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Misjudged
Murderesses 2: The Hanged. |
Since in this
article the main details of the background and trials of the accused had been
examined elsewhere on this website it is proposed to concentrate on what went
wrong. See blue hyperlinks to the original articles.
“Poisoning the Background.” The Press
As a modern article in the New Yorker stated:
In
1836, the government decreased the tax on newspapers
from four pence to a penny. Consequently,
the number of newspapers shot up, as did the sales of any paper willing
to report vividly and at
length on poisoning cases. In 1856, when
the Illustrated Times published a special edition
on the trial of the ‘Rugeley
poisoner,’ Dr. William Palmer
– circulation was said to have doubled to 400,000.
The articles
probably inspired a few poisonings. Indeed, they more or less provided instructions.
This depiction of the popular
and local press in occupying
the current role of the dark
web in disseminating antisocial material as a manual for poisoning may have been overdone. Not
only was the illiteracy rate 50 per cent
throughout the period. With the exception of Florence Maybrick, in all of the dubious
cases examined in here the defendants were at best semi-literate. The function
of the general British press during this
period would appear
to frighten precisely those who formed
juries: the shopkeepers and other
ratepayers who could
now afford the penny
press. These juries may well have been prejudiced by previous cases
with local connections having
been reported in local newspapers. Essentially local
gossip about women who got away with
it and what probably motivated those females who were convicted. This meant that everyone
concerned, from witnesses to jurors knew all about the case from the prosecution view through the local press before the opening of the trial.
As the law
stood and still stands, stirring up prejudice against an accused
awaiting trial was prohibited on pain of committal for contempt. Not only did
the press give little or no heed to it, such was the reluctance of authority
from judges downwards to enforce the law that even in the most blatant breaches
of the rule, that there would appear to be no instances
throughout the period
under consideration. The press, local and national, freely, and often imaginatively, embroidered evidential fact with local gossip. In particular, if the accused had any previous bad character this was
paraded to the public. Letters written
by the accused and others
were published before
appearances in court. Totally false reports of confessions by the accused
even in notorious cases for fraud and murder were left unpunished.
What has been shown in a series of recent books
and studies is the sinister and biased role of The Times of
In fairness, it should be noted that on
occasion influential regional newspapers came to the rescue of the unfairly
convicted, as in the Ann Merritt case.
“Poisoning
the Background.” The Prelude cases
If a notorious poisoner had came from the same area or
town previously, the press used their licence to remind all the locals by
coupling the name of the accused with the convicted.
Sarah Chesham,
1851, Clavering, 37 miles from
Priscilla Biggadike, 1868, Stickney,
seven miles from
1875 Trial. Lizzie Pearson, 1873
The lawyers’ petition for mercy used the
following arguments:
That your petitioner is a woman of mean education, defective
eyesight, imperfect memory
and subject to epileptic fits.
And that your petitioner
further shows that the jury who passed (judgement) upon the trial of your
petitioner were greatly divided in opinion, and
that they retired and were closeted together for upward of three hours, and the
date of such jury were of the opinion
when they retired from the jury box in court that your humble and miserable
petitioner was not guilty to the last and fatal moment the said jury never were
agreed to find her guilty save upon the promise that she should be recommended
to mercy and that in pursuance of such bargain your petitioner was as she had
advised improperly and unconstitutionally convicted
of an offence which she now knows
solemnly asserts her innocence.
Mary’s
eyesight and memory both had a bearing on the trial. The defective eyesight may
have caused confusion between the arsenic and salts, and the possible lie about
the disposal of the excess arsenic could have been genuine lapse of imperfect
memory.
The Rev
Savage’s letter stresses the fact that Mary herself fetched the doctor
and showed her anxiety about her husband’s health by going to a second medical
man when the first refused
to attend the dying man. Mary’s depth and level of intelligence and ignorance also featured.
The Judges letter to the Home Office
concludes: ‘at the same time it is not satisfactory as could be desired in a case of life or death’.
Waddington, the Home Office official
responsible to the Home Secretary,
ends his report
to the Home Secretary: ‘The compromise, then, was a breach
of duty on the part of the jury and might not, strictly speaking, have any
weight at all on the decision of the case. You will see, however, by
the last sentence in Coleridge’s letter that he is not quite satisfied.’
On the
above evidence, there was surely
a reasonable expectation that Mary would receive
mercy and probably be sentenced to transportation for life.
However, the same day, the Home Office
received a letter from Bellair. the visiting chaplain - Sir, “The governor of
the Coventry jail having informed me as one of the visiting justices of the
said jail that a prisoner under the sentence of death, Mary Ball, signed
a petition in which amongst other things it was said her
eyesight wanted, I deem it my duty to acquaint you that
she can read small print
without the aid of spectacles.” I have the honour to be so, Your faithful
servant.
What
is totally astonishing is the assertion
based on the alleged testimony of the prison governor
that Mary was able to read small print without
the aid of spectacles. In that
one sentence we have the risible
claim that Mary was not only of good eyesight but also literate.
Did
she confess? A handbill, was also published.
The
confession of Mary Ball as made
to Mr. Stanley, Governor of the jail, to which
is added an account
of her execution.
could
it be true? Surely not, because there is a lack of a Holmesian dog bark: the
first thing the governor would do would be to rush this confession to the Home
Office. No such document exists.
The woman who in Coventry on 9 August 1849 was hanged before a crowd of 20,000, was at worst, cause of a
spur of the moment self-poisoning which could have
been prevented, and at best, instigator of a straightforward accident.
