MARY ANNE HIGGINS, AND EDWARD CLARKE.
TRIED FOR MURDER.
THE trial of these prisoners, which took place at the Warwick assizes, on the 9th of August, 1831, excited the most intense interest in the county in which it occurred, owing to the peculiar circumstances under which the crime, with which they stood charged, was committed, and the relative position of the persons accused, and the deceased. The female prisoner, Mary Anne Higgins, was rather a good-looking girl, with a fresh complexion, and pleasing, though un-intellectual expression of countenance, and her appearance produced almost universal sympathy. Clarke, however, was the object of very different feelings; and although previously to the trial his guilt was involved in much doubt, the indifference which he exhibited on being introduced to the dock, procured for him a very unfavourable consideration amongst the crowd of persons assembled.
The indictment charged that the prisoners had been guilty of the wilful murder of William Higgins, at Coventry, on the previous 22nd of March, by administering to him three drachms of arsenic. In a second count Clarke was charged as an accessory to the murder, by aiding and abetting Higgins in its commission. Clarke was twenty-one years of age, and his fellow-prisoner only nineteen years.
Upwards of forty witnesses were called, and the investigation lasted from nine o’clock in the morning until an advanced hour in the evening; the material facts of the case, however, as elicited from the evidence, may be stated in a comparatively small compass:—
William Higgins, the deceased, was a man in an humble station of life, who had saved a little money, upwards of 100l. of which he had placed out at interest. Upon the death of his only brother, who left four or five children behind him, the deceased, being unmarried, took one of the children (the female prisoner) to live with him, and reared her as he would his own child, intending also to leave her the little money he possessed at his death.
About the beginning of the year 1831, a courtship commenced between the girl and the prisoner Clarke, who was an apprentice at the watch factory of Messrs. Yale and Co. at Coventry, in the course of which he evidently acquired considerable influence over her mind. He was observed, in the months of February and March, in the possession of more money than usual, including one or two golden guineas, a denomination of coin of which the deceased’s savings were supposed principally to have consisted; and he boasted, on more than one occasion, that he had only to go to the old man’s house whenever he wanted money.
On Tuesday, the 22nd of March, the female prisoner went into a druggist’s shop, and asked for two-pennyworth of arsenic to destroy rats. The young man in the shop told her that she could not have it except in the presence of a witness; upon which she went away, and did not return. She afterwards went to another shop of the same description, and made a similar application, to which she received the like answer. Upon which she observed, that she did not know what she was to do, as she came from the country. She added, however, that she had a sister residing at Coventry, and she would go and fetch her. She then left the shop, and, when passing through Spoil-street, she met a girl named Elizabeth Russell, who told her that she was going to the factory (Vale and Co.’s); upon which the prisoner said, “Just come with me as far as Messrs. Wyly’s, the druggists, and I will then accompany you to the factory.” Elizabeth Russell asked her what she wanted at the druggists’? To which she replied, that she wanted some arsenic to destroy rats. The girl then accompanied her to the druggists’, where she received the arsenic in her presence, with a label upon the paper having the words, “arsenic, poison,” printed on it. She inquired of the shopman how she was to use it, in order to destroy the rats; and he told her she might mix it up with some bread, or some substance of that kind. She then left the shop, and on going into the street she tore off the label, saying at the same time to the other girl, “What has he stuck this on for?”
They walked as far as the factory, which they reached just as the men were coming out of it to go to dinner, it being then about one o’clock in the day; they here parted, and the prisoner Higgins was joined by the prisoner Clarke, who walked with her towards her uncle’s house; a waggoner who was passing along the street shortly afterwards, observed Clarke entering the uncle’s house, and the niece the next moment closing the door, which Clarke had left open, after him.
At two o’clock Clarke returned to his work at the factory, and remained there until eight in the evening; about nine he was observed standing at the entry which led from the deceased’s house to a yard where there was a certain convenience, from which the old man was seen apparently returning. The niece was also observed standing at the entry. Whilst the old man was in the yard, a particular kind of noise was heard, and the place afterwards exhibited the appearance of a person having been vomiting there.
At about one o’clock at midnight the female prisoner knocked up an old woman named Green, who lived a few doors off, and implored her, for God’s sake, to come to her uncle, who was taken very ill. Mrs. Green accordingly got out of bed, put on her gown, and followed her to her uncle’s. On her way, Mrs. Green was met by a man, who, when passing by Higgins’s door the moment before, heard two voices, as he thought, in the house; but could not tell whether they were male or female voices, or the voices of a male and female. Upon Mrs. Green going in, she found the deceased lying upon his niece’s bed, with his head resting on his left hand, in the attitude of a man who had been vomiting. Upon going up to him, she thought at first she heard him breathe, but found, when she stirred him, that he was stiff. She called to him, but received no answer. Observing some water on the floor near the bed, and knowing that the old man had been subject to a complaint which she called the water-swamp, she proposed going down stairs and making some tea for him. She and the niece went down accordingly, and, while below, the latter said, “Oh! I hear my uncle groan.”