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

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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$in an engagement; they corresponded frequently and clandestinely; on the 6th May 1856 he got possession of her person; the engage- ment was discontmued once or tmce; the family did not know of it, and the letters continued on her part in the same terms of passionate love, for a very considerable time—I say passionate love, because un- happily they are written without any sense of decency, and in most licentious terms. After a certain time, Mr IMinnoch's attentions to the girl became very marked; she saw there was no chance of marrying L'Angelier even if she continued to like him sufficiently; but the other was certainly a most desu'able marriage for her to make. The Lord Advocate says, that her object then was to extri- cate herself from the position in which she was placed; that she first makes an appeal to L'ilngelier to give up her letters; she writes then very coldly, and says the attachment has ceased on her part, and she thinks on his part also; certainly there was no reason to suppose tliat, thougli he fi'equently blamed her conduct; but that is what slie states. The Lord Advocate says that by these cold letters she was trying to make him give her up and to give up her letters. She failed in that. The Lord Advocate says, that then she pro- ceeded to write in as warm terms as ever, and to talk of their em- braces, as she had done before. She does not succeed by that tone, and then she receives him, as he says must be inferred and is proved, into her house for the puiq:)ose of gaining her object. She has to leave Glasgow, and he too has to go to Edinbm'gh. She retui'ns, and she understands that he retm^ned, and she writes letters for the purpose of having interviews with him. The Lord Advocate says that, on the former occasion, when she failed in getting the letters, out of resentment she had administered the poison to him on the 19th and22d; and aware that no allurements, or enticements, or fascinations from her w^ould get the letters ft-om him, she had pre- pared for the intenicw which she had expected on the 22d March, by another purchase of arsenic, and with the intention to poison him. The Lord Advocate's theory and statement is that tlie interview having taken place, she did accordingly administer that dose of arse- nic, from which, howsoever administered, he died. All this, on the other hand, is treated as a totally incredible supposition by the coun- sel for the prisoner. It is said that she could not have had such a purpose—that it is something too monstrous to believe or inquire into even. Gentlemen, it is very difficult to say what might not occur to the cxas[)erated feelings of a female, who had been placed in the situation in which this woman was placed. And there it is that the correspondence comes to be of much importance, in ascertaining what .sort of feelings this girl cherished, and what state of mind and dispo- sition she was of, and whether there is any trace of moral sense or pro- ])rietv to be found in her letters, or whether they do not exhibit such a degree of ill-regulatt'd, disorderly, distempered, lii-entious feelings as to show that this is a person fpiite capable of cherishing any object ti) a\oi(l disgrace and exposure, and of taking any revenge which$