Yes it was true
that she tried to prevent the police taking away
the bag of rice but it was on the
grounds that her father had rice prepared for him regularly and he would miss
it. This was coupled with the uncontested evidence of her father that she
regularly prepared rice for him and there had been no ill effects. Dr Taylor’s evidence was that ‘the bag
contained enough rice to kill six people’, that ‘every grain of rice was
covered and the whole appeared to have been
carefully mixed up together so that every part of the rice was poisoned and the interior
of the bag containing the rice was likewise
covered with arsenic’.
So
how did the idea
of Dr Taylor’s that
the poisoning had occurred with little doses over a period
of time square up with
the large quantity
of arsenic carefully spread
through the rice?
And why on earth
did Sarah Chesham
not get rid of the rice immediately her husband died if she had indeed
put so much arsenic in it? One is driven to the probable
conclusion that when the
rice was taken by the police from her house it did not contain
arsenic. She was also open with
both the doctor
and her mother-in-law about the feeding of milk and rice to her husband.
Then there was the evidence of the
testimony of Hannah Phillips. In the formal evidence she made allegations that adultery formed
part of Chesham’s motive for ridding herself of her husband. But
Phillips did not explain why she
failed to report Chesham’s confessions about having poisoned Solomon Taylor and her intention to poison Lydia Taylor,
or why she didn’t disclose
Chesham’s threats about her husband while he was still alive and she might have spared him the results of eating one of
Chesham’s seasoned pies. There were also two quite extraordinary statements by
her giving markedly different evidence in the magistrate’s court and assize.
There was no one acting on Sarah’s behalf to cross examine this dubious witness
so willingly accepted by the trial judge as
proof of the previous murders.
Her husband gave evidence
that he had no idea his wife
was so close to Sarah, and she had never talked to him about these
conversations until after the inquest.
Superintendent Clarke was in charge of
all the cases brought against Sarah; he
must have smarted over the criticisms
of the conduct of the investigations of the first
three cases. He must have been quite sure that she was guilty of poisoning her husband as soon as he died and well before Dr Taylor’s
examination. If Sarah was unlikely to be responsible for the arsenic in
the rice then he was probably responsible for ‘improving’ the evidence after its confiscation.
As to Proctor,
the only explanation why the
judge took care to exclude him from the proceedings was that the judge must
have been convinced before the trial started that Biggadike was guilty and it
was useful to have Proctor as a
prosecution witness. After all, there was clear other evidence against him
apart from Priscilla’s statement. He was also a ratcatcher, the only common occupation that had access
to commercial quantities of poison under the
poisons act. I wonder what everyone
would have thought if his sentence
to 18 months for actual bodily harm had occurred before the trial rather than
10 years later.
This case has overtones of the great
eighteenth-century poison case involving Mary Blandy, daughter of a rich
There is no doubt that Lizzie bought
two lots of vermin powder, and whilst she may well have used the first lot of
killing mice, as her mother-in- law testified, the second lot was not only
unaccounted for but she lied to the police about it.
On the other hand the hole in the prosecution bucket is the disappearance of George Smith, the lodger
who lived with Lizzie’s uncle.
What the prosecutor, in a pre-emptive strike, had to say about his flight from the trial: ‘There had
been some talk of Smith. There had been no witness
to say they saw Smith waiting upon the deceased:
and although Smith was
not to be found, that
was no reason
to assign the
committal of this dastardly cruel and heartless murder to a man.’
So, firstly,
the deceased was a man
and everyone knew
this was a woman’s crime. Secondly, there
was a perfectly innocent reason
for the flight,
and the jury were asked to assume that:
most unlikely. As he assumed in his address to the jury Lizzie
was in such constant attendance on the deceased there was no opportunity for the lodger
to get at him. Again,
most unlikely.
A good defence lawyer properly briefed
would have been able to question the problems with this case.
Was Lizzie guilty? Probably – but beyond
reasonable doubt?
“Mrs. Lefley, is like
the notorious Mrs. Biggadike, a native of Stickney, and singular to state many
circumstances in the two cases are exactly parallel. Mrs. Biggadike went out on
the day she arranged to poison her husband, and upon her return she, like Mrs.
Lefley walked straight up to her husband’s bedroom. She said ‘What’s the matter
my dear?’ He said ‘You know very well what’s the matter. Go down and don’t let
me see your face again.’ She went down, was apprehended by police and
afterwards tried and executed for the murder of which she was undoubtedly guilty.” With a paragraph in the paper like this
interposed in the report of earlier proceedings Mary Lefley never had a chance.
There are many unanswered questions about
this case:
Lefley saw seven people, excluding his wife,
between his arrival at the surgery and his death.
He told Dr first, Kelly, Miss Barb and Elizabeth
Hill that the pudding was poisoned and of course he sent Mary away from
his bedside. Otherwise, he said nothing
to any of the seven which they mentioned in their evidence. A curious reticence.
The pudding contained
enough arsenic to kill a hundred men. Could Mary possibly have been so naive as to believe this
massive dose would be undiscovered?
Is it also possible
that her husband could have cooked
and eaten part of such a saturated pudding without noticing the grittiness in
taste and appearance?
Then there was the
suicide evidence. Surely a weird coincidence that whilst the husband was
contemplating suicide his wife was planning murder. She knew about the suicide
attempt too. Why didn’t she wait?
Why
did Mary
not concoct a plausible story about self-administered poison? Again,
no plausible evidence
of motive or unhappy marriage
or access to poison
was given at the trial.
I firmly
believe that by the standards of the time she should have been acquitted.
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