Briefly, then, reviewing the points he had made, the Solicitor-General concluded his exhaustive address.
THE DEFENCE.
Mr. Rutherford Clark, in the opening of his speech, urged on the jury that the enormity of the double crime required it “to be proved by evidence strong, clear, overwhelming, that brought home to their minds and consciences, without the slightest suspicion on the testimony, the guilt of the prisoner,” and that “the motives assigned for it were not such as could ever have, in the slightest degree, actuated any human being to the commission of such hideous offences.” Whilst he could not deny that he had the opportunity of committing the crime, he contended “that it went a very short way—indeed no way at all—in even suggesting or indicating his guilt.”
“If,” he said, “you find a case where crime is committed, and where the person charged with committing it has made an opportunity for himself—has been zealous in obtaining opportunities—then opportunity is of the greatest possible importance and the strongest possible evidence; but to say that he has opportunity in this case is nothing more than to say it was likely, as indeed it was true, that the husband who was attending the sick bed of his wife, should carry to her some of her meals, and send up others with her meals. But that he should do so is, I am sure, nothing unnatural—nothing to suggest guilt. It would have been frightfully suggestive of guilt, if, instead of sending up these meals, and taking them up himself, he had always chosen some other agent to carry them up and to administer the food she was taking. If that had been the case, I should have been inclined to say that the Crown would have had a case much more strong to indicate guilt, than they have when, as it is stated here, that he was administering to the comfort of his wife while upon her death-bed.”[161]
On the point that the prisoner was in possession of the means of poisoning, “he was,” he said, “by profession a doctor, and had, no doubt, as most doctors have, considerable quantities of drugs in his possession. Whether he had more than most medical men kept in their houses was a matter of opinion, but it was absurd to suppose that he accumulated these large quantities of most powerful and destructive poisons—a minute dose of many of which would have been fatal—for the purpose of murder.”[162]
“But,” continued Mr. Clark, “it is not unimportant, in considering this question, and it is very important especially in considering the argument of the Solicitor-General, that these poisons were kept, not in any locked press, but, on the contrary, within the reach of the household. It is a remark I have made, that there was not one of the poisoned articles of food which ever reached the lips of Mrs. Taylor or Mrs. Pritchard without passing through other hands than the prisoner’s, and it is odd enough that, in regard to each of them, the person who administered it and who carried away the food left, is this girl, Mary McLeod. It will not do for the Solicitor-General to say, ‘I have established that one of two persons must have committed these crimes,’ and that you can trace the particular finger of the medical man in connection with them. Probability will never support a conviction. It will not do for him to say, as regards the death of Mrs. Pritchard, that it was the act either of the prisoner or Mary McLeod, and that it was not likely that a girl of under seventeen would have the skill to do it. Do you not think that he shrinks from the onus of proof when he accepts this convenient mode of getting rid of the difficulty, as he must prove that it is one of those two who did it. He must prove by evidence that it was not Mary McLeod or some one else in the house, and it was only by showing that it was not Mary McLeod, that he can bring this charge home, to the prisoner.” [Mr. Clark then noticed that the question was put to Lattimer whether she put anything into the tapioca, but that that question was not put to Mary McLeod.] “It is a singular omission in the case of the Crown, which necessarily depends upon being able to select between those two persons, whom the Solicitor-General stated were the only two who could have committed the murder, that they did not venture to put the question to exclude upon her evidence the fact that she might have been guilty. And this is all the more strong that I shall trace every article of poisoned food immediately through her hands.”[163]
Subsequently he reviewed the evidence as to each of the three poisoned articles of food.
“Let us see,” he said, “about this tapioca:—it was suggested, apparently through Mrs. Taylor, that Mrs. Pritchard would like some. Accordingly some tapioca is brought by a little boy, and it is brought in, and received by Mary McLeod. She says she placed it for some short time on the lobby table. Catherine Lattimer says Mary McLeod took it down to her, but Mary says Mrs. Taylor did. Now the suggestion of the Crown is that the prisoner put antimony in this tapioca, so nicely adjusted to the quantity bought as to produce sickness leading to death, but not so as to produce death itself. It would certainly have been of some importance to have shown that he had any opportunity of administering or putting any poison into it, but it is not proved—there is not a shadow of evidence that he had any opportunity, or to show that he was in the house at the time. He was a man accustomed to exercise an active profession, and, of course, would naturally be out at that period of the day; but at all events it is not shown that he was aware that his wife desired tapioca, or that his mother-in-law had ordered it. It is not even shown that there was the least possibility of his introducing antimony into that bag. It is prepared and carried up by Mary McLeod to her mistress, who declines to take it, and it is taken by Mrs. Taylor, who was taken ill after partaking of it.”
Again, as to the poisoned bit of cheese:—