her sister she stated she was happy, and she also told her sister when she first saw her during her illness, that when she got well all would be right. What did she mean by that expression, and what would have become of the prisoner if she had got well, he having a wife living? In the will that had been made by the deceased, she appeared to have been studiously called ‘spinster,’ and she signed her name, ‘Isabella Bankes,’ and how she could have done this, knowing that she had gone through the ceremony of marriage with the prisoner, and might, therefore, naturally have supposed herself entitled to the name of ‘Smethurst,’ was certainly a very mysterious and extraordinary circumstance.[178] He could not help observing on the circumstances under which the will was made. The prisoner had certainly told Mr. Senior a falsehood, and he did not appear to scruple to degrade most seriously the unhappy lady for the purpose of having the will prepared in the form he required. If he had told the attorney the truth, he would never have drawn the will in the form in which it appeared. Again, at the very period when this unhappy woman was lying in agony on her death-bed, and according to the prisoner’s statement unable to bear the excitement of seeing her sister, he took into her room on the Sunday an entire stranger, and there a will prepared by himself was read to her, and executed by her under the circumstances of degradation to which he had alluded. Thus this poor dying woman, from whom all her relations had been excluded, had a stranger thrust into her presence, and was allowed to pass into the other world without one word of religious consolation, as if she had been a beggar and an unbeliever in a heathen land. Again, as to the pecuniary motive, on the supposed inadequacy of which counsel had commented because she would have been entitled to receive the interest of the £5000 (£150) only during her lifetime, it should not be forgotten that by her will he would be at once in the possession of a sum equal to twelve years’ purchase of that dividend.”

“The illness of the deceased appeared to have commenced very soon after the parties arrived at Richmond; the prisoner appeared to have described it as a bilious attack; he undoubtedly appeared desirous to have additional medical aid, and Dr. Julius was in consequence called in. In both the lodgings he appeared to have performed all the offices that were necessary in connection with the patient, although it was perfectly clear that he had ample means for providing the necessary attendance. The jury would consider what bearing this had on the case. Did he refuse to have a nurse because he did not wish to have a witness in that bedroom? He not only refused to have a nurse, but he wrote to the deceased’s sister to prevent her from visiting her sister. He said that he could not afford a nurse, yet at this very time the deceased had an income of at least £220 a year. It also appeared that no portion of any of the food given to the deceased was allowed to remain; it was always thrown away, so that no person ever had an opportunity of tasting it. This was one of the facts of the case, from which the jury would draw their own inference. It was a fact in favour of the prisoner that neither arsenic nor antimony was found at his lodgings or on his person. He had, however, ample opportunity between his discharge on the Monday and his re-arrest on the following day, of getting rid of any poison, and if the jury thought that the deceased really died of poison, the fact that none was found in the prisoner’s possession would not have much weight.

“After the first interview, the prisoner had taken every means in his power to prevent the deceased from seeing her sister, on the ground that the doctor forbade it[179]—which was not true. Why was not the sister informed on the 30th, when she was allowed to see the deceased again, that she had made a will, and what could be the object of the prisoner in wishing that the young woman who was to witness the will should be told it was a ‘Chancery paper’ and not a will? The fact of the sister having been sent away on the day before the death, was probably more in connection with the will, and from fear lest the deceased should, at the last moment, revoke it in favour of a beloved sister, than with the actual death—but it was a fact in the case. It was also a fact in the case, that after the prisoner ceased to attend on the deceased she ceased to vomit, and that the prisoner said that as the parties about the deceased had interfered, he should take no further responsibility, nor pay for anything, though at that time he had money of the deceased’s at his bankers.[180] It was another fact to be considered that the draft of the will was entirely in the prisoner’s handwriting, and that there was no evidence that it was drawn by a barrister as he represented.”

