Arsenic Sold to Maybrick by Druggist
MR. EDWIN GARNETT HEATON, a retired chemist (druggist), formerly carried on business at 14 Exchange Street East, Liverpool, for seventeen years; he retired from business in 1888. He testified at the trial:
“Mr. Maybrick called frequently at my shop for about ten years or more, off and on. He used to get the tonic called ‘pick-me-up.’ He would come to the shop, get it, and drink it up. He gave me a prescription which altered it, which I put up with liquor arsenicalis. He brought the prescription for the first few times; I used afterward to give it him at once, when he came into the shop and gave his order. I prepared the ‘pick-me-up’ and added the stuff. At the beginning of giving it to him, a certain quantity of liquor arsenicalis was given, and as it continued it was gradually increased from first to last, so at the last it was 75 per cent. greater in quantity than it was originally. He used to get it from two to five times a day, and each containing 75 per cent. increase.”
This testimony of Mr. Heaton’s was challenged by the prosecution, and considerably nullified by the fact that he did not know Mr. Maybrick, his customer, by name, but identified him by a photograph. To show how inexorably one fatality after another was woven into the web of my tragic case, it is in order to state that Mr. Heaton’s connection with Mr. Maybrick could and would undoubtedly have been perfectly established but for what in the circumstances can be characterized only as a criminal blunder on the part of the police. In the printed police list of the score or more medicine bottles found locked in the private desk of Mr. Maybrick at his office was one entered as follows: “Spirit of salvolatile, Edwin G. Easton, Exchange Street East, Liverpool.” This misprint of Easton for Heaton escaped the attention of everybody at the trial, and thus prevented the defense from identifying most circumstantially Mr. Maybrick with Mr. Heaton’s customer who had the arsenic habit.