Letters were also subsequently received by him, purporting to be from the same person, in which new demands for clothing, coals, and other articles were made, but at length, in the month of October 1808, two years having elapsed since the commencement of the charm, he thought that, the time had fully arrived, when, if any good effects were to be produced from it, they would have been apparent, and that therefore he was entitled to look for his money in the bed. He, in consequence, commenced a search for the little silk bags, in which his notes and money had been, as he supposed, sewn up; but although the bags indeed were in precisely the same positions in which they had been placed by his deceased wife, by some unaccountable conjuration, the notes and gold had turned to rotten cabbage-leaves and bad farthings. The darkness, by which the truth had been so long obscured, now passed away, and having communicated with the prisoner, by a stratagem, meeting her under pretence of receiving from her a bottle of medicine, which was to cure him from the effects of the puddings which still remained, he caused her to be apprehended. Upon her house being searched, nearly all the property sent to the supposed Miss Blythe was found in her possession, and a bottle containing a liquid mixed with two powders, one of which proved to be oatmeal, and the other arsenic, was taken from her pocket when she was taken into custody.
The rest of the evidence against the prisoner went to show that there was no such person as Miss Blythe living at Scarborough, and that all the letters which had been received by Perigo were in her own handwriting, and had been sent by her to Scarborough to be transmitted back again. An attempt was also proved to have been made by her to purchase some arsenic, at the shop of a Mr. Clough, in Kirkgate, in the month of April 1807, but the most important testimony was that of Mr. Chorley, the surgeon, who distinctly proved that he had analysed what remained of the pudding, and of the contents of the honey pot, and that he found them both to contain a deadly poison, called corrosive sublimate of mercury, and that the symptoms exhibited by the deceased and her husband were such as would have arisen from the administration of such a drug.
The prisoner’s defence consisted of a simple denial of the charge, and the learned judge then proceeded to address the jury. Having stated the nature of the allegations made in the indictment, he said that in order to come to a conclusion as to the guilt of the prisoner, it was necessary that three points should be clearly made out. 1st. That the deceased died of poison. 2nd. That that poison was administered by the contrivance and knowledge of the prisoner. And 3rd. That it was so done for the purpose of occasioning the death of the deceased. A large body of evidence had been laid before them, to prove that the prisoner had engaged in schemes of fraud against the deceased and her husband, which was proved not merely by the evidence of Wm. Perigo, but by the testimony of other witnesses; and the inference the prosecutors drew from this fraud was the existence of a powerful motive or temptation to commit a still greater crime, for the purpose of escaping the shame and punishment which must have attended the detection of the fraud; a fraud so gross, that it excited his surprise that any individual in that age and nation could be the dupe of it. But the jury should not go beyond this inference, and presume that, because the prisoner had been guilty of fraud, she was of course likely to have committed the crime of murder; that, if proved, must be shown by other evidence. His Lordship then proceeded to recapitulate the whole of the evidence, as detailed in the preceding pages, and concluded with the following observations. “It is impossible not to be struck with wonder at the extraordinary credulity of Wm. Perigo, which neither the loss of his property, the death of his wife, and his own severe sufferings, could dispel; and it was not until the month of October in the following year, that he ventured to open his hid treasure, and found there what every one in court must have anticipated that he would find, not a single vestige of his property; and his evidence is laid before the jury with the observation which arises from this uncommon want of judgment. His memory however appears to be very retentive, and his evidence is confirmed, and that in different parts of the narrative, by other witnesses; and many parts of the case do not rest upon his evidence at all. The illness, and peculiar symptoms, which preceded the death of his wife; his own severe sickness; and a variety of other circumstances attending the experiments made upon the pudding, were proved by separate and independent testimony; and it is most strange, that, in a case of so much suspicion as it appeared to have excited at the time, the interment of the body should have taken place without any inquiry as to the cause of death, an inquiry which then would have been much less difficult; though the fact of the deceased having died of poison is now well established. The main question is, did the prisoner contrive the means to induce the deceased to take it?—if she did so contrive the means, the intent could only be to destroy.—Poison so deadly could not be administered with any other view. The jury will lay all the facts and circumstances together; and if they feel them press so strongly against the prisoner, as to induce a conviction of the prisoner’s having procured the deceased to take poison, with an intent to occasion her death, they will find her guilty; if they do not think the evidence conclusive, they will, in that case, find the prisoner not guilty.”