On the medical testimony, the Chief Baron said:—

“The medical witnesses called for the defence thought the symptoms of this case inconsistent with slow poisoning, and that had arsenic or antimony been the cause of death, some portions of those substances would have been found in the body.[181] These statements were, however, the opinions of scientific men, the result of reading and study, and the jury would have to consider how far it weighed against the evidence of those scientific witnesses who had seen the patient when living, and had observed personally all the symptoms that manifested themselves. The medical men first called in found themselves baffled by the disease; the medicines not only did not alleviate the symptoms, but did not produce even their natural effects. They, therefore, came to the conclusion that something was being administered which counteracted their medicines. Dr. Todd, one of the most eminent physicians of the day, was called in, and came to the same conclusion. These gentlemen, and other competent witnesses, who had not seen the patient while living, were equally of opinion that the symptoms were not ascribable to any natural causes; but were those which would arise from the administration of an irritant poison. The counsel for the prisoner had laid much stress upon the mistake made by Dr. Taylor in one of his tests, and asked them to dismiss Dr. Taylor’s evidence from their consideration. He did not agree with this. The failure of Dr. Taylor’s analysis in one instance arose from a new and hitherto unknown fact in science, and did not in any way invalidate his testimony.[182] It appeared to him that no answer had been given to the main point urged by the prosecution—that no medicine whatever had the slightest effect upon the malady under which the deceased was suffering. He did not agree with the prisoner’s counsel, that the real question for the jury was to consider which set of medical witnesses were entitled to credit. The medical evidence was important, but the jury must, in addition, look at all the other facts of the case, and particularly to the conduct of the prisoner and the motives for his crime. They must, after all, be guided by those rules of common sense that would operate on the minds of reasonable men with regard to the more important actions of their lives; and even supposing that there were no medical testimony at all in the case, they would still have, as it appeared to him, a very grave question to decide with reference to the guilt or innocence of the prisoner.”

The jury, after deliberating for twenty minutes, returned a verdict of “Guilty.” When the prisoner, who appeared thunder-struck at the verdict, was called upon to say why sentence of death should not be passed on him, he speedily recovered his self-possession, and addressed the Court in a powerful, though rambling speech, in which he attempted to explain away some portions of his conduct, strongly asserted his innocence, and denounced Dr. Julius, against whom he appeared to entertain a bitter animosity. Again, when the usual sentence had been passed upon him, which he heard without emotion, he denounced Dr. Julius as his murderer, and declared that “he was innocent before God.”

No sooner was the verdict given than its correctness was questioned alike by the legal and the medical profession, each discussing it within its own domain, the doctors confining themselves too exclusively to the conflict of medical testimony, the lawyers confining their disputes too exclusively to the collateral facts of the case. Such, however, was the discussion between the two professions, that the Home Secretary (Sir G. Cornewall Lewis) deemed it advisable to reprieve the culprit until the case had undergone deliberate revision.

By the account given by Mr. Justice Stephen, based on the notes and papers of the late Lord Chief Baron, it would appear that, in addition to the numerous letters (some very foolish on both sides) sent to him, and transmitted by him to the Home Secretary, two communications, described as “somewhat hastily prepared,” were forwarded from Dr. Baly and Dr. Jenner. These urged that “sufficient weight had not been given to the fact of the pregnancy and the ambiguous character of the symptoms,” and, some of the letters added, “their inconsistency and incompatibility with poison.” As the reasons on which these “somewhat hastily prepared communications” were based are not divulged, it is impossible to judge of their value. The learned Judge, on the contrary, called the Home Secretary’s attention to the statement in the memorial to the Prince Consort (already quoted, note, p. 474), to certain entries in Smethurst’s diary, not proved at the trial, and not now given, showing that he had wilfully misstated the symptoms of the patient, and to a statement in a letter of Mr. Herapath in the Times that the quantity of arsenic extracted from the chlorate of potass was larger than could have been released from the copper gauze. (See Chapter IX. p. 509.) On receiving this report the Home Secretary referred the whole of the documents, together with the copy of the evidence, to Sir B. Brodie. His reply, which, it is reported, dealt not only with the medical, but the moral evidence of Smethurst’s guilt,[183] concluded in these words: “Taking into consideration all that I have stated, I own that the impression on my mind is that there is not absolute and complete evidence of Smethurst’s guilt.” Thus on evidence not subjected to the searching cross-examination which it could have received if produced at the trial, and the opinion of a most eminent surgeon (not an analyst) merely on reading the papers submitted to him, the prisoner was pardoned. “The responsibility,” says Judge Stephen, “was thus shifted from those on whom it properly rested on to a man, who, however skilful and learned as a surgeon, was neither juryman nor judge.”[184]

THE LIVERPOOL POISONING CASE.

TRIAL OF THOMAS WINSLOW FOR THE WILFUL MURDER OF ANN JAMES.

Before Baron Martin, Northern Circuit, Liverpool, August 20, 1860.

For the Prosecution: The Attorney-General for the County Palatine (Mr. Bliss, Q.C.), Mr. Aspinall, and Mr. Temple.

