Baron Parke.—“What is that?”
Kelly.—“Scheele’s Acid.”
Witness.—“That prescription is in the handwriting of Dr. Addison. I do not believe that Scheele’s Prussic Acid could be mixed with a drink and taken by a person and not smelt after death. I do not think porter would disguise it. I put about twenty drops of Scheele’s Prussic Acid down the throat of a parrot with a glass syringe. Three women were present, and the smell was so strong and suffocating, that it compelled them to leave the room. The bird was afterwards stuffed. I mixed thirty drops of this acid with eleven ounces of porter, and found the odour slightly perceptible. I did not perceive the difference when the froth was on and when there was none. It is the property of prussic acid to give out a smell when volatilising. Apple-pips contain prussic acid. I have assisted at the extracting it from fifteen small apples. The process was a soft-water bath, diluted sulphuric acid, and sulphate of iron. Two Grains And a Quarter of Cyanide of Silver Were Produced. I did this under the direction of Dr. Lievesley, a lecturer at the London Hospital. In this process two sweet almonds were used.”[16]
On cross-examination by Serjeant Byles the witness admitted that he made this experiment on the 9th of March at the request of the Prisoner’s solicitor, and that he had never made this experiment before; that he had been with Mr. Hughes only about a year and half, and was paid £80 a year, and that Dr. Lievesley provided the London Pharmacopœia acid, and the porter. On being shown a leather or paper covering of a small bottle that had been found in the ashes of the grate in Mrs. Hart’s house, the witness declared that it could not be the covering of the bottle that he had put on, as it was too small for leather.
HISTORY OF MRS. HART.
Sarah Bateman said that she knew Mrs. Hart six years ago, when employed to nurse the Prisoner’s first wife, who soon after died. The witness at that time observed that Mrs. Hart—then known as Hadler—was with child, and the following statement was subsequently made by her when at tea with Tawell and the witness.
“I am in the family way, and will vindicate my master in it. He is going to be married to Sarah Catforth (the present wife), ‘and if it was to get abroad it would make a great difference to him.’ She seemed much excited, and Tawell begged her not to excite herself. ‘He was about to be admitted into the Society of Friends,’ he said, ‘and should not like these things to get abroad.’ She said, ‘He could marry Miss Catforth, and no one, not even her mother, should know what had become of her.’”
Mary Ann Moss, of Crawford Street, Bryanston Square, with whom Mrs. Hart came to lodge in 1841, when she was confined of a girl, remembered Tawell frequently visiting her, as Mrs. Hart said, “to bring her money from her husband.” From there she removed to a small house on Paddington Green for the sake of privacy, where Tawell paid regular visits, and eventually to Salt Hill, at Tawell’s desire. She represented to this witness that her husband was Tawell’s son, that Tawell disapproved of the marriage, and that the girl and a boy of whom she had been subsequently delivered were his. Mrs. Hart’s mother, Mrs. Hadler, also spoke to her having not heard of her for several years.
With the proof by a clerk of Barnet’s Bank that Tawell had drawn a cheque for £14 on the 1st of January, and the identification of certain letters being in his handwriting, the case for the prosecution was closed.