G. Lathom Browne

[1] Christison on Poisons, 1829, p. 491.

[2] For instance, strychnia or strychnine, morphia or morphine, aconitia or aconitine, are the same substances.

[3] 39 & 40 Vict. cap. 77, sec. 12.

[4] Potassio-mercuric iodide, made by dissolving 50 grammes of potassium iodide and 13·5 grammes of mercuric chloride, in a litre of distilled water. The reagent is added till no further precipitate is produced, which is known by filtering a small portion at intervals and testing with the potassio-mercuric iodide to see if finished. The strength of the solution must be, as nearly as possible, 1 part of the alkaloid in 200, so that an approximate idea must first be obtained by weighing or otherwise. As the quantity is in poison cases generally too small to weigh, the approximate idea must be gathered by comparing the intensity of the tests with those furnished by known amounts of the alkaloid. Each cubic centimetre of Mayer’s solution precipitates ·02 gramme of morphia, ·0268 of aconitia, and ·0167 of strychnia. For further details see Blyth’s Practical Chemistry, 1879, p. 289.

[5] Rennard (Chem. Centr. 1876, 456) asserts that acetic ether is preferable to amylic alcohol, as the latter dissolves more colouring matter.

[6] To recover the alkaloid, dissolve the precipitate in sufficient sulphurous acid solution, and evaporate: the sulphate is left (Wagner).

[7] If the picrate precipitate be dissolved in dilute potash, and the solution shaken with ether-chloroform, the latter, on evaporation, leaves the alkaloid again in a free state.

[8] At the inquest this witness said that she rinsed out one of the glasses on the table to give the deceased the water.

[9] Evidence of Katherine White, barmaid; W. Marton, gardener; J. Kendal, waiter at the Jerusalem Coffee-house; H. Crapp, clerk G. W. Railway, Slough; G. Lewis, postboy at Salthill; R. Roberts, innkeeper, Slough; C. Wibberts, guard of G. W. R.; Weymouth, a plumber; E. J. Howell, superintendent of Slough station; Rev. E. T. Champneys T. Holman, constable, of Farnham-Royal.

[10] At the inquest, this witness, speaking of the results of the chemical analysis, said:—“It may not have been prussic acid, but in conjunction with some salt nearly allied to it. I do not think it was administered by itself but in some liquid. The salts of prussic acid have not the same pungent peculiar odour as prussic acid itself. They would produce death, but he could not say how quickly.” Mr. Norblad, on the same occasion, suggested that one of the salts into the composition of which prussic acid enters, might have been given; “that cyanide of potassium, the salt to which he referred, would cause death in from two seconds to a quarter of an hour, according to the amount given.” At the time of the inquest it was not known that the prisoner had bought of Thomas, Scheele’s solution of prussic acid. On the properties of the various kinds of these salts, see Mr. Stewart’s remarks, pp. 73-77.

[11] Doubtful. C. G. S.

[12] On the mooted question of “odour,” see Mr. Stewart’s experiments and remarks on smell-blindness, pp. 63-66.

[13] In giving the examination-in-chief of this witness, I have, through the kindness of Mr. C. Platt, the clerk of assize of the old Norfolk circuit, been able to correct the cotemporary reports in the Times and the Bucks Heraldby the original report of his experiments made by Mr. Cooper to the prosecution. Mr. Cooper was unable to be at the inquest, and the results of such of these experiments as Messrs. Champneys and Norblad had witnessed were then alone given in evidence, excluding those where the odour of prussic acid was smelt by Mr. Cooper and his sons, and where the quantity in the portion of the contents of the stomach submitted to analysation was determined.

[14] See the table of Mr. Stewart’s experiments on bitter and sweet apples, and other fruits, p. 59.

[15] The reporter is wrong here; see cross-examination of Mr. Champneys, p. 24, in which he says that neither Mr. Norblad nor Mr. Pickering smelt the odour on the first opening of the body.

[16] Sweet almonds would not affect the production of prussic acid from the apple-pips, except as tending to produce emulsine.

[17] See note at p. 38 as to Pickering’s evidence on this point.

[18] See p. 58.

[19] Judge Therry’s Reminiscences of 30 Years’ Residence in N. S. Wales. 2nd edition, p. 107. I have altered the conclusion of the Judge’s remarks from information supplied to me by a relative well acquainted with Sydney in those days.

[20] Animal matter contains the elements carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, and oxygen: the carbon and nitrogen unite with the alkaline metal to form a cyanide, or a ferrocyanide if iron also be present.

[21] Case of Sir T. Boughton, 1781.

[22] The potash and ferrous salt form potassium sulphate and ferrous hydroxide, the latter combines with cyanogen and more potash to form potassium ferro-cyanide, the ferric chloride with the potash produces ferric hydroxide and potassium chloride; when the hydrochloric acid is added, it dissolves up the excess of ferrous and ferric hydroxides, forming ferrous and ferric chlorides, and the ferric chloride unites with the potassium ferrocyanide to form ferric ferrocyanide or Prussian blue.

[23] Professor Carey Lea (American Journal of Science, 3, ix., 121) prefers to mix a weak solution of ammonio-ferrous sulphate with a little ammonio-ferric citrate, to acidify with hydrochloric acid, then to place two or three drops of this on a white plate, and to add a few drops of the suspected solution. A blue cloudiness indicates HCN. This method, he says, is capable of detecting ¹/₅₀₀₀ of a grain of HCN. But I do not think it more delicate than the old method if properly performed, and it does not so easily admit of comparative experiment as to quantity.

[24] Professor Toynbee met his death by incautious use in this way.

[25] Death from suffocation.

[26] 19 Vict. c. 16.

[27] The authorities for the following report are (1) Report of Trial of William Palmer. J. Gilbert, Lond., 1856. (2) Reprint of Times Report of the Trial. Ward and Lock, Lond., 1856; and the Life and Career of William Palmer, by the same publishers. (3) Verbatim Report of the Trial, from shorthand notes of Mr. Angelo Bennett. J. Allen, Lond., 1856. (4) Letter to Lord Chief Justice Campbell by the Rev. Thomas Palmer, brother to the prisoner, with appendix of documents, including memorial from his solicitor to Sir G. Grey, letters and newspaper criticisms. Taylor, Lond., 1856. I have also availed myself of Mr. Justice Stephens’ summary of the trial and his comments on the evidence, in the appendix to the third volume of his History of the Criminal Law of England.

[28] “From his childhood upward,” says his brother, “no man was gentler of heart—his charity was inexhaustible; his kindliness to all who were in distress well known. To him the wanderer resorted in his afflictions; by him the poor and houseless were fed and comforted. I write in the face of the public, with my character as a gentleman and a clergyman at stake, and I avow only facts that cannot be denied. His liberality was a proverb; his frank sincerity, his courage, his faithful loyalty to his friends, his temperance, his performance of the duties of religion, his social relations in the character of father, husband, and son, won for him the love and confidence of all who approached him; and though it is true that in one fatal instance he violated the laws of his country, and subjected himself to a severe penalty for an infringement of its commercial code, yet, this excepted, his was in all respects the very opposite of that cool, calculating, cowardly, crafty temper, which is essential to the poisoner, and we know cannot co-exist with those qualities which my brother possessed from his earliest years down even to the day when your lordship sent him to his death.” Letter to Lord Campbell, pp. 4, 5.

[29] The excuse put forward for this was his wish to raise money for Bate. The prisoner’s brother complains, in his letter to Lord Campbell, pp. 29, 30, and with justice, that though the evidence of the negotiation for this insurance was afterwards excluded as irrelevant, the statement was allowed to be made by the Attorney-General without a comment, which Lord Campbell must have known would prejudice the case against the prisoner. This exclusion of the evidence of a statement which has been allowed to pass unchallenged is nearly as useless as the formal warning not to pay any attention to some evidence that has been wrongly admitted—the prejudice has been raised, and the mischief already done. But for the result of this trial, he would have been tried for the murder of his wife, whose body had been exhumed and analysed.

[30] As the probability of Cook’s state of health predisposing him to epileptic attacks was made part of the prisoner’s case, the evidence of his regular medical attendant is subjoined:—

Dr. Henry Savage, physician, of 7, Gloucester-place, examined by the Attorney-General.—I knew John Parsons Cook. He had been in the habit of consulting me professionally during the last four years. He was a man not of robust constitution; but his general health was good. He came to me in May, 1855, but I saw him about November of the year before, and early in the spring of 1855. In the spring of 1855 the old affair—indigestion—was one cause of his visiting me, and he had some spots upon his body, about which he was uneasy. He had also two shallow ulcers on his tongue, which corresponded with two bad teeth. He said that he had been under a mild mercurial course, and he imagined that those spots were very syphilitic. I thought they were not, and I recommended the discontinuance of mercury. I gave him quinine as a tonic, and an aperient composed of cream of tartar, magnesia, and sulphur. I never at any time gave him antimony. Under the treatment which I prescribed the sores gradually disappeared, and they were quite well by the end of May. I saw him, however, frequently in June, as he still felt some little anxiety about the accuracy of my opinion. If any little spot made its appearance he came to me, and I also was anxious on the subject, as my opinion differed from that of another medical man in London. Every time he came to me I examined him carefully. There were no indications of a syphilitic character about the sores, and there was no ulceration of the throat, but one of the tonsils was slightly enlarged and tender. I saw him last alive, and carefully examined him, either on the 3rd or 5th of November. There was in my judgment no venereal taint about him at the time.

Cross-examined by Mr. Serjeant Shee.—I do not think that the deceased was fond of taking mercury before I advised him against it; but he was timid on the subject of his throat, and was apt to take the advice of anyone. No; I don’t think that he would take quack medicines. I don’t think he was so foolish as that.

Mr. Stevens, his stepfather, who saw him at the Euston Station on the 5th of November, when starting for Rugeley, said, “he looked better than he had seen him for a long time. ‘You don’t look,’ he said to him, ‘like an invalid’; and Cook, striking his chest, said he was quite well, and should be all right if he was happy.” In point of appearance he was not a robust man; his complexion was pale, and he had sore throat in the previous winter for some months.

For the defence, Foster, a farmer, said he considered him of a weak constitution, because he had bilious headaches, the last a year and a half back, but admitted that he hunted three days a week.

John Sargeant, a betting man, who met him at the races which he attended, said:—I had an opportunity of seeing the state of his throat before he died. I was with him at the Liverpool meeting the week previous to the Shrewsbury races; we slept in adjoining rooms. One morning he called me into his room and drew my attention to his throat, which was much inflamed. There were ulcers upon it, and the tongue was so swollen, that I said I was surprised at the state of his mouth. He said he had been in that state for weeks and months, “And now,” he said, “I don’t take notice of it.” He had shown me his throat before this at almost every meeting we attended. He took some gingerbread and cayenne on the platform at Liverpool, and told me afterwards it nearly killed him. (It came out afterwards that the cayenne nut was a trick nut.) The witness had also known Palmer supply Cook with blackwash before his death. He had never seen Cook’s throat dressed by anybody, and was surprised to see him eat and drink so well. He saw the blackwash applied (externally) at the Warwick Spring Meeting in 1855. With reference to another point, this witness spoke to Cook being unable to pay him more than £10 out of £25 at the Liverpool meeting, and promising the balance at Shrewsbury.

[31] On the part of the prisoner, a saddler at Rugeley, of the name of Myalt, whom Fisher spoke of as being in the room with Cook and Palmer, was called to give an entirely different account of this suspicious incident. “I saw Cook,” said this witness, “in Palmer’s company on Wednesday, about twelve o’clock. I had not dined with Palmer, but at my house at Rugeley, and got back to Shrewsbury between eight and nine, and went to Palmer’s room to see if he was in. The first person I saw was Cook at the room door, who said, ‘What brought you here?’ I told him, ‘to see how they were getting on.’ Palmer, I found, had gone out, and I went into the town, and was away about an hour. “When I returned Palmer was not there, so I waited in his room till he returned, about a couple of hours. He came in with Cook, who was the worse for liquor—not very drunk—rather. They asked me to take some brandy and water; it was produced directly afterwards—the brandy in a decanter, the water might be on the table. I did not leave the room at all, from the time Cook and Palmer came in till they all went to bed. I did not see anything put into the brandy and water; nothing could be without my seeing it. Palmer and I left together, and slept that night in the same room. Cook said something about its being bad. He drank part of it off, and then gave it to some one to taste. He proposed to have some more, but Palmer said he would not unless Cook drank his out. Nothing more happened that night. Next morning Palmer asked me to call Cook. I went into his room, and he told me how ill he had been in the night, and obliged to send for a doctor. He asked me what had been put into the brandy and water, and I told him I did not know of anything. He asked me to send for the doctor—Palmer. I did so. The witness did not remember Mrs. Brooks coming, or Palmer being called out of the room. He swore that Cook did not say ‘it burns my throat.’ Did not remember Fisher saying that it was no good his tasting it, as there was nothing in the glass. He told Mr. Gardner and Mr. Stevens before the inquest what he now said, but they had not subpoenaed him.

