Remarks on the trial of Robert Reid, for the murder of his wife : before the High Court of Justiciary, at Edinburgh, on the 29th of June 1835 / by John Fletcher.

Date:
1835
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Remarks on the trial of Robert Reid, for the murder of his wife : before the High Court of Justiciary, at Edinburgh, on the 29th of June 1835 / by John Fletcher. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    haps upon the floor, to place her as erect as he could, and to wrap a portion of the bed-clothes around the lower parts of her naked body, before he went to , seek assistance ? Is it not what almost any man, in i the same circumstances, would have instinctively (lone, and would his having done so aflford any rea- son for believing that he had murdered the woman ? On the contrary, would it not rather lead to an op- posite belief, since, of all the postures he could pos- sibly have selected, had he been a murderer, to make it appear that her death had been natural, the one above described was the least adapted for the purpose ? We may concede then with perfect safety, if not with advantage, that the posture in which the corpse was found was that in which it had been placed by Heid. But it still remains a question whether this at- titude were retained, as was supposed, by the rigidity of death ; the occurrence of which would have war- ranted the presumption of Professor Christison that she had been dead some time, and perhaps there- fore had been killed by Reid at his preceding visit to his house, which had taken place at nine o'clock, he having been absent from home from half past nine o'clock till two. It is hardly necessary to say that the supervention of such rigidity by this time would have proved nothing prejudicial to the Prisoner, since Mrs Reid might have died from natural causes at any time during this interval : but the presump- tion is that no such rigidity had at this time taken place. At the time of Reid's changing the pos- ture of the body, it had either already acquired this rigidity, or it had not. If it had, provided the woman had died in any other posture—and
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