Poison Romance and Poison Mysteries

which lasted eight days, excited the keenest interest throughout the country, especially as the principal actors in the tragedy were people of good social

e to extreme irritability of the stomach and treated him accordingly; but, becoming puzzled by the persistent sickness and the rapidly increasing weakness of his patent, a second practitioner was called in consultation. From this time he grew considerably worse, severer symptoms and diarrh?a set in, which caused th

ing the first portion of which Mrs. Maybrick nursed her husband; but through a letter addressed to her lover, which she had given to her nursemaid to post, having been opened by the latter and handed to Mr. Maybrick's brother, trained nurses were called in, and the sick man was placed in their charge entirely. This letter, which formed one of the strongest pieces of evidence against the accused, revealed the connection between Mrs. Maybrick and her lover, and contained the intelligence to him that her husband was "sick unto death." Evidence was also given by the servants, of

ased, and the Government analyst, swore they believed that death was caused from the effects of arsenic; while on the other, Dr. Tidy, who was called for the defence, as an expert stated that the quantity of arsenic discovered in the body did not point to the fact that an overdose had been administered. He believed that death had been due to gastro-enteritis of some kind or other, but that the symptoms and post-mortem appearances distinctly pointed away from arsenic as the cause of death. Dr. MacNamara, ex-president of the Royal College of Surgeons, Ireland, also stated, that in his opinion Mr. Maybrick's death had not been caused

woman by permission of the judge made the following sta

this purpose I put a plate over the flypapers, then a folded towel over that, and then another towel over that. My mother has been aware for a great many years that I have used arsenic in solution. I now wish to speak of his illness. On Thursday night, May 9, after the nurse had given my husband medicine, I went and sat on the bed beside him. He complained to me of feeling very sick, very weak, and very restless. He implored me then again to give him the powder which he had referred to earlier in the evening, and which I declined to give him. I was over-wrought, terribly anxious, miserably unhappy, and his evident distress utterly unnerved me. As he told me the powder would not harm him, and that I could put it in his food, I then consented. My Lord, I had not one true or honest friend in the house. I had no one to consult, no one to advise me. I was deposed from my own position as mistress of my own house, and from the position of attending on my husband, and notwithstanding that he was so ill, and notwithstanding the evidence of the nurses and the servants, I may say that he missed me whenever I was not with him; whenever I was out of the room he asked for me, and four days before he died I was not allowed to give him a piece of ice without its being taken out of my han

the time the black shadow which could never be dispelled passed over the life of the accused woman, her husband was in the habi

ath of her husband. There were two questions to be answered: Was there clear, safe, and satisfactory equivocal proof, either that death was in fact caused by arsenical poisoning, or that the accused woman administered that poison if to the poison the death of her husband was due? The j

wder for which he craved, of the nature of which she said she was ignorant. There can be no doubt this powder was arsenic. If she did not know the powder was arsenic, and did not give it w