Sophie Charlotte Elizabeth, the widow Ursinus, was born on May 5, 1760, and was the daughter of the secretary of the Austrian legation, Weingarten, afterward called Von Weiss. Contemporary historians call him Baron von Weingarten. He was supposed to have turned traitor to the Austrian government, and this led to his settling in Prussia and to his change of name. According to common belief, he had really refused a tempting offer made to him by the Prussian government to hand over some important papers, very much wanted. But he was in love, and the mother of his betrothed, an enthusiastic partisan of Frederick the Great, managed to abstract the papers from a cupboard. He had to bear the brunt of this misdeed and voluntarily accepted exile. Charlotte lived with her parents until her twelfth year, and was then committed to the care of a married sister in Spandau to be educated. Her parents were Catholics but she declared herself a Lutheran. Later, the father and mother being unwilling to countenance a love affair into which their daughter had been drawn, took up their residence in Stendal. Here Charlotte became acquainted with her future husband, at that time counsellor of the Supreme Court, who after a year’s acquaintance, sought her hand. She did not precisely love this grave, sickly, elderly man, but she confessed to a sincere liking and was willing to marry him on account of his many excellent qualities, his position and his prospects. She was then in her nineteenth year. The pair, after moving to and fro a great deal, finally settled in Berlin, where Privy Counsellor Ursinus died on September 11, 1800.
The match had not been happy; husband and wife lived separately; they were childless and Frau Ursinus was inclined to flirtation, having taken a strong fancy to a Dutch officer named Rogay. The aged husband did not seem to disapprove of the attachment, which his wife always maintained was perfectly platonic, and it was generally believed that the phlegmatic Dutchman was incapable of the “grand passion.” After leaving Berlin, probably to escape her influence, Rogay returned and died there three years before the privy counsellor. When the propensity of Frau Ursinus to secret poisoning was discovered, the making away with this Dutch officer was laid to her charge, but she was acquitted of the crime, and it was indeed sworn by two competent physicians that Rogay had died of consumption.
Privy Counsellor Ursinus died very suddenly and mysteriously, his death being in no wise attributed at the time to his chronic ailments. But when, three years later, the widow came under suspicion, serious doubts were entertained as to whether she had not poisoned her husband. Her own account as to the manner of his death only strengthened the presumption of her guilt. According to her statement, she had given a small party on September 10th, her husband’s birthday. He was in fairly good spirits, but had remarked more than once that he feared he was not long for this life. On retiring to rest, his wife saw nothing wrong with him, but in the middle of the night his moans and groans awakened her. An emetic stood handy by the bedside, kept thus in readiness by the doctor’s order (which the doctor subsequently denied), and Frau Ursinus wished him to take it, but gave him an elixir instead. As he did not improve, she tried the emetic and rang up the servants, but none came; then she sought the porter, desiring him to call them, but still no one appeared. So she remained alone with her suffering husband through the entire night. The following morning he was in a very weak and feeble condition and he died on the afternoon of the same day.
Grave suspicion of foul play was now aroused and Frau Ursinus was arrested. It was urged against her that she had shown no real desire to summon the servants; that she made no attempt to call in the doctor; that the family physician had never prescribed the emetic; why, then, was it there? A worse charge against the wife was her volunteering the statement that she kept arsenic to kill rats, a conventional excuse often made in such cases. And in this case it was put forward quite unnecessarily, for there were no rats in the house.
Yet there was no definite charge against Frau Ursinus. No motive for murder could be ascertained. They were by no means bad friends, this wedded pair. Frau Ursinus might in her secret heart desire to be freed from the bond that tied her to an infirm old man, and marry another husband, but she had always appeared grateful to the privy counsellor and treated him kindly. On the other hand, it was proved that she had purchased a quantity of arsenic for the purpose of destroying the fictitious rats. Sufficient doubt existed to justify the exhumation of the body and proceed to a postmortem examination. No definitely incriminating evidence was, however, forthcoming. The autopsy was conducted by two eminent doctors, who could find no positive traces of arsenic, but there was a presumption from the general condition of the vital organs and convulsive contraction of the limbs that it had been used. Three physicians who had attended Herr Ursinus in his last illness testified that his death resulted from a natural cause, that of apoplexy of the nerves, and repudiated all idea of arsenic. At this stage there was a foregone conclusion that Frau Ursinus would be quite exonerated from the felonious charge.
