Reports of Trials for Murder by Poisoning; / by Prussic Acid, Strychnia, Antimony, Arsenic, and Aconita. Including the trials of Tawell, W. Palmer, Dove, Madeline Smith, Dr. Pritchard, Smethurst, and Dr. Lamson, with chemical introduction and notes on the poisons used

by G. Lathom Browne; active 19th century C. G. Stewart

THE JUDGE’S CHARGE.

On the fifth day, the Lord Justice Clerk summed up the evidence in this protracted trial with great minuteness, in the course of his charge reading to the jury nearly the whole of the evidence, and meeting the various objections to its relevancy offered by the prisoner’s counsel. There were three points, he said, for their consideration. (1.) Did the two ladies, or either of them, die from poison? (2.) If aye, was that poison administered for the purpose of destroying life? (3.) Was it the prisoner who administered it?

On the first point, after calling their attention in detail to the medical and analytical evidence in the case of Mrs. Pritchard, that she died from slow antimonial poisoning, he said, did not appear to have been contested by the prisoner’s counsel, and, upon the evidence, he did not think it admitted of a doubt. As the evidence showed that it was not from a large dose of antimony taken lately before death that she had died, the idea of accident or mistake was excluded. That it might have arisen from unskilful treatment by the prisoner was negatived by his assertion that he had never administered antimony to her, except once externally in October last, which could have nothing to do with the state in which the intestines were found in March. The idea of suicide by slow poisoning, even if there had been any hint of a suicidal tendency on Mrs. Pritchard’s part, was equally inadmissible: she must, if killed by antimony, have had it administered to her for that purpose. In Mrs. Taylor’s case, into the details of which he fully entered, one was almost forced to the conclusion that her death was brought about by the combined action of aconite, antimony, and opium. As to the idea of accident in her case it was inconsistent with the fact that the Battley’s solution was pure when bought. “Was it then,” he added, “by accident that these two subtle poisons, aconite and antimony, found their way into her medicine-bottle: if not by accident, did she put them there herself, or had she any knowledge of such things as to enable her, if she were willing, so to poison herself by using her own medicine? There was no appearance of that, and the character and conduct of the old lady, her natural condition both of body and mind as you heard it described by the witnesses, is such as not to suggest the idea of suicide in her case as a possibility at all. Consider, then, with reference to both deaths, whether you can arrive at the conclusion, or whether you can resist the conclusion, that the poison by the means of which they were deprived of life was wilfully given to them for the very purpose of destroying life.”

Passing then to the third question, “Was the poison of which these ladies died administered to them by the prisoner?” the Lord Justice Clerk went with great minuteness through the painful details of Mrs. Pritchard’s long and lingering illness, the symptoms which it exhibited, the prisoner’s misrepresentation of it as gastric fever, when the medical men proved that there was no fever in the case, but clear signs of antimonial poisoning, and the various acts of the prisoner during it which were put forward as showing that he had, and that he used, the opportunities his position offered, for the purpose of administering the poison. The interest of this portion of the charge, as well as of that relating to the symptoms and death of Mrs. Taylor, and the prisoner’s conduct in relation to it, depends so entirely on the judge’s method of marshalling the evidence, already reported, that it could not be satisfactorily given except verbatim. Many of the remarks of the learned judge, on these points of the evidence, have already been reported in the notes. It will therefore be sufficient to give, here, his remarks on the question of motive, and on the suggestion of the prisoner’s counsel with regard to Mary McLeod.

“In regard to the matter of motive, I would suggest to you that the motive that his pecuniary difficulties would be relieved by the death of Mrs. Taylor, does not seem to have been made out satisfactorily. You will consider the evidence, but I confess I do not think it worth while to set it before you again. Then, the question comes to be, was there a motive? What is there in the shape of a motive that may be supposed to account for the perpetration of two such horrid crimes? That is the way it was stated, and ably stated, by the prisoner’s counsel. But there are some considerations applicable to that part of the case which I am bound to suggest to you. The absence of motive, in the ordinary sense of the word, is not a very uncommon thing in the experiences of a criminal court. In truth, the existence of any adequate motive for the perpetration of a great crime is a thing impossible. Still there may be what is called an intelligent motive—the existence of some foul passion, or some immediate and strong excitement, which, in a moment of half frenzy, drives a man to the commission of murder. These are all very evident and intelligible incentives to crime. But when we find that, in the opinion of the prisoner’s counsel, there is no motive, it means no more than this, that the motive has not been discovered. There must have been a motive or incentive, and yet we may never discover what it was. You are never in a condition to say that there was no motive, but only that the motive was not discovered; and the motives of human action, we know from history and experience, are often inscrutable. Another motive or incentive has been suggested—the illicit relation between himself and Mary McLeod. This is a very important part of the case undoubtedly, and one to which you are bound to give due attention. The prosecution suggests that the existence of that intercourse was the reason or the desire that led him to get rid of his wife. If that was the incentive, I do not think there will be much difficulty in explaining the incentive to the commission of the other murder; because her presence in the course of the chronic poisoning of his wife would have been a great obstruction and interference with his plans.[167] But it is for you to say whether it is a sufficient motive. It is a fair question for your consideration, and I should desire you to turn your minds to it very seriously; keeping only in mind this view, that even supposing you find it impossible to assign an intelligible motive for the commission of one or both of these murders, the absence of evidence of motive is not sufficient reason for acquitting the prisoner, if you are satisfied from the other evidence in the case that he was guilty. Motive, after all, can but create a presumption one way or another. It is not evidence of the fact of murder, that a man has an obvious motive to commit it; and just as little can the absence of proof of the existence of a motive be a reason for finding the prisoner not guilty, if the evidence of the fact of the murder be satisfactory against him.”

