Full report of the trial of Thomas Hall for the murder of Captain Henry Cain : Before his honor Mr. Justice Williams, at the Supreme Court, Dunedin, January, 1887.
- Hall, Thomas, -1887?
- Date:
- MDCCCLXXXVII
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Full report of the trial of Thomas Hall for the murder of Captain Henry Cain : Before his honor Mr. Justice Williams, at the Supreme Court, Dunedin, January, 1887. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.
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![of colchicum—the atropia on two occasions, and thecolchicum on one. But 1 need hardly say these do not enter into this case seriously, as they must form matter of merespeculation. There we find the prisoner had numerous opportunities of access to Cain. He became friendly to him some time in November, and called pretty often then. He sat up with him twice, on Christmas Eve and the night before, and Miss Houston took the latter part of the night. Miss Houston did not obsei ve that he was sick after Hall had sat up with him, although on Christmas Day he was very sick indeed. I have gone through the evidence to show that before he made it up with Cain the latter was sick, and J have pointed to the pre- scription of the 3rd November for nausea, and to the fact that at the end of November or be- ginning of December Cain used to complain of iis whisky. Hall did not stay at the house, and the whisky was not kept for Cain alone. He was a hospitable man, so I suppose other people ■would have suffered unless Hall could have been present. Then after this Hall's visits became more constant; he stayed for a few minutes every morning, and the sickness seemed to continue. There is no evidence of any particular drink administered by Hall that Cain was sick after, except on that occasion at lunch spoken of by Mrs Ostler. The sickness seems to have come on afc night, irrespective of the presence of Hall. All that can be said, therefore, is that Hall if he had been inclined to poison Cain had at this time plenty of opportunity for doing so, and that other people had the same oppor- tunity. If a man lays himself out to poison a :sick man, and has constant access, his most likely course to avert danger would be to put it into his physic, not in liquor which was on the table and open to anyone. Hall might do this, so might anyone else who had an interest in poisoning Cain; and it seems to me to be on the whole a question of saying that Hall had an opportunity of doing it and therefore he did it. Up to this point, then, the chief evidence against Hall seerns to be his possession of the book Taylor on Poisons and of these poisons. It was correctly said by the counsel for the ■'Crown that it is not necessary to prove motive; but at the same time, where there is a doubt whether a particular crime was committed by a particular man, the fact that he had a motive is very properly dwelt upon. Now, in this case the motive suggested is that Hall was in want of money, and that Cain's death would bring him money. And I think it may very well be taken ^that he was in want of money, because a man does not fortify his banking account with for- .geries and undertake transactions like that of the mortgage unless he is in a very bad way. The question is therefore whether there is rea- sonable evidence that Cain's death would put money into Hall's pocket. Mrs Hall was in- terested in two settlements, and as to one of these, Mrs Newton, her sister, was also inter- ested. In the first—that in which both were interested—the parties on 5th December made a deed which gave Cain an annuity of £300 a year and the use of Woodlands dur- ing his life. Had it not been for the execution of iihat deed, Cain's death would not, so far as this settlement was concerned, have been of the leasf benefit to Mrs Hall. She had a life interest in the property wholly independent of Cain, and by this deed they granted Cain the annuity and use of the house. The deed was dated Decembei 5, and Mr Knubbley, the sohcitor, says it wag executed by Mrs Hall with her husband's fuU consent and knowledge. All that Mrs Hal] seems to have had under the settlement was a life interest in the property, subsequently transfer- able to her children, but she deprived herself of her life interest in part of the annuity and also of the proceeds of Woodlands. She also seems by this deed to have had some claim against Cain, because he had advanced sums to Mrs Newton for a larger amount than she was entitled to. Therefore it was suggested by the defence that it is absurd to sup- pose a man would voluntarily allow his wife to execute a deed giving Cain a life interest under the settlement if he intended to get rid of him. A simpler way would have been to tell his wife not to sign it. Then there was another settlement under which Mrs Hall had a life interest in certain property, and had given herself a disposing power of it by will only so that she could not deal with the corpus. Hall wanted to cancel this—of course for the purpose of getting the money. Le Cren said in December that Cain objected to this, and I confess it struck me on reading the aflSdavit produced, and I said so at the time: Here was a strong motive on Hall's part for getting rid of Cain, and yet we have an affidavit sworn by Cain to Knubbley showing that he (Oain) was at that time quite satisfied that what Hall wanted should be done, and a friendly suit begun. So it seems that Hall was a party to a friendly suit with his wife for the purpose of getting rid of the trust, when at that time he could have got all he wanted without any trouble. Then the third thing it is suggested that Hall would get by Cain's death was something under his will. There is evidence that Hall was aware that a new will had been made, but it was suggested as inconsistent that he, as a party to Che deed of December 5, could have supposed that Cain had any large property to leave. Further, there were his daughters, who were not blood rela- tions, and a nephew who was, of whom he seemed to have been fond. I have deal* now with matters up to Captain Cain's death ; but there is certain evidence which has been ad- mitted and which you have a perfect right to take into consideration and give every reason- able influence to in considering the question as to whether antimony was administered by Hall. Of course I allude to the evidence you have before you that a few months later his wife was ill. There were symptoms of antimony ob- served in her for a considerable time by Dr Mac- intyre, and ultimately liquids received from Hall for her were seized and found themselves to con- tain antimony, and antimony was also foundi pon Hall. You have a perfect right to take all these circumstances into account in considering how antimony got into Captain Cain's body. If antimony is found in the body of a person to whom the accused has constant access, and if,](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b2105650x_0082.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
