Professor Christison, to whom, on the 11th of May, Dr. Penny had delivered similar portions of the body to those on which he had experimented, together with portions of the deposits from the stomach and intestines, made a chemical analysis of the white powder, and the fluids obtained from the stomach, and the small intestine, and of a portion of the liver. As from these he obtained unequivocal proofs of the presence of arsenic, he did not, at that time, proceed further. Subsequently, however, on the 28th of May, he analysed a portion of the great intestine, and was satisfied of the presence of arsenic; and in a portion of the brain he found “traces of arsenic, but not satisfactory evidence, which might be owing to the small quantity of material he had to analyse.”

Of the samples of Murdoch’s and Currie’s arsenic, which Dr. Penny had delivered to him, “The former,” he said, “contained the due proportion of soot; the latter was not coloured with the indigo prescribed by the Act—was not of a bluish, but greyish black colour, imperfectly mixed, and easily removeable by washing with cold water, which cannot easily be done with good indigo. The proportion was a thirty-sixth, and not a thirty-second, as the Act directs.”[110]

The cross-examination of this witness was first directed to the probability of the colouring matter in the arsenic being detected in the portions of the body analysed.

“My attention,” said Professor Christison, “was not directed to colouring matter in arsenic. I got only one article in which it might have been found—the small intestine. The others had been subjected to a previous analysis. I was not asked to attend to the colouring matter. I did not see it, and did not search for it. Supposing soot or indigo to have been given with the arsenic, I think it might have been found in the intestines by careful examination. I can’t say it would have been found: many circumstances go to the possibility of its being found. Many component parts of soot are insoluble: it might have been removed by frequent vomiting. It is very difficult to remove soot from arsenic entirely. Indigo would have been found more easily from the peculiarity of its colour, and the chemical ingredients are so precise. Currie’s arsenic is not coloured with true indigo; it is waste indigo, or what has been used by the dyer. I don’t know how it is prepared. I did not analyse the colouring matter of Currie’s arsenic. I ascertained it was not the indigo directed by the Act to be used, and I ascertained the quantity. I separated the colouring matter from the arsenic, and subjected it to the action of sulphuric acid. Charcoal (more properly—carbon) is one of the constituents of good indigo, and necessarily of waste. The chief constituent of soot is charcoal also.”

The remainder of his cross-examination was directed to the amount of arsenic found in the stomach, and the symptoms of, and the period at which the effects are exhibited.

On the fifth day Professor Christison was recalled, and gave the following evidence as to the use of arsenic as a cosmetic, its taste, and its supposed presence naturally in the bodies of human beings.

Robert Telfer Corbett, physician in Glasgow, and senior surgeon in the infirmary, who had assisted at the post-mortem examination and joined in the report, was called on the fourth day, and gave the following evidence.

“So far as he could judge without analysis the deceased had died from the effect of poison. The morbid appearances presented were of two kinds—one showing the result of recent action, the other of action at a period antecedent to it. The last of these appearances consisted of several ulcers, each about the ¹/_16th of an inch in diameter, with elevated edge, on the upper part of the duodenum. They might have been characteristic of the effect of irritant poison at the distance of a month, but it is impossible to fix any date. I think they were such as irritant poison, administered a month before, would have produced. They were of longer standing than immediately antecedent to death. In the duodenum and intestines the body had in colour and otherwise the appearances characteristic of arsenical poisoning. Inflammation and ulceration are the effect of inflammation; jaundice, I mean the yellow tinge of the skin, is an occasional, but not a necessary symptom of death by arsenic, but not a common one. Extreme thirst is one of the symptoms, and shows itself very early. It is not characteristic of British cholera in its earlier stages. The exact time a dose of arsenic takes to exhibit its symptoms is from a half to one hour—that is the average time. Longer periods have been known but are very unusual. They depend more on the mode in which the poison is given, and the state of the stomach, than on the quantity administered. If a person had been the subject of repeated doses, the irritability of the stomach would make it more likely to operate quickly. I have read of cases of murder where large quantities of arsenic have been found in the stomach. I can refer to cases in which details were not given, but the quantity was said to be large.”

