THE RIVER AT MILWAUKEE.THE RIVER AT MILWAUKEE.
That there had been a murder still remained self-evident, but it was never positively known by whom it was committed, nor who was the actual victim. Some years later a man was arrested onsuspicion as a thief; he was carrying a bag heavily laden, and it was found to contain a number of copper articles, all of them stolen. The bag was inscribed with the same name, “Vogt,” as that picked up in the river. A farmer named Vogt now came forward and stated that about the time of the picking up of the unknown corpse he had sent his carter in with a load of wheat packed in bags such as the two mentioned. The man was supposed to have delivered his load, driven his team outside the city, the waggon filled with the empty sacks, and then made off with the price of the wheat. A more probable theory was that he had been murdered and rifled, his body being then thrust into one of his own bags, which was thrown into the river. The case was never carried through to the end, and neither the thief who was caught with the second bag nor the French sailor, Matelot Jack, was tried, presumably from want of sufficiently clear evidence to warrant prosecution.
Our next case of mistaken identity occurred in Scotland many years ago, when a farmer’s son, a respectable youth, was charged with night-poaching on the evidence of a keeper, who swore to him positively. It was a moonlit night, but cloudy. Other witnesses were less certain than the keeper, but they could speak to the poacher’s dress and appearance, and they saw him disappearing towards the farmer’s house.
An attempt to set up analibifailed, and the prisoner, having been found guilty by the jury, was sentenced to three months’ imprisonment. On his release, feeling that he was disgraced, he left the country to take up a situation at the Cape of Good Hope.
Soon afterwards the keepers whose evidence had convicted the wrong man met the real culprit in the streets of the county town. He was in custody for theft, and was being escorted to the courts. His name was Hammond. The keepers followed, and after a longer look were more than ever satisfied of the mistake they had made, and they very rightly gave information in the proper quarter. Then a witness came forward who, on the night of the trespass, had seen and spoken with this man Hammond, when he had said he was going into the woods for a shot. Hammond himself, knowing he could not be tried for an offence for which another had suffered, nowvoluntarily confessed the poaching. Great sympathy was shown towards the innocent victim, and the gentleman whose game had been killed offered to befriend him. But the young man had already made for himself a position at the Cape of Good Hope, and would not leave the colony, where indeed he eventually amassed a fortune. On his return to Scotland, many years later, he was presented with a licence to shoot for the rest of his days over the estates he was supposed to have poached.
We now come to the famous Kingswood Rectory case. On the 11th of June, 1861, Kingswood Rectory, in Surrey, was broken into, in the absence of the family, and the caretaker murdered. The unfortunate woman was found in her nightdress. She was tied with cords, and had been choked by a sock used as a gag and stuffed halfway down her throat. There had been no robbery; the house had been entered by a window in the basement, but nothing was missing from it, although the whole place had been ransacked. Trace enough was discovered to establish the identity of one at least of the murderers. A packet of papers was found lying on the floor of the room, and it had evidently dropped from the pocket of one of the men.
This packet contained six documents: a passport made out in the name of Karl Franz, of Schandau, in Saxony; a certificate of birth, and another of baptism, both in the name of Franz; a begging letter with no address, but signed Krohn; and a letter from Madame Titiens, the great singer, in reply to an appeal for help. Besides these, there was a sheet of paper on which were inscribed the addresses of many prominent personages; part of the stock-in-trade of a begging-letter writer. All these papers plainly implied that one of the criminal intruders into Kingswood Rectory was a German. Moreover, within the last few days several German tramps had been seen in the neighbourhood of Kingswood, one of whom exactly answered to the description on the passport.
A few weeks later, a young German, in custody in London for a trifling offence, was recognised as Karl Franz. He himself positively denied that he was the man, but at last acknowledged that the documents found in Kingswood Rectory were his property. He was, in due course, committed for trial at the Croydon assizes. Theprosecution seemed to hold very convincing evidence against him. A Saxon police officer was brought over, who identified him as Karl Franz, and swore that the various certificates produced had been delivered to him on the 6th of April of the same year. Another witness swore to Franz as one of the men seen in the neighbourhood of the rectory on the 11th of June; while a third deposed to having met two strangers in a wayside public-house, talking a foreign language, and identified Franz as one of them. This recognition was made in Newgate, where he picked out Franz from a crowd of prisoners. Yet more: the servant of a brushmaker in Reigate deposed that two men, speaking some unknown tongue, had come into the shop on the day of the crime, and had bought a hank of cord. One of these men she firmly believed to be the accused. This was the same cord as that with which the murdered woman was bound.
What could the accused say to rebut such seemingly overwhelming evidence? He had, nevertheless, a case, and a strong case. He explained first that he had changed his name because he had been told of the Kingswood murder, and of the discovery of his papers. They were undoubtedly his papers, but they had been stolen from him. His story was that he had landed at Hull, and was on the tramp to London, when he met two other Germans by the way, seamen, Adolf Krohn and Muller by name, and they all joined company. Muller had no papers, and was very anxious that Karl Franz should give him his. On the borders of Northamptonshire the three tramps spent the night behind a haystack. Next morning Franz awoke to find himself alone; his companions had decamped, and his papers were gone. He had been robbed also of a small bag containing a full suit of clothes.
