Recollections of Old Liverpool

by James Stonehouse

Fortunately, only one life was lost, that of a fool-hardy young man who would press forward to see the fire better—he rushed up to the High-street door and a piece of timber fell on him. The surging of the crowd caused several persons to be struck down and trampled upon. I saved one woman’s life by beating off the people who would have crushed her. By twelve o’clock the fire had slackened considerably, and by the evening it was to all appearance subdued. But the fire in the interior remained smouldering for some time afterwards. In the churches on that day the event was alluded to in a very feeling manner, and in St. Peter’s Church the rector offered up a prayer of thanksgiving that the town had been spared from a more extensive calamity.

At this time High-street (there was a famous tavern called the “Punch-Bowl” in this street) was the communication between Castle-street and Old Hall-street, and it is a most strange circumstance that the direct line of road was not retained instead of cutting the new street called Exchange-street East through the houses and gardens between Tithebarn-street and Dale-street. It was a great mistake, and everybody said so at the time. Many great mistakes have been made in respect to our streets and public buildings, not the least of which was the blunder of filling up the Old Dock, and erecting that huge and ugly edifice, the Custom-house, thereon.

I believe if the conflagration had extended from the Exchange to some distance in the adjoining streets, we should have had some vast improvements effected. From the narrowness of Castle-street may be imagined what a scene of confusion it must have been during the fire. It is quite a wonder that many lives were not lost during that morning of terror. The inhabitants of the four streets in many cases prepared for flight, for the fire raged so fiercely at one time that the escape of the houses in the vicinity from destruction seemed miraculous. While I was helping to draw water from the yard of some people I knew in Castle-street, a burning ember or piece of timber fell into a lot of dirty paper which would

in five minutes have been alight if I had not been there to extinguish it. There were many such wonderful escapes recorded.

The trial of Mr. Charles Angus for the alleged murder of Miss Margaret Burns (who was his late wife’s half-sister) in 1808, may be considered as one of the causes celebres of the time. It took place at Lancaster, on the 2nd of September, before Sir Alan Chambre. Sergeant Cockle, and Messrs. Holroyd, Raine and Clark, were for the Crown; Mr. T. Statham, attorney. Messrs. Topping, Scarlett, and Cross for the prisoner; Mr. Atkinson, attorney. Mr. Angus was a gentleman of Scotch birth, and resided in Liverpool—in King-street, I think. He had been at one time an assistant to a druggist, where he was supposed to have obtained a knowledge of the properties of poisons, and he was charged with putting this knowledge to account in attempting to produce abortion in the case of Miss Burns, who was suspected of being pregnant by him, and thereby causing her death. Miss Burns was Mr. Angus’s housekeeper, and governess to his three children. The case rested entirely on circumstantial evidence, made out against the prisoner by his conduct previous to the supposed commission of the deed, by his conduct at the time and afterwards. At the time the strongest prejudice ran against Mr. Angus, and it must be said that the

public were not satisfied with the verdict of the jury; but at this distance of time, those who had an opportunity of looking over the evidence, and remembering the case in all its bearings, will at once say dispassionately that there was not a shadow of evidence against Mr. Angus. Miss Burns, who had been unwell for some time, was noticed previous to the 23rd of March, 1808, to be ailing, and that her size had materially enlarged; and it was suspected, as adduced by several witnesses, that she was enceinte. On the 23rd of March she complained of being very unwell, and went to lie down on a sofa in the breakfast-room where she remained the whole of the day, thirsting and vomiting. Mr. Angus would not allow his servants to sit up with Miss Burns, but remained in the room with her the whole of that night, the next day, and the following night. On the 25th Miss Burns said she felt better. A servant on that morning was sent to Henry-street for some Madeira that Miss Burns fancied. On her return, not seeing the lady on the sofa, where an hour previous she had left her, she looked round the room and discovered her doubled up in a corner of the room with her face towards the wainscot, while Mr. Angus was asleep sitting in a chair covered by a counterpane. The evidence was most conflicting. Several witnesses declared Miss Burns was not pregnant, others

that they believed she was. The medical evidence was also of a most bewildering and diverse nature. Some of the most eminent surgeons in Liverpool were examined, and none of them agreed on the case. This fact came out that no signs of childbirth were visible as having taken place—no dead infant was discovered. The room in which Miss Burns and Mr. Angus were, was at all times accessible to the servants, and no cries of parturition were heard during the lady’s illness. The fact of the matter was, Miss Burns had suffered from an internal complaint, and died from natural causes. This was shown by Dr. Carson, then a young and rising physician at the time, and who afterwards published a pamphlet in which he utterly demolished the medical evidence given at the trial for the crown.

The jury, after a few minutes’ deliberation, returned a verdict, finding the prisoner “Not Guilty,” on grounds as unimpeachable as the trial. In some of the circumstances attending and resulting from it, it was disgraceful, especially on the part of the medical witnesses for the crown, in their conduct towards the one for the defence—Dr. Carson. I have before me an authentic “Report of the Trial,” “A Vindication of their Opinions,” published by those witnesses, and Dr. Carson’s “Remarks” on that publication, in which he exposes their shortcomings with a master’s

hand, in a style as terse as it is bold, and as elegant as it is severe; never were the weapons of irony, satire, and invective more effectively used; his impeachment is as withering as his victory at the trial was complete. The authors of the “Vindications” had not only done what in them lay to ruin him in every conceivable way, public and private, but they had exposed themselves to his “Remarks,” all-pungent as they were, by going into court and giving opinions founded upon “the most disgracefully deficient dissection ever made.” The sore which they had inflicted upon themselves at the trial did not heal under the caustic of the “Remarks”; and so the doctor became a victim to local prejudice, passion, and persecution. But he gained to himself a world-wide reputation which outlived them all; the honours of the French Academy were bestowed upon him, and he took his stand among the literary and scientific magnates of the day. As to the trial, the theory of the prosecution was that the prisoner caused the lady’s death by administering a poison to procure abortion, and it was based upon a hole in the coats of the stomach, and a peculiar mark in the uterus; the medical witnesses for the crown affirming that the former could not have arisen from any other known cause than poison, and the latter a sure sign of recent delivery. No poison was found in the stomach

or intestines, nor were the supposed contents of the uterus ever found, and no other part of the body was examined. The hole in the stomach presented the same appearance, and was described in the same terms as those which John Hunter had called attention to as occurring in certain cases of sudden death, where there was no suspicion of poisoning, and caused by the action of the gastric juice. Doctor Carson accepted Hunter’s facts, but propounded a theory of his own, being guided to his conclusions by the experiments of Sir John Pringle and Dr. Bride, in reference to water at the temperature of 90 degrees dissolving animal substances. He successfully combated the notion about poisoning from another point of view, namely, the symptoms during life, the comparative mildness of which did not correspond with the usual effects of the poison fixed upon. As to the mark in the uterus, he gave his opinion that it might have arisen from other causes than the one alleged; two phenomena were absent, and upon this fact he asserted it to be physically impossible that there could have been a recent delivery; and, moreover, in his “Remarks,” he proved mathematically that the mark was four times the size it ought to have been on that hypothesis. Miss Burns had not been attended professionally by any one as she was averse to doctors. Mr. Angus in his defence