The cross-examination of this witness was mainly directed to his assertion that the yellowness of the skin seen in jaundice, and, as he added, of the conjunctiva of the eye also, was a known symptom in arsenical poison, but he admitted that the statement in Dr. Taylor’s book was his only authority: he only “knew it to be a secondary symptom from arsenical poisoning in his routine.” He admitted also that the ulcers on the duodenum might arise from some enteric fever, and that any cause of inflammation might produce them.

On re-examination by the Lord Advocate, he repeated that from his reading and study he knew jaundice to be an occasional symptom of arsenical poisoning. To a question whether “in a person during life who immediately after taking food had been seized with severe pain and intense thirst, he should think, because he had a yellow colour, that might not be the effect of arsenical poisoning?” he replied “that might or might not be,” and “that the appearance of jaundice would not sway him materially one way or the other.” This witness, though he had made many post-mortem examinations, had only once before done so in a case of arsenical poisoning. With this witness the medical evidence for the prosecution was closed.

It will be convenient, as in Palmer’s case, to give in this place the evidence of the medical witnesses, called, at a subsequent period, for the defence.

MEDICAL EVIDENCE FOR THE DEFENCE.

Two physicians were called for the prisoner, with the object of proving (1), that arsenic could be used without danger as a cosmetic; (2), that the symptoms in L’Angelier’s last illness were consistent with the suggestion that he died of some form of cholera.

Dr. James A. Lawrie, a physician of Glasgow, many years in practice, who was first called, said—

“He had taken a quarter or half-an-ounce of arsenic, bought at Currie’s, and washed his hands freely with it, and on the previous Saturday had tried the same experiment with a half-an-ounce on his face, but washed his face afterwards with cold water. The effect was the same as using a ball of soap with sand—it softened the skin. He filled the basin with the usual quantity of water, and mixed the arsenic with it. It was a practice he should have no fear of repeating, and would not hesitate in using, if he had a case that required it, such as vermin on the skin. In consequence of the insolubility of arsenic, he did not think that increasing the quantity of arsenic would make any difference in the effect.”

On the second point this witness said:—

“I treated one case of poisoning by arsenic. Some years ago during the prevalence of cholera, I was asked to see a gentleman about seven or eight in the evening, and the account was that he had been ill since three or four in the morning. I found him labouring under premonitory symptoms of cholera, and I prescribed for him. I returned about ten, and found the symptoms very much aggravated, and the vomiting and purging still continued. His voice was not affected, and the vomiting was not the same as in cholera. It was a reddish yellowish matter, and I requested it to be set aside. I thought it was not a case of cholera, and asked him what he had taken. He said only his ordinary food, wine, &c., but nothing else. The symptoms went on still further, and I called a consultation of other medical men. He still said he had taken nothing. I was satisfied from the aggravation of the symptoms that something else was the matter, and at last he died about three in the morning. I next day learnt that he had purchased half-an-ounce of arsenic the day of his death. I had the vomit and contents of stomach analysed, and discovered arsenic in great quantities. Extreme thirst, as far as I know, is an early symptom in poisoning by arsenic—but not equally so in cholera, it belongs to a later stage in cholera.”

Dr. Douglas Maclagan, of Edinburgh, who had had some experience in arsenical poisonings, and devoted much of his time to chemistry, had the same opinion as Dr. Lawrie of the innocuousness of arsenic as a cosmetic (mainly from its insolubility).

EVIDENCE OF THE OPPORTUNITIES FOR THE ADMINISTRATION OF POISON.

