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

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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$iuiy poison in any food taken by his wife. The whole case stands upon mere probabilities—mere suggestions, that opportunities and means were in his pos- session, and that either he or some other person must have been the guilty p;u-ty. But I wish you also to notice that, instead of being worse after taking that egg-flip, as Mary M'Leod has said, Mrs Pritchard was rather better, and therefore it is very inconceivable that there was anything in this egg-flip which caused Mary Patterson to suffer. It must have been from something else she took. She did not notice at first that there was anything peculiar in the egg-flip, but that it had a very bad taste. Then it is a curious thing that Drs l\Iaclagan and Littlejohn have stated that tartarisi d antimony is a comparatively tasteless substance. Mary Patterson, speaking of what she experienced when she took the egg-flip, says that the moment she put it to her mouth .she felt a burning sensation, and said—“ Oh, what a taste it has?”—not the burning sensation in her throat, which was afterwards spoken to—but when she put this substance to her lips. This must have been caused by some other substance, not antimony at all. The fact that she experienced a bad taste is inconsistent with the theory that there was any antimony there ; but be there antimony there or not, how you are able to reconcile those discrepancies I do not understand. Sufficient foi me to say that there is no proof whatever that the prisoner’s hand did put in the antimony. There is as much proof that it Avas put in by another, thi'ough Avhose hands every one of these articles had passed. Gentlemen, I have now considered pretty nearly all the evidence Avhich I think the Solicitor-General relied on, and with which it is necessary to detain you in this case. These are the only instances of poisoning on which the Solicitor-General proceeded, so far as I know. And it will be unnecessary to attempt to detain you upon the evidence upon which the Crown do not rely in this case. Now, you wiU keep in view that this is a case where the Crown undei-took to prove the administration of poison. It is not a case on which they can obtain a verdict, as I would again repeat, by probabilities, or inferences, or presumptions. They have stated the case against the prisonej, and are bound to shoAV by conclusive evidence, without any reasonable doubt, that the prisoner is guilty of the crime with which he is charged. It Avould have been desirable in a case of this kind that the Crown would have satisfied the bur- den of proof which is upon them by proving that on some one occasion the prisoner Avas detected in administering poisons. If the case was proved that the poison had been administered in the course of months in a house of Avhich he Avas the head, but in which also there were other persons, how is it possible, if you are to accept the case for the Crown as conclusive of the prisoner’s guilt, that through- out the investigation they have made in that house during these months they have not been able to trace one case of poisoning to the prisoner’s hands ? In every one of these cases Mary M‘Leod is concerned. In the case of the tapioca it is impossible to conceive the prisoner concerned. lu the case of the cheese it is almost equally impossible to suppose that the prisoner could have been con- cerned in it. And yet Avhile I think the evidence frees him from suspicion as regards these cases—though freed from suspicion as regards cases in Avhich, according to the CroAvn, poison Avas put in Mrs Pritchard’s food—yet they concluded Avithout a shadow of evidence that he was the foul poisoner Avho, during these three mouths, protracted his wife’s sufferings until she died in his arms on the 28th March. The case i.s utterly beyond belief. The Crown admitted their obligation to prove this case by the clearest possible evidence. And yet the elaborate .speech of the Solicitor-General is reduced to this, that there Avere but tAvo ])cr- sons Avho could commit the crime—the prisoner and Mary M'Leod. Mary$