This story was discredited. It is a very old dodge for accused persons to say that suspicious articles found on the scene of a crime had been stolen from them. Yet Franz’s statement was suddenly and unexpectedly corroborated from an independent source. The day after he had told his story, two vagrants, who were wandering on the confines of Northamptonshire, came across some papers hidden in a heap of straw. They took them to the nearest police-station, when it was found that they bore upon the Kingswood case. One was a rough diary kept by the prisoner Franz from the moment of his landing at Hull to the day on which he lost his other papers. The inference was that it had been stolen from him too, but thatthe thieves, on examination, found the diary useless, and got rid of it. Another of the papers was a certificate of confirmation in the name of Franz. Now, too, it was proved beyond doubt that the letter written by Madame Titiens was not intended for the accused. The recipient of that letter might no doubt have been an accomplice of the accused, but then it must have been believed that these men kept their papers together in one lot, which was hardly likely.
Inspector. Captain. Foot Gendarme. SAXON POLICE.Inspector.Captain.Foot Gendarme.SAXON POLICE.
Another curious point on which the prosecution relied also broke down. A piece of cord had been found in Franz’s lodgings, exactly corresponding with that bought at Reigate, and used in tying the victim. But now it was shown that this cord could only have been supplied to the Reigate shop by one rope-maker, there being but one manufacturer of that kind of cord; and this fact rested on the most positive evidence of experts. Franz had declared that he had picked up this bit of cord in a street in Whitechapel, near his lodgings, and opposite to a tobacconist’s shop. On further inquiry it was not only found that the rope factory which alone suppliedthis cord was situated within a few yards of Franz’s lodgings, but his solicitor, in verifying this, picked up a scrap of the very same cord in front of a shop in that same street!
A very narrow escape from wrongful conviction occurred in the case generally known as the Cannon Street murder, which happened in April, 1866. Here the suspected murderer was tried for his life, and the circumstantial evidence against him was so exceedingly strong that but for a very able defence conducted before Mr. Baron Bramwell, one of the strongest judges England has had, the prisoner would surely have been convicted.
A certain Sarah Milson was housekeeper at Messrs. Bevington’s, the well-known furriers and leather dressers of Cannon Street. She was a widow, and had been employed by the firm for several years. It was her duty to occupy the premises at night when the working hands had left the house. She was not alone, for a female cook also lived on the premises. It was the rule of the house that the porter, a man named Kit, should lock the doors when the day’s work was over, and hand over the keys, including those of the safe, to Mrs. Milson.
On the night of the 11th of April, 1866, Kit performed this duty, and then called upstairs through the speaking-tube to Mrs. Milson, who came down to receive the keys. His last act was to extinguish the light in the lobby, after which he was shown out of the front door by Mrs. Milson.
A little later the same evening the cook, who was upstairs in her bedroom, heard a ring at the door-bell, and was on the point of answering it when Mrs. Milson, who was sitting in the dining-room, called out that the bell was for her, and she accordingly went down. This was about ten minutes past nine. The unfortunate housekeeper was never again seen alive. Later that night the cook, on going downstairs with a lighted candle in her hand, found Mrs. Milson dead at the foot of the stairs. The police were at once called in, and found that death was caused by the battering in of the woman’s head, and a large quantity of blood was spattered over the stairs. A crowbar was found close to the body, and was probably the instrumentby which the murder had been effected, although it was unstained with blood.
“FOUND MRS. MILSON DEAD AT THE FOOT OF THE STAIRS” (p. 117).“FOUND MRS. MILSON DEAD AT THE FOOT OF THE STAIRS” (p.117).
An inquiry was at once set on foot by the police, who ascertained certain facts. First, the cook declared that a man came constantly to call upon the housekeeper, that she herself had never seen the man, but that on one occasion, just before his expected arrival, Mrs. Milson had borrowed two sovereigns from her, which had afterwards been repaid. The identity of this man was discovered next day when a letter was found in one of the boxes of the deceased, signed “George Terry.” This letter, a claim made upon Mrs. Milson for the repayment of certainmoneys she owed, expressed great indignation, and threatened that unless Mrs. Milson could offer satisfactory terms the writer would complain to Mr. Bevington of his housekeeper’s indebtedness. Attached to this letter was a receipt signed “William Denton, on behalf of George Terry, 20, Old Change.”