Again, after having shown how no imputation could rest on the servants Lattimer and Patterson, the learned judge thus dealt with the imputation thrown out by the prisoner’s counsel against Mary McLeod:—

“He has said that there was another girl there who stands in a very different position, and that it appears, singularly enough, that whenever an article of food was to be carried to Mrs. Pritchard, Mary McLeod’s is the hand that bears it. In short, if I understand aright his theory, it is Mary McLeod who caused these murders, and he invites you to choose between her and the prisoner, and to pronounce upon a balance of probabilities which of the two it was. This is a very painful position for you to be placed in. If it be necessary that you should decide absolutely between the two it must be done. At the same time the prisoner’s counsel did not seem sufficiently to advert, in considering the point, to the possibility that both might have been implicated, and, if that was so, I suppose we should have little doubt which was the master and which was the servant; and, although the one might be the active hand that administered the poison, if two were concerned, you would have very little doubt who was the actor, and who set on the other. And, in fact, if you should arrive at this conclusion, every article that the prisoner’s counsel alluded to for the purpose of throwing the guilt on Mary McLeod would be an article of evidence to implicate the prisoner at the bar. But I do not desire you to take this theory. On the contrary, I think it quite right that you should consider on the balance of probabilities, as has been very well said, which of the two is the perpetrator of this crime; and in considering this, it is necessary for you to advert to this—that the poison was administered in doses—in doses any one of which was insufficient to kill, but which was quite sufficient, in the agony it produced, and by the gradual reduction of the strength of the patient, at length to lead to a fatal termination. Is it conceivable that a girl of fifteen or sixteen years of age, in the position of a servant maid, could of herself have conceived and executed such a design, within this house, under the eye and subject to the vigilance of the husband of her victim, himself a medical man? That is very hard to believe. On the other hand, if you can suppose that the prisoner was the person who conceived and executed this wicked design, it is not so difficult to believe that Mary McLeod may have been the perfectly unconscious instrument of carrying out his purpose—suspecting nothing, knowing nothing of what was being done, and seeing nothing but great kindness on the part of the prisoner to her mistress, and seeing them dying, not rapidly as in the case of Mrs. Pritchard, and though rapidly in that of Mrs. Taylor, still in a way the prisoner accounted for as a medical man. You may understand easily enough that a girl in the position of Mary McLeod might be made the unconscious means of carrying out these designs, and perfectly innocent on her part. But there is no difficulty in this question. If you are satisfied that murder was committed, somebody did it. Some of them are plainly innocent, and therefore the probability of guilt is reduced to two. Of these two, one or both of them are guilty of this deed.”

Then with a remark on the suggestion of the prisoner’s counsel, that Mrs. Taylor died of an overdose of opium in the Battley’s solution, the learned judge left the case to the jury, who, after about an hour’s deliberation, found the prisoner “Guilty,” and he was sentenced to death.

After his conviction, in the hopes of exciting commiseration, Pritchard drew up a confession implicating Mary McLeod, but the transparent falsehood failing to gain for it any credence, he was induced to put forward a second, and, subsequently, a third and apparently full confession of his guilt. In this last he made the following statements: “I am guilty of the death of my mother-in-law, Mrs. Taylor, and of my wife. I can assign no motive for the conduct which actuated me, beyond a species of ‘terrible madness,’ and the use of ‘ardent spirits.’ I hereby freely and fully state that the confession made on the 11th of this month (implicating McLeod) was not true, and I confess that I alone, and not M. McLeod, poisoned my wife in the way brought out in the evidence at the trial. Mrs. Taylor’s death was caused according to the wording of the indictment and the main facts brought out at my trial. I hereby fully acknowledge and now plead wholly and solely guilty thereto, and may God have mercy on my soul.” He was executed on the 27th of July, at Glasgow, in the sight, it was reported at the time, of nearly one hundred thousand persons.

THE RICHMOND POISONING CASE.[168]