For the Defence: Mr. Digby Seymour, Q.C. for the County Palatine, Mr. Fenwick, and Mr. Little.

HISTORY OF THE CASE.

The prisoner, who had been an ironworker, was charged with the murder of Ann James, by aggravating the disease of the cÆcum, under which she was suffering, through the administration of minute doses of antimony. Mrs. James came to Liverpool from Devonshire, in 1854, whither she was soon followed by her sister Eliza, her sister’s husband a Mr. Townsend, an invalid, three nephews, and a niece, who was married to a japanner of the name of Cafferata. Commencing business as a grocer, she had subsequently kept an eating-house, which was eventually turned into a night refreshment and registered lodging-house, of which the prisoner, one of her lodgers, had taken the active management. Between him and the Townsends it was evident that no good feeling existed. They were jealous of his influence over their aunt, and suspicious of the intimate relations that existed between them. One of the nephews, Martin, who had caused her much trouble and expense from frequently enlisting in and having to be bought out of the army, acted as baker to the shop, but, with that exception, the Townsends had no share in the business. Previous to the last illness of their aunt, her sister, lately left a widow, and the other two nephews, died suddenly, as it was found afterwards, under very suspicious circumstances. No investigation, however, was made in their cases, until after the aunt’s death.

Mrs. James had prospered in her business: according to her own account, the prisoner had made it. Her stock-in-trade and the goodwill were worth between £200 and £300: she had four gas shares, valued at £200, and £130 in the savings bank, at the time of her death. An authority for the withdrawal of the money from the savings bank, the holograph of the prisoner, was found in a drawer, and during her last illness the prisoner had gone to the gas company to try and get the shares entered in his own name, and been told that it could not be done without a proper transfer, or by will. On this he got the solicitor of the gas company to see Mrs. James and draw her will. This the solicitor did, no one but himself and his clerk being present, and by it the business and stock-in-trade were left to the prisoner, and the rest of the property divided equally between Mrs. Cafferata and her child, and the nephew Martin, the prisoner being appointed sole executor. On the 5th of February, Mrs. James was so ill that the prisoner called in Dr. Cameron, Physician to the Liverpool Southern Hospital, who found her in bed, suffering from bowel complaint, and a tumour in the abdomen, which he believed to be cancer, and very weak and prostrate. He prescribed for her, and desired to be sent for again if she became worse. On the 26th of that month the prisoner wrote to Mrs. Cafferata at Manchester to come at once if she wished to see her aunt alive. She came and stayed with her for a fortnight, sleeping in the same bed, in the back parlour, of which the prisoner had the key at night. During Mrs. James’s illness her food was prepared by her servants, and brought to her room generally at night by the prisoner, who was very attentive, and showed great interest in her condition. On the 29th of March, Dr. Cameron was sent for again, and found her symptoms similar to those he had seen on his first visit. Again, on the 8th of May he saw her, when she was suffering under a violent attack of purging and vomiting, but, as regarded these effects, was convalescent by the 19th. On the 25th, however, he found her again very ill, and for the first time, from the symptoms, suspected that some foreign ingredient, some irritating substance, such as antimony, had been given to her. Mrs. Cafferata had again been sent for to attend on her aunt. Dr. Cameron prescribed tannin as an antidote, and on the 6th of June Mrs. James was again convalescent. Two days after, however, the same bad symptoms reappeared, and she became exceedingly prostrate. Some of her urine and excretions were obtained and handed to Dr. Edwards for analysis, and its results communicated to Dr. Cameron, who, in consequence, went to her house on the 10th of June with the police, took possession of all the medicine bottles and some cups that were in her room, and had Mrs. James taken to the Southern Hospital. More specimens of the excretions were obtained, and instructions given that for the future they should be, from time to time, preserved. On the evening of the 9th of June, if Mrs. Cafferata was to be believed, a most suspicious incident occurred. “On that evening,” she said, “I made my aunt a cup of sago from a parcel on the kitchen shelf, which she took, and at three o’clock the next morning took up to her a cup of tea and an egg, and, as she did not eat them, I placed them on a chair by the bedside, went into bed to her, and slept till nine o’clock, having locked the door, and placed the key under it. When I awoke I found my aunt awake, and appearing to want to go to sleep. I then saw two cups had been brought into the room in the night” (the prisoner admitted that he brought one) “and the cup gone from the bedside.”[185] In one of these cups was a little sago, in which antimony was detected by chemical analysis. For some days after her removal to the Hospital Mrs. James continued very ill, but ceased to have attacks of vomiting and purging after the first or second day. Afterwards, however, she improved in health until the 22nd of June, when dangerous symptoms occurred, and she died in two days.[186]

MEDICAL AND ANALYTICAL EVIDENCE.

