The Secret Poisoner

A Century of Murder

Linda Stratmann

• Éditeur: Yale University Press
• Année: 2016
• ISBN:
  9780300219548
• Sujet: History
• Sous-sujet: Modern British History

"This fine social history charts the changing patterns of using poison" and the forensic methods developed to detect it in the Victorian Era ( The Guardian, UK). Murder by poison alarmed, enthralled, and in some ways even defined the Victorian age. Linda Stratmann's dark and splendid social history reveals the nineteenth century as a gruesome battleground where poisoners went head-to-head with scientific and legal authorities who strove to detect poisons, control their availability, and bring the guilty to justice. Separating fact from Hollywood fiction, Stratmann corrects many misconceptions about particular poisons and their deadly effects. She also documents how the motives for poisoning—which often involved domestic unhappiness—evolved as marriage and child protection laws began to change. Combining archival research with vivid storytelling, Stratmann charts the era's inexorable rise of poison cases.

CHAPTER ONE

The Devilish Dumplings

When surgeon John Marshall¹ arrived at 68 Chancery Lane, the home and office of law stationer Robert Gregson Turner, on the night of 21 March 1815, it was immediately obvious that he was dealing with a potentially fatal emergency.

At two o’clock that afternoon, Turner’s two apprentices, Roger Gadsden and Tom King, aged seventeen and eighteen, and the servants, Eliza Fenning and Sarah Peer, had dined off a meat pie without suffering any ill effects. The family, consisting of Turner, his wife Charlotte, who was nearly seven months pregnant, and his father and business partner Orlibar Turner, visiting from his home in Lambeth, ate an hour later. Their hearty dinner consisted of beefsteaks served with potatoes, white sauce made with milk, and yeast dumplings. During the previous two weeks, Eliza had several times suggested to her mistress that she make yeast dumplings at which she said she was ‘a capital hand’.² Charlotte said she preferred them made from bought dough, but Eliza, determined to make them herself, went ahead and ordered the yeast without her mistress’s permission. The baker delivered the yeast on 20 March and Eliza used some to make a batch of light fluffy dumplings that were eaten by the servants and apprentices. The next day she made a second batch for the family dinner, but these did not turn out so well, the mixture failing to rise properly. Nevertheless, they were cooked and served.

Before the meal was over, Charlotte was afflicted by a severe burning pain and retired to her room, where she was violently sick. Soon afterwards, Robert and Orlibar were similarly affected. An apothecary, Henry Ogilvy of nearby Southampton Buildings, Chancery Lane, was sent for; he arrived at five o’clock, by which time Eliza, too, was unwell. Roger Gadsden was ordered to walk to Lambeth and fetch Orlibar’s wife Margaret to help care for the family. By the time he arrived at Lambeth, he too had been taken ill, suffering so acutely that he thought he would die.

Margaret, accompanied by Gadsden, who vomited repeatedly all the way back home, arrived by coach at eight o’clock and took charge of the situation. It was probably she who sent Tom King to fetch the physician John Marshall, who had known the family for over nine years,³ from his home in Half Moon Street just off Piccadilly. No one was in any doubt that all of those who were unwell had been poisoned, and King told Marshall that some of them were so ill that they might be dead before he got there.

A medical man called to a case of suspected poisoning in 1815 was obliged to perform three roles – physician, analyst and detective. Marshall had to decide very quickly whether the family had been poisoned or was suffering from disease, which would determine what treatment he would give.⁴ Cholera can exhibit the same symptoms as poisoning: pain in the stomach and bowels, with vomiting and purging. It was usually treated by giving the patient fluids, with laudanum to stop the diarrhoea. In both cholera and irritant poisoning there is a burning acrid sensation in the throat, but in cases of poison this sensation is felt before the vomiting begins, whereas in cholera it appears afterwards as a reaction to the stomach acids in the vomit. Marshall would have been aware that cholera in Britain, when fatal, was rarely so in less than three days, whereas a victim of poisoning might die in hours.⁵ In the Turners’ case, several people who had eaten the same meal had been taken ill within minutes of each other and the pain in the throat had preceded vomiting. Marshall, with little time to spare, decided that the family had been poisoned, and the most probable culprit was arsenic, commonly used in homes as a vermin killer. His preferred treatment was to wash the stomach with copious fluid and give purgatives to eliminate the poison via the bowels as quickly as possible. Emetics, to induce vomiting, although used by other doctors, he regarded as unnecessary and tending to increase the painful irritation.

