Report of the trial of Madeleine Smith : before the High Court of Justiciary at Edinburgh, June 30th to July 9th, 1857, for the alleged poisoning of Pierre Émile l'Angelier / by Alexander Forbes Irvine, advocate.
- Smith, Madeleine, 1835-1928.
- Date:
- 1857
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Report of the trial of Madeleine Smith : before the High Court of Justiciary at Edinburgh, June 30th to July 9th, 1857, for the alleged poisoning of Pierre Émile l'Angelier / by Alexander Forbes Irvine, advocate. 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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![bought arsenic at another part of the town, and under a false name, that would only have made the case stronger against her. So that the mere open purchase of arsenic was, after all, not of much weight. But of the possession of any arsenic at the time of the deceased's first illness, they had no proof whatever. The use of arsenic in the way she stated afterwards, as a cosmetic, was not proved. There was one witness, who had been a servant in her father's house, and who, two or three years ago, had heard her say that arsenic was good for the complexion or the health; but it was not pretended that any of her family, or any one in the house, were aware of her having arsenic before the 19th February. Then, the Jury would remember that the contents of the stomach vomited in the way the landlady described were not examined ; and the fact that arsenic produced the illness was merely an inference from the fact that, on the 22d March he did die of arsenic, and that the stuff then vomited was of the same character as on that occasion. This was, he thought, very loose and unsatisfactory indeed. The charge was the administration of arsenic on the 19tli Februarv; but the prisoner was not j^roved to have possessed arsenic at that time, and the stuff, indeed, was not proved to have contained any arsenious matter. It would not do to go back to the occasion of the death, and infer from the presence of arsenic then that this first illness also arose from the presence of arsenic, and not from other causes. As to the large quantity of meat ordered by L'Angelier, Mrs Jenkins did not say, nor did he so understand her, that the whole of it was meant for consumption at dinner on the day after his illness. It was obviously intended as a supply to be kept in the house. Coming to the second illness, his Lordship desired the Jury to observe that it was on the 21st February that the prisoner had got the arsenic mixed with soot, at ISIurdoch's shop; so that if the use of that arsenic was not properly accounted for, they must sup- pose she got it for a purpose different from what she described. Little attention need be paid to the story about giving it to rats, because, without some such excuse, she would not have got it; antl, if she w^anted it for cosmetic pur])Oses, it was not likely she would say so. But the fact remained that she possessed ai'senic on the 21st; and then arose the question, did she see the deceased on the Sunday before the arsenic was administered? Mrs Jenkins did not know he was out of the house on that Sunday ; and really there seemed a good deal of force in the Dean's observation, that the foundation of the prosecutor s case was somewhat shaken. Coming to the question of the third illness, his Lordshi]) thought there was ample evidence to show that a letter was anxiously ex- pected by L'Angelier just before he went to the Bridge of Allan, so anxiously that even after his return to Glasgow from Ldinburgh, and after leaving instructions with Thuau about forwarding his k-tters, he went i)ack to Edinburgh to Jce if the letter had not gone there](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21078324_0301.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
