Dr. Miller, Professor of Chemistry at King’s College, confirmed the opinion of Dr. Taylor so far as it related to the chemical analysis, but gave no medical opinion.
Dr. Clarence Pemberton, House Surgeon at the Southern Hospital in Liverpool, deposed that he attended Mrs. James and paid attention to her symptoms. He made the post-mortem examination. “Taking the symptoms observed during lifetime, and the appearances shown by the post-mortem examination, and assuming the judgment of Dr. Edwards to be correct, the cause of death, in his judgment, was the diseased ‘cæcum,’ but the administration of antimony would undoubtedly accelerate her death.”
On cross-examination, he admitted that, judging from what he saw in the hospital, all the symptoms might be attributed to natural causes, and, in answer to the Judge, said that on the post-mortem examination he could find no traces or symptoms which he exclusively attributed to the administration of antimony.
Dr. Francis Ayrton said he saw the viscera and the other portions of the deceased sent for analysation. He observed some redness at the commencement of the small intestines, and some spots on the large ones, and he formed his opinion from these spots that an irritant had passed through the bowels. Antimony was an irritant, and would produce such appearances. He had heard the evidence given, and his opinion was that the deceased’s death was accelerated by antimony. He also admitted, on cross-examination, that what he observed in the viscera might be attributable to other causes than antimonial poison.
THE PRISONER’S STATEMENTS.
According to the evidence of Mrs. Cafferata, and the inspector of police, the prisoner openly accused the Cafferatas of having poisoned their aunt. He objected to their interference, and ordered them to leave the house, calling Cafferata a second Palmer, because he carried white powders about in his pocket, and saying, when the wife showed him the soda powders in question, “You are not likely to show me the right stuff.” When Mrs. Cafferata wanted to go to the hospital to see her aunt, he threatened to put her under arrest. That the prisoner had a great deal of drink when he spoke in this way was admitted by the witness, but when he made the same accusation of the Cafferatas to the inspector such apparently was not his condition. On the other hand, a Mrs. Higgins, on cross-examination, spoke to a threat of Mrs. Cafferata’s that “she would hang the orange dog (the prisoner), and that after her evidence they would want no more.”
PURCHASE OF POISON BY THE PRISONER.
The proof of the purchase of antimony by the prisoner was most unsatisfactory. A woman (Ann Foley) who used to work for Mrs. James, remembered that during the previous summer, on one occasion, when Mrs. James was sitting behind the counter and the prisoner was present, she said to him, “Here is Mrs. Foley; she will go for it;” that they then gave her twopence and told her to go and get antimony for the dog, and that when she went to a chemist of the name of Miller for it he would not let her have it, but told her to tell them to bring the dog over to him. This chemist’s assistant (E. P. Rees) remembered a woman coming for antimony some nine or ten months before, a second person coming also for it on the same day, and a third about four months after for the same drug, to poison a dog with. The third person, he believed, but could not swear, was the prisoner. Another witness (Eliza Brennan) told a strange story about the prisoner. She had been in Mrs. James’s service, some two years ago, and spoke to him about leaving and going to Dublin in the first week of her service. On this the prisoner, she said, advised her to stay, but added that, “if she would go, if she would buy him half-a-crown’s worth of antimony in Dublin, and send it to him by the boat, he would give her £5.” Lastly, a newspaper boy (Thomas Maguire), who slept at Mrs. James’s house, swore that
“The prisoner once sent him for a pennyworth of something for the dog, he did not know its name, but what he got was a white powder, which when given to the animal in water purged it violently—that within half an hour the prisoner sent him again for the same, and now told him its name was antimony. He got it, said the witness, from a young man, name Coopland, at Miller’s the chemist. He declared it was taken from a bottle six or seven from the window, and professed to point out the bottle to the Inspector of police. He knew that the letters ANT. on it stood for antimony. He had also several times since January last seen the prisoner when making bread and butter for the mistress take from his pocket a white powder in a paper and throw some of it on the bread before he buttered it; when he asked him once what it was, the prisoner had said it was salt. When the witness said ‘there was salt enough in the house without that,’ the prisoner made no reply.”
To Inspector Home the prisoner admitted that “he knew the use of antimony, and had given it to cattle, but had not had any in his possession for many years.”