On the first charge, that of administering poison on the 19th or 20th of February, it was urged on the jury that there was no reliable evidence that the lovers had met on either of these days, that Madeline Smith had at that time poison in her possession, or that the illness which L’Angelier was supposed to have had at that time showed arsenical symptoms. On the 17th of February L’Angelier told Miss Perry, the confidante of their loves, that he expected to meet Madeline on the 19th, and, from some other circumstances—what they were is not stated—when on the 2nd of March he told her how ill he had been, falling on the floor of his room, she said that “she knew that he referred to the 19th of February.” Mrs. Jenkins, however, could not fix the date of this attack: it might have been eight or ten days before the second illness (February 23), and, like his illness in January, she believed it to be due to bile, the symptoms being something the same as her own but more violent, on both occasions accompanied by a good deal of purging and vomiting. From Dr. Thomson’s evidence, however, it appears that his first illness in that year, which Dr. Thomson places on the 3rd of February, was due to a cold, with cough and boils, for which he prescribed. The only attempt that Miss Smith made to purchase poison before that date was that of sending the page boy to Dr. Yeaman’s to buy some prussic acid, which the doctor refused to sell to her. The Lord Advocate admitted that he could not prove that she had arsenic in her possession before that illness. “It would not do,” said the Lord Justice Clerk in his charge, “to infer, from her having arsenic afterwards, that she had it also on the first occasion.”[113]

On the second charge, that of administering poison on the 22nd or 23rd of February, the following evidence was offered. On the 21st of February Miss Smith openly purchased an ounce and a half of arsenic of the chemist Murdoch, ostensibly for the purpose—a false one, as the evidence proved—of killing rats at her father’s country house. It was mixed with soot, of which she some days afterwards spoke to the chemist, saying she thought arsenic was white. If, therefore, the lovers met on the 22nd, or 23rd, she had poison in her possession. Whether L’Angelier went out on the night of the 22nd, his landlady could not say:[114] she did not hear him come in, but, when she went into his room early the next morning, she found him suffering from his second attack of illness for which Dr. Thomson attended him, and from which he recovered in about eight days. That the symptoms were those of arsenical poisoning was hardly to be doubted, and though Dr. Thomson at the time attributed them to billious derangement, he said, that, “had he known that L’Angelier had taken an irritant poison, those were the symptoms he should expect to follow.” The evidence that the lovers had met on the night of the 22nd, or morning of the 23rd, rested on a letter, which not only did not bear any date or day of the week, but the post-mark on which was so obliterated that the post-office official could not fix any date, though he thought he could see the “M” of March on the stamp, which counsel on both sides agreed in considering an error. In that letter Miss Smith wrote: “I am so sorry to hear you are ill. I hope to God you will soon be better—— you did look bad on Sunday night and Monday morning. I think you got sick with walking home so late, and the long want of food; so, next time we meet, I shall make you eat a loaf of bread before you go.” This letter the Lord Advocate assumed to be written on Wednesday, the 25th of February, and to refer to the meeting on the night of the 22nd and morning of the 23rd. To Miss Perry, on the 9th of March, L’Angelier spoke of having had a cup of coffee and chocolate from Miss Smith, which Miss Perry understood to refer to two occasions, and added, “I can’t think why I was so unwell after getting that coffee and chocolate from her.” “It ought not to be forgotten,” said the Lord Justice Clerk, “that the contents of the stomach on these two illnesses had not been examined, and therefore it was merely an inference that they were caused by arsenic—an inference drawn from the fact that on the 22nd of March he died from that poison.” With reference to the purchase of arsenic, the learned Judge added: “He attached little importance to the statements of the druggists as to what was said by the prisoner about rats; without stating some such objects she would not have got it at all; and it was not to be supposed, if she had wanted it as a cosmetic, that she would tell the druggist. Did she see the deceased on the Sunday night, before the arsenic was administered? Mrs. Jenkins did not see him go out of the house that night, and he asked the jury to consider whether there was, on the whole, apart from the correspondence, evidence that they had met together that night? If there was no proof that the administration took place on the 22nd of February, then there was great force in the observation that the foundation of the case for the prosecution had been shaken.”