[32] “Lord Campbell did not even read this portion of the witness’s evidence to the jury. Whatever its value might be, and it had some in the prisoner’s favour, they were not reminded of it, and can hardly be expected to have remembered it after a twelve days’ trial.” Letter to Lord Campbell, p. 24.

[33] Some questions on this point were put to Mr. Gardner, the solicitor for the prosecution, but were stopped as too general.

[34] Mills, in her cross-examination, said that Palmer “had on a plaid dressing-gown, but could not say whether he had on a cap or not.”

[35] Lord Campbell had omitted from his notes this contradiction of the statement of Mills and others that the body was arched, and when Mr. Serjeant Shee called his attention to it, made no comment on it to the jury.—Evidence of Mary Keeling.

[36] But see the evidence of Mr. Partridge, Mr. Rogers, and Mr. Pemberton as to the state of the exhumed corpse, and the probable effect of the granules.—Evidence of scientific witnesses for the defence, post, pp. 170-4.

[37] A Mr. Devonshire, a late assistant of Dr. Monckton’s, who was present at the post-mortem, was also called to confirm the previous witnesses. He also proved the extraction of the liver, kidneys, spleen, and some blood, and their safe delivery through a clerk (Boycott) to the attorneys at Rugeley to Dr. Taylor for analysis.

[38] Mr. Curling agreed with Dr. Watson, Principles and Practice of Physic, in the cases of “the sticking of a fish bone in the fauces, the stroke of a whip-lash under the eye leaving the skin unbroken, the cutting of a corn, the biting of the finger by a sparrow, the blow of a stick on the neck, the insertion of a seton, the extraction of a tooth, the injection of a hydrocele, and the operation of cupping,” but not with “the percussion of the air caused by a musket-shot.” He also explained that the supposed case of tetanus produced at once where a negro servant cut his thumb with a dish, rested on the authority of an old cyclopÆdia, and that his judgment was more mature and his experience greater than when, twenty-two years of age, he wrote the treatise in which he had quoted this case. (It was only in Rees’ CyclopÆdia.)

[39] Dr. Todd, in reply to Lord Campbell, defined idiopathic tetanus to be “that form of the disease which is produced without any external wound, apparently from internal causes—from a constitutional cause.”

[40] Evidence of Dr. Robert Corbett, physician, of Glasgow, at the time medical clerk at the Glasgow Infirmary; Dr. Watson, surgeon to the infirmary; Dr. J. Patterson, of the infirmary laboratory; and Mary Kelly, patient.

[41] This is a test for brucia and not for strychnia. See p. 285.

[42] See Ptomaine’s or Cadaveric Poisons. Chemical introduction, ante, p. 12, and Chapter V., p. 278.

[43] “Mr. Mayhew called on me with another gentleman with an introduction from Professor Faraday. I received him as I would Professor Faraday, and entered into conversation with him about these cases. He represented, as I understood, that he was connected with some insurance company, and wished for information about a number of cases of poisoning that had occurred during many years. After we had conversed about an hour, he asked if there was any objection to the publication of the details. Still believing him to be connected with an insurance office, I replied that, so far as the correction of error was concerned, I had no objection to anything appearing. On that evening he went away without telling me he was connected with the Illustrated Times, or any other paper. It was not until Thursday that I knew that. It was the greatest deception that ever was practised on a scientific man.”—Dr. Taylor’s evidence. In his charge, Lord Campbell said, “I must say I think it would have been better if Dr. Taylor, trusting to the credit he had before acquired, had taken no notice of what had been said; but it is for you to say, whether, he having been misrepresented, and having written this letter to the Lancet to set himself right, materially detracted from the credit which would otherwise be given to his evidence.” It was these statements in the Illustrated Times, copied into other papers, that led Dove to resort to strychnia to poison his wife.—See his case, post.

[44] On the value of experiments on animals, see Chemical Introduction, ante, p. 6.

[45] “A mixture of sugar and bile, or a substance called pyroxanthine—the product of a distillation of wood—will produce the purple and red tint.”—Taylor’s evidence. But see Chapter V.

[46] Curarine. See Chapter V.

[47] On this point see Chapter V.

[48] This suggestion of negligence on the part of the operator, Mr. Devonshire, and the comments on it by the Attorney-General, having subjected him to several attacks both in the Central Criminal Court and in the papers, he gave the following explanation in a letter to the Morning News, dated May 29:—

“It was agreed in consultation at Mr. Freer’s, at Rugeley, that the stomach and intestines should be opened, and, with their contents, enclosed in a jar. It was further agreed that the spinal cord should not be opened if its upper portion and the brain should prove to be in a healthy condition. At the examination I was assisted by Mr. Newton, a young gentleman who had, unfortunately, never witnessed a post-mortem. He punctured the stomach, and about a teaspoonful of its contents was lost. Afterwards, when Dr. Harland and I were examining the lining membrane, Mr. Newton suddenly turned the stomach inside out; an additional half teaspoonful was thus lost, the remainder falling into the jar. This accounts for Dr. Taylor finding the mucous membrane in contact with the intestines. With the exception of this casual puncture I maintain the post-mortem was skilfully performed.”—Letter to Lord Campbell. Appendix, p. xxiv.

[49] The extract from Orfila is: “In a dog who for four entire months had taken no emetic, having taken three grammes in ten days (that is, about forty-five grains), but had not taken any for four months, the metal was found accumulated in the bones; the liver also contained a great deal, and the other tissues but little.”

[50] The letter referred mainly to the case of the prisoner’s wife. Mr. Serjeant Shee wished only the concluding paragraph to he read, but the Attorney-General insisted on the whole. It was dated only Jan., published in the Lancet of February 2, was headed “Audi alteram partem,” and was as follows:—

“Sir,—I have great pleasure in replying to the inquiries in your leading article of January 19. (1) I stated that I had never known antimonial powder, when given in medicinal doses (i.e., from five to eight grains a dose) to produce vomiting or purging. I am aware that experience differs on this point—that some have found the substance inert, and others very active. From some recent experiments on antimonial preparations, I think it not unlikely that the powder sometimes contains arseniate of lime. Dr. Pereira mentions that in the case of a dose of half a teaspoonful it on one occasion produced violent vomiting, purging, and sweating; while in still larger doses (120 grains to a dose), prescribed by Dr. Elliotson, it occasioned in some instances only nausea. I have never met with any case in which serious symptoms could be referred to its operation; and in the case of Ann Palmer (the wife) this medical preparation would not account for the antimony found in her body. (2) My statement as to the cause of death was that the deceased died from the effects of tartar emetic, and from no other cause; that is the opinion which Dr. Rees and myself formed from the result of our examination, and from the description under which the deceased laboured during the eight days before her death. It is an opinion now equally shared by the two medical attendants of the deceased. We are quite prepared to maintain this at the trial.” The letter then went on to describe the state of Ann Palmer’s body, though not exhumed until eighteen months after death, and contrasted it with that of the brother, and concluded with the passage given in the text. Its effect could not be but prejudicial to the prisoner.

[51] In this case, stated by Dr. Christison, the patient had been affected with some complaint for four weeks, and began to take strychnia; in three hours there was stupor and loss of speech, and at length violent tetanic convulsions, and death in three hours and three-quarters.

[52] Probably a mistake of the reporter, as I cannot find any clue to the meaning of this word.—C. G. S.

[53] An instance of the indestructibility of strychnia was communicated by Mr. F. Crace Calvert, F.C.S., to the London journals subsequently to the trial. In 1849 several hounds of a pack in Cheshire were poisoned and one brought to his laboratory, from which, by the usual process, strychnia was obtained. “As the master of the hounds attached great importance to the case, he requested me,” writes Mr. Calvert, “to obtain a sufficient amount of poison from the stomachs of some other of the dead dogs, that I might not only be convinced of the presence of the poison, but might also bring some of the extracted strychnia into court. To enable me to do so, several dogs were disinterred and brought to my laboratory, and the space of time from the date of death to that when I submitted them to analysis was at least three weeks, and I still perfectly succeeded in extracting strychnia from their stomachs and exhibiting it in the state of crystallised hydrochlorate.”—Appendix to Letter to Lord Campbell, p. xxix. Another correspondent to the Times called attention to the practice in Mexico of killing a worn-out mule with nux vomica, leaving its carcase to be eaten by the wolves, which are thus killed, and that the Turkey buzzards who feed on the dead wolves also die of the poison.—Ib. p. xxv.

[54] See Chapter V.

[55] An error. See Chapter V.

[56] The table of cases of poisoning by strychnia, with their symptoms and results of the post-mortem, given by Mr. Woodman and Dr. Tidy, shows that the state of the heart varies. In six cases it was contracted and empty, in some others the right side only was empty, and in one both sides were filled with blood.—Handy Book of Forensic Medicine and Toxicology. London. 1877.

[57] In a letter to the Times of June 4, Mr. Herapath says: “I learnt on my return here (Bristol) that Mr. Yates had visited Bristol with an anonymous letter in his hand (since acknowledged to have been written by the magistrates’ clerk, Keynsham), and questioned several gentlemen whom I am in the habit of meeting, as to whether they heard me say ‘that I had no doubt strychnia was in Cook’s body, but that Dr. Taylor could not find it,’ and ‘that a word from me would hang the man.’ They all said they had heard me speak of the case, but not in such terms. The mayor said that ‘he could not say the exact terms, but the impression on his mind was, that I thought strychnia was there, but that Dr. Taylor could not find it.’”—Letter to Lord Campbell, Appendix, p. xxxi.

[58] “The controversy,” as to the non-discovery of strychnia by Dr. Taylor, says Mr. Justice Stephen, “was foreign to the merits of the case, inasmuch as the evidence given for the prisoner tended to prove, not that there was no strychnia in Cook’s body, but that Dr. Taylor ought to have found it if it was there. In other words it was relevant, not so much to the guilt or innocence of the prisoner, as to whether Mr. Herapath and Dr. Nunneley were better analytical chemists than Dr. Taylor. The evidence could not be even considered relevant to the shaking of Dr. Taylor’s credit, for no part of the case rested on his evidence except the discovery of the antimony, as to which he was corroborated by Mr. Brande, and not contradicted by the prisoner’s witnesses.” (One does not see how this could have been accomplished, as they were not present at the analysis.) “His opinion as to the nature of Cook’s symptoms was shared by many other medical witnesses of the highest eminence, whose credit was altogether unimpeached. The prisoner’s counsel was placed in a curious difficulty by this state of the question. They had to attack, and did attack Dr. Taylor’s credit vigorously, for the purpose of rebutting his conclusion that Cook might have been poisoned by strychnia: yet they had to maintain his credit as a skilful analyst. For if they destroyed it, the fact that he did not discover strychnia went for nothing. This dilemma was fatal. To admit his skill was to admit their client’s guilt; to deny it, was to destroy the value of nearly all their own evidence. The only possible way was to admit his skill and deny his good faith; but this too was useless for the reason just assigned.”—History of Criminal Law in England. Vol. III., 418.

[59] Roberts, Theory and Practice of Medicine, 1877, Vol. II., 23, gives the following symptoms of angina pectoris:—“Abrupt suddenness—intense prÆcordial pain—oppression and constriction of the chest—suffocation, no cyanosis—tenderness of chest rare—face pale, sweat—expression of intense anxiety—pulse mostly feeble, flickering occasionally—vomiting and eructation. Conscious at first, but, if prolonged, may be syncope. Spasmodic movements, and even general convulsions may be observed. Usually several brief paroxysms with intermissions. Tendency to rave under slight exciting causes.” Dr. Bristow, Theory and Practice of Medicine, agrees with this, and adds, “After death various lesions—most important the calcification of the coronary vessels—fatty and other degenerations of the muscular tissue of the heart. In other cases the heart perfectly healthy.”