Dr. Cameron, who attended the post-mortem examination of the body of the deceased, gave the following description of the appearances presented.

“The body was greatly emaciated. The membrane of the gullet presented a yellow appearance. At the entrance of the stomach there were two patches of false membrane, but I could form no opinion how they were caused. The stomach was distended, and contained sixteen ounces of fluid. There were two small ulcers communicating with the cancerous tumour, which might have been caused by the administration of antimony or by disease. The bowels had been perforated and their contents discharged into the cavity of the abdomen, which was the immediate cause of death. My opinion is, that antimony was administered within a very short time of her admission into the hospital—sometime between the 9th and 10th of June. I do not think antimony was given to her after her admission into the hospital. The vomiting was not of the kind ulcers would produce, but of a kind which might be produced by an irritating substance such as antimony.”

On cross-examination by Mr. Digby Seymour, he said:—

“Hot food in a case like that of Mrs. James might produce vomiting, and always occasioned more or less pain with ulceration of the stomach. There was no redness of the small intestines. Vomiting was one of the principal symptoms of ulceration of the stomach, as by tending to starve and weaken the patient it produced emaciation and prostration. Purging was not a usual symptom of an ulcerated stomach, but occurred with cancer in the bowels. Witness agreed with Dr. Richards as to there being no case in which slow antimonial poisoning was accompanied with dysenteric evacuations. The alternation of constipation and purging was one of the known symptoms of antimonial poisoning. The intermitting condition of the patient was one of the reasons which led him to the conclusion that she was the subject of poison. Witness agreed with the opinion that in malignant diseases of the stomach the symptoms remitted in a remarkable way so as to excite a hope that recovery would take place; but the truce was not very long; frightful disorganization was at length produced and inevitable death at last. Softening of the brain had been noticed in some cases of antimonial poisoning, but it was not a frequent or even an ordinary indication. Antimonial poisoning sometimes produced enlargement of the liver, but it did not in this case. Aphthous ulcerations in the glands of the small intestines are also symptoms of the presence of antimony—there were none in this case. Eminent writers on Materia Medica and pathology assert that some persons can tolerate the presence of poison in their bodies without it having any effect upon them. It is also an accepted truth among eminent scientific writers, that there are conditions and circumstances of the human frame in which antimony may not possess poisonous results.”

On re-examination, the witness said:—

“This toleration of poison is common in certain cases of inflammation, but it is my opinion that, in this case, the opposite to toleration has been established. Aphthous ulcerations are not often observed in cases of poisoning by antimony. The absence of these symptoms, combined with the state of the liver and brain, in no way affect my opinion as to the poisoning in this case. There were peculiar symptoms in the vomiting of Mrs. James which induce me to believe that it was not caused by the ulcer. Antimony would aggravate the ulcerous disease and enfeeble the bodily powers, as well as affect the appetite. One of the effects of slow poisoning by repeated doses is that the stomach is prevented from receiving fresh nourishment.”

To the Judge.—“I have never attended a human patient poisoned by antimony. Persons suffering from sickness after food are relieved by vomiting; but in the case of Mrs. James there was considerable retching after the food was thrown off the stomach.”

