Chronicles of Newgate Vol 2 — Newgate Notorieties part 1

As these records draw to a close, the crimes I chronicle become so much more recent in date that they will be fresh in the memory of most of my readers.

Nevertheless, in order to give completeness to the picture I have attempted to draw of crime in connection with Newgate, from first to last, I must make some mention, in this my penultimate chapter, of some of the most heinous offences of modern times.

The crime of poisoning has always been viewed with peculiar loathing and terror in this country.

It will be remembered that as far back as the reign of Henry VIII.

a new and most cruel penalty was devised for the punishment of the Bishop of Rochester's cook, who had poisoned his master and many of his dependents.

Sir Thomas Overbury was undoubtedly poisoned by Lord Rochester in the reign of James I. , and it is hinted that James himself nearly fell a victim to a nefarious attempt of the Duke of Buckingham.

But secret poisoning on a wholesale scale such as was practised in Italy and France was happily never popularized in England.

The well-known and lethal aqua Toffania, so called after its inventress, a Roman woman named Toffana, and which was so widely adopted by ladies anxious to get rid of their husbands, was never introduced into this country.

Its admission was probably checked by the increased vigilance at the custom houses, the necessity for which was urged by Mr. Addison, when Secretary of State, in 1717. The cases of poisoning in the British calendars are rare, nor indeed was the guilt of the accused always clearly established.

It is quite possible that Catherine Blandy, who poisoned her father at the instigation of her lover, was ignorant of the destructive character of the powders, probably arsenic, which she administered.

Captain Donellan, who was convicted of poisoning his brother-in-law, Sir Theodosius Broughton, and executed for it, would probably have had the benefit in these days of the doubts raised at his trial.

A third case, more especially interesting to us as having passed through Newgate, was that of Eliza Fenning, who was convicted of an attempt to poison a whole family by putting arsenic in the dumplings she had prepared for them.

The charge rested entirely on circumstantial evidence, and as Fenning, although convicted and executed, protested her innocence in the most solemn manner to the last, the justice of the sentence was doubted at the time.

Yet it was clearly proved that the dumplings contained arsenic, that she, and she alone, had made the dough, that arsenic was within her reach in the house, that she had had a quarrel with her mistress, and that the latter with all others who tasted the dumplings were similarly attacked, although no one died.

The crime of poisoning is essentially one which will be most prevalent in a high state of civilization, when the spread of scientific knowledge places nefarious means at the disposal of many, instead of limiting them, as in the days of the Borgias and Brinvilliers, to the specially informed and unscrupulously powerful few.

The first intimation conveyed to society of the new terror which threatened it was in the arrest and arraignment of William Palmer, a medical practitioner, charged with doing to death persons who relied upon his professional skill.

The case contained elements of much uncertainty, and yet it was so essential, in the interests and for the due protection of the public, that the fullest and fairest inquiry should be made, that the trial was transferred to the Central Criminal Court, under the authority of an Act passed on purpose, known as the Trial of Offences Act, and sometimes as Lord Campbell's Act.

That the administration of justice should never be interfered with by local prejudice or local feeling is obviously of paramount importance, and the powers granted by this Act have been frequently put in practice since.

The trial of Catherine Winsor, the baby farmer, was thus brought to the Central Criminal Court from Exeter assizes, and that of the Stauntons from Maidstone.

Palmer's trial caused the most intense excitement.

The direful suspicions which surrounded the case filled the whole country with uneasiness and misgiving, and the deepest anxiety was felt that the crime, if crime there had been, should be brought home to its perpetrator.

The Central Criminal Court was crowded to suffocation.

Great personages occupied seats upon the bench; the rest of the available space was allotted by ticket, to secure which the greatest influence was necessary.

People came to stare at the supposed cold-blooded prisoner; with morbid curiosity to scan his features and watch his demeanour through the shifting, nicely-balanced phases of his protracted trial.

Palmer, who was only thirty-one at the time of his trial, was in appearance short and stout, with a round head covered rather scantily with light sandy hair.

His skin was extraordinarily fair, his cheeks fresh and ruddy; altogether his face, though commonplace, was not exactly ugly; there was certainly nothing in it which indicated cruel cunning or deliberate truculence.

His features were not careworn, but rather set, and he looked older than his age.

Throughout his trial he preserved an impassive countenance, but he clearly took a deep interest in all that passed.

Although the strain lasted fourteen days, he showed no signs of exhaustion, either physical or mental.