The jury, after conferring for a moment, found the prisoner guilty;—and the judge proceeded to pass sentence of death upon her, in nearly the following words:—
“Mary Bateman, you have been convicted of wilful murder by a jury, who, after having examined your case with caution, have, constrained by the force of evidence, pronounced you guilty; and it only remains for me to fulfil my painful duty by passing upon you the awful sentence of the law. After you have been so long in the situation in which you now stand, and harassed as your mind must be by the long detail of your crimes, and by listening to the sufferings you have occasioned, I do not wish to add to your distress by saying more than my duty renders necessary. Of your guilt, there cannot remain a particle of doubt in the breast of any one who has heard your case.—You entered into a long and premeditated system of fraud, which you carried on for a length of time, which is most astonishing, and by means which one would have supposed could not, in this age and nation, have been practised with success. To prevent a discovery of your complicated fraud, and the punishment which must have resulted therefrom, you deliberately contrived the death of the persons you had so grossly injured, and that by means of poison, a mode of destruction against which there is no sure protection; but your guilty design was not fully accomplished.—And, after so extraordinary a lapse of time, you are reserved as a signal example of the justice of that mysterious Providence, which, sooner or later, overtakes guilt like yours; and at the very time when you were apprehended, there is the greatest reason to suppose, that if your surviving victim had met you alone, as you wished him to do, you would have administered to him a more deadly dose, which would have completed the diabolical project you had long before formed, but which at that time only partially succeeded; for upon your person, at that moment, was found a phial containing a most deadly poison. For crimes like yours, in this world, the gates of mercy are closed. You afforded your victim no time for preparation; but the law, while it dooms you to death, has, in its mercy, afforded you time for repentance, and the assistance of pious and devout men, whose admonitions, and prayers, and counsels, may assist to prepare you for another world, where even your crimes, if sincerely repented of, may find mercy.
“The sentence of the law is, and the court doth award it. That you be taken to the place from whence you came, and from thence, on Monday next, to the place of execution, there to be hanged by the neck until you are dead; and that your body be given to the surgeons to be dissected and anatomised; and may Almighty God have mercy upon your soul.”
The prisoner having intimated that she was pregnant, the clerk of the arraigns said, “Mary Bateman, what have you to say, why immediate execution should not be awarded against you?” On which the prisoner pleaded that she was twenty-two weeks gone with child. On this plea the judge ordered the sheriff to impannel a jury of matrons; this order created a general consternation among the ladies, who hastened to quit the court, to prevent the execution of so painful an office being imposed upon them. His lordship, in consequence, ordered the doors to be closed, and in about half-an-hour, twelve married women being impannelled, they were sworn in court, and charged to inquire “whether the prisoner was with quick child?” The jury of matrons then retired with the prisoner, and on their return into court delivered their verdict, which was, that Mary Bateman is not with quick child. The execution of course was not respited, and she was remanded back to prison.
During the brief interval between her receiving sentence of death and her execution, the ordinary, the Rev. George Brown, took great pains to prevail upon her ingenuously to acknowledge and confess her crimes. Though the prisoner behaved with decorum, during the few hours that remained of her existence, and readily joined in the customary offices of devotion, no traits of that deep compunction of mind, which, for crimes like hers, must be felt where repentance is sincere, could be observed; but she maintained her caution and mystery to the last. On the day preceding her execution, she wrote a letter to her husband, in which she enclosed her wedding-ring, with a request that it might be given to her daughter. She admitted that she had been guilty of many frauds, but still denied that she had had any intention to produce the death of Mr. or Mrs. Perigo.
Upon the Monday morning at five o’clock she was called from her cell, to undergo the last sentence of the law. She received the communion with some other prisoners, who were about to be executed on the same day, but all attempts to induce her to acknowledge the justice of her sentence, or the crime of which she had been found guilty, proved vain. She maintained the greatest firmness in her demeanour to the last, which was in no wise interrupted even upon her taking leave of her infant child, which lay sleeping in her cell, at the moment of her being called out to the scaffold.
Upon the appearance of the convict upon the platform, the deepest silence prevailed amongst the immense assemblage of persons, which had been collected to witness the execution. As a final duty, the Rev. Mr. Brown, immediately before the drop fell, again exhorted the unhappy woman to confession, but her only reply was a repetition of the declaration of her innocence, and the next moment terminated her existence.