John Baker Edwards, Analytical Chemist, said:—

“He analysed a bottle of urine which he received from Dr. Cameron on the 6th of June, and informed him that he found in it slight traces of antimony. On Saturday, June 9, he received two bottles from Dr. Cameron, one of which contained fÆces, analysed it and found slight traces of antimony. The other bottle was marked ‘vomit.’ Analysed that, and found in it two considerable deposits of antimony. Subsequently confirmed this analysis by other chemical tests. He sublimed it by the application of heat, and obtained a white sublimate, which, when examined under the microscope, had the appearance of oxide of antimony. Afterwards dissolved this in tartaric acid, passed sulphuretted hydrogen gas through it, and obtained an orange precipitate—sulphuret of antimony. He could not scientifically distinguish whether it was ‘free’ or ‘eliminated’ antimony.[187] On Wednesday, the 13th of June, he received three bottles labelled ‘Mrs. James, Tuesday,’ one of which was labelled ‘vomit.’ It had scarcely a trace of antimony. The other two bottles contained fÆces and urine, in each of which was a trace of antimony. On the same day he also received two cups, one of them containing about a tablespoonful of sago. This he analysed and found in it two considerable deposits of antimony on copper, which he sublimed and recognised under the microscope as oxide of antimony. On Thursday the 14th he received three bottles, one of them of vomit, containing no antimony; the other two containing fÆces and urine, in which was no antimony. On the 15th he again received a bottle of vomit and also one of fÆces, and in the former he found two antimonial deposits, which under the microscope he recognised as oxide of antimony, and in the latter a trace of antimony. On the following day he found traces of antimony in two bottles of urine. The day after he received two bottles, one of urine, and found a trace of antimony in each. He also examined some uncooked sago which contained no antimony. Subsequently (after Mrs. James had been removed to the hospital) he received bottles labelled ‘Mrs. James.’ The vomit contained no antimony, but there were still distinct traces of it in the fÆces and urine. He subsequently received four jars containing brain, lungs, heart, spleen, kidneys, intestines, stomach, and blood, labelled ‘Mrs. James,’ and four bottles containing fluids. He analysed portions of these separately. From one half of the stomach he obtained five deposits of antimony. He also obtained five deposits of antimony from the intestines, four deposits of it from one of the kidneys, and three deposits of it from one half of the liver. He found no trace in the brain. In four ounces of blood he found a distinct deposit of antimony, and also from the fluid of the stomach. He also analysed six bottles of medicine and two of urine, and found no antimony. On the 26th of July he took a portion of the spleen and lungs of Mrs. James to London, and examined them there in conjunction with Dr. Miller and Dr. Taylor, and also the deposits of the viscera. He examined and tested them and found by the most approved tests applied that they contained antimony.”

On cross-examination, the witness admitted:—

“That the first satisfactory result which he obtained was on the 9th of June—that he had no doubt that the trace he found on the 7th was antimony, but it was not a satisfactory result—that he had examined the body of a dog which died from antimony, and which had been exhumed, and had not found a trace, and, that if the animal had vomited after taking it he should not have expected to find any.”

Dr. A. S. Taylor said:—

“That he received some jars at Guy’s Hospital from Inspector Horne, containing portions of the stomach, cÆcum, liver, one kidney, and the heart, and afterwards from Dr. Edwards a portion of the spleen and lungs. He divided them and gave a part to Mr. Miller. Dr. Edwards showed him some sublimate on glass, and deposits on copper. He examined them. The deposits on copper were metallic antimony, and those on the glass were oxide of antimony. He was of opinion that antimony had entered the body during life. Assuming the deceased to have been labouring under the disease of the cÆcum, and to have had two ulcers in her stomach, the administration to her of antimony, by depressing the bodily powers, would tend to accelerate death. Antimony had a powerful depressing influence and lowered the pulse in strength, produced great exhaustion of the system, and in a serious disease affecting the body was likely to aggravate its effects. A person might be able to bear a dose of antimony in health, who in a serious disease would be destroyed by it. His opinion, in this case, was that antimony had been administered at intervals in small doses. Antimony could be found in the tissues three weeks after it was taken. It might during that time be found, day by day and at intervals, in the secretions. The tests which he had applied were the most approved known in science.”

On cross-examination, the witness said:—

“The disease which has been described as affecting the deceased must have terminated fatally. The death had been caused by inflammation arising from the passage of the contents of the diseased bowel into the cavity of the abdomen. It was very difficult to draw the line where a patient had rallied from the effects of poison, and where she sank under disease. The medical man in attendance on the deceased person would be the best judge of the influence of poison in accelerating death. Small doses frequently repeated would have the effect of irritating the mucous membrane of the bowels. In two most marked cases of poisoning with which he bad been connected there had been no change in the condition of the liver. All the indications in Mrs. James’s case were referable to natural causes. If antimony were found in the fÆces, he should conclude that the purging was occasioned by antimony. In vomiting caused by ulcers in the stomach, it was confined to the relief of the stomach from its contents, and then ceased. Antimony produced prostration of the nervous power.”

Dr. Miller, Professor of Chemistry at King’s College, confirmed the opinion of Dr. Taylor so far as it related to the chemical analysis, but gave no medical opinion.