On the third charge—that of poisoning on the 22nd or 23rd of March, the following facts were proved. On his return to work, after his second illness, L’Angelier was so altered in health, his complexion wan, with a dark, hectic spot on each cheek, that leave of absence was given to him, for the first time since he had been in this employ. Miss Smith had advised him to take rest and change, and L’Angelier had apparently told her that he should go to the Bridge of Allan. On the third of March, however, Miss Smith writes that her family are going to the same place, and the next day suggests that he should go to the South of England. On the 5th of March he writes her a painfully earnest letter on the reports about her intended marriage with Mr. Minnoch, concluding: “Mind, I insist on having an explicit answer to the question you evaded in my last.” Next day the prisoner purchases another sixpenny-worth of arsenic, not again of Murdoch, but of Currie, and this time the excuse is that the house in Blythswood Square is so overrun with rats, that it is to be shut up and the servants sent away till the vermin is eradicated. This again was pure invention on her part. The family went to the Bridge of Allan, whence on Tuesday, the 10th of March, the prisoner wrote to L’Angelier that they would be home again in Glasgow on the next Monday or Tuesday, when she would write to arrange an interview, adding, “I long to see you, to kiss and embrace you, my only sweet love.” Before this the Minnoch marriage had been arranged, and the day talked about, if not definitively fixed. Again on the 13th she wrote him: “I think we shall be home on Tuesday, so I shall let you know, my own beloved sweet pet, when we shall have a dear, sweet interview; when I may be pressed to your heart, and kissed by you, my own sweet love. A fond, tender embrace; a kiss, sweet love! I hope you will enjoy your visit here.” It had been previously arranged between them that L’Angelier should not come to the Bridge of Allan until her family had left.

During this visit of the Smiths to the Bridge of Allan, L’Angelier was taking his leave of absence. On the 6th of March he left for Edinburgh, and returned to Glasgow on the 17th, and, finding no letter for him, stayed at home all the next day waiting for it. On the 19th he left for the Bridge of Allan, where he was to stay for a week, his friend Thuau undertaking to forward his letters. On the 19th, after he had left, a letter came, and Thuau forwarded it that night, and it reached Stirling at nine the next morning. That letter was not to be found. In his tourist’s bag, however, the envelope of it was discovered, and, from a letter which he wrote to Miss Perry on the 20th, in which he said, “I should have come to see some one last night, but the letter was too late,” it may be fairly assumed that it contained the wished for appointment for the Thursday night. On the 18th the prisoner bought her third packet of arsenic at Currie’s. Several dead rats, she said, had been found, and it was feared some large ones still remained. This time she had a female companion with her, and, as she had to Murdoch expressed her surprise at the arsenic she had previously purchased not being white, she again used the same expression at Currie’s. This arsenic was coloured with indigo. On the 21st the last of the long series of letters reached L’Angelier’s lodgings, and was forwarded at once by Thuau. “Why, my beloved, did you not come to me?” she wrote. “Oh, my beloved, are you ill? Come to me. Sweet one, I waited and waited for you, but you came not. I shall wait again to-morrow night—same hour and arrangement.” That letter, which was found in his pocket, was received by him after nine on Sunday morning. He left the Bridge of Allan shortly after evening service began, and was at his lodgings by eight o’clock that evening. To accomplish this L’Angelier had walked to Stirling, taken the train from there to Coatbridge, where a Mr. Ross found him, and, after some refreshment at the station, walked with him to Glasgow, apparently quite well, and walking briskly.[115] When he arrived at his lodgings he appeared greatly improved in health since he left on the previous Thursday, was in high spirits, and said that the letter had brought him back. He left his lodgings about nine o’clock, is seen soon after sauntering in the direction of Blythswood Square, but not near the Smiths’ house, as it was the hour there for family prayers. To wile away the time he calls on a Mr. M’Alister, who is not at home, and from that time till he came back to his lodgings, after midnight, all trace of him is lost. At two o’clock the next morning the door-bell rang violently; his landlady went down, and found L’Angelier at the door, standing with his arms across his stomach. He was suffering from his fatal illness, already too bad to be able to use his pass key. How that attack progressed, and what its symptoms were, and what was the result of the post-mortem and analytical examinations, has already been reported.