[60] In the Appendix, p. xxi., to the letter to Lord Campbell, is a letter from a Mr. Lacy, a hatter of Nottingham, dated June 2, to the Morning News, giving a very unfavourable account of the earlier years of this witness. He appears to have got out of the way after the trial, and to have evaded the search made for him by the prisoner’s friends.

[61] In cross-examination, after admitting that he attested the proposal to the Prince of Wales office for £13,000 on Walter Palmer’s life, and saying that he did not recollect attesting another proposal on the same life to the Universal, the proposal to that office was put into his hand, and he was asked if the “Jeremiah Smith” attesting it was his signature. “It is very like my signature,” he said, “but I have a doubt of it.” (After a pause) “I believe it is not my handwriting; I swear it is not. I think it a very good imitation. I did not receive the document from Pratt; I might from W. Palmer. I don’t recollect.” (After some hesitation) “No doubt he did give it to me. I got it before it was signed.”

Attorney-General.—“Do you now say it is not your signature?”

Witness.—“I do.” (He then admitted getting appointed agent to the Midland County office in order to get a policy for £10,000 on Bate’s life.)

Attorney-General.—“I will refresh your memory with regard to these proposals. Look at that, and tell me whether it is your handwriting?”

Witness.—“Yes.”

Attorney-General.—“Now, refreshing your memory with that document, were you applied to in December, 1854, to attest a proposal of Walter Palmer to the Solicitors’ and General office for £13,000?”

Witness.—“That is my signature, certainly.”

Attorney-General repeats the question.

Witness.—“I don’t recollect.”

Attorney-General.—“What, with your signature staring you in the face?”

Witness.—“I might have been a witness to it. I am speaking from memory.”

Attorney-General.—“Have you any doubt, after looking at that document?”

Witness.—“I have no doubt.”

Attorney-General.—“At last we have got at it from you. Now look to that document, and see if another month afterwards—in January, 1855—you were asked to attest another proposal for £13,000 to the Prince of Wales office?”

Witness (hesitating).—“That is my signature. (A pause.) Perhaps if I saw the paper I could answer.”

Attorney-General.—“There is the paper.”

Witness (after a pause).—“I might have signed it in blank. I have some doubt whether I did not sign some of these in blank. The body of the papers is in the handwriting of William Palmer.”

Attorney-General.—“Upon your oath, don’t you believe that William Palmer applied to you to attest the proposal on his brother’s life for £13,000?”

Witness.—“He did apply to me.”

Attorney-General.—“Was it not to attest the proposal for £13,000 on his brother’s life?”

Witness.—“One of them was for £13,000. I don’t think I was present when Walter Palmer signed the assignment. I believe Jeremiah Smith’s (another witness of that name) handwriting is very like mine.”

After much fencing with the question, the witness saying he might or he might not have attested Walter Palmer’s signature to a deed of assignment, the Attorney-General put a cheque for £5 into the witness’s hand, and asked him if it was William Palmer’s signature to it.

Answer.—“It is.”

Question.—“Did you take that piece of paper to the bank and get £5 for it, and that for attesting the signature of Walter Palmer to the deed of assignment?”

Answer.—“I may have got the £5 at the bank; but upon my honour I do not know what for. (Laughter.) Cook, with reference to the £200 bill, gave Palmer £10 for the accommodation, and he took the money to Shrewsbury races. I cannot say who saw me on the Monday night when I went up to Cook’s room at the ‘Talbot Arms.’ I did not notice. I believe that either the chambermaid, the waitress, or the cook saw me go into the hotel. I don’t know who drove the fly to Stafford.”

This witness was also severely cross-examined as to his relations with Mrs. Palmer, replying with the same caution as to their impropriety, and could not get further than “that there ought not to be any truth” in the imputation.

Mr. Justice Stephen, who was present at the trial, gives the following graphic sketch of the demeanour of this witness:—“No abbreviation can give the effect of this cross-examination. The witness’s efforts to gain time, and his distress as the various answers were extorted from him by degrees, may be faintly traced in the report. His face was covered with sweat, and the papers put into his hands shook and rattled.”—Hist. Criminal Law of England. Vol. III., p. 399, note. “And yet, after all,” as the learned judge adds, “he was right as to the time according to the inspector at Euston. If Smith spoke the truth, Newton could not have seen Palmer at all that night, and Mills, if at all, must have seen him in Smith’s company. Mills never mentioned Smith” (and was never asked by the defence if he came with Palmer), “and Smith would not swear that she or anyone else had seen him at the ‘Talbot’ that night.”

[62] Smith (not Jeremiah, subsequently examined, pp. 185-6), when called for the defence, said that he sent the soup to Cook by Rowley, but not to Palmer’s on the way.

[63] Palmer’s brother, in the letter to Lord Campbell, states that Sanders, the trainer, if called (who had been examined before the coroner), could have proved that Cook excused his not giving him more than £10 when he came to see him, on the plea “that he had given all his money to Palmer to take with him to London to settle his affairs,” and that he was in court at the trial, and when not called by the prosecution, was sent out of the way to prevent his being called for the defence.—Letter to Lord Campbell, pp. 18, 19.

He was called on his subpoena at the close of the evidence for the defence (tenth day), and when he did not answer, the Attorney-General said, “I should be deeply grieved if it could be possibly thought that the absence of any witness could in any way prejudice the prisoner’s case, and if my learned friend makes any application on that ground it shall not be resisted by me.” No application was made.

[64] It was an acknowledgment that certain bills, of which the dates and amounts were set out, were all for Cook’s benefit, and signed either J.P. or I.P. Cook. Cheshire was under Palmer’s influence, and a few days after opened Dr. Taylor’s letter to Mr. Gardner with the account of the results of the analytical examination, and disclosed them to Palmer, for which he was prosecuted and punished.

[65] Whilst Palmer was in Stafford jail, inquests were held on the bodies of his wife and his brother Walter. In the first case there was no manner of doubt that she had been gradually dosed to death by antimony. In that of the brother, the analysis failed to detect any poison, a fact probably accounted for by the length of time that had elapsed since the death and the action of the lead coffin, if prussic acid was the poison used. In both cases, however, verdicts of wilful murder against Palmer were returned. On the 21st of January Palmer was brought up from jail as a witness in an action on one of the £2000 bills purported to be signed by his mother, the signature of which was denied by her; clerks in banks and others who knew her handwriting well also agreeing that it was a forgery. At last Palmer was produced in custody. He entered in a perfectly cool and collected manner, nodded familiarly to his friends in the crowded court, and gave the following evidence in a low, yet firm and distinct voice, without a sign of trepidation:—

Mr. Edwin James (putting the disputed bill into his hand).—“Is the signature of William Palmer, as drawer of this bill, in your handwriting?”

Palmer.—“Yes.”

Mr. James.—“And did you apply to Mr. Padwick to advance you money on it?”

Palmer.—“I did.”

Mr. James.—“Who wrote Sarah Palmer’s acceptance on it?”

Palmer.—“Anne Palmer.”

Question.—“Who is she?”

Palmer.—“She is dead.”

Question.—“Do you mean your wife?”

Palmer.—“Yes.”

Question.—“Did you see her write it?”

Palmer.—“Yes.”

The action was, of course, at once abandoned, and no further proceedings taken on the other bills bearing the mother’s name.

[66] See Lord Campbell’s correction of this.—Judge’s charge, post.

[67] Ante, pp. 185 and 186, note.

[68] See the suggestion of Dr. Guy, that the death was probably due to morphia, and the remarks thereon in Chapter V., post.

[69] On this point, which was also put very strongly by Lord Campbell in his charge, the prisoner’s brother, in his letter to that judge, accuses the prosecution of cunningly keeping back a witness of the name of Cockayne, who had been examined before the coroner and whose deposition was before the Court, who would have explained the use for which the strychnia was bought. “Had he been, as he ought to have been called, he would have proved that he kept a gun loaded in the stable, by order of my brother, to shoot the dogs that worried his brood mares, and that he also threatened to poison them, and that the strychnia was purchased for that object, and that he had missed dogs since then, which had been in the habit of prowling about the pastures and hunting the mares.” He also accounts for the non-production of poisoned dogs, by the “medical fact that they go away to die in secret, concealed and quiet places, where they die undiscovered, and would be mortally attacked in so short a time that they could not get to their own home.” He further accuses them of sending this witness, and Sanders the trainer, who would have proved that Cook told him he had given Palmer all his money, out of the way, so that the prisoner’s solicitor could not call them for the defence.—Letter to Lord Campbell, pp. 17, 19. But see ante, p. 188, note.

[70] See ante, p. 216, note, on the evidence of a witness, Cockayne, who was called before the coroner.

[71] The prisoner’s brother, on the contrary, says that he distinctly, in a most solemn interview, declared his “perfect guiltlessness of blood.” The same writer unfortunately lessens the value of his other statements by a coarse attack on Lord Campbell as a worthy successor of Jeffries, and imputes to him and Baron Alderson a deliberate intention to force the jury to a conviction. As I had not the advantage of being present at the trial, I can only say nothing of this appears in any of the reports of the trial which I have collated, and whilst on the contrary we now have the evidence of an experienced criminal lawyer, who saw and heard all. Still, however, remains the great difficulty that strychnia, as every analytical chemist will testify, ought to have been found, if it had been given, though the failure to discover it does not conclusively negative the probability of it having been administered. Dr. Guy has suggested that morphia might have been the cause, introduced into the pills, a point of which would seem to be made in Serjeant Shee’s speech, and which would account for Palmer’s statement that Cook was not killed by strychnia, and with his wish for a further examination of the body by Mr. Herapath.—Hist. of Crim. Law of England. Vol. III., pp. 423-4. See on this point Chapter V.

[72] For the report of this trial I have relied on the apparently verbatim report in the Times (probably from the pen of the late Mr. Campbell Forster), collated with that in the Annual Register of 1856, and with the Summary by Mr. Justice Stephen based on the notes of the presiding judge.

[73] Mrs. Mary Wood. Mr. Overend objected to this witness being asked as to her opinion of Dove’s state of mind, on the ground that she was not a skilled witness. The objection was allowed by Mr. Baron Bramwell, but on the suggestion of the judge, not persevered in by the prosecution.

[74] Charles Harrison.

[75] These strong expressions were not supported by any specific proof worth reporting. Mr. H. admitted he used to flog him, but added, “I flogged him till I was satisfied there was a want of reason, but not after.” He admitted that he flogged him slightly (perhaps a stroke or two) the day before he left.—Stephens’ Summary. Vol. III., p. 430.

[76] He used to point loaded fire-arms at his servants, and threaten to shoot unoffending persons: tell strange stories of being followed by robbers: wander about his fields without an object.

[77] Evidence of his nurse, Mrs. Wood, Mr. Highley, Mr. C. Harrison, Mr. Lord, and the servants at Whitwell Farm (James Shaw, Mary Peek, Robert and William Tomlinson, Emma Spence, and Emma and Fanny Wilson) called for the defence, and cross-examination of Elizabeth Fisher, who had been his servant at Normanton and Leeds, Mrs. Thornhill, charwoman, generally employed at the house at Leeds, and Mary Hicks.

[78] In his second confession he fixes the date of this as Sunday, February 24, and that he took then about ten grains.

[79] On the Monday he wrote the following letter to his mother:—“My dear Mother,—I am sorry to tell you that my wife is very ill indeed. She came down as I thought this morning much better, took a nice breakfast for her, and then she commenced to play (the piano). After that she told Mrs. Fisher (who is with us) that she would help her to make the beds, but instead of that she was seized in her limbs and could not stand, neither could she take anything. I went to Mr. Morley, and I am sure I did not expect to see her alive when I came back; but thank God she was alive, and that was all; she was entirely prostrated. Mother has been to see her. If you would like to see her you had better come by London for three and sixpence. Harriet would like to see her, but she thinks of the expense. My dear wife’s love to you and all at home, and accept the same from your affectionate son, William Dove. P.S.—I hope Mary will not make fun of this small bit of paper; it would be over-heavy if I had not torn it off.” [This was one of the letters referred to by Baron Bramwell as disproof of his imputed idiotcy.]

