TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:
—Obvious print and punctuation errors were corrected.
—The transcriber of this project created the book cover image using the title pageof the original book. The image is placed in the public domain.
REPORTS OF TRIALS
FOR
MURDER BY POISONING.
REPORTS OF TRIALS
FOR
MURDER BY POISONING;
BY
PRUSSIC ACID, STRYCHNIA, ANTIMONY,
ARSENIC, AND ACONITIA.
INCLUDING THE
TRIALS OF TAWELL, W. PALMER, DOVE, MADELINE SMITH,
Dr. PRITCHARD, SMETHURST, AND Dr. LAMSON,
WITH
CHEMICAL INTRODUCTION AND NOTES ON
THE POISONS USED.
BY
G. LATHOM BROWNE,
OF THE MIDLAND CIRCUIT, BARRISTER-AT-LAW, AUTHOR OF “NARRATIVES OF
STATE TRIALS IN THE 19TH CENTURY,”
AND
C. G. STEWART,
SENIOR ASSISTANT IN THE LABORATORY OF ST. THOMAS’S HOSPITAL;
ASSOCIATE OF THE ROYAL COLLEGE OF SCIENCE, DUBLIN;
AND OF THE SOCIETY OF PUBLIC ANALYSTS.
LONDON:
STEVENS AND SONS, 119, CHANCERY LANE,
Law Publishers and Booksellers.
1883.
LONDON:
BRADBURY, AGNEW, & CO., PRINTERS, WHITEFRIARS.
PREFACES.
This volume of selected reports of the most remarkabletrials for murder by poisoning, which have been heldduring the past half century, with essays and notesexplanatory of the nature, and operation, and methods ofdetecting the various poisons supposed to have been employed,will it is hoped prove useful to the medical, as wellas the legal profession. With this object the evidence ofthe medical and chemical witnesses has been given indetail, especially in those cases in which a conflict ofscientific testimony arose, between experts of the highestprofessional character and reputation. Care has also beentaken to state the scientific nomenclature of this class ofwitness correctly, a point on which the shorthand writers,otherwise so reliable, are naturally liable to fail, catching asthey do only the sounds of a language unknown to them,in reporting which the error even in a single letter is oftenmost important. My colleague, besides furnishing thelatest information obtainable with reference to the variouspoisons, has offered from recent experiments, made speciallyfor this purpose, explanations of those points in the severaltrials about which the rival experts disputed, bringing tobear on them the latest discoveries in chemical science.
In preparing these reports, I have followed the formadopted by the late Mr. Townsend, the Recorder of Macclesfield,[vi]in his valua