The first patient Marshall encountered was the cook, Eliza Fenning. She was lying on the stairs, flushed, retching and complaining of a burning pain in her stomach. He was told that she had already vomited a great deal. Margaret at once advised Marshall that the other members of the family were in a far worse state than Eliza and needed more urgent attention. Marshall ordered Eliza to drink water and milk, and she was taken up to bed.

Robert Turner was already in bed, prostrated by excruciating pain and appearing to Marshall to be on the point of death. The muscles of Turner’s abdomen and viscera were contracting spasmodically, and so powerful were these movements that basins of his yellowish-green vomit included faecal matter driven up from the intestines. Turner was also suffering from violent diarrhoea, and his motions were a homogenous bright green like paint.⁶ He complained of burning heat like a furnace or red-hot irons, which started at his tongue and went all the way down to his stomach, as well as insatiable thirst and a headache. His eyes were sensitive to light, and his extremities were cold. When he tried to walk to the commode he fell down in a fit and had to be helped back to bed.

The other patients showed similar symptoms, and it was feared that Charlotte would miscarry. Both she and her husband had lost the entire skin of their tongues, probably due to the corrosive effect of arsenic in the vomit. Over the next few days the cuticle of Charlotte’s skin would peel from her body in flakes that resembled bran. Orlibar, while clearly very ill, was the least affected of the family. Marshall sent for Henry Ogilvy to find out what treatment had already been given and consult him on further action. Ogilvy confirmed that he had given no emetics, but had washed his patients’ stomachs with sugar water or milk and water and given them doses of castor oil. Both men were convinced that they were dealing with a case of arsenical poisoning. Concerned that some of the poison had already left the stomach and was damaging the intestines, they decided to continue doses of purgatives until the faeces looked a more normal colour, while giving alkaline draughts to neutralise the effects of the arsenic. The patients were allowed to drink water, milk and mutton broth. Marshall and Ogilvy went to see Eliza in her garret, and, to their surprise, she refused to take any medicine, saying that her life meant nothing to her and she would sooner die. Only after very great persuasion did she consent to take something. They gave instructions to Margaret Turner about when the medicines were to be repeated and she agreed to stay up all night and ensure that this was done.

The next question to address was how the family had been poisoned, and the vital clue was the condition of apprentice Roger Gadsden, the only person taken ill who had not eaten with the Turners. At about twenty past three, at which time both Gadsden and Eliza were both well and the house had not yet been alerted to the condition of the Turners, Gadsden entered the kitchen and saw leftover dumplings that had been brought down from the dinner table. There was also some sauce at the bottom of the sauceboat. He was about to eat some dumpling, when Eliza exclaimed, ‘Gadsden, do not eat that – it is cold and heavy, it will do you no good.’ ⁷ He ate a piece the size of a walnut, but when she repeated the warning, he desisted, and sopped up the last of the sauce with a piece of bread. About an hour later he felt sick and vomited, but recovered and was well enough to start out on the journey to Lambeth to fetch Margaret Turner. It was only then that he became so ill that he realised he had been poisoned.

Margaret had tackled Eliza about the ‘devilish dumplings’,⁸ to which Eliza replied, ‘not the dumplings, but the milk, ma’am’.⁹ The dumplings, which Eliza said she alone had mixed, had been made with flour taken from a storage bin (the same flour used to make the crust of the pie eaten earlier that day without ill effect), the remainder of the original batch of yeast, and milk left over from breakfast. Sarah Peer had gone out to fetch more milk after two o’clock, at which time the dumplings had already been mixed, and this new milk was used by Charlotte to make the sauce. Contrary to Gadsden’s account of dipping a bit of bread in the dregs of the sauce, Eliza, still insisting that the problem was in the sauce and not the dumplings, claimed he had ‘licked up’¹⁰ three quarters of a boatful. Marshall’s enquiries however revealed that Robert Turner, who was the most severely afflicted of all his patients, had eaten the largest quantity of dumpling but had had none of the sauce. The only dish eaten by all the sufferers was the dumplings. Eliza claimed to have eaten a whole one herself, although she was not seen doing so, and she made no mention of having had any sauce. The only two members of the household who had not been taken ill were Sarah Peer, who had gone out soon after serving dinner, and Tom King.

