An American Suffragette

by Isaac Newton Stevens

But the district attorney had called his first witness and the bailiff rapped loudly for order. For three days the State put witness after witness on the stand and by expert medical testimony, by toxicologists, by direct and inferential testimony, the district attorney more than proved the case which he had outlined to the jury.

That the child was probably permanently crippled from tuberculosis of the knee and that the tuberculosis resulted from faulty surgery was the opinion of the three surgical experts called upon that point, but upon cross-examination Silvia forced each of them to admit that it was possible that a former tubercular condition had recurred. She also forced the unwilling admission that so far as the fracture of the leg was concerned the bones had knit perfectly. The most damaging testimony was that of a neighbor woman, who had overheard Mrs. Bell exclaim to herself on the very day of the poisoning, "I will force him to marry me or I will kill him!"

Pressed on cross-examination as to what she saw as well as heard, she related how she had passed Mrs. Bell's door, which was open, and had seen Mrs. Bell with a document of some kind in one hand and a pen in the other, and had heard her utter this exclamation. When asked why she assumed that the statement must refer to Dr. Earl, she replied with some feeling that no other man had been seen around the apartment since Mrs. Bell moved in, the first of April.

A young woman, a clerk in Thompson's candy store in Boston, identified Dr. Earl as the purchaser of a box of candied fruit a few days before the poisoning. On cross-examination she said it was a box of identical proportions with the one marked "Exhibit A." Silvia asked her if the boxes from their store did not always bear the firm name on the lid and she admitted that they did, and swore that the one purchased by Dr. Earl had the firm name on the outside of the lid in gilt letters. Then Silvia showed her the box which had contained the poisoned fruit and asked her to state on oath whether or not that was the box in which she had sold Dr. Earl the fruit and she declared that it was not. Then she asked her if Dr. Earl had purchased any loose pieces of fruit, and she testified that he had not.

Silvia produced a box and asked the witness if it were not from the Thompson store. She answered that it was.

"Did not Dr. Earl also purchase a box of pecans at the time that he bought the fruit and is not this the box in which the pecans were packed?" Silvia continued.

The girl seemed to study for a few moments. "Yes, I do remember," she said, "he did buy a box of pecans the same day he bought the candied fruit and this box may have contained them, for it is from our store. I want to add, though, that I had forgotten about the nuts when the district attorney asked his questions here and when I was examined in Boston."

"How did you happen to forget about the nuts and remember about the candied fruit?" asked Silvia.

"There was nothing to recall the pecans to my mind until you mentioned them just now, but I remember that Dr. Earl bought them first and returned afterward and bought the fruit."

On redirect examination the district attorney got an admission from the clerk that at several places in Boston, which she mentioned, boxes could be obtained without any name on the lid, but that the Thompson store never carried them.