Lord Advocate.—“Is great thirst a symptom of arsenic?”
Witness.—“Generally it is, and generally an early and persistent symptom.”
Lord Advocate.—“Is it so in cholera?”
Witness.—“I should say that I have seen thirst very early in cholera. I think it is usually so. I do not know any injurious effect that would result if the face were washed with water containing arsenic, if you kept your mouth and eyes shut, but I do not recommend it.”
To the Dean.—“I cannot say how much arsenic would be held in suspension by an ordinary cupful of chocolate and cocoa. It must depend upon the kind of chocolate. Cocoa in this country is generally thin, but chocolate in France is generally as thick as porridge. It is not so in this country.”
EVIDENCE OF THE OPPORTUNITIES FOR THE ADMINISTRATION OF POISON.
On the first charge, that of administering poison on the 19th or 20th of February, it was urged on the jury that there was no reliable evidence that the lovers had met on either of these days, that Madeline Smith had at that time poison in her possession, or that the illness which L’Angelier was supposed to have had at that time showed arsenical symptoms. On the 17th of February L’Angelier told Miss Perry, the confidante of their loves, that he expected to meet Madeline on the 19th, and, from some other circumstances—what they were is not stated—when on the 2nd of March he told her how ill he had been, falling on the floor of his room, she said that “she knew that he referred to the 19th of February.” Mrs. Jenkins, however, could not fix the date of this attack: it might have been eight or ten days before the second illness (February 23), and, like his illness in January, she believed it to be due to bile, the symptoms being something the same as her own but more violent, on both occasions accompanied by a good deal of purging and vomiting. From Dr. Thomson’s evidence, however, it appears that his first illness in that year, which Dr. Thomson places on the 3rd of February, was due to a cold, with cough and boils, for which he prescribed. The only attempt that Miss Smith made to purchase poison before that date was that of sending the page boy to Dr. Yeaman’s to buy some prussic acid, which the doctor refused to sell to her. The Lord Advocate admitted that he could not prove that she had arsenic in her possession before that illness. “It would not do,” said the Lord Justice Clerk in his charge, “to infer, from her having arsenic afterwards, that she had it also on the first occasion.”[113]
On the second charge, that of administering poison on the 22nd or 23rd of February, the following evidence was offered. On the 21st of February Miss Smith openly purchased an ounce and a half of arsenic of the chemist Murdoch, ostensibly for the purpose—a false one, as the evidence proved—of killing rats at her father’s country house. It was mixed with soot, of which she some days afterwards spoke to the chemist, saying she thought arsenic was white. If, therefore, the lovers met on the 22nd, or 23rd, she had poison in her possession. Whether L’Angelier went out on the night of the 22nd, his landlady could not say:[114] she did not hear him come in, but, when she went into his room early the next morning, she found him suffering from his second attack of illness for which Dr. Thomson attended him, and from which he recovered in about eight days. That the symptoms were those of arsenical poisoning was hardly to be doubted, and though Dr. Thomson at the time attributed them to billious derangement, he said, that, “had he known that L’Angelier had taken an irritant poison, those were the symptoms he should expect to follow.” The evidence that the lovers had met on the night of the 22nd, or morning of the 23rd, rested on a letter, which not only did not bear any date or day of the week, but the post-mark on which was so obliterated that the post-office official could not fix any date, though he thought he could see the “M” of March on the stamp, which counsel on both sides agreed in considering an error. In that letter Miss Smith wrote: “I am so sorry to hear you are ill. I hope to God you will soon be better—— you did look bad on Sunday night and Monday morning. I think you got sick with walking home so late, and the long want of food; so, next time we meet, I shall make you eat a loaf of bread before you go.” This letter the Lord Advocate assumed to be written on Wednesday, the 25th of February, and to refer to the meeting on the night of the 22nd and morning of the 23rd. To Miss Perry, on the 9th of March, L’Angelier spoke of having had a cup of coffee and chocolate from Miss Smith, which Miss Perry understood to refer to two occasions, and added, “I can’t think why I was so unwell after getting that coffee and chocolate from her.” “It ought not to be forgotten,” said the Lord Justice Clerk, “that the contents of the stomach on these two illnesses had not been examined, and therefore it was merely an inference that they were caused by arsenic—an inference drawn from the fact that on the 22nd of March he died from that poison.” With reference to the purchase of arsenic, the learned Judge added: “He attached little importance to the statements of the druggists as to what was said by the prisoner about rats; without stating some such objects she would not have got it at all; and it was not to be supposed, if she had wanted it as a cosmetic, that she would tell the druggist. Did she see the deceased on the Sunday night, before the arsenic was administered? Mrs. Jenkins did not see him go out of the house that night, and he asked the jury to consider whether there was, on the whole, apart from the correspondence, evidence that they had met together that night? If there was no proof that the administration took place on the 22nd of February, then there was great force in the observation that the foundation of the case for the prosecution had been shaken.”
On the third charge—that of poisoning on the 22nd or 23rd of March, the following facts were proved. On his return to work, after his second illness, L’Angelier was so altered in health, his complexion wan, with a dark, hectic spot on each cheek, that leave of absence was given to him, for the first time since he had been in this employ. Miss Smith had advised him to take rest and change, and L’Angelier had apparently told her that he should go to the Bridge of Allan. On the third of March, however, Miss Smith writes that her family are going to the same place, and the next day suggests that he should go to the South of England. On the 5th of March he writes her a painfully earnest letter on the reports about her intended marriage with Mr. Minnoch, concluding: “Mind, I insist on having an explicit answer to the question you evaded in my last.” Next day the prisoner purchases another sixpenny-worth of arsenic, not again of Murdoch, but of Currie, and this time the excuse is that the house in Blythswood Square is so overrun with rats, that it is to be shut up and the servants sent away till the vermin is eradicated. This again was pure invention on her part. The family went to the Bridge of Allan, whence on Tuesday, the 10th of March, the prisoner wrote to L’Angelier that they would be home again in Glasgow on the next Monday or Tuesday, when she would write to arrange an interview, adding, “I long to see you, to kiss and embrace you, my only sweet love.” Before this the Minnoch marriage had been arranged, and the day talked about, if not definitively fixed. Again on the 13th she wrote him: “I think we shall be home on Tuesday, so I shall let you know, my own beloved sweet pet, when we shall have a dear, sweet interview; when I may be pressed to your heart, and kissed by you, my own sweet love. A fond, tender embrace; a kiss, sweet love! I hope you will enjoy your visit here.” It had been previously arranged between them that L’Angelier should not come to the Bridge of Allan until her family had left.