A complete report of the trial of Dr. E. W. Pritchard, for the alleged poisoning of his wife and mother-in-law. Reprinted, by special permission, from the 'Scotsman' / Carefully revised by an eminent lawyer.
- Eminent lawyer
- Date:
- 1865
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: A complete report of the trial of Dr. E. W. Pritchard, for the alleged poisoning of his wife and mother-in-law. Reprinted, by special permission, from the 'Scotsman' / Carefully revised by an eminent lawyer. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.
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![jiidgmeut, the questions and the considerations uj^on which your verdict must depend. These questions, to resume very briefly, are these :—Did both ladies, or did either of them, die from the effects of poison ? If so, was that poison’ taken wilfully to commit suicide by both or either ? Was it taken accidentally, by the mistake of the persons themselves, or of some others ? If you answer the first of these questions in the afiirmative, and the second and third in the negative, you ai’e then shut up to this other question—Who committed the murder ? for murder, upon the assumption of these answers to the ques- tions I have stated, was committed. It is quite competent for vou to find the prisoner guilty of the one chai’ge, and to acquit him upon the other; but I submit to you, as the truth of the case, that he is guilty of both. I have stated to you the various considerations which appear to me to be of weight to determine conclusively your answers to the various questions which I have put to you in the manner which I have stated. By presenting the case to you, as I have done, maintaining the charge now at the close of the evidence as it was stated at the beginning, I have discharged my public duty to the best of my judgment, and, you will believe, I am sure, conscientiously. It is for you now, after you shall have heard the powerful, and I am sure altogether becoming and proper defence which will be stated for the prisoner by my friend Mr Clark, to consider how you are to discharge yours. If my friend shall be able to con- vince you, by arguments which you shall think the evidence warrants, that the evidence is insufficient—that you cannot, without serious doubt and mis- ,givings, pronounce the prisoner guilty of both or either of these murders, then undoubtedly it will be your duty to acquit him ; for in that case he shall be en- titled to be acquitted. But if, on the other hand, you are satisfied upon the evidence that he is guilty of both or either of these charges—if the effect of the evidence, considered calmly and dispassionately, is to produce that conviction upon your mind, then your duty—you duty to the public, to yourselves, to the oath which you have taken—is to pronounce a verdict according, in that view, to w'hat is your opinion of the truth of the case, finding that he is guilty. [The Solicitor-General resumed his seat, having spoken about two hours and a quarter.] ME CLAEK’S ADDEESS FOE THE PEISONEE. Mr A. E. Clark commenced his address for the prisoner at twenty minutes to three. He said—Gentlemen of the jury, under this indictment the prisoner is charged with the commission of two murders—the one the murder of his mother- in-law, Mrs Taylor ; the other, the murder of his wife. The annals of human crime are indeed black enough ; but if he be guilty of the charges that are made thus against him, I do not hesitate to say that he is the foulest criminal that ever lived. He is a member of an honourable profession, whose duty and whose pleasure it is to assuage sufi'ering, to ward off the attacks of disease, and to do their best to prolong human life ; and we all know how nobly, how generously, how unselfishly that duty is discharged. But here it is said that the physician became the destroyer, and used his art of healing to sap the foundation of life. Black indeed would be a crime such as that, but it in no degree indicates the measure of the prisoner’s guilt if he indeed be guilty. He is charged with hav- ing murdered two defenceless, trusting, devoted women—of one of whom (to use the expressive language of Dr Cowan) he was the idol, and to the other of whom he was united by the most tender of human ties—who was the mother of his children, and](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b28407258_0106.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