It was not difficult to follow up George Terry from the address given, and he was presently found as an inmate of St. Olave’s Workhouse. He readily told the story of his relations with Mrs. Milson. She had been acquainted with his wife, and as she was in difficulties, he had helped her to get a loan from a certain Mrs. Webber, the total amount being £35. Mrs. Webber appears to have been very urgent about repayment, and so Terry sent Mrs. Milson the letter which was found, but which he did not write himself, having secured the services of a fellow-lodger whom he knew by the name of Bill. “Bill” wrote the letter, went with it to Cannon Street, signed the receipt for such money as he received, and brought back the money. This had occurred some three months before. The man calling himself Denton was then traced, and proved to be a certain William Smith, who lived at Eton, at 6, Eton Square. The City detectives who had charge of the case went at once to Eton with the letter and the receipt, which were shown to William Smith and acknowledged to be in his handwriting.
There was enough in this to warrant the man Smith’s arrest on suspicion, but the police soon had stronger evidence. A woman, Mrs. Robins, who acted as housekeeper at No. 1, Cannon Street, volunteered some very damaging information. She stated that on the night of the murder she returned to No. 1 at ten minutes to ten. As she was on the point of entering her house she heard the door of No. 2 violently slammed. Looking round, she saw a man go down the steps and pass her on the right. He was dressed in dark clothes and wore a tall hat. The light of the hall lamp shone on the man’s face, so that she was able to know it; she noticed that he walked in a very hurried manner, leaning forward as he went along. In order to see whether Mrs. Robins could identify this man, William Smith was taken from Bow Street to the Mansion House through Cannon Street. He was between two police officers, but there was nothing to show that he was in custody. Mrs. Robins had been warned by thepolice to stand at her door at the time the party passed, and she was asked to say whether she could recognise her man. She made out Smith without hesitation; but to strengthen her evidence, she was sent for to the Mansion House, where the prisoner was placed amongst a number of people in a room through which Mrs. Robins was invited to pass. As she crossed the room for the second time she pointed to Smith and said, “This is the man I saw in Cannon Street.”
Another very damaging witness was a boat-builder, Henry Giles, of Eton, who deposed that he met the prisoner Smith in an alehouse on the night of the 11th of April. Giles asked Smith to play a game of dominoes, but Smith replied that he had to travel forty miles that night. “How can you do that?” asked Giles. “Easy enough,” was the reply; “if I go to London and back, that would make forty miles.” Giles then said, “But you are not going to London, are you?” and Smith replied, “Yes, I am,” at which Giles laughed and called him a liar. Another witness declared that he had seen Smith hurrying towards Slough Station about 7 p.m. The prisoner was said to be wearing dark clothes, a black coat, and a tall black hat.
The evidence of railway officials proved that a train had left Slough at 7.43 and reached Paddington at 8.40. There was also a train down at 10.45, which arrived at 11.43. It was said in evidence that the interval of two hours was quite sufficient to allow Smith to go into the City by the Metropolitan Railway, commit the crime in Cannon Street, and returnviâBishop’s Road to Paddington. Further evidence against the man Smith consisted of spots upon his coat which were believed to be blood-stains, but which he accounted for by alleging that he had cut himself in shaving.
Here was a man of indifferent character, an idle ne’er-do-well, known to have had dealings with the murdered woman, against whom very clear circumstantial evidence had been adduced. He was shown to have said he was going to London; he was seen close to the station where a train was on the point of starting for London; he was recognised by a respectable woman at just the time he could have reached the house in Cannon Street had he travelled up to Paddington as alleged, and added to all this there were the blood-stains on his coat.
Yet the whole case broke down on the production of the most complete and unquestionablealibi. It was proved beyond all question that Smith did not go to London from Slough by the 7.43 train. The prisoner admitted that he had walked in the direction of Slough Station with the idea of meeting a friend. But he was certainly in company with a man named Harris in Eton Square a little before 6.30, and the two remained together until ten minutes past ten.
THE MANSION HOUSE JUSTICE ROOM, WHERE THE CASE WAS FIRST HEARD.THE MANSION HOUSE JUSTICE ROOM, WHERE THE CASE WAS FIRST HEARD.
A number of other witnesses corroborated this statement—a brazier, a photographer, a gardener, a bootmaker, and so on. Ten or twelve men in all had had Smith under their eyes through the whole of the time that he was supposed to be killing the woman in Cannon Street. One had been drinking with him, three others had played cards with him, an alehouse-keeper’s wife had served him with beer after 11 p.m.
It was altogether absurd to suppose that these witnesses hadcombined to perjure themselves on behalf of Smith. But even if such a combination had been possible, although no motive for it had been produced, there was other evidence that spoke unconsciously for the prisoner. If Smith had really committed the crime he would never have denied that he went to London, as he did deny it; he would have made some excuse for his going, feeling sure that the fact would be discovered. Another curious fact was that, as he was undoubtedly at Eton at 7.30, he must have gone at great speed to catch the 7.43 train at Slough, a full mile distant. There was not the least necessity for it either, as the Windsor Station was only a few yards from where he had been seen. A defence of this kind was perfectly unanswerable; the judge summed up entirely in favour of the prisoner, and directed the jury to find him not merely “Not guilty,” but actually innocent of the crime.
