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.

317/330 (page 299)

$as his. His Lordship here read the letter and obser\ed:—This is a letter from a girl, written at five in the morning, just after she had submitted to his embraces; can you conceive or picture any worse state of mind than this letter exliibits ? In other letters, she uses the word love underscored, showing clearly what she meant by it; and in one letter she alludes to a most disgusting and revolting- scene between them, which one would have thought only a common prostitute could have been a party to, and exliibiting a state of mind most lamentable to think of. Certainly such a sentence was probably never before penned by a female to a man. There are many other letters all -wiitten in the same strain, and certainly ex- hibiting a state of mind which it was fearful to contemplate. If, while he was correcting her bad habits, he was, as is said, under- mining her principles; still, so far as these letters go, they certainly prove that she was in a most depraved state of mind. Of that there can be no doubt. Probably it was not the less so, if he had been endeavouring to undermine her principles and -vortues. Of that, how- ever, there is no proof whatever—not the slightest. These letters go on in the same way until November and December. Afterwards they are very much in the same style—all alluding to meetmgs which they had had and to arrangements for meetings in the futm'e, although of these meetings we had no proof beyond the letters, until the time that Christina Haggart lets him in. The same strain of passionate love continues until the 2d of February, when L'Angelier became jealous of the attentions which were being shown her by Minnoch, and returns her letter. Then, indeed, she writes in a very different strain, and asks the engagement to be broken off, to which he will not consent, and she appeals to him to return the letters—a request with which he will not comply; and, finally, returns to her old style, signing herself as his beloved. And, with respect to this, the Lord Advocate says, she wrote thus for the purpose of luring him back to her arms, in order that she might get her letters back, and so accomplish the purpose which she had in vain endeavom'cd to achieve, by the fii'st means she adopted. Cuming down to the closing- letters of February and March, his Lordship said he did not think it was very material what the Lord Advocate insisted upon, as to the dates of the letters, in which she says she must gi^'e him a loaf of bread; still it must be borne in mind that her allusion to his illness confirms the statement, which he makes about the same time to one of the witnesses; that he had become ill in the presence of a lady. Following the course of the letters, we come to the first one addressed to L'Angelier from the Bridge of Allan, in which she employs the same terms of affection, and to that of the IGtli, in whicli she addresses Mr jNIinnoch as ^ly Dear William, but still fails to obtain from L'Angelier, by the new ])olicy on whicli she has entered, the return of her letters. That she is, then, acting a ])art, there can be no doubt. I think that is as clear as letters can establish. On the Kitli, sin.- writes to Minnocli—$