“I,” said this witness, “saw the prisoner on the 2nd of February in her house, and told her I had come to ask a few questions, which she might answer or not as she pleased, but that it would be my duty to repeat her answers to the magistrate; that I should like to have some women present to hear, and accordingly sent for two of her neighbours, and when they had come I asked her ‘Did she know of any arsenic being in the house?’ ‘No.’ ‘Did her husband use it in his business?’ ‘No.’ ‘Had she purchased any lately?’ ‘No.’ Brown was then brought in, and she turned pale and agitated. I told her Brown had told me she had, and she said ‘That was true, and she would tell me what for.’ On the way to the police court she said ‘she purchased it for herself, but thought better of it afterwards.’ I asked her what had become of it afterwards, and she said ‘she had emptied it into one paper.’ She then changed the conversation, and said that her husband was very fond of soda and acid powders, and that a woman had told her that he had said he was very troubled in his mind, and did not know whether he should not jump into the river or Clapton pond.”
On cross-examination he excused the presence of the women, on the ground that he wanted to see if Brown could identify the prisoner; that she wanted to say more but that he stopt her, and told her to tell the magistrate.
Of this last statement of the inspector, the Lord Chief Baron added in his charge—
“That it appeared to him to be a piece of hypocrisy, which accorded with all the rest of his conduct. He wished it to go forth to the public, and that the police themselves should understand, that such proceedings savoured of an excess of zeal which was perfectly unjustifiable, and which ought not to be looked on in any other light than discreditable.”
To Clarke, a police constable, she said, whilst in custody, that “she supposed she should be hung—they had told so many lies about it—she bought the arsenic for her husband.” To the female searcher at the police-station she said that she did not know on what charge she was brought there; and then, when told it, added, “I know he was poisoned, but not by whom.” And when told that Mrs. Gillett was the principal witness against her, declared that she was forsworn. On the second examination at the police-court, she told the gaoler that “she wished the magistrate to know something about the case. All she had said was true, except as to not buying the poison. She had placed it in the same cupboard with her husband’s powders after taking off the papers marked ‘poison.’ If he had taken it, it must have been by mistake, and she threw the remainder of the poison and all his powders into the fire. She intended to have taken it herself if he went on as he had done.”
THE PRISONER’S STATEMENT.
“I have nothing to say except that I never intended my husband to take the poison. When I bought it I intended to take it myself, if he had come home as he had done several times before. I could not live with him had he gone on so. I thought no more of it till the Sunday, when I thought he might have taken it instead of the soda, and then I burnt it. What I said about hanging was this—‘If I am to be hanged this moment I am innocent of anything to my husband.’ I have nothing more to say.”
Mr. Clarkson, for the defence, after alluding to the difficulties under which he laboured in consequence of the prisoner not having made any preparations for her defence, and the brief having only been handed to him as the case was opened, attacked the evidence of Coward in language which the Lord Chief Baron entirely adopted, and asked the jury to dismiss it from their consideration. He also characterised the declarations of the prisoner as told by witnesses clearly unfavourable to her. “With regard to the testimony of Dr. Letheby, if they relied on it, it would be necessary,” he said, “to come to the conclusion that the prisoner had continued administering poison to the deceased during the whole of the day—as it was proved that he was ill as early as eight in the morning. But he asked the jury if her conduct would justify such a conclusion. Her story might be true, and if the deceased took the poison through her culpable negligence in putting it in the cupboard with his soda powders, the offence would not be murder, but manslaughter.”
The strong remarks of the Lord Chief Baron on the conduct and evidence of Coward have already been given, and as the remainder of his charge consisted only of an analysis of the evidence, and its application to the different points of the case, it is needless to report it. As was characteristic of this kind judge, every point that could be made in favour of the prisoner was brought clearly out in his able charge. After a brief deliberation, a verdict of guilty, coupled with a recommendation to mercy on account of her previously good character, was returned, and sentence of death was pronounced by the learned judge.
A medical man of large experience, who was present during the trial, was so astonished at the statement of Dr. Letheby as to the time when the arsenic had been administered, that he communicated with the sheriffs, who brought the case before Sir George Grey, by whom it was referred to Sir Benjamin Brodie, Dr. Billing, Dr. Leeson, and other medical men of repute. These, it was understood, agreed that the time of administration could not be fixed. On this, at the urgent request of Dr. Pereira, Dr. Letheby wrote to the Home Secretary that it was his duty to admit that it was within the range of possibility—nay, even probable—that the arsenic might have been taken, as the woman asserted, early in the morning of her husband’s death, and in consequence the capital sentence was commuted for one of penal servitude for life. This case was used by Mr. Bright in his speech in the House of Commons in favour of the abolition of capital punishments, as a strong example of their danger.