I cannot leave this interesting case, in which there was nearly a miscarriage of justice from mistaken circumstantial evidence, without relating a curious fact within my own knowledge that grew out of this murder. In December, 1869, when I was acting as Controller of the Convict Prison at Gibraltar, a convict came before the Visitors who appeared under strong emotion, and who told me in a broken voice, with tears in his eyes, that he wished to give himself up as one of the Cannon Street murderers. I cannot remember the man’s name, but I will call him X. After hearing what he had to say, the Visitors asked him what had induced him to make this confession. “Because,” said he, “I didn’t do the job alone. My accomplice, Y” (as I will call him), “has just come out in the last draft from England. I have not yet spoken to him, but I am greatly afraid that he might forestall me in my confession.” The man spoke with such evident contrition and good faith that the Visitors felt bound to accept his story; but they sent for the other, meaning to confront them.
Y started violently when he came into our presence and saw X standing there, but he positively denied his complicity in the murder. For some time, too, he refused to acknowledge that he knew X, and then followed a strange altercation between the two, X earnestly imploring Y to make a clean breast of it, as he himself had done; Y as stoutly repudiating all connection with the matter. Just when we had made up our minds to dismiss both themen and report the case home for instructions, Y’s better nature seemed to triumph, and he admitted thus tardily that he had been concerned in the murder of Mrs. Milson. Our next step was to order both men into separate and solitary confinement until instructions could be received from home. We fully expected to hear in due course that both men were to be sent home to stand their trial for the Cannon Street murder.
I am not ashamed to confess that we had been completely humbugged. A full and searching inquiry had been instituted by the Home Office authorities, more particularly into the antecedents and movements of the two convicts, and it was established beyond all doubt that neither of them could have possibly committed the crime, seeing that both were in custody for another offence on the day of the murder. I am free to admit that in the many years I have since spent in the charge and control of criminals, I have been very loath, after this experience, to accept confessions, although I have had many made to me. Mine is not a singular experience, as most police and prison officials will say. Indeed, the general public themselves must have noticed that there are few mysterious crimes committed which are not confessed to by persons who could not possibly have been guilty. In the case of X and Y, the whole trick had been devised for the simple purpose of escaping daily labour and gaining a few weeks’ complete idleness in the cells.
False confessions, it may be added, are a frequent source of trouble to the police. Whenever some great criminal mystery has shocked the public mind, silly people, whether from constant brooding over the fact or from sheer imbecility, are driven to surrender themselves as the criminals. It will be remembered that at the time of the Whitechapel murders numbers of people stood self-confessed as the perpetrators of these crimes, eager to take upon themselves the criminal identity of the mysterious “Jack the Ripper.” I have recorded elsewhere[7]a curious case in which a lady of good position, married, having many children and a perfectly happy home, became possessed with the idea that she had committed murder—that of a soldier in garrison in the town where she lived. At length she wrote to Scotland Yard, and made full confession of her crime, adding that she meant to arrive in London next day, where she was prepared to submit herself to arrest, trial, and whateverpenalty might be imposed. All she asked was that she might not be separated from her children, and that if they could not accompany her to gaol they might at least be permitted to visit her frequently. Next day she arrived as she had threatened, and drove up to Scotland Yard in a cab, herself and children inside, her portmanteaux and a huge bath on the box. There she sat, and positively refused to move anywhere except to gaol. The police authorities, after vainly arguing with her, were on the point of taking charge of her as a wandering lunatic, and sending her home, but the Assistant Commissioner hit upon a happy device for getting rid of her. This was to tell her that if she went to gaol she must be separated absolutely from her children. If, however, she would sign a paper promising to appear whenever called upon, she might remain with her children in her own home. The ruse was successful; she signed the promise, and returned as she had come.
THE CONVICT PRISON AT GIBRALTAR (MARKED BY A *).THE CONVICT PRISON AT GIBRALTAR (MARKED BY A *).
An innocent man narrowly escaped death through an artful plot which led to a mistake of identity, but which fortunately, at theeleventh hour, was brought home to its criminal contrivers. A certain Mr. Henderson, a respectable merchant of Edinburgh, was in 1726 charged with the forgery of an acceptance, signed by the Duchess of Gordon, although, as a matter of fact, he was ignorant of the whole affair. In the year mentioned it was discovered that a man named Petrie, who filled the post of town officer or constable in Leith, held a bill for £58 which purported on the face of it to have been drawn by George Henderson on the Duchess of Gordon, accepted by her, and paid over by Henderson to a Mrs. Macleod. This Mrs. Macleod owed a sum of money to Petrie, and she begged him for a further advance, which he made, to the amount of £6, Mrs. Macleod lodging with him as security the acceptance which she had received from Henderson. Petrie took no action on the bill in the way of demanding payment from the Duchess of Gordon; this was at the instance of Mrs. Macleod, who assured him that her Grace was at that time engaged in special devotional exercises, and that the Duchess’s agent was absent from Edinburgh. Petrie was put off with other excuses. Mrs. Macleod continued to beg him to hold over the bill, and brought him a letter to the same effect purporting to come from Henderson. Petrie, although suspicious as to the genuineness of the bill, took no steps, and the matter came out otherwise; whereupon the Edinburgh magistrates issued a warrant for the arrest of the three parties—Petrie, Henderson, and Mrs. Macleod. Petrie was almost immediately exonerated, but Mrs. Macleod gave such evidence against Henderson that he was held to be fully incriminated, and was put back for trial. Mrs. Macleod asserted positively that the bill had been given her by Henderson.