[80] This witness and Mr. Morley, the surgeon, were called in Palmer’s trial to state the symptoms observed in the course of Mrs. Dove’s illness and death, without mentioning her name, and Mr. Morley also related the results of the analytical examination of her body in conjunction with Mr. Nunneley, who was called on behalf of Palmer, and maintained that if it had been given, strychnia must have been found by analysis six days after death (pp. 124-8).

[81] “He told me,” said Harrison, “that he was afflicted by devils, but that I had more power over them, and could send them to frighten his wife from her bed to sleep with him—believed they were in his house, and attributed thunder and lightning to them. I attributed this to delirium tremens. Told me he had sold his soul to the devil. I did not encourage him to think I could rule devils; it was his own fancy. I told him I would cast his nativity, but when I saw the state of his mind I did not finish it.”—Harrison’s evidence—cross-examination. But see Dove’s account of Harrison in his confession, post.

[82] In this case Baron Alderson also decided that if the witnesses were called by the defence, the person calling them made them his own witnesses, 2 C. & K. p. 520. Baron Parke, Justice Cresswell, and Lord Campbell agreed with this. See R. v. Cassidy, F. &. F. p. 79.

[83] To the schoolmaster at Abeford—conjuring tricks!

[84] Should not this be “at some times.”

[85] “That would be moral insanity.”—Judge’s Notes—Stephen.

[86] I cannot find in the reports to what particular act this question refers.

[87] “The suggestion of Dr. Williams,” says Judge Stephen, “that Dove had allowed his mind to dwell on his wife’s death till at last he became the victim of an uncontrollable propensity to kill her, if correct, would not prove that his act was not voluntary. It is setting and keeping the mind in motion towards an object plainly conceived that constitutes the mental part of an act. Every act becomes irrevocable before it is consummated. If a man, for example, strikes another, he may repent while his arm is falling; but there is a point at which he can no more deprive his arm of the impetus with which he has animated it, than he can divert from its course a bullet which has been fired from a rifle. Suppose he deals with his mind in this manner at an earlier stage of the proceeding, and so fills himself with a passionate, intense longing for the forbidden object or result, that he becomes, as it were, a mere machine in his own hands. Is not the case precisely similar, and does not the action continue to be voluntary and wilful, although the act of volition which made it irrevocable preceded its completion by a longer interval than usual?

“It must, however, be remembered, that the proof that Dove’s propensity was uncontrollable was very defective. An uncontrollable propensity, which accidental difficulties or the fear of detection constantly control and divert for a time, is an inconceivable state of mind. Is there the smallest reason to suppose that, if Mrs. Dove had met with a fatal accident, and had been lying in bed dying before her husband gave her any poison, his uncontrollable propensity to kill her would have induced him to give her poison nevertheless? If not, the propensity was like any other wicked feeling. It was certainly uncontrolled, and it may probably have been strong, but that is different to uncontrollable.”—History of the Criminal Law of England, by Mr. Justice Stephen. Vol. III., p. 435-6.

[88] Baron Bramwell especially called attention to the letter of the prisoner to his mother of the 25th of February, describing his wife’s first attack (see ante, note p. 237), and that to the Witchman, Harrison, asking him, in replying about his nativity, to “write in milk, or lemon, or anything else that would not show till put to the fire.”

[89] This was proved at the trial by the Fishers.

[90] Mr. Morley’s pupil had shown it to him; proved at the trial.

[91] That would be February the 23rd, when Fisher’s mother come to Dove’s to take her daughter’s place, and the first attack was when Mrs. Dove fell whilst helping to make the beds on the following Monday. Throughout his statement Dove is very confused as to dates. The tasting by Mrs. Witham was several days after this.

[92] Mrs. Witham states (see her evidence) that she gave her medicine at 3.30 P.M., and she seemed better for it.

[93] In his comments on this extraordinary case, Mr. Justice Stephen—after noting Dove’s predisposition to madness in his infancy; the fact that the symptoms of the disease exhibited themselves at frequent intervals, yet never reached such a pitch as to induce his friends to treat him as a madman; the prurience with which he dwelt on the prospect of his wife’s death; the forming of the design of putting her to death, and the deliberate contrivance and precaution with which he carried it out—says:—“In this state of things can he be said to have known, in the wider sense of the words, that his act was wrong? He obviously knew that it was wrong in the sense that people generally consider it so; but was he capable of thinking, like an ordinary man, of the reasons why murder is wrong, and of applying these reasons to his conduct? There was evidence both ways. His irrationality, however, was occasional, and he appears to have acted rationally enough as a rule, and to have transacted all the common affairs of life. Did, then, this act belong to the rational or irrational part of his conduct? Every circumstance connected with it referred it to the former. It was a continued series of deliberate and repeated attempts, fully completed at last.”—History of the Criminal Law. Vol. III., pp. 435-6.

[94] This is probably an error of the reporter—rigid(?)

[95] The pills were produced at the inquest, and seen there by Dr. Lees, but not submitted for analysis, either to him or Dr. Bernays.

[96] In this the presence of strychnia was very distinct.

[97] The important evidence of this witness is given very briefly on the report of the trial. From the notes of the analyses made at the time in the laboratory I have been enabled to give it in greater detail.

[98] Morphia gives with nitric acid a deep orange unchanged by stannous chloride.

[99] See also case of Agnes Sennett, p. 121.

[100] A striking case of cure by chloroform is given in the London Med. Gazette for 1850, p. 187, quoted from the Boston Med. Journal, July, 1850.

[101] Palmer administered to Cook so few pills, that unless these consisted of solid morphia, which is impossible, they could not much affect the above conclusion.

[102] The words “causing to be administered” were struck out on the objection of Mr. Young that “they were not covered by the major part of the indictment, and not material in any way.”

[103] This was distinctly denied by Miss Giubilei, who had been a pupil teacher at the school.

[104] Mr. Minnoch, on the contrary, said, “She accepted me on the 28th of January, and then she and I arranged it on the 12th of March. From the 28th of January to the end of March there was nothing to suggest to my mind a doubt as to the engagement continuing. I had no idea she was engaged to any other. When the marriage was fixed in March it was to take place on the 18th of June.”

[105] “But surely,” said the Lord Justice Clerk, “had such been the case, she would never have wished to be ‘clasped to the heart,’ as she expresses it in her letter, of a man whom she had to inform that she was engaged to another, and that all relations must be broken off between them.”

[106] On this latter matter and the identification of the envelopes for the respective letters much time was occupied. In his charge the Lord Justice Clark said, that “though the procedure adopted had been loose and slovenly, it did not appear that the panel had suffered any prejudice from the want of any of them. As to each letter being in its proper envelope, in the first part of the correspondence, it did not much signify whether such were the case; because there was no doubt that those passionate letters written by the prisoner, declaring such strong love for L’Angelier, and some of them expressed in very licentious terms, were written by her at some time or other.”

[107] “Arsenious oil applied to scalp to cure vermin caused death on 10th day.”—Taylor, I., 254. “A solution to cure itch caused death in two years.” Cours de Med., Leq., p. 121. “Arsenious acid and gum to the head, caused death in 36 hours.”—American Journal of Med. Science, July, 1851. “When used as a face powder it caused poisoning symptoms.”—Christison, p. 329. “Arsenical soap applied to scrotum and axillÆ produced violent pains in stomach, vomiting, purging, but patient recovered in fourteen days.”—Med. Times and Gazette, December 10, 1853. And see other similar cases in list in “Woodman and Tidy.”

[108] See Chapter VII.

[109] Referring to the evidence of Dr. Penny, the Dean, in his speech for the defence, said: “Here comes again another point on which the evidence for the Crown is very defective, to say the least of it. They knew very well when they were examining the contents of this poor man’s stomach, and his intestines generally, what was the arsenic that the prisoner had bought. They knew from her own candid statement that she bought it partly at Murdoch’s and partly at Currie’s. If that arsenic had been swallowed by the deceased, the colouring-matter could have been detected in the stomach—there was one means of connecting the prisoner with this poison which was found in L’Angelier’s stomach, and a very obvious means. It may be very well for Professor Penny and Dr. Christison to say now that their attention was not directed to this matter. Whose fault was this?—the whole thing was in the hand of the authorities. They kept it to themselves—they dealt with it exclusively—and they present this lame and impotent conclusion.”

[110] 14 Vict. c. 13, sec. 3: “Before the sale, the arsenic shall be mixed with soot or indigo in the proportion of one ounce of soot or half an ounce of indigo, at least, to one pound of arsenic, except in cases where, according to the representation of the purchaser, such mixture would render it unfit for his purpose, when it may be sold in quantities of not less than ten pounds.”

[111] In the Edinburgh Monthly Journal of Dec., 1857, Professor Christison gives the details of a case—not of suicide—in which 90 to 100 grains were found, and the party lived seven hours. In the case of R. v. Dodds, Lincoln Assizes, December, 1860, 150 grains were found; in that of R. v. Hewitt, or Holt, Chester Winter Assizes, 1863, 154 grains were found eleven weeks after death. Professor Christison’s letter will be found in Appendix B., p. 358.

[112] In Woodman and Tidy the following Table, showing the solubility of arsenic, is given:—

[113] As proof that L’Angelier’s first illness could not have been on the night of the 19th and morning of the 20th, the Dean referred to the fact that “on the 21st he ordered of his butcher the largest piece of beef to be found in his pass-book (7lbs.), and had fresh herrings in such a quantity as to alarm his landlady, and a still more alarming quantity and variety of vegetables.” “There’s a dinner for a sick person!” He also said, “I give my learned friend the option of being impaled on one of the horns of the dilemma—I care not which. He was ill from arsenical poisoning on the morning of the 20th, or he was not. If he was, he received arsenic from other hands than the prisoner’s. If he was not, the foundation of the case was shaken.”

[114] “What is the evidence of Mrs. Jenkins on this point? She says he was in his usual condition on the 21st, when he made that celebrated dinner, and she thought he was making himself ill, and on that 21st he told her he should not leave the house all the following day—the Sunday. He had, therefore, I maintain, no appointment to keep, else he would never have made that statement. On the 22nd Mrs. Jenkins says she had no recollection of his going out. When he did go out at night, and came in late, what was his habit? Mrs. Jenkins says he never got into the house on those occasions except in one of two ways—either he asked her for a check key, and got one, or Thuau opened the door for him. He did not ask for a key that night, and Thuau says he certainly did not let him in.”—Speech of the Dean of Faculty for the defence.

[115] To the evidence for these statements, the Dean of Faculty objected that, though the guard of the train from Stirling was shown the photograph of L’Angelier, and identified him by it, the photo. was not shown to Ross—that Ross only spoke of him as a foreigner—that no one at the place where he had refreshments at Coatbridge was called to identify him—that the “foreigner” told Ross he had walked from Alloa (eight miles), and not from the Bridge of Allan, and that on the Friday or Saturday previous he had walked into Stirling to try and get a cheque cashed, and yet no attempt was made to show that he did so. The witnesses for the defence, on the contrary (Adams, Kirk, Dickson, druggists), were clear (Adams) that at half-past five on Sunday, the 22nd, a gentleman came to his shop for 25 drops of laudanum; Dickson, of Batherton, two miles from Coatbridge, that one whom he recognised as extremely like the photo. of L’Angelier came for a similar dose at 6.30 on a Sunday at the end of March, suffering from a bowel complaint; and Miss Kirk, of the Gallowgate, Glasgow, who remembered a gentleman, “as like as anything I ever saw” to the photo. of L’Angelier, came about 8 p.m. on a Sunday night at the end of March for a medicine, and got a white powder. [But it must be remarked that, weak as this evidence was, it was weakened by the admission of Adams that his customer did not complain of illness—by that of Dickson that it might have been in April, and by the inability of Miss Kirk to fix any date for the occurrence, or to state what the powder was, though she identified the purse from which the party took the money for the payment of it.]

[116] On the question whether this letter brought L’Angelier to Glasgow, the Dean referred to an expression in one of his letters to Thuau, that he did not know what “Mr. Mitchell could want with him,” and inferred that it might be to hear about this person that he hurried up to Glasgow and called on M’Alister, who probably might have given some information on this point had he been called. [If so, why was he not called for the defence?]

