Celebrated trials of all countries, and remarkable cases of criminal jurisprudence / Selected by a member of the Philadelphia bar [i.e. J.J. Smith].

John Jay Smith

Date:: 1835

Credit: Celebrated trials of all countries, and remarkable cases of criminal jurisprudence / Selected by a member of the Philadelphia bar [i.e. J.J. Smith]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

96/612 (page 86)

$portion of that whatever.—Q. Were you taken ill, sir ? A. Soon afte? dinner I was, sir. I first felt an inclination to be sick : I then felt a strong heat across my chest. 1 was extremely sick.—Q. Did it produce any swelling in you? A. I was exactly as my father and wife were, except stronger symptoms. I had eaten a dumpling and a half. I suffered more than any person.—Q. Were your symptoms, and that of the others, such as could be produced by poison ? A. I should presume so; all taken in the same way, and pretty near the same time. Sarah Peer sworn.—Q. You are a servant to Mrs. Turner ? A. Yes.—Q. How long have you lived in the family ? A. Nearly eleven months.—Q. Do you recollect the circumstance of warning being given to the prisoner some time after she came? A. I do, sir.—Q,. Did you hear her say any thing after that respecting your mistress ? A. I heard her say that she should not like Mr. or Mrs. Robert Turner any more.—Q. On the morning of the 21st of March did you go for any milk? A. Yes, after two o'clock; after I had dined Q. What had you eaten for dinner ? A. Beef-steak pie. I had dined with the prisoner.—Q. Had you any concern whatever in making the dough for the dumplings'? A. No, sir.—Q. Or the sauce] A. No sir. —Q. Were you in the kitchen when the dough was made1? A. No, sir. I never meddled with it, or put any thing to it. I never was in the kitchen from the time I went up to make the beds, a quarter after eleven, until I came down again.—Q. You, I believe, had permission of your mistress to go out that afternoon ? A. It was directly after I took up the dumplings, and then I went out directly. I came home at nine o'clock exactly. I ate none of the dumplings myself.—Q. In eating of the beaf-steak pie, had you partaken of any of the crust ? A. Yes. I was not at all ill. I had eaten some dump- lings she had made the night before. I never tasted any better. They were all made out of the same flour.—Q. Had you any difference with your mistress any time ? A. No. Cross-examined by Mr. Alley.—Q. Were not the coals delivered in the house that day? A. No.—Q. Then it is not true that you were set to watch the coals coming in? A. No.—Q. As the dumplings were taken out of the pot you went out ? A. Yes.—Q. Had the prisoner and you been upon good terms ? A. At times, sir.—Q. When was the last quarrel ? A. Two or three days before she had taken something out of my drawer for a duster. I said, I did not like to lead that life, without she altered her temper.—Q. How long before that had you quarrelled with her ? A. About a week, or a week and a half.—Q. What might that quarrel be about ? A. I cannot say. —Q. Was it the habit of your house for the servants to take their turns to go out of a Sunday ? A. Yes.—Q. Who did you go to visit on Tuesday ? A. My sister, at Hackney.—Q. When had you been to your sister's before that? A. About a month.—Q. Whose turn was it to go out before this Tuesday? A. Mine.—Q. The prisoner lived seventeeen weeks in your master's house. Did it happen that you ever went to visit your sister but on a Sunday ? A. Never except on that day.—Q. I suppose you occasionally went into the office where these young men were? A. Very seldom.—Q. You knew the waste paper was kept in the office ? A. Yes, but mistress always kept it up-stairs in the dining-room for my use.—Q. You knew there was waste paper in the office ? A. No, sir. I never touched any there. • I did not know it for a certainty. There might be waste paper there, but I never touched it.—Q. Did you not know there was poison kept there ? A. I never went to the drawer in the office, nor never knew there was poison kept there to kill rats and mice.—Q. \Mr. Gurncy.'] You went to see your sister, that lived at Hackney ? Yes.—Q. And the reason you went away as soon as you took the dumplings up was to arrive there and see your sister in time? A. Yes.—Q. Were the yeast dumplings made the nignt before different or not ? A. Very different, and good, and of a different shape. Mr. Orlibar Turner.—Q. Did you keep this arsenic to poison the mice,$