In due course Henderson was arraigned. Several witnesses swore positively that they had seen Henderson sign documents, especially an acknowledgment of a debt to Mrs. Macleod. One, a man named Gibson, declared that the signature had been given in his own house by Henderson, and in his presence and that of other witnesses. He appears to have identified Henderson in the dock, asserting that he had often previously seen him and been in his company. Gibson further declared that Henderson wore a suit of dark-coloured clothes, and a black wig such as he now appeared in.
Henderson’s defence was that he knew absolutely nothing of the whole proceeding. His counsel adduced in his favour that he was aman of excellent character, and his demeanour at the trial, his straightforward answers to all interrogatories, and the outward appearance of truth in all his details, no doubt made an impression upon the Court. The Lord Advocate, his prosecutor, pressed hard for a conviction, on the ground that the forgery of the bill had been fully proved. The judges, however, stayed proceedings, and postponed decision until the following session.
Now, when the case looked blackest against Henderson, a mere chance interposed to save him. The Lord Advocate, who seems to have had no doubt of his guilt, was on his way northward to spend the recess, when he paid a visit on the way to a Mr. Rose, of Kilravock. One day Mr. Rose took his lordship to see a house he was building, and while inspecting it Mr. Rose missed one of the carpenters. On inquiring what had become of him, the foreman took Mr. Rose aside and privately told him that the man, hearing the Lord Advocate was at Kilravock, had absconded, saying it was time for him to leave the country. The man in question, by name David Household, had gone to the coast, proposing to take ship for London. Mr. Rose felt it his duty to inform the Lord Advocate, and the foreman was questioned as to whether the carpenter had been guilty of any crime. The answer was that Household was suspected of being accessory to a forgery. The Lord Advocate forthwith despatched a messenger to the coast, who apprehended Household, and carried him prisoner to Edinburgh. Household was brought before the Court at the beginning of the winter session and questioned, when he confessed that he had been party to a very scandalous and deliberate fraud. Early in the year Mrs. Macleod had come to him and asked him to write out for her the very bill or acceptance for the forgery of which George Henderson was charged. Household admitted that he had penned the whole document, and had imitated the signatures of Henderson, both as drawer and endorser of the bill, but that he had not written the name of Gordon. Household further deposed that he had assumed, at Mrs. Macleod’s request, the identity of George Henderson; that she had given him for the personation a coat belonging to her husband, and a black-knotted periwig; that she had carried him to a gardener’s house at the Water-Gate, where she had dictated to him a part of the obligation which had been produced in court; and had then taken him on to a house in the Canon-Gate (Gibson’s), where he (Household) had written the rest of the document, and signed it
“MRS. MACLEOD WENT TO HER EXECUTION DRESSED IN A BLACK ROBE” (p. 128).“MRS. MACLEOD WENT TO HER EXECUTION DRESSED IN A BLACK ROBE” (p.128.)
“George Henderson” in the presence of the various witnesses whom Mrs. Macleod had produced. He also confessed that he had written the letter which Mrs. Macleod had given Petrie as coming from George Henderson. Finally, after Mrs. Macleod’s arrest, a Highlander had come to him with a message from Mr. Macleod urging him to leave the country for his own safety. Household, however, did not take flight until the appearance of the Lord Advocate at Kilravock; then he went to Leith, and hid himself on board ship, where he was discovered by a Customs officer, and eventually arrested.
This evidence changed the whole character of the trial, and the Lord Advocate was the first to admit that Henderson was innocent of the forgery, which was now fixed upon Mrs. Macleod. The records of the case do not give any definite information as to who actually signed the Duchess’s name to the bill, but when Mrs. Macleod was finally arraigned this forgery was laid to her charge, and her offence must have been satisfactorily proved to the jury, for she was found guilty and sentenced to death. Two law officers, the Lord Advocate and the Solicitor-General, characterised the whole “as an artful and horrid contrivance, only discovered by the good providence of God.” It is stated in the account published that Mrs. Macleod went to her execution dressed in a black robe with a large hoop, and a white fan in her hand. When on the gallows she herself took off the ornamental parts of her dress, and put the fatal cord about her neck with her own hands. She persisted to the last in denying her guilt.