Suddenly the situation entered upon a new phase. Frau Ursinus was accused of another and entirely new murder, that of her aunt, a maiden lady named Witte, who had died at Charlottenburg on the 23d January, 1801, after a short illness. No suspicious circumstances were noted at the time of her death, but after the arrest of Frau Ursinus, the possibility of her complicity in this deed took definite shape. A careful inquiry ensued and the inculpation, amounting to little less than certainty, was soon established. Again the process of exhumation was set afoot and there was not the smallest doubt that the deceased had died from arsenical poisoning. It was equally certain that Frau Ursinus had administered it.
On her own confession she admitted her arrival at her aunt’s house on January the 16th. Fräulein Witte was sick and complaining, and her niece, who professed great affection for her, decided to spend some little time with her. On the day following the arrival of her niece, Fräulein Witte’s disorder increased, and she had other disquieting symptoms. Frau Ursinus now summoned a doctor, stating that she herself felt so low and depressed that she contemplated suicide and had made up her mind to take poison. In the meantime, her aunt became more and more seriously ill. On the 23d of January Frau Ursinus persuaded her to let another physician be called in, who pronounced the illness to be unimportant, but when he left it increased. Frau Ursinus watched by her aunt all night, during the course of which the poor woman died. She was quite alone with her expiring victim and must have been a witness of her terrible convulsions. It came out at the trial that on the occasion of a previous visit to Charlottenburg, Frau Ursinus had written to a chemist in Berlin for a good dose of poison to destroy the rats in her aunt’s house. Here again the rats were non-existent.
This pretence was as false as was her insistence on the fact that she had been in a great state of depression since her husband’s death. This mental condition and her consequent desire to commit suicide came up prominently at her trial. She had always affected great sensibility, wishing to pose as a fragile, delicate person, as she considered robust health to be vulgar. Yet she was naturally strong and well. No proof could ever be found that she meant to take her own life. When really she had most ground for depression, being burdened with a terrible accusation, and the scaffold loomed threateningly before her, the undaunted spirit of the woman rose to the occasion and her real and powerful nature asserted itself. She did not exhibit the smallest sign of low spirits, but fought on with desperate courage and self-reliance, disputing every point, lying freely and recklessly in her unshaken resolve to save life and honour. Her adroitness in defence was greatly aided by her extraordinary knowledge of the Prussian criminal code. Very rarely her fortitude deserted her, and she was betrayed into a strange admission, that if she had really handed poison to her aunt she must have been out of her mind. The object of this particular murder was plainly indicated in the fact that she expected a considerable inheritance from Fräulein Witte. Conviction in this case followed almost as a matter of course.
Her guilt in attempting the life of the man-servant Klein was never in doubt, but the motive remained obscure to the very end. One explanation was offered by Frau Ursinus herself. She denied all wish to kill him but admitted that she was making an experiment in the operation of lethal drugs with the idea of ascertaining their effect on herself. A more plausible reason was that she had at one time made him her confidant and wished to use him as a go-between in negotiating a second marriage. They had quarrelled, and Klein was about to leave her service, which she dreaded, lest he might tell tales and make her appear ridiculous before the world. She owed him a deep grudge also for having presumed upon the favour she had shown him. To get rid of so presumptuous and dangerous a person was enough to move this truculent poisoner to seek to compass his death. Klein eventually recovered his health and survived for twenty-three years, living comfortably on a pension forcibly extracted from Frau Ursinus.
The verdict pronounced upon her was one of “not guilty” as regards her husband and the Dutch officer Rogay. But she was fully convicted of having murdered her aunt, Christina Regina Witte, and of several felonious attempts to poison her servant, Benjamin Klein. Her sentence was imprisonment for life in a fortress and she endured it in Glatz, on the frontier of Silesia and Bohemia. From the first she was treated with excessive leniency and in a way to prove that prison discipline was then a mere farce in Prussia. She was permitted to furnish and arrange the quarters allotted to her according to her own taste, and she spent much time at a comfortable writing table under a well lighted window. She engaged a lady companion to be with her constantly, and passing travellers curious to make the acquaintance of a murderess were allowed to call on her and to listen to her unending protestations of innocence. She did not always evoke sympathy, and the government was much abused for its favouritism. A cutting comparison was drawn between this aristocratic criminal parading the ramparts of Glatz in silks and satins, and humble offenders who had been condemned for succumbing weakly to ungovernable rage and who were driven to toilsome labour in deep ditches, heavily chained and grossly ill-used. Here she acted the lady of quality, and being possessed of a considerable income, was able to give parties which were largely attended. At one of these receptions, it is said that a lady guest on noticing some grains of sugar sparkling in a salad involuntarily started back. Frau Ursinus remarking this, said, smiling sarcastically, “Don’t be afraid, it is not arsenic!”