Dr. Clarence Pemberton, House Surgeon at the Southern Hospital in Liverpool, deposed that he attended Mrs. James and paid attention to her symptoms. He made the post-mortem examination. “Taking the symptoms observed during lifetime, and the appearances shown by the post-mortem examination, and assuming the judgment of Dr. Edwards to be correct, the cause of death, in his judgment, was the diseased ‘cÆcum,’ but the administration of antimony would undoubtedly accelerate her death.”

On cross-examination, he admitted that, judging from what he saw in the hospital, all the symptoms might be attributed to natural causes, and, in answer to the Judge, said that on the post-mortem examination he could find no traces or symptoms which he exclusively attributed to the administration of antimony.

Dr. Francis Ayrton said he saw the viscera and the other portions of the deceased sent for analysation. He observed some redness at the commencement of the small intestines, and some spots on the large ones, and he formed his opinion from these spots that an irritant had passed through the bowels. Antimony was an irritant, and would produce such appearances. He had heard the evidence given, and his opinion was that the deceased’s death was accelerated by antimony. He also admitted, on cross-examination, that what he observed in the viscera might be attributable to other causes than antimonial poison.

THE PRISONER’S STATEMENTS.

According to the evidence of Mrs. Cafferata, and the inspector of police, the prisoner openly accused the Cafferatas of having poisoned their aunt. He objected to their interference, and ordered them to leave the house, calling Cafferata a second Palmer, because he carried white powders about in his pocket, and saying, when the wife showed him the soda powders in question, “You are not likely to show me the right stuff.” When Mrs. Cafferata wanted to go to the hospital to see her aunt, he threatened to put her under arrest. That the prisoner had a great deal of drink when he spoke in this way was admitted by the witness, but when he made the same accusation of the Cafferatas to the inspector such apparently was not his condition. On the other hand, a Mrs. Higgins, on cross-examination, spoke to a threat of Mrs. Cafferata’s that “she would hang the orange dog (the prisoner), and that after her evidence they would want no more.”

PURCHASE OF POISON BY THE PRISONER.

The proof of the purchase of antimony by the prisoner was most unsatisfactory. A woman (Ann Foley) who used to work for Mrs. James, remembered that during the previous summer, on one occasion, when Mrs. James was sitting behind the counter and the prisoner was present, she said to him, “Here is Mrs. Foley; she will go for it;” that they then gave her twopence and told her to go and get antimony for the dog, and that when she went to a chemist of the name of Miller for it he would not let her have it, but told her to tell them to bring the dog over to him. This chemist’s assistant (E. P. Rees) remembered a woman coming for antimony some nine or ten months before, a second person coming also for it on the same day, and a third about four months after for the same drug, to poison a dog with. The third person, he believed, but could not swear, was the prisoner. Another witness (Eliza Brennan) told a strange story about the prisoner. She had been in Mrs. James’s service, some two years ago, and spoke to him about leaving and going to Dublin in the first week of her service. On this the prisoner, she said, advised her to stay, but added that, “if she would go, if she would buy him half-a-crown’s worth of antimony in Dublin, and send it to him by the boat, he would give her £5.” Lastly, a newspaper boy (Thomas Maguire), who slept at Mrs. James’s house, swore that

“The prisoner once sent him for a pennyworth of something for the dog, he did not know its name, but what he got was a white powder, which when given to the animal in water purged it violently—that within half an hour the prisoner sent him again for the same, and now told him its name was antimony. He got it, said the witness, from a young man, name Coopland, at Miller’s the chemist. He declared it was taken from a bottle six or seven from the window, and professed to point out the bottle to the Inspector of police. He knew that the letters ANT. on it stood for antimony. He had also several times since January last seen the prisoner when making bread and butter for the mistress take from his pocket a white powder in a paper and throw some of it on the bread before he buttered it; when he asked him once what it was, the prisoner had said it was salt. When the witness said ‘there was salt enough in the house without that,’ the prisoner made no reply.”

To Inspector Home the prisoner admitted that “he knew the use of antimony, and had given it to cattle, but had not had any in his possession for many years.”

In his charge to the jury, Baron Martin told them that, if they believed that the prisoner administered the antimony with the intention of killing, and that her death from a natural disease was thus accelerated, that was murder—citing the dictum of Lord Hale “that if a man be sick of some disease which might possibly end his life, and another gave him a wound, which would hasten his death, this was murder by the party giving the wound”—they were to guard against prejudice because of the nature of the crime, and not to convict unless the evidence affirmatively satisfied their minds of his guilt.

The jury almost immediately returned a verdict of “Not Guilty.”