The Duchess of Gordon in this case was Lady Henrietta Mordaunt, daughter of the celebrated Charles Earl of Peterborough, and wife of Alexander, second Duke, whom she married in 1706, twenty years before the occurrences recorded.
Captain Donellan and the Poisoning of Sir Theodosius Boughton: Donellan’s Suspicious Conduct: Evidence of John Hunter, the great Surgeon: Sir James Stephen’s View: Corroborative Story from his Father—The Lafarge Case: Madame Lafarge and the Cakes: Doctors differ as to the Presence of Arsenic in the Remains: Possible Guilt of Denis Barbier: Madame Lafarge’s Condemnation: Pardoned by Napoleon III.—Charge against Madame Lafarge of stealing a School Friend’s Jewels: Her Defence: Conviction—Madeleine Smith charged with Poisoning herFiancé:“Not proven”: the Latest Facts—the Wharton-Ketchum Case in Baltimore, U.S.A.—The Story of the Perrys.
Captain Donellan and the Poisoning of Sir Theodosius Boughton: Donellan’s Suspicious Conduct: Evidence of John Hunter, the great Surgeon: Sir James Stephen’s View: Corroborative Story from his Father—The Lafarge Case: Madame Lafarge and the Cakes: Doctors differ as to the Presence of Arsenic in the Remains: Possible Guilt of Denis Barbier: Madame Lafarge’s Condemnation: Pardoned by Napoleon III.—Charge against Madame Lafarge of stealing a School Friend’s Jewels: Her Defence: Conviction—Madeleine Smith charged with Poisoning herFiancé:“Not proven”: the Latest Facts—the Wharton-Ketchum Case in Baltimore, U.S.A.—The Story of the Perrys.
“FEWcases,” says Sir James Stephen,[8]“have given rise to more discussion than that of the alleged poisoning of Sir Theodosius Boughton by his brother-in-law, Captain Donellan, in 1781.” It was long deemed a mystery, and even now the facts are not considered conclusive against the man who actually suffered for the crime. Donellan was found guilty, and in due course executed, but to this day the justice of the sentence is questioned, and the case, in the opinion of some, should be classed with judicial errors. This is not the view of Sir James Stephen, who has declared that the evidence would have satisfied him of Donellan’s guilt. “Why should he not have been found guilty?” asks the eminent judge. “He had the motive, he had the means, he had the opportunity; his conduct, from first to last, was that of a guilty man.”
Sir Theodosius Boughton was a young baronet who, on his majority, came into an estate of £2,000 a year. In 1780 he was living at Lawford Hall, Warwickshire, with his mother and sister, the latter having married Captain Donellan in 1777. Mrs. Donellan was her brother’s heir; if he died childless everything would go to her. Donellan claimed afterwards to have been quite disinterested. Hehad all his wife’s fortune settled on her and her children, and would not even keep a life interest in her property in case she predeceased him. This settlement extended not only to what she had but to what she expected, and his conduct in this matter was one of the points made by the defence in his favour.
CAPTAIN JOHN DONELLAN. (From a Contemporary Print.)CAPTAIN JOHN DONELLAN.(From a Contemporary Print.)
Boughton was suffering from a slight specific disorder, but was otherwise well; Donellan wished to make it appear otherwise. Talking of him to a friend, he described his condition as such that the friend remarked the young man’s life would not be worth a couple of years’ purchase. “Not one,” promptly corrected Donellan. On the 29th of August, 1780, a country practitioner who was called in pronounced Sir Theodosius in good health and spirits, but prescribed a draught for him: jalap, lavender water, nutmeg, and so forth. The remainder of the day was spent in fishing, and the baronet went to bed, having arranged that his mother should come to him and give him his medicine at seven o’clock next morning. He had been neglectful about taking it; it had been kept locked up in a cupboard, but, at his brother-in-law’s suggestion, it was now left on the shelf in another room—where, as the prosecution declared, anyone, Captain Donellan in particular, might have access to it.
At six a.m. on the morning of the 30th a servant went in and saw Sir Theodosius about some business of mending a net. The young baronet then appeared quite well. At seven Lady Boughton came up with the medicine, which she found on the shelf. Sir Theodosiustasted and smelt it, complaining that it was very nauseous. His mother then smelt it, and noticed that it was like bitter almonds, but she persuaded her son to drink off a whole dose. “In about two minutes or less,” she afterwards deposed, “he struggled violently and appeared convulsed, with a prodigious rattling in his throat and stomach.” When he was a little better the mother left him, but returned in five minutes to find him with his eyes fixed, his teeth clenched, and froth running out of his mouth.
The doctor was forthwith summoned. Now Donellan came in, and Lady Boughton told him that she was afraid she had given her son something wrong instead of the medicine. Donellan asked for the bottle, took it, poured in some water, then emptied the contents into a basin. Lady Boughton protested, declaring that he ought not to have meddled with the bottle. Donellan’s reply was that he wished to taste the stuff. Again, when a maid-servant came in he desired her to remove the basin and the bottles, while Lady Boughton directed her to let them alone. But now Sir Theodosius was in his death-throes, and while she was engaged with him the bottles disappeared.