[117] “I have already shown,” said the Dean, “how constantly she repeated to him her warning that on no account he was to make the slightest noise of any kind. Therefore, without previous arrangement, it does not appear to me possible for these parties to have met on the occasion on which the prosecutor says they did. If I am right in reading that letter, she expected him on Saturday evening, and she waited and waited, as she had upon Thursday, but he did not come. On the Sunday evening she did not expect him. Why should she? When he did not come on Thursday evening, when he did not come on Saturday evening, why should she expect him on the following evening? Well, then, that is the state in which her expectations were on that occasion, and her conduct precisely squares with it. She is at home in the family. They are all at prayers at nine o’clock. The servants come up to attend prayers with the family. Mackenzie, the suitor of Haggart, remains below while the family are at prayers. The servants afterwards go down stairs to bed, as usual—one after the other. The family then retire to rest, and the prisoner, with her youngest sister, goes to her bedroom about half-past ten or eleven. They both get into bed about the same time; and, so far as human knowledge can go, that house is undisturbed and unapproached till the prisoner is lying in the morning side by side with her sister, as she had fallen asleep. The watchman was on his beat—he knew L’Angelier well—and he saw nothing.”

[118] Regarding this third charge in the light of probabilities, the Dean said:—“If you believe the evidence of the Crown, he suspected the prisoner of having tried to poison him. But my learned friend says his suspicions were then lulled—she had become more kind to him before he left town. I thought my learned friend said he was brooding over it when in Edinburgh, and spoke of it in a serious tone to the Towerses. That was on the 16th of March, after which date he had nothing to change his mind in the shape of kindness from the prisoner, and therefore if he did once entertain the suspicion, however unfounded, there was nothing to remove it from his mind anterior to the 22nd of March. A man, whose suspicions are excited against a particular person, is not very likely to take poison at that person’s hand; and yet, what are we asked to believe that he took from her hand that night? That he took from her hand a poisoned cup, in which there lurked such a quantity of arsenic as was sufficient to leave in his stomach after death 82 grains; such a dose indicating the administration of at least double—aye, I think Dr. Christison said the administration of at least half an ounce (240 grains)—and that he took it that evening from the hand of the prisoner, with all his previous suspicions that she was practising on him. It is a dose which, as far as experience goes, was never successfully administered by a murderer. There is not a case on record in which it has ever been shown that a person administering poison to another ever succeeded in persuading him to swallow such a quantity.” [But note as to confidence after suspicion, that of Cook in Palmer, after the suspicious illness at Shrewsbury.—See Palmer’s Case, ante; and as to quantity administered by murderers, note ante, p. 319, and Appendix B., p. 358.]

[119] Christina Haggart, if she was to be believed, appears to contradict this assertion. On re-examination she said that between a month and two before her apprehension Miss Smith asked her to leave the back gate into the lane open after ten at night, and stay in the kitchen a little, as she was to see her friend. When she did so she saw no one in the lane, but as she went into the kitchen, which was in front of the house, she met Miss Smith going towards the back door. She heard footsteps coming through the gate—that she stayed in the kitchen till she heard Miss Smith go to her own room. She stayed about half an hour. “Charlotte Maclean, the cook, stayed in the kitchen with me at my request.” In this she was confirmed by Maclean, but she could not say she heard Miss Smith in the passage, though she heard her afterwards go to her bedroom. Miss Smith’s statement to Dr. Meau is true, if the meeting took place only at the back gate. The Lord Justice Clerk, however, spoke of this evidence as proving that L’Angelier was in the house in Blythswood Square.

[120] In a letter with post-mark September 18, 1855, she alludes to some such threat, “Beloved, you are young, you ought to desire life.” In another with post-mark October 19, 1855, she writes, “‘Before long,’ you say, ‘I shall rid you and all the world of my presence.’ God forbid that you should do this.” “This,” said the Judge, “was a common enough mode of influencing females; and if such was his design, he seemed to have succeeded.”

[121] As to the evidence for the defence, that L’Angelier had on one occasion threatened to throw himself out of the window at the “Rainbow” Tavern, his lordship observed, “As the witness was in bed at the time the deceased had ample opportunity to have thrown himself over, if he had been so inclined, before the witness could interfere; and the jury would consider whether, when going about the room in that excited state, he had only thrown open the window to get air. As to the other stories that he would drown himself, if jilted, they did not amount to much, as on one occasion he had been jilted, and had not drowned himself. You will consider whether all this is merely the vapouring of a loose, talkative man, fond of awakening an interest in the minds of others about himself, or whether it affords any indication that he was likely to commit suicide. As to the evidence about giving arsenic to horses in France, which would be useless unless given constantly, he did not see its importance. If he was in the habit of taking it in small quantities, he knew its qualities, and therefore this did not aid the notion that he took an immense quantity on the 22nd to destroy himself. No doubt the prisoner was not bound to prove that he poisoned himself, but it was a hazardous thing to set up a defence that L’Angelier went out that night carrying such a quantity of arsenic in his pocket, and that he swallowed it, how, when, and where, no human being could conceive.”

[122] “It is very difficult,” said the learned Judge, “to say what the exasperated feelings of a female placed in such a situation as this woman was might not lead her to do. And here it is that the correspondence becomes of the utmost importance, as shewing what feelings she cherished about that time, what state and disposition of mind she was in, and whether there was any trace of moral sense or propriety to be found in her letters, or whether they did not exhibit such a degree of ill-regulated, disordered, distempered, and licentious feelings, as shew that the writer was quite capable of compassing any end by which she could avoid exposure and disgrace, and of cherishing any feeling of revenge which such treatment might excite in her mind, driven nearly to madness by the thought of what might follow the revelation of this correspondence. We have heard a good deal said by the Dean of Faculty as to the character of this person: we have no evidence on the subject, except what these letters exhibit, and no witness to character is brought; and certainly these letters exhibit as extraordinary a frame of mind and of passion as perhaps ever appeared in a court of justice. Can you be surprised, that after such letters as those of the 29th April and 3rd May (inviting him in very plain terms to meet her for that purpose at the garden gate of the country house), that on the 6th May, three days afterwards, he got possession of her person? On the 7th she again writes, and in that letter is there the slightest appearance of grief, of repentance, of remorse? It is the letter of a girl rejoicing in what had passed, and alluding to it particularly in terms which I will not read, for perhaps they were never previously committed to paper, as having passed between man and woman. There could be no doubt of the state of degraded and unholy feeling into which she had sunk, probably not the less so if it was produced by his undermining and corruption.”

[123] If this was the use for which the prisoner bought the arsenic, it is at least curious that she did not buy it until the 21st of February, 1857, when she was endeavouring to get her letters back from L’Angelier. The article in Blackwood was in December, 1853. Johnston’s Book was published in 1855, and of the papers in Chambers, the first was in December, 1851, the second in June, 1853, and the third in July, 1856.

[124] Without wishing to fight over again the case of Eliza Fenning, I would refer any one at all curious on this point to a letter to the Times, quoted in the “Annual Register” for July 29, 1855, from the Rev. J. H. Gurney, the nephew of the well-known shorthand writer, in which it is stated, on the authority of an extract from his uncle’s note-book, that Eliza Fenning did confess the crime to the Rev. James Upton, a Baptist minister, whose chapel she attended, though she subsequently maintained her innocence to other visitors.

[125] The learned Judge had previously said, “If this had been an appointment about business, and it had been shown that a person came to town for the purpose of seeing another, and he went out for that purpose, having no other object in coming to Glasgow, they would probably scout the notion of a person saying, ‘I never saw or heard of him that day that he came;’ but the inference they were asked to draw was this, that they met on that night, when the fact of their meeting is the foundation of the charge of murder. Therefore the jury must feel that the grounds of drawing an inference in the ordinary matters of civil business, or the actual appointment of mutual friends is one thing, and the inference from the fact that he came to Glasgow, that they did meet, and that, therefore, the poison was administered to him by her at that time, is another, and a most enormous jump in the category of inferences.”

[126] Evidence of Samuel Peckeridge, his fellow-workman; Thomas Denman, who had seen him near the reservoir on Stamford Hill, on the 24th, vomiting, and going to the public-house for brandy; James Ashby, another turncock of the East London Company’s; Mrs. Gillett, and Mr. Toulmin, of Clapton.

[127] On Dr. Letheby’s evidence, see remarks in Chapter VII., p. 395.

[128] A. Andrews also proved that she had only objected to the post-mortem because she knew the deceased objected to it; that she said “Thank God, I am innocent. Poor dear soul, I loved him too well to injure him;” and had told him that Annie had eaten the rest of the gruel, and that Mrs. Gillett knew it.

[129] James Urry, the secretary of the benefit society, proved that the deceased had been insured in it nearly two years—these would not have been completed until February 2nd, and that, in consequence, she would be entitled to only £7 10s. instead of £10. When he saw the prisoner she seemed absorbed in grief.

[130] See on this the remarks in Chapter VII. p. 395.

[131] Tidy (Handbook of Modern Chem., 1878, p. 397) states that 1,000 parts of boiling water, digested for twenty-four hours with the powder, dissolve—of the opaque form, 5·4 parts; of the transparent, 10; of the crystalline, 15.

[132] In this case, which was tried before the late Lord Denman, at the Summer Assizes, 1848, very many of the guests at a dinner given to celebrate the election of an Independent minister were seriously affected, and the death of the chairman (an invalid) hastened, by eating of a blancmange made in the form of a cucumber, surrounded with leaves—all of the natural green colour. In colouring this sweet, emerald green, in which, on analysis, 47½ per cent. of arsenite of copper was found, had been used to such an extent that the colour was in some parts half an inch in depth. The pastrycook (Franklin) had been previously warned, by the chemist who sold it to him, of its poisonous qualities, and for a time had discontinued its use for eatables; and the defence was, that in this case his apprentice (Randall) had used it under the impression that the sweet was only for ornament. They were both found guilty of manslaughter, and sentenced to three months’ imprisonment with hard labour.

[133] According to the Apotheker Zeitung, No. 14, April 3, 1879, out of 118 samples of children’s toys officially examined in 1878, 53, or nearly one-half, were found adorned with poisonous colours. In the cases of 46 the vendors were punished. As to dresses, see Chem. News, v. 114.

[134] In the case of Maria Gage, tried at the Summer Assizes, at Ipswich, on the 2nd of August, 1851, for the murder of her husband, it was proved that she had got a neighbour to purchase for her a pennyworth of stuff for rats and mice, which was found to consist of linseed with arsenic enough to kill half a dozen men.

[135] “Considerable sensation has been excited by the report that arsenic had been detected in the paper collars, &c., manufactured by a Leipzig firm. On a careful examination, conducted by six of the most eminent chemists, the accusation was proved to be utterly unfounded.”—Chemiker Zeitung, No. 45, 1879.

[136] In this case, which was tried in April, 1835, before Sir Charles Wetherell, as Recorder of Bristol, a widow lady of the name of Mary Smith, who had lodged with the prisoner, was poisoned by her, in October, 1833, for the sake of the money and other property she had with her. The accused was proved to have purchased yellow arsenic about six days before Mrs. Smith’s death, and to have been seen putting some yellow powder out of a paper from her pocket into a basin of gruel, after taking which Mrs. Smith was seized with dreadful convulsions, and died. In consequence of suspicions created by the prisoner’s subsequent conduct and false statements, a post-mortem was held of the body, exhumed fourteen months after death. The report of this examination was very striking. “A thick, yellow coating, like paint, lay on the mucous membrane of the stomach, particularly over the pyloric third, but it extended more or less with some small interjections of unstained membrane to within two or three inches of the great cul-de-sac.” The accused was convicted and executed.

[137] Phosphates give nothing with sulphuretted hydrogen, and a yellow with silver nitrate.

[138] “A curious toxicological case is reported from Hamburg. The body of a man who died in 1867 was taken for examination. It was thought necessary to determine arsenic, not merely in the corpse in question, but in the soil of the churchyard at different distances from the coffin, and also in the body of another man who had been subsequently buried in the same grave. This latter body was perfectly free from arsenic, which, however, was found in the first corpse in ample fatal quantity (3·6 grains), whilst in the lid of the coffin and in the adjacent ground very minute quantities were traced. Hence the conclusion was fairly drawn that the man in question had been poisoned with arsenic, and that a portion of the poison had been gradually transferred from his body to the wood of the coffin and the adjacent soil.”—Chemiker Zeitung, No. 7, February 13th, 1879.

