[123] If this was the use for which the prisoner bought the arsenic, it is at least curious that she did not buy it until the 21st of February, 1857, when she was endeavouring to get her letters back from L’Angelier. The article in Blackwood was in December, 1853. Johnston’s Book was published in 1855, and of the papers in Chambers, the first was in December, 1851, the second in June, 1853, and the third in July, 1856.
[124] Without wishing to fight over again the case of Eliza Fenning, I would refer any one at all curious on this point to a letter to the Times, quoted in the “Annual Register” for July 29, 1855, from the Rev. J. H. Gurney, the nephew of the well-known shorthand writer, in which it is stated, on the authority of an extract from his uncle’s note-book, that Eliza Fenning did confess the crime to the Rev. James Upton, a Baptist minister, whose chapel she attended, though she subsequently maintained her innocence to other visitors.
[125] The learned Judge had previously said, “If this had been an appointment about business, and it had been shown that a person came to town for the purpose of seeing another, and he went out for that purpose, having no other object in coming to Glasgow, they would probably scout the notion of a person saying, ‘I never saw or heard of him that day that he came;’ but the inference they were asked to draw was this, that they met on that night, when the fact of their meeting is the foundation of the charge of murder. Therefore the jury must feel that the grounds of drawing an inference in the ordinary matters of civil business, or the actual appointment of mutual friends is one thing, and the inference from the fact that he came to Glasgow, that they did meet, and that, therefore, the poison was administered to him by her at that time, is another, and a most enormous jump in the category of inferences.”
[126] Evidence of Samuel Peckeridge, his fellow-workman; Thomas Denman, who had seen him near the reservoir on Stamford Hill, on the 24th, vomiting, and going to the public-house for brandy; James Ashby, another turncock of the East London Company’s; Mrs. Gillett, and Mr. Toulmin, of Clapton.
[127] On Dr. Letheby’s evidence, see remarks in Chapter VII., p. 395.
[128] A. Andrews also proved that she had only objected to the post-mortem because she knew the deceased objected to it; that she said “Thank God, I am innocent. Poor dear soul, I loved him too well to injure him;” and had told him that Annie had eaten the rest of the gruel, and that Mrs. Gillett knew it.
[129] James Urry, the secretary of the benefit society, proved that the deceased had been insured in it nearly two years—these would not have been completed until February 2nd, and that, in consequence, she would be entitled to only £7 10s. instead of £10. When he saw the prisoner she seemed absorbed in grief.
[130] See on this the remarks in Chapter VII. p. 395.
[131] Tidy (Handbook of Modern Chem., 1878, p. 397) states that 1,000 parts of boiling water, digested for twenty-four hours with the powder, dissolve—of the opaque form, 5·4 parts; of the transparent, 10; of the crystalline, 15.
[132] In this case, which was tried before the late Lord Denman, at the Summer Assizes, 1848, very many of the guests at a dinner given to celebrate the election of an Independent minister were seriously affected, and the death of the chairman (an invalid) hastened, by eating of a blancmange made in the form of a cucumber, surrounded with leaves—all of the natural green colour. In colouring this sweet, emerald green, in which, on analysis, 47½ per cent. of arsenite of copper was found, had been used to such an extent that the colour was in some parts half an inch in depth. The pastrycook (Franklin) had been previously warned, by the chemist who sold it to him, of its poisonous qualities, and for a time had discontinued its use for eatables; and the defence was, that in this case his apprentice (Randall) had used it under the impression that the sweet was only for ornament. They were both found guilty of manslaughter, and sentenced to three months’ imprisonment with hard labour.