Donellan, after the event, wrote to the baronet’s guardian, Sir William Wheler, notifying the death, but giving none of the peculiar circumstances of the case. Three or four days later the guardian replied that as the death had been so sudden, and gossip was afloat concerning a possible mistake with the medicine, it was desirable to have apost-mortem.“The country will never be satisfied else, and we shall all be very much blamed,” wrote Sir William Wheler. “Although it is late now it will appear from the stomach whether there is anything corrosive in it.... I assure you it is reported all over the country that he was killed either by medicine or by poison.” The step was all the more necessary in the interest of the doctor who prescribed the draught. Donellan replied that Lady Boughton and he agreed “cheerfully” to the suggestion. Sir William wrote again, saying he was glad they approved, and gave the names of the doctors who should perform the autopsy.
When they came, Donellan showed them the second letter, not the first; the mere desire for apost-mortem, not the grounds for it, as set forth in the first, that poison was suspected. Decomposition was far advanced, the doctors were not pleased with the business, and, knowing no special reason for inquiry, made none. After thisDonellan wrote to Sir William Wheler, conveying the impression that thepost-mortemhad actually taken place. Later, another surgeon offered to open the body, but Donellan refused, on the plea that it would be disrespectful to the two first doctors. Sir William, too, having learnt that nothing had been done, reiterated his desire for apost-mortem, and two more doctors arrived at Lawford Hall on the very day of the funeral. Donellan took advantage of a misconstruction of a message, and the body was buried without being opened.
Three days afterwards it was exhumed in deference to growing suspicions of poison, but it was too late to verify foul play. But the doctors formed a strong opinion of the cause of death, and later, when it came to the trial, they agreed that the draught, after swallowing which Boughton died, was poison, and the immediate cause of death. One said that the nature of the poison was sufficiently clear from Lady Boughton’s description of the smell. But the great surgeon, John Hunter, would not admit that the appearance of the body gave the least suspicion of poison. As to the smell, a mixture of the very same ingredients, but with laurel water added, was made up for Lady Boughton at the trial, and she declared it smelt of bitter almonds exactly like the draught.
The introduction of the laurel water followed the important discovery that Donellan had a private still in a room which he called his own, and that he distilled roses in it. A curious bit of evidence not mentioned in the report of the trial is preserved,[9]which shows how a single number of the “Philosophical Transactions” was found in Donellan’s library, and the only leaves in the book that had been cut were those that gave an account of the making of laurel water by distillation. Donellan’s still figured further in the case, for it was proved that he had taken it into the kitchen, and asked the cook to dry it in the oven. This was two or three days after the baronet’s death, and the presumption was that he had desired to take the smell of laurel water off the still. It also appeared that Donellan was in the habit of keeping large quantities of arsenic in his room, which he used, seemingly with but little caution, for poisoning fish.
Donellan’s defence did not help him greatly. It was written, after the custom of those days, and did not attempt to explain why
“NOW DONELLAN CAME IN” (p. 131).“NOW DONELLAN CAME IN” (p.131.)
he had washed or made away with the bottles. He submitted that he had urged the doctors to thepost-mortemby producing Sir William Wheler’s letter; but it was the second, not the first letter. On other points he maintained a significant silence. What went against him also were unguarded confidences made to a fellow-prisoner while he was awaiting trial. He said openly that he believed his brother-in-law had been poisoned, and that it lay among themselves: Lady Boughton, himself, the footman, and the doctor. Another curious story is preserved by Sir James Stephen, whose grandfather had long retained a strong belief in Donellan’s innocence, and had written a pamphlet against the verdict which attracted much notice at the time. Mr. Stephen changed his opinion when he had been introduced to Donellan’s attorney, who told him that he also had firmly believed in Donellan’s innocence until one day he proposed to his client to retain Dunning, theeminent counsel, for his defence. Donellan agreed, and referred the attorney to Mrs. Donellan for authority to incur the expense of the heavy fee required. Mrs. Donellan demurred, thinking the outlay unnecessary, and when this was reported to the prisoner, Donellan burst into a rage, crying, “And who got it for her?” Then, seeing that he had committed himself, he stopped abruptly, and said no more.
Donellan was convicted and executed, and to those who aver that the verdict was wrong Sir James Stephen replies that every item of evidence pointed to Donellan’s guilt, and did, in fact, satisfy the jury. The want of complete proof is the chief basis of the argument in Donellan’s favour, backed by the opinion of so eminent a scientist as Hunter. He deposed that he did not see the slightest indication of poisoning, and while he admitted that death following so soon after the draught had been swallowed was a curious fact, yet he could see no necessary connection between the two circumstances. The symptoms, as described to him, and the state of the internal organs, were perfectly compatible with death from epilepsy or apoplexy. Public opinion at the time was, no doubt, adverse to Donellan, and the jury may have been prejudiced against him. He was deemed an adventurer, a fortune-hunter, who had gained a footing in a good family by somewhat discreditable means, and it was assumed that he was prepared to go any length to feather his nest further.