[139] See also a case in the Gaz. MÉdicale, 1850.

[140] When we bear in mind how small a space even 200 grains of arsenic would occupy—not more than that of an ordinary seidlitz powder—the suggestion of L’Angelier carrying this means of suicide about him, when keeping the supposed appointment on the Sunday night, is by no means improbable. And when his evident tendency to attempt self-destruction, when irritated or depresssed, is remembered, it is within the range of probability, that, if either the meeting took place and ended with a quarrel, or he failed to obtain a meeting, in the excited state of mind which either circumstance would have created, he in desperation swallowed the drug very shortly before he returned to his lodgings, only to die. This is a far more probable suggestion than that set up by the defence, that he had been dosing himself with arsenic on the road from Stirling to Glasgow. The difficulty is that purchases of arsenic by L’Angelier could not be proved. But, looking to the careless way in which it was exposed in the shops of some of the firms with which he had relations (evidence of Fleming and Townsend), he might have got it from thence, without its being known, or he might have purchased it in Edinburgh on his visit there, where he could not be easily recognised. He certainly had an unwholesome hankering after this drug.—G. L. B.

[141] To the medical profession, for whose use, as well as for that of their legal brethren, this volume is intended, any but a detailed report of the medical evidence in this disputed case would be useless.

[142] For the report of this trial I have relied on that published in Edinburgh by William Kay, 1865.

[143] Evidence of James Struthers. Registrar of Deaths for the Blythswood district of Glasgow.

[144] According to Mary Patterson, Mrs. Taylor was in the kitchen about 7 p.m., as well as usual, only appearing a little peevish in consequence of her night-watching. Mary McLeod met her going up stairs from the consulting-room about nine o’clock, and in a short time her bell rang, and she found her in her daughter’s bedroom asking for hot water to make her vomit, when she desired her to go for the doctor.

[145] See evidence, ante, p. 414 (note), of McLeod and Paterson, as to her health and actions during the evening before her seizure.

[146] It was with reference to this visit that Paterson afterwards expressed his opinion, that, but for the accident of meeting Pritchard, he would not have been asked to visit his wife. This was severely commented on by Mr. R. Clark as showing the ill-feeling towards the prisoner which was imputed to the witness.

[147] It was proved that he kept large quantities of antimony, poisons, and other drugs in his consulting-room, though no chlorodyne.—Evidence of McCall, Dr. Penny, McHattie, Foulger, and Kerr.

[148] In a letter to his father-in-law on the 3rd of March, Pritchard wrote: “I am very much fatigued with being up with dear Mary Jane, who was very much worse yesterday, and passed a wretched night. Wednesday has been a periodic day with her during this illness, and she always dreads it. Her prostration is extreme, and her appetite quite failed. Dr. Paterson has recommended Dublin stout and some very simple medicine.”—Evidence of Mr. Taylor. Second day.

[149] On Dr. Paterson’s evident feeling against the prisoner, the Lord Justice Clerk made the following remarks: “It is said that he exhibited a strong feeling against the prisoner; no human being could feel otherwise if he had formed the impression that Mrs. Pritchard was being poisoned in the hands of her husband, her medical attendant. It is said that he exhibited this feeling in a marked unpleasant manner in the box. That is a matter of manner, and, if the feeling existed, I do not know that he could have made his evidence really more valuable if he had concealed the existence of it. It may be an unpleasant thing to see what is called an animus in a witness exhibited in the witness-box. If he has a feeling strong upon him, and that on good ground, he may come into the box and entirely suppress all appearance of it, because he has more command of his feeling, or a better manner of concealing it. The fact remains, that if he takes up the position I have described, he cannot, as a man of ordinary feeling, feel otherwise than unfavourably prepossessed against the prisoner.” Again, on his concealment of his suspicions, the Judge said: “Now, he thought it consistent with his professional duty—and I must also add with his duty as a citizen of this country—to keep this opinion to himself. In that I cannot say he did right. I should be very sorry to lead you to think so. I care not for professional etiquette, or professional rule. There is a rule of life and a consideration far higher than these—the duty that every citizen of this country, that every right-minded man owes to his neighbour—to prevent the destruction of human life in this world, and in that duty I cannot but say that Dr. Paterson has failed. Now you will consider what effect that is to have, or whether it is to have any effect on your minds. It is a very painful subject—a subject which I would fain avoid, but the exigencies of this case drive me to its consideration—and I am bound to say that, because a man is so mistaken in regard to his duty to his fellow-citizens, and his fellow-creatures, it by no means follows that he is undeserving of credit as a witness. You may con sider his evidence always in the light of that failing; if you can see reason to modify anything that he says, because of the existence of that failing, it is your bounden duty to do that.”—Charge of the Lord Justice Clerk. Fifth day.

[150] From Western Branch of Glasgow Apothecaries’ Company, September 19, 1864, 10 grains strychnia; November 4, ½ oz. tincture conii (Hemlock); November 16, 1 oz. laudanum, 1 oz. tartar emetic; November 24, 1 oz. tincture aconite; December 8, 1 oz. tincture (Fleming’s) aconite; December 9, 1 oz. tincture conii. 1865: February 4, 1 oz. tincture conii; February 7, 1 oz. tartarised antimony, 1 oz. tincture of aconite; February 9, 1 oz. tincture of aconite; February 11, 1 oz. tincture of digitalis; February 18, 2 oz. tincture conii (all sold by the manager, J. Campbell); November 24, 1 oz. tincture of aconite; December 9, 1 oz. tincture conii; February 4, 1865, 1 oz. tincture conii (sold by the assistant). Fleming’s tincture of aconite is six times stronger than the ordinary tincture.—Evidence of J. Campbell. From John Currie, chemist in Glasgow:—1865: February 18, 2 oz. solution of morphia and 1 oz. of Fleming’s tincture of aconite; March 8, solution of atropine, 1 drachm, with 2 grains of atropia to a drachm; March 13, ½ oz. of Fleming’s tincture of aconite; March 14, solution of atropine, 1 drachm, with 2 grains to a drachm; March 16, solution of atropine, 1 drachm, with 5 grains to a drachm.—Evidence of John Currie. Chloroform from July 13 to December 9, 1864, 132 oz.—J. Campbell. This witness said that 2 oz. of tartarised antimony and about 1 to 2 ozs. of Fleming’s tincture would cover the whole of their sales for a year, and that the chloroform was also in excess of usual sale to one person. For the defence it was proved that as much as 80 oz. of Fleming’s tincture was sold by them within a year.—Evidence of John Simpson, of Duncan, Flockhart & Co., of North Bridge, Glasgow. And from 2 to 3 oz. of tartar emetic, besides larger quantities to veterinary surgeons.—Thomas Fairgreive, chemist, of Edinburgh.

[151] Evidence of Alexander McCall, superintendent of Glasgow Police, and John Murray, an officer of the Sheriff—third day; and reports of analyses by Professor Frederick Penny, same day. Another specimen of tapioca, bought direct from Barton and Henderson, had no antimony in it—Same witness.

[152] In reply to the Judge, the witness said that to take 7 grains of Fleming’s tincture Mrs. Taylor must have taken 100 drops of the poisoned Battley in a single dose, equal to a teaspoonful; that 100 drops would not be an unusual amount to a person accustomed to the use of it in moderation, and that many opium eaters would not thank you for 100 drops. Aconite might be given in divided doses, and not prove fatal, though the same quantity was taken, the distressing effect of one dose going off before the other was taken.

[153] Dr. Gairdner stated that the only time he saw Mrs. Pritchard was on the night of the 8th of February, and that at that interview Pritchard told him Dr. Cowan had prescribed stimulants, which he ordered to be discontinued, and no medicine till he saw her again. Dr. Cowan said that he did not see her until the 11th of February, “to the best of his recollection, stopped all night, saw her again next day, and left in the evening for Edinburgh.”

[154] Dr. Paterson stated that he was called on the 24th of February to see Mrs. Taylor, and then noticed the state in which Mrs. Pritchard was, but not being asked did not prescribe for her. He was called in to Mrs. Pritchard first on the 2nd of March, when he prescribed powders containing camomile, blue or gray powder, ipecacuanha, and aromatic powder, and he never saw her again until five hours before her death. There is not a word in his evidence of his having been previously consulted about the use of Battley’s solution. The only interviews with the prisoner, other than in the sick-room, were on the 1st of March, when he met him in the street and he asked him to see his wife, and on the 5th of March, when Pritchard called on him, reported that the remedies had had a good effect, and Dr. Paterson recommended their continuance.

[155] Mary McLeod stated that she was in the bedroom from the time Dr. Paterson left till Mrs. Pritchard died; that she lay on the sofa, and that Pritchard told her to get the mustard-plaster, and that it was applied to Mrs. Pritchard’s stomach, and as it did not seem to do her good, she was sent down again for another, and that when she and Mary Patterson returned with it, Mrs. Pritchard was dead.

[156] From an account sent in to Mr. Taylor after his wife’s death, the last purchases appeared to be:—18th January, 1865, 2 oz.; 29th January, 2 oz.; and 4th February, 2 oz. James Thomson stated that the last time he took the bottle to be filled was on the night before Mrs. Taylor left for Glasgow, and that for a year or so before her death he took the bottle to be filled at first only once in every two or three months, but latterly every two or three weeks.

[157] Evidence of J. Foulger and George Kerr.

[158] This had previously been admitted by Dr. Penny.

[159] See remarks of the Lord Justice Clerk on the motive, post, p. 445.

[160] See the argument of the Dean of Faculty imputing the murder to McLeod, and the Judge’s charge on that point, post, 437-440.

[161] “Mr. Clark very properly said,” remarked the Judge in this charge, “‘it is not his fault that he had abundant opportunities. The relation existing between him and these ladies is not his fault, and it was the existence of this relation that gave him these opportunities.’ Quite true, gentlemen—a very just observation; but remember, on the other hand, that as the opportunities did in point of fact exist, he cannot argue the case as if they did not.”

[162] “His possession of poisonous drugs,” said the Judge in his charge, “to such an extent is not a suspicious circumstance in the case of a medical man. They are in some degree necessary; but the peculiar position of the matter in this case—the nature of the drugs found in his consulting-room—is certainly not to be lightly passed over, and still more the nature of the purchases that he had been making from two different apothecaries during the period to which our inquiries particularly refer. In his consulting-room were found some parcels of tartaric acid—not a very large quantity; some phials, containing the remains of tincture of aconite and white powder to the extent of three or four grains, containing a somewhat strange and unexplained mixture of tartarised antimony or tartar emetic and aconite. These things were found in his consulting-room; but what had he been purchasing during the period to which our inquiry refers? On the 16th of November he purchased an ounce of tartar emetic, and upon the 7th of February another ounce of the same poison—very unusual quantities, as the apothecaries state. He also purchased no less than 5½ ounces of tincture of aconite. That, the apothecaries state, is a very unusual quantity for a medical man to purchase: but I think it was a mistake in some respects to push this statement to the extent to which the prosecutor pressed it, because some of the other witnesses of the same description said that for external application tincture of aconite is sometimes used in considerable quantities, and if it were used for that purpose we might account for such a large quantity being used by the prisoner. But I do not think anybody said, that two ounces of tartar emetic within a month or two was a usual quantity for one medical man to use who was not in the practice of mixing it at home, which the prisoner, in his conversation with Dr. Paterson, says he was not. Besides, there were other very strange purchases, which have no immediate connection with this case—all of them strong poisons. He was, therefore, undoubtedly possessed of a very large quantity of different kinds of poisonous substances; but what is most important is, that he was in possession of that very poison to which the death of Mrs. Pritchard is undoubtedly to be traced, and to which, in combination with others, the death of Mrs. Taylor is to be traced—that is antimony. So that whether we adopt to the full extent the suggestion of the Crown, it appears beyond a doubt that some one had been practising a system of poisoning, and that in the possession of the prisoner were the agents necessary for carrying it on.”

[163] See, post, p. 446, the Judge’s remarks on this attempt to throw the crime on McLeod.

