“It is spoken to by Mary McLeod. She tells you she had taken up the tray for supper, and that on it was the cheese and other things which were placed on the table at which Dr. Taylor and the other inmates of the house are sitting; that she came out, and that, on returning again, Dr. Pritchard handed to her a piece of cheese to take to her mistress. She did not see him cut off the piece of cheese, but he handed it to her sitting at the table; and it is perfectly obvious it must have been cut off the cheese eaten by the family at supper. If he placed antimony upon it, it must have been in the presence of the persons at supper—a piece of yellow cheese which must have indicated the powder of tartarised antimony, if placed upon it.[164]—It was not asked if it were possible to put this tartarised antimony upon the cheese while sitting at supper. I leave you to judge if it were possible. It was taken up oddly enough—I cannot help noticing the coincidence—by Mary McLeod. She says she ate part of it, and that it did her no harm; but the residue was taken down into the kitchen and eaten by Patterson, and she suffered from vomiting.”
Again, as to the poisoned egg-flip:—
“The doctor comes and tells his servant to prepare some, a thing not unnatural to be taken by a person with a delicate stomach, and for a medical man to order. But it is said this was a plot for Dr. Pritchard to get in his drugs in this way. He supposes that he went through the dining-room and got the sugar, and then into the consulting-room, and then into the pantry, and dropped the pieces of sugar, on which he had put antimony, into the egg. Does he give any proof of this? Does he suggest anything more than suspicion? The Crown seems to have doubted whether he could on the sugar have put in so much antimony as to have produced the effects which the servant girl says she suffered. Dr. Littlejohn thought it possible, but he had never tried the experiment. A possibility at the best—a large possibility—that he could have put in the drug. Was the egg-flip capable of producing the effects which are said to have been caused by it? ‘Barely possible,’ according to Dr. Littlejohn. What is its history: does it pass through his hands? No. It was left by Patterson in the pantry, and Mary McLeod came down for it to the kitchen. She was told it was in the pantry, and she goes up to bring it down again. There, again, you have Mary McLeod intervening in the matter, notwithstanding the dilemma on which the Solicitor-General placed his case: she it is who carries it up to the bedroom, and she it is who administers it to the patient who is suffering there. There is another remarkable thing in this case. The amount of antimony introduced must have been a very powerful dose, because, taking only a teaspoonful of the egg-flip as Patterson did, she lay vomiting and suffering all night. Mrs. Pritchard took a wine-glassful, and vomited for about half an hour afterwards. Surely if a strong woman took only a teaspoonful, and a weak woman a wine-glassful, she would have been destroyed by the poison that had so powerful an effect on the former.”[165]
Again, with reference to the bottle of Battley’s solution found in Mrs. Taylor’s dress after her death, into which it was suggested that the prisoner had put the aconite and antimony discovered in it, said Mr. Clark:—
“He knew, no doubt, that she was taking it, but it is not in the least degree proved that he knew where it was, in what bottle it was, or where Mrs. Taylor kept the bottle. Mary McLeod did know, for she bought it for Mrs. Taylor. But what is the ground of suggestion that aconite had been put into that bottle before Mrs. Taylor had it? All that you have is that Drs. Maclagan and Littlejohn say there was, and that they were contradicted by the person who actually observed its effects. And what became of this bottle? It was found on her person after her death. Is it possible to suppose that he had the means of getting at the bottle before her death to introduce the poison? How could he? It was carried about her person, and there is not the slightest suggestion that he ever had access to it; and yet you are asked to act upon that suggestion, because it is said, ‘You may probably trace the administration of a medical hand.’ No: probabilities are not in this case. It is proof, and proof alone, that we can go on. What was the history of the bottle? It was found in her clothes, no doubt, when the body was being dressed by Patterson and Nabb, and even they did not know the very great quantity, perhaps, that this old lady had taken. But still more, supposing that she should take no aconite, she had taken sufficient of the mixture to account for her death. Assuming that the highest mark on the bottle, as taken by Dr. Paterson, is a correct one, it would come to be not less than 2¾ ounces that had been taken. It was shown that the bottle was put by for some time; but if it was taken away after the murder, that is of very little consequence. If he had put antimony in it, would it not have been very easy for him to have thrown the bottle aside? But instead of that, we have him expressing his surprise to these two women that she had taken such a great quantity. He takes away the bottle, and brings it back again, and there it remains until examined by Dr. Penny, who then finds that it contains some aconite and antimony. But where is the shadow of a proof that he put it there? The bottle was lying open—was not locked up in any way: it remained in the house from the death of Mrs. Taylor till after the prisoner was apprehended, more than a month afterwards. Any person in the house might have access to it, and yet all that can be suggested to prove that the prisoner put in this antimony and aconite before her death was contained in the observation of my learned friend, that you could trace, or that you could probably trace here, the finger of a medical man.”[166]
The false statement in the certificate of death, Mr. Clark attributed to a desire of sparing the feelings of the husband. He did not justify the morality of the act, but, looking at the circumstances, asked the jury “if there was any degree of guilty knowledge when he asked Dr. Paterson to inform his father-in-law of the cause of death, and he was only forced to take that step by his refusal.” With Dr. Paterson’s manner in the witness-box he naturally dealt in the most severe language of reproof and censure.
“I do not believe,” he said, in concluding his remarks on this witness, “he saw any symptoms of poisoning, or he would have acted as any other medical man would have acted—unselfishly, nobly, and generously in this matter. And when you see that this is inconsistent with the whole conduct of the profession to which he belongs, I ask you to disbelieve many of the statements he makes. You cannot rely on these statements, given with a bias, for he tells you what is incredible, or only credible at the loss of his own honour, which I am sure he will strive studiously to guard. He has become a partisan in this matter altogether, and forgot what is due to his position and his profession. All that can be said of Dr. Paterson is this,—that he speaks about the prisoner, of his mother-in-law, and speaks further about what he said of her falling; yet even after all, this is merely an account of a circumstance given by him some months, or, if you like, a month after the case occurred. And because the prisoner made some statements not exactly consistent with the truth as now disclosed on the evidence, are you to believe, on Dr. Paterson’s statement, and upon his statement only, that these statements were made so as to show guilty knowledge. I can quite understand that after there is proof of administration you may support that proof by evidence of falsehoods which the prisoner may tell, if you have reliable evidence to prove that they were stated. But when you have no evidence of administration of poison, then the evidence is all the other way; then I think you cannot eke out the probabilities of the case by appealing to these probabilities, or to the falsehoods depending on evidence like that here, as showing conclusively, beyond a reasonable doubt, that this prisoner was the person who committed that foul crime upon the person of his mother-in-law.”
Having thus commented on the evidence given for the prosecution on all the leading points of the case, in masterly, if not convincing arguments, in conclusion the prisoner’s counsel dwelt on the admitted terms of affection in which he lived with his wife and children—on the impossibility of believing in his commission of such a cold-blooded murder, on the evidence adduced. “The whole evidence of the Crown,” he said, “hangs upon probability, and can never justify you in believing, in the first place, that he was capable of committing the crime; and, in the second, it is hardly conceivable that anything so unnatural should be committed by such a man.”