Suspicion was growing against Eliza, not only because she had made the dumplings and had offered no assistance to or shown concern for the Turners, but also because she was the only person in the household known to have a motive to harm the family. Eliza had been employed by the Turners from the end of January 1815.¹¹ About three weeks after Eliza’s arrival, Charlotte saw her going into the apprentices’ room in a state of partial undress, and spoke to her severely, giving her notice to quit. Eliza, claiming that she had only gone there to get a candle, was suitably contrite. Charlotte ‘afterwards took compassion on her’¹² and allowed her to stay; nevertheless, the rebuke rankled. From then on, Eliza was sullen and less respectful towards Charlotte. Eliza told Sarah Peer that she no longer liked Mr and Mrs Turner, and was heard to say that ‘“she would have her spite out with her mistress”’.¹³

That night, John Marshall investigated the remains of the dumplings. He found them dense, tough and heavy, something he ascribed to a culinary failure and not poison.¹⁴ He cut them into thin slices, and saw on the exposed interior ‘white particles pretty thickly and uniformly distributed throughout the surface, which I conjectured to be white arsenic’.¹⁵ This suggested to him that the powder had not merely been sprinkled on top of the dough but was very thoroughly and evenly mixed in.¹⁶

White arsenic in its powdered form is poorly soluble in cold water, rather better in hot, and was often to be seen in its undissolved state in the stomachs of murder victims, or lurking unnoticed as a gritty residue at the bottom of poisonous liquids. When no unconsumed poison was available for examination, a living victim of criminal poisoning whose vomit and faeces had not been preserved posed a conundrum even less soluble, and it was hard to obtain a conviction without a confession.

Chemical testing to show whether an unknown substance was arsenic was then in its infancy, and toxicology was only just emerging from darkness and superstition to become a science. Until the middle of the eighteenth century, medical men gave their opinions on whether or not someone had been poisoned based on symptoms, external appearance and, if the victim died, the condition of the organs. Grains of white arsenic found in the body or leftover food and drink were chiefly identified by appearance, but advances in chemistry were already suggesting that greater certainty might be found in a laboratory. Around 1710, Dutch chemist Herman Boerhaave experimented by subjecting poisons to the heat of glowing coals, and noticed that arsenic fumes smelled like garlic.¹⁷ Over a century later, this was still a useful rule of thumb.

Marshall had no special apparatus for testing the dumplings, so he placed a slice on a polished halfpenny and held it over the flame of a candle on the blade of a knife. It gradually burned to a cinder, and gave out an unmistakable odour of garlic. When the coin cooled, the upper surface showed a silvery-white residue, which he believed to be a coating of volatilised white arsenic. This result, which became known as the reduction test, had first been noticed by a German professor of medicine, Johann Daniel Metzger, in 1787, who found that when heating compounds containing arsenic with charcoal, a deposit of white arsenic formed on a copper plate held over the resulting vapour. He further showed that when white arsenic was heated in a test tube with charcoal, shiny dark deposits of metallic arsenic, called ‘mirrors’, appeared on the upper cooler part of the tube.¹⁸

Although on his own admission the test carried out by Marshall was crude, it was an important step. Doctors and juries looking for evidence of poisoning wanted and expected to actually see the arsenic, either in powdered form or reduced to a metal. Failure to provide such evidence was a serious weakness in a criminal prosecution. In April 1806, when fifteen-year-old apprentice William Henry Wyatt was tried at the Old Bailey¹⁹ for the attempted murder of his employer’s family by putting arsenic in their coffee, the only proof that the white residue found in the coffee was arsenic was visual examination, and the evidence of an apothecary who placed it on a hot iron and testified that it smelled of garlic. Like Eliza Fenning, Wyatt had had free access to the poison kept by his employer and knew what it was. He had also drunk a small amount of the coffee, and said he had been ill. There seemed to be no motive for him to poison the family and he was acquitted.

Marshall also examined the knives used at dinner and found them so de...