[164] “It is said,” remarked the Lord Justice Clerk, “that it would be very difficult that cheese could be poisoned by antimony—very difficult to make a powder like tartar emetic adhere to a piece of cheese in sufficient quantity to have any effect, and that, if it did, it must have been visible to the naked eye, because the cheese was yellow and the tartar emetic was white. But we know from the evidence before us that tartar emetic is easily dissolved, and the poisoned cheese could easily have been poisoned by dipping it into a solution, quite as easily as by dipping it into a powder.” See Chapter IX.

[165] On this argument of the prisoner’s counsel the Lord Justice Clerk said:—“It is difficult to offer an answer to that. It is impossible to say what is the precise point to which a poison of this kind will kill—what is the precise amount that will at once destroy life as compared with that which will only inflict suffering and torture. But that Patterson did suffer these severe vomitings and pains immediately after having tasted the egg-flip I suppose you will not disbelieve, looking to the general character of the evidence which she gave here as a witness.”

[166] With reference to the finding of the bottle of Battley’s solution the Lord Justice Clerk made the following remarks:—“To that scene I beg now to call your attention as given by Mary Patterson. ‘When the bottle was found,’ she says, ‘he expressed great surprise that she should have taken so much of its contents in so short a time.’ Now he was quite aware, as you will see by the evidence, that the old lady was in the habit of taking a great quantity, and you will consider whether the surprise was real or feigned. That is but a very small point, however, in reference to this matter. His expression in regard to it, seemed to me much more strong. He expressed surprise at her having sent ‘a girl like that for it’—namely, McLeod. I cannot see that there is anything so startling in that. Did he mean to suggest that in sending such a messenger there might be some mistake as to the contents of the bottle? Why, what was it, ‘to send a girl like that?’ What was the harm of sending a girl—an intelligent servant girl? What was wanted was Battley’s solution, because it was what Mrs. Taylor wanted—was accustomed to take. But still he thought that it was a very serious matter—and further, that it was one of those things that it would not do to have spoken of as having occurred in his house—a man of his profession.”

[167] Had she survived the wife, would she not have been a most important witness to aid in the conviction of the prisoner?

[168] For the report of this trial I have used that in the Sessions Papers, Central Criminal Court, 1859, collated with that given by Mr. Justice Stephen in his “History of the Criminal Law of England,” vol. iii., p. 438, and that in the Annual Register of 1859.

[169] According to her sister she had for some time suffered from an affection of the uterus requiring the use of an injection.

[170] The prisoner called on the solicitor on the Saturday and asked him to come up the next day to draw the will, to which he consented on the prisoner’s representation of the state of the lady—but wished a medical man to be present. The prisoner, however, assured him it was quite unnecessary, as she was suffering only from diarrhoea, and was quite in her right mind. “I went,” said the witness, “to the prisoner’s lodging, and he informed me that they were not married, which was another reason why he did not wish a medical man to be present. I then went up to the bedroom of the deceased, and the prisoner said to her, ‘My dear, this is the gentleman who has come to make your will.’ She bowed, and handed me the paper which I had seen on Saturday. I looked at it, and asked her if that was what she wished, and read it to her, and she said it was quite correct, except that she wished to leave a brooch to a friend. I then drew up the will in accordance with her instructions, in a lower room. The prisoner was with me, and, when the will had been drawn up, said the daughter of the landlady could be one of the witnesses, and he supposed I could say it was some Chancery paper. I told him that would not do. She must know it was a will, and he replied, ‘Oh, very well.’ Shortly afterwards the deceased executed the will, and I and Miss Wheatley attested it, and I handed the document to the prisoner, who paid me my fee. She appeared perfectly competent to make a will.”—Evidence of Mr. Senior. The will was proved by Smethurst, notwithstanding opposition, after his punishment for bigamy.

[171] From the sudden and serious illness of one of the jurors, however, the examination of the witnesses had to be suspended, and the trial adjourned to the first day of the next Session. Eventually he was put on his trial, before another jury, on the 15th of August. As the statement of Serjeant Ballantine was fully confirmed by the witnesses, the landladies of the respective lodgings, and the sister, it will be necessary only to report the medical evidence.

[172] It was apparently with reference to this case that the name of a Dr. Barker, of Bedford, was repeatedly mentioned, but he was not called to confirm or explain the supposed instance of dysentery in early pregnancy.

[173] It must be borne in mind that there was no error in this experiment, and that it was never suggested that the arsenic in this case came from the copper, as it was not destroyed, as when the bottle of chlorate of potash was afterwards tested with copper gauze, which was destroyed by it, and the arsenic in the gauze liberated. Serjeant Parry, of course, said that the experiments in both cases were the same. So they were so far as copper was used, but the presence of the chlorate of potash in the other case made all the difference.—See Chapter IX.

[174] Had this discovery of arsenic not been erroneous, the gap in the evidence, as to the possession of the poison by the prisoner in a form most likely to be administered, would have been filled up. It in no way, however, militated against the discovery of arsenic in bottle 2. See post, Chap. IX., how far Mr. Herapath was correct in asserting that more arsenic was found than could have been released from the copper. In his statement before the committing magistrates, on the 20th of May, Serjeant Ballantine stated that bottle 21 had originally been sent by Dr. Julius with a quinine mixture.

[175] On farther cross-examination, Professor Brande said that the copper he used in Reinsch’s test was generally rolled down from a halfpenny, which he considered pure enough for the purpose.

[176] But see his evidence, Palmer’s trial, p. 175, ante.

[177] Handbuch der Pathologischen Anatomie, by Baron Carl von Rokitansky, Vienna, 1842-46, of which a translation by various English medical men of eminence was published by the Sydenham Society in 4 vols. 8vo. 1849-54. It is still considered a valuable book of reference.

[178] Subsequent to the verdict, in a memorial to the Prince Consort, it was stated that “a lady friend of the deceased was a witness,” to Miss Bankes’ knowledge, of the fact that he was married already, and that she wished the ceremony to be gone through. This lady, the memorial stated, was to have been called, but Mr. Parry deemed it unnecessary. Upon this, the Lord Chief Baron, in his report to the Home Secretary, observed—“I do not believe Mr. Serjeant Parry gave any such advice; but if it be true that any such evidence was ready, why is not the lady friend named, and why is not her statement or declaration now offered and laid before you? Such evidence would, in my opinion, much alter the complexion of the case.”—Judge Stephen’s Hist. of Crim, Law, iii., 461. [What need was there of this evidence, when it had been proved that for weeks together Miss Bankes had been lodging and associating in the same house with Smethurst and his wife?]

[179] Not quite correct; on the prisoners representations of the effect of the sister’s prior visit, Dr. Bird had advised that she should not see her—at any rate at present.—See his evidence, ante, p. 450.

[180] When Dr. Julius was recalled, and stated that at the first examination before the magistrates the prisoner urged that it was necessary for him to go back to his wife; that her death might be occasioned by his absence; and that it was imperative that he should go; Serjeant Parry asked the witness “whether the magistrates at that time did not direct or require him not to interfere further with the patient?” To this he replied—“I do not think it was addressed to him, but it was addressed generally—it was in his presence. It might have been a general direction, but he might have heard it.”

[181] “And not only in the evacuations, where small portions of both were found?” They also laid great stress on the absence of certain symptoms generally present in slow poisoning by arsenic or antimony, or both.

[182] Or he might have added, the results of his experiments on the evacuations, the correctness of which were proved by the subsequent 76 tests by Reinsch’s method.

[183] “There were,” says Judge Stephen, “fourteen reasons in all assigned by Sir B. Brodie, six in favour of the prisoner, and eight against him, of which only two of the first and four of the second proceeded on medical or chemical grounds. Until these are published it is impossible to judge fairly of Brodie’s opinion.”

[184] Stephen’s Hist. Crim. Law of Eng., iii., 465.

[185] Margaret Higgins, a servant of Mrs. James, told a very different story when put into the box for cross-examination, her evidence not being taken for the prosecution. “On the morning of the 10th I went into Mrs. James’s bedroom, about half-past eight, and found two or three spoonsful of warmsago in a tea-cup by the bedside, and two cups on the table. I took the cup from the chair by the bedside down stairs, and ate the sago, which did me no harm.”[As the prisoner said he took it in about 5 a.m., the sago, being in an open cup, could not have been warm at 8·30. It was also clear, from other parts of her evidence, that she was in favour of the prisoner, and anxious to throw the crime on the Cafferatas.

[186] Evidence of Mrs. Cafferata, Dr. Cameron, Mr. Clarence Pemberton (surgeon), Mr. Tennyson Lloyd (solicitor), Inspector Horne, and detective Kehoe, who proved the seizure of the medicine bottles, &c., and their safe delivery to Dr. Edwards.

[187] “Free antimony” is what has not been taken up into the system. “Eliminated,” which has been taken up into the system.

[188] For these acids I have used the systematic nomenclature corresponding to the phosphates, as in Bernay’s “Notes for Students,” in preference to Fremy’s original titles.

[189] Sulphuric acid may be freed from arsenic or antimony by treating it with a few small fragments of charcoal and a little rock salt, and boiling till the hydrochloric and sulphurous acids have been expelled.

[190] Solutions of bismuth give with water white precipitates, which are not re-dissolved by tartaric acid.

[191] But it must be borne in mind that it was late in the evening when the cheese was taken up to the bedroom, where the light was not likely to have been strong; probably, on the contrary, was carefully shaded, so as not to annoy the invalid.

[192] This bottle, according to Serjeant Ballantine’s statement, had been sent by Dr. Julius to the deceased containing a quinine mixture.

[193] Arsenic is tasteless. See evidence of Professor Christison, in Madeline Smith’s case, ante, p. 322.

[194] This must be an error of the reporter, and must mean McIntyre, who, with Dr. Bird, took possession of the bottles in the bedroom. Dr. Bird delivered only bottles 1, 2, 3.

[195] In his evidence at the trial Dr. Taylor said that he found less than half a grain of arsenic, equal to 2¼ per cent. in the copper dissolved—an impossibility.

[196] “An attempt,” says Mr. Justice Stephen, “was made to account for the presence of antimony and arsenic alleged to be discovered by Dr. Taylor, by the suggestion that it might have been contained in the medicines administered to Miss Bankes during her life. Arsenic is generally found in bismuth, and for three or four days doses of bismuth, containing five or six grains, were administered to Miss Bankes. Dr. Richardson put the proportion of arsenic in bismuth at half a grain to an ounce, and as an ounce contains 480 grains, each dose would have contained about ¹/₁₄₀ of a grain of arsenic. If, therefore, Miss Bankes took twelve doses of bismuth, she would have taken between one-eleventh and one-twelfth of a grain of arsenic in four days. This seems (for it is not perfectly clear), from Dr. Bird’s evidence, to have been more than a week before the day on which he obtained the evacuation analysed by Dr. Taylor, and in 4 oz. of which he said he found nearly a quarter of a grain.”—History of Criminal Law of England, Vol. III., 459.

[197] The authorities relied on for this report are—(1) The Central Criminal Court Sessions Paper, 5th session of 1882; (2) the report in the Standard, in which the evidence is in many points given more fully and clearly, including the charge of the learned judge, in which he has kindly made some corrections; (3) the Summary of Affidavits in support of the petition to the Home Secretary, and the affidavits themselves, 70 in number, relating to his conduct and state of mind from his youth to his conviction.

[198] Dublin Medical Journal, vol. xix., p. 403.

[199] On the death of Herbert John, in 1879, the prisoner had received £479 India Stock and £269 Consols as his wife’s share of that child’s property.—Evidence of Mr. Chapman, and of Mr. Ormond, the trustee.

[200] At Blenheim House he had two wheel-chairs—one on the basement floor, and one on the bedroom floor. From the evidence of Mrs. Jolliffe, at whose house the Chapmans lodged at Shanklin, in August, 1880, he was then able to get himself up and down stairs, but with great difficulty—crawling up on his hands and knees. The spinal-curvature was gradually increasing.

[201] It will be seen later that he went through the form of going to Wimbledon that evening with Mr. Tulloch, and pretending to him that he had been to the school.—See evidence of John Law Tulloch, post.

[202] It is incorrectly stated, in the Summary of Affidavits, that symptoms of poisoning did not begin till about three-quarters of an hour after Lamson had left (p. 5).

[203] According to Banbury, a pupil, the boy had gone over some examination papers with him after tea, and was in good health and spirits. Ball, another pupil, gave the same account of the boy’s health.