“Here,” said the learned Judge, “the proof stops. And, supposing you are quite satisfied that the letter brought him to Glasgow,[116] are you in a condition to say, with satisfaction to your own consciences, that, as an inevitable and just result of that, you can find it proved that they met that night?[117] That is the point in the case. That you may have the strongest moral suspicion that they met—that you may believe that he was able, after all their clandestine correspondence, to obtain the means of an interview, especially as she complained of his not coming on the Thursday, said she would wait again to-morrow night, same hour and place, and talked of wishing to clasp him to her bosom—that you may suppose it likely that, although he failed to keep his appointment on Saturday, she would be waiting on Sunday, which was by no means an uncommon evening for their appointment—all that may be very true, and probably you will think so; but remember you are trying this case upon evidence that must be satisfactory, complete, and distinct.

“A jury may safely infer certain facts from the correspondence. They may even safely infer that meetings took place, when they find these meetings either mutually appointed or arranged for by the parties. But it is for you to say here whether it has been proved that L’Angelier was in the house that night. If you can hold that that link in the chain is supplied by just and satisfactory inference—remember, I say just and satisfactory—and it is for you to say whether the inference is just and satisfactory in order to complete the proof. If you really feel that in your own minds, you may have the strongest suspicion that he saw her; for really no one need hesitate to say that, as a matter of moral opinion, the whole probabilities of the case are in favour of it. But if that is all the amount that you can derive from it, the link still remains awanting—the catastrophe and the alleged cause of it are not found together. And therefore you must be satisfied that you can here stand and rely upon the firm foundation, I say, of a just and sound, and perhaps I may add, inevitable inference. That a jury is entitled often to draw such an inference there is no doubt; and it is just because you belong to that class of men to whom the Lord Advocate referred, namely, men of common sense, capable of exercising your judgment upon a matter which is laid before you to consider, it is on that very account that you are to put to yourselves the question, ‘Is this a satisfactory and a just inference?’ If you find it so, I cannot tell you that you are not at liberty to act upon it, because most of those matters occurring in life must depend upon circumstantial evidence, and upon the inference a jury may feel bound to draw. But it is an inference of a very serious character—it is an inference upon which the death of this party by the hand of the prisoner must depend.”[118]

CONDUCT AND STATEMENTS OF THE PRISONER AFTER L’ANGELIER’S DEATH.

In her declaration Miss Smith stated that she heard of L’Angelier’s death on the afternoon of Monday, the 23rd. On the Wednesday evening she was out at a party, and at eight o’clock the next morning she had left the house. In consequence Mr. Minnoch, and a brother of the prisoner, thinking apparently that she had gone to her father’s country house, took the rail to Greenock, and the steamer thence to Row, on board which they found her a little after two in the afternoon. She said she was going to Rowaleyn, and they went on with her, and from thence brought her to Glasgow in a carriage. “When we met her on the steamboat,” said Mr. Minnoch, “I asked her why she had left her house and her friends in such distress at her absence. She made no reply. I requested her not to do so among so many people. I renewed my inquiry afterwards at Rowaleyn. She said she felt distressed that her parents should be so much annoyed at what she had done.” The suggestion on the part of the prosecution was, that from conscious guilt she was fleeing from justice—on the part of the prisoner, that she was fleeing from the shame of an exposure of her love passages with L’Angelier. “But,” said the learned judge, “my opinion is, that having made a statement already about getting arsenic for the gardener to kill rats, and knowing that if it had been discovered that he got no arsenic for such a purpose, unpleasant consequences might follow, she wished to see him, in order to make an arrangement by which that statement might be borne out. The steamer in which she went only sailed from Helensburgh to Gairloch and back, and therefore escape by it was nearly impossible; and, in point of fact, he did not believe she had any intention of attempting it.”

Previously, however, to this unexplained flight from home, she had been visited by the French consul, a mutual friend of the lovers, to whose searching questions in the presence of her mother she gave most decided answers. As this witness’s evidence was greatly relied on by counsel for the prisoner, it is reported in full.

M. Auguste Vauvert de Meau, the French Consul at Glasgow, who had known L’Angelier for three years, was acquainted with the prisoner’s family, and aware from L’Angelier’s own statements of the correspondence between the lovers, gave the following evidence:—