This was a rather exaggerated view. Donellan was a gentleman. He had borne the king’s commission, and was a son of a colonel in the army. To haunt fashionable society in London and the chief pleasure resorts in search of a richpartiewas a common enough proceeding, and implied self-seeking, but not necessarily criminal tendencies. He got his chance at Bath by doing a civil thing, and made the most of it. Lady Boughton was unable to find accommodation in the best hotel, and Donellan, who was there, promptly gave up his rooms. The acquaintance thus pleasantly begun grew into intimacy, and ended in his marrying Miss Boughton. So far the circumstances were not very strong against him. It was his conduct after the event that told, and, though there is an element of doubt in the case, most people, probably, who review the facts will come to the same conclusion as did Sir James Stephen.
One of the greatest poisoning trials on record in any country is that of Madame Lafarge, and its interest is undying, for to this day the case is surrounded by mystery. Although the guilt of the accused was proved to the satisfaction of the jury at the time of trial, strong doubts were then entertained, and still possess acute legal minds, as to the justice of her conviction. Long after the event, two eminent Prussian jurists, councillors of the criminal court of Berlin, closely studied the proceedings, and gave it as their unqualified opinion that, according to Prussian law, there was absence of proof. They published a report on the case, in which they gave their reasons for this opinion, but it will be best to give some account of the alleged poisoning before quoting the arguments of these independent authorities.
In the month of January, 1840, an iron-master, residing at Glandier, in the Limousin, died suddenly of an unknown malady. His family, friends, and immediate neighbours at once accused his wife of having poisoned him. This wife differed greatly in disposition and breeding from the deceased. Marie Fortunée Capelle was the daughter of a French artillery colonel, who had served in Napoleon’s Guard. She was well connected, her grandmother having been a fellow-pupil of the Duchess of Orleans under Madame de Genlis; her aunts were well married, one to a Prussian diplomat, the other to M. Garat, the general secretary of the Bank of France. She had been delicately nurtured. Her father had held good military commands, and was intimate with the best people, many of them nobles of the First Empire, and the child was petted by the Duchess of Dalmatia (Madame Soult), the Princess of Echmuhl (Madame Ney), Madame de Cambacères, and so forth.
Colonel Capelle died early, and Marie’s mother, having married again, also died. Marie was left to the care of distant relations; she had a small fortune of her own, which was applied to her education, and she was sent to one of the best schools in Paris. Here she made bosom friends, as schoolgirls do, and with one of them became involved in a foolish intrigue, which, in the days of her trouble, brought upon her another serious charge, that of theft. Marie grew up distinguished-looking if not absolutely pretty; tall, slim, with dead-white complexion, jet-black hair worn in straight shiningpleats, fine dark eyes, and a sweet but somewhat sad smile. These are the chief features of contemporary portraits.
To marry her was now the wish of her people, and she was willing enough to become independent. Some say that a suitor was sought through the matrimonial agents, others positively deny it. In any case, a proposal came from a certain Charles Pouch Lafarge, a man of decent family but inferior to the Capelles, not much to look at, about thirty, and supposed to be prosperous in his business. The marriage was hastily arranged, and as quickly solemnised—in no more than five days. Lafarge drew a rosy picture of his house: a large mansion in a wide park, with beautiful views, where all were eager to welcome the bride and make her happy. As they travelled thither the scales quickly fell from Marie’s eyes. Her new husband changed in tone; from beseeching he became rudely dictatorial, and he seems to have soon wounded the delicate susceptibilities of his wife.
The climax was reached on arrival at Glandier, a dirty, squalid place. Threading its dark, narrow streets, they reached the mansion—only a poor place, after all, surrounded with smoking chimneys: a cold, damp, dark house, dull without, bare within. The shock was terrible, and Madame Lafarge declared she had been cruelly deceived. Life in such surroundings, tied to such a man, seemed utterly impossible. She fled to her own room, and there indited a strange letter to her husband, a letter that was the starting-point of suspicion against her, and which she afterwards explained away as merely a first mad outburst of disappointment and despair. Her object was to get free at all costs from this hateful and unbearable marriage.
This letter, dated the 25th of August, 1839, began thus: “Charles,—I am about to implore pardon on my knees. I have betrayed you culpably. I love not you, but another....” And it continued in the same tone for several sheets. Then she implored her husband to release her and let her go that very evening. “Get two horses ready: I will ride to Bordeaux and then take ship to Smyrna. I will leave you all my possessions. May God turn them to your advantage—you deserve it. As for me, I will live by my own exertions. Let no one know that I ever existed.... If this does not satisfy you I will take arsenic—I have some.... Spare me, be the guardian angel of a poor orphan girl, or, if you choose, slay me, and say I have killed myself.—Marie.”