[204] The following is a list of the various articles delivered to Dr. Stevenson for analysis:—“I received a number of bottles and things from Mr. Bond. There was a bottle, duly secured and sealed, and labelled ‘liver, spleen, and kidneys.’ That was labelled with the letter A. I received a bottle labelled ‘B,’ containing parts of small intestines, cÆcum and colon, and other parts of the intestines handed to Dr. Bond on December 7. A third bottle was received, containing part of the stomach. The fourth was a bottle secured, sealed, and labelled ‘stomach,’ handed to Dr. DuprÉ by Mr. Bond on December 7th, ‘D.’ The fifth was a bottle, sealed and secured as before, ‘urine,’ handed to Dr. DuprÉ by Mr. Bond on December 7, ‘E.’ The sixth was a bottle, sealed and labelled ‘vomit;’ and on another label, handed to Dr. Bond by Dr. Berry, December 6, ‘F.’ With this was a broken bottle, unlabelled, and a gutta-percha wrapper, with two seals upon it, as Mr. Griffin said. The next, ‘7,’ was a pill-box. It was secured and sealed, and marked on the tape which secured it ‘C.B.’ That is the pill-box (identified), and it is sealed in the same manner as the wrapper of the broken bottle. ‘8’ was a newspaper parcel sealed; ‘9’ was a brown paper parcel sealed; ‘10’ was a paper parcel sealed. That was the whole of what I received from Mr. Bond. ‘11’ I received from Inspector Butcher. That was opened in the presence of Mr. Bond. It contained a box—(this is the box)—with capsules in it. These capsules in the bottle were some of the 107 capsules. There was a paper with some sugar in it; some loose sugar, sweetmeat sugar. It contained a box of quinine powders—(box identified)—labelled ‘quinine powders’ in writing, and had the name ‘J. W. Littlefield, Ventnor,’ in print. There were four pills loose, one large comfit from a Dundee cake, and one of the capsules contained what appeared to be a pill, but which was really a similar comfit.”

“I don’t think you said what was in the newspaper parcel?”

“Eight packets.”

“What did the next parcel contain?”

“Nine packets. Packet 11 I received from Inspector Butcher on December 12, marked ‘1 W. D.’ Inside that there were two little tinfoil packages. Twelve was received from Butcher on December 14. It was a parcel labelled ‘The remainder of the sugar from Dr. Bedbrook’s.’ Sherry from the decanter used by Lamson was handed to me by Butcher on the 14th.”

“Did you later on receive this box and wafers?”

“Yes. It is marked 14.”

[205] See post, Chapter XI.

[206] See post, Chapter XI.

[207] The only evidence offered of his being at Shanklin on the 29th was an entry, in the “luggage and cloak office” book of the Shanklin railway station, of a ticket having been issued for luggage on the 29th August, in the name of “Lamson,” which Mr. Poland proposed the porter (John Durrant) should use to refresh his memory. As the witness could not identify the prisoner as the party; without saying that it was strictly inadmissible, Mr. Justice Hawkins considered it would have little effect, and it was not pressed. Neither Mr. Chapman nor Mrs. Jolliffe saw him there on that day.

[208] Evidence of William Tulloch, and the pawnbroker, Robinson, of Mortimer Street, Regent Street.

[209] There is some error in the report, as it was on the 1st December that the prisoner wrote to the deceased that it was too late to come that day; and Mr. Montagu Williams admitted, in his speech, that the prisoner visited Wimbledon, and said he went to the school on the 2nd. It must have been on the 2nd that the witness went with him, the first time, to Wimbledon. In his affidavit in support of the plea of insanity J. L. Tulloch says, that “he saw Dr. Lamson at his brother’s (W. Tulloch) for a few minutes on the 1st, and next day proceeded with him to Wimbledon.”

[210] He had previously, on the 15th November, tried to change a cheque for £15 at the American Exchange, in the Strand, where a parcel had been sent for him.—Evidence of Sidney Harbord, the cashier.

[211] In the cross-examination of Mrs. Bowles, the school-matron, Mr. Williams endeavoured to get from her an admission that the chemicals kept in the house for the purposes of the scientific lectures were unsecurely kept, and within the reach of the boy. Mr. Bedbrook, however, proved that the button of the cupboard in which they were kept was 6 feet 6 inches from the floor It was also proved by the chemical lecturer that the chemicals were only those acids commonly used in the production of gases—acetate of lead, hydrochloric and sulphuric acids.—Evidence of Eastick and Whalley.

[212] In the boy’s box, on the ground floor, five pills mixed with capsules were found. Twenty white powders, which were numbered 1 to 20, were got from a box in the dining-room, marked “J. Littlefield,” six of which—1 to. 6—were large. The tin box with the two pills was handed to the police inspector by Mr. Bedbrook, and a decanter of sherry from the sitting-room, and the remainder of the sugar from the matron. The evidence of Inspector Fuller, and other policemen, proved that after being transferred from various hands, these things were handed to the analyst, the Judge remarking on the want of care in transmitting such important pieces of evidence, most unnecessarily, through so many hands.

[213] The assistant at Messrs. Bell & Co.’s stated the price of atropia to a medical man as 4d. per grain—hence the remark of Mr. Montagu Williams on the entry of “8d.” “C.” in the cash book of that day. The assistants at Messrs. Allen’s altered their minds, on consultation together, within three hours after they had told the police that it was atropia they had sold to the prisoner.

[214] The fact of this poison having been sold by Allen & Hanbury’s assistant to the prisoner, on the faith of finding his name in the Medical Directory, was severely commented on by the Judge. No doubt by 31 Vict. cap. 121, sec. 17, Schedule A. Amendment Act, 32 & 33 Vict. cap. 117, sec. 3, it is not required, in the case of a medical man, that the name of the purchaser, the name and quantity of poison sold, and the purpose for which it is to be used, should be entered, and the signature of the purchaser is not required. The following questions and answers call for publication:—

The Judge.—“Suppose I applied and gave a name out of the Medical Directory, and asked for two grains of aconitia, would you sell it me?”

Answer.—“If I were satisfied at the time you were a medical man I should let you have it.”

The Judge.—“Then anybody of respectable appearance and well dressed might apply? and is there anything by which you can satisfy yourself that the applicant is not an impostor and telling you that which is not true?”

Answer.—“The only thing would be the style of writing—whether it was in the style characteristic of medical men.”

The Judge.—“That hardly seems satisfactory.”

Mr. Poland.—“The Act does not require registration in the case of sale to a medical man.”

The Judge.—“It strikes me that anyone could go, if he had sufficient knowledge to write in the technical style of medical men, and get poison without difficulty; and though the matter is not before us in this case, it may be that the law requires amendment in this particular.”

The jury also appended to their verdict a presentment urging greater restrictions on the sale of poisons, with which the Judge thoroughly agreed, and undertook to forward it to the Home Secretary. During the present Session of Parliament the Government have announced that a “New Poisons Act” is preparing, and that it will deal with patent medicines. It is imperatively required.

[215] Entries in the Register of the New York Bloomingdale Asylum.

[216] Affidavit of Dr. G. H. Boyland, of Baltimore, U.S., a fellow student, and Dr. John Swinborne, of Albany, N.Y., Surgeon-in-Chief of the American Ambulance.

[217] Affidavits of Dr. Charles H. Von Klein, of Hamilton, County Butler, U.S., Surgeon in the Russian army, and Dr. F. P. Carey, of Auburn, N.Y., fellow surgeons with Lamson at Bucharest.

[218] Statutory declarations of about thirty persons—friends, servants, and such as occasionally came in contact with him during his residence at Bournemouth.

[219] Ernest Juch, of 1, New Broad Street, journalist, and formerly a medical practitioner, who met Lamson in New York, August, 1881, and saw him daily for two months.

[220] Mrs. McElroy, when, with Lamson’s consent, taking charge of his medicines, found among other things an unmarked box of “sugar pills,” which Lamson said were either morphia or quinine, he did not know which. On this evidence the following remark is made on the accused’s behalf:—“After he (Lamson) left, and when John was taken ill, several pills were discovered on the table, which were not noticed while Lamson was there. It is believed that as John was suffering from indigestion (he had dined at one, and portions of his dinner were vomited undigested at nine) he determined to take a pill, and try with it one of the capsules just given him. John’s symptoms of poisoning did not begin till about three-quarters of an hour (really twenty-five minutes, see p. 520) after Lamson left, and he lived for about four hours after, whereas if he had taken the poison in the capsule, while Lamson was there, it is almost certain that the symptoms would have set in much earlier, especially considering the enormous quantity of poison said to have been taken. He then, unhappily, selected one containing aconitia. From the foregoing evidence of the way in which Lamson used and prescribed aconitia, taken with what Mrs. McElroy says of his ignorance as to what his own medicaments contained, it might well be that he ignorantly or insanely mixed these pills, and sent them to Percy John without any murderous intent.”

[221] A sample of “English aconitine,” recently obtained from Morson’s, was amorphous, slightly coloured, and gave a red-brown colour, with all acids, even acetic; yet its physiological action was perfect.

[222] In “Unbeaten Tracks in Japan” (Isabella L. Bird, 1880), it is stated that the Ainos, an interesting race inhabiting a part of that country, poison their arrow-heads with a paste prepared from the root of a species of aconite, Aconitum Japonicum.

[223] A servant girl was recently poisoned in New York by repeatedly rubbing tincture of aconite on the gums to relieve pain. She died in three days. (British Medical Journal, Aug. 26, 1882.)

[224] Woodman and Tidy, p. 393, wrongly give this as “one ounce of the tincture.”

[225] The case of Reg. v. McConkey, already referred to (ante, p. 515), furnishes us with an instance of aconite root being administered with criminal intent, and with fatal result.

In Aug., 1882, four boys and a girl suffered severely from chewing dried aconite root, which they had found in the street. The symptoms, tingling and numbness, abdominal pain, nausea, vomiting, giddiness, muscular weakness, pains in the legs, and coldness of the feet, set in very rapidly, the greatest delay being a quarter of an hour. There was no dyspnoea, and the pupils in all were widely dilated. The treatment adopted was the administration of emetics (sulphate of zinc and vin. ipecac.), coffee and brandy, and castor oil. Recovery in two to seven days. Quantity taken, “a very small piece.” (Brit. Med. Journal, 1882, p. 1039.)

[226] An illustration of the dangerous character of these preparations, and of the serious results which may ensue from the mistake of a person ignorant of medicine, is afforded by the following case, reported in the Medical Times and Gazette, of January 22, 1853. An inquest was held on January 15th, 1853, to inquire into the death of Emma Forty, an inmate of the Roman Catholic Convent of the Good Shepherd at Arnosvale, near Bristol. The deceased suffered from tapeworm, for which the medical attendant of the convent had prescribed a decoction of pomegranate bark and quinine. According to the general custom at the convent, the medicine was prepared by Miss Ryder, the sister-attendant, who unfortunately took a wrong bottle from the dispensary, and gave, instead of the decoction, a drachm of Fleming’s Tincture of Aconite. This mixture was given to the deceased on the Monday preceding the inquest (Jan. 10th); and death occurred in about five hours after the draught had been swallowed. After some remarks by the Coroner as to the imminent danger of unskilled persons being allowed to dispense drugs, the jury returned a verdict that death was occasioned by the administration of aconite by Miss Ryder, and expressed the opinion that much blame was attributable to the authorities of the convent for allowing persons, without the necessary knowledge, to dispense medicines: they hoped that in future such a practice would be discontinued.

[227] A report of the inquest is to be found in the Pharmaceutical Journal, 1872, p. 618. The deceased was the Hon. Gowran Charles Vernon, Recorder of Lincoln, and second son of Lord Lyvedon. According to the evidence of a brother of Mr. Vernon, the latter had for some time past complained of pains in his head, and had been in the habit of using neuraline with the object of relieving these pains. On returning to his residence, after a walk with his wife, the deceased was seized with a fit, and shortly afterwards died. The doctors considered that he was suffering from neuralgia and epileptic fits. Mr. G. Harley, M.D., M.R.C.S., stated that he had analysed neuraline, and found it to be an extract of aconite, mixed with rose-water; it also contained chloroform. The Coroner (Dr. Lankester) said there was no doubt that the deceased had expired from natural causes, and that he had been seized with a fit of convulsions, from the effects of which he died.