On returning to gaol each day he talked freely and without reserve to the warders in charge of him, chiefly on incidents in the day's proceedings.

He was confident to the very last that it would be impossible to find him guilty; even after sentence, and until within a few hours of execution, he was buoyed up with the hope of reprieve.

The conviction that he would escape had taken so firm a hold of him, that he steadily refused to confess his guilt, lest it should militate against his chances.

In the condemned cell he frequently repeated, "I go to my death a murdered man."

He made no distinct admissions even on the scaffold; but when the chaplain at the last moment exhorted him to confess, he made use of the remarkable words, "If it is necessary for my soul's sake to confess this murder,[125] I ought also to confess the others: I mean my wife and my brother's." Yet he was silent when specifically pressed to confess that he had killed his wife and his brother.

Palmer was ably defended, but the weight of evidence was clearly with the prosecution, led by Sir Alexander Cockburn, and public opinion at the termination of the trial coincided with the verdict of the jury.

Originally a doctor in practice at Rugeley, in Staffordshire, he had gradually withdrawn from medicine, and devoted himself to the turf; but his sporting operations did not prosper, and he became a needy man, always driven to desperate straits for cash.

To meet his liabilities, he raised large sums on forged bills of acceptance drawn upon his mother, a woman of some means, whose signature he counterfeited.

In 1854 he owed a very large sum of money, but he was temporarily relieved by the death of his wife, whose life he had insured for £13,000. There is every reason to suppose that he poisoned his wife to obtain possession of this sum upon her death.

His brother was supposed to have been his next victim, upon whose life he had also effected an insurance for another £13,000. The brother too died conveniently, but the life office took some exception to the manner of the death, and hesitated to disburse the funds claimed by Palmer.

After this Palmer tried to get a new insurance on the life of a hanger-on, one Bates, but no office would accept it, no doubt greatly to Bates's longevity.

Meanwhile the bill discounters who held the forged acceptances, with other promissory notes, began to clamour for payment, and talk of issuing writs.

Palmer, alive to the danger he ran of a prosecution for forgery, should the fraud he had committed be brought to light, sought about for a fresh victim to supply him with funds.

He fixed upon a sporting friend, Mr. John Parsons Cook, who had been in luck at Shrewsbury races, both as a winner and a backer, whom he persuaded to go and stay at Rugeley in an hotel just opposite his own house.

It was there that Cook was first taken ill with violent retchings and vomitings, all dating from visits of Palmer, who brought him medicines and food.

Palmer's plan was to administer poison in quantities insufficient to cause death, but enough to produce illness which would account for death.

For this purpose he gave, or there was the strongest presumption that he gave, antimony, which caused Cook's constant sickness.

Quantities of antimony were found in the body after death.

While Cook lay ill, Palmer in his name pocketed the proceeds of the Shrewsbury settling, and so got the money for which he was prepared to barter his soul.

The last act now approached, and in order to avoid the detection of this last fraud, Palmer laid his plans for disposing of Cook.

He decided to use strychnia, or the vegetable poison otherwise known as _nux vomica_; and one of the many links in the long chain of evidence was an entry in a book of Palmer's to the effect that "strychnia kills by causing tetanic fixing of the respiratory muscles."

The purchase by Palmer of strychnia was proved.

The night he bought it, Cook, who had been taking certain pills under medical advice, not Palmer's, was seized with violent convulsions.

He had swallowed his pills as usual, at least Palmer had administered them--whether the ordinary or his own pills will never be known, except as may be inferred from the results, which indicate that he had taken the latter.

Cook recovered this time; it was probably Palmer's intention that he should recover, wishing to encourage the supposition that Cook was in a bad way.

Next night Cook had a second and a more violent attack.

That day Palmer had bought more strychnia, and had called in a fresh doctor.

The second attack was fatal, and ended in Cook's death from tetanus.

This tetanus, according to the prosecution, was produced by strychnia, and followed the administration of pills by Palmer prescribed nominally by the fresh doctor, for which Palmer had substituted his own.

Cook's death was horrible--fearful paroxysms and cramps, ending in suffocation by the tetanic rigour which caught the muscles of the chest.

After Cook's death his stepfather, who was much attached to him, came to Rugeley.

He was struck with the appearance of the corpse, which was not emaciated, as after a long disease ending in death; while the muscles of the fingers were tightly clenched, not open, as usual in a corpse.

He said nothing, but began to feel uneasy when he found that Cook's betting-book was missing, and that Palmer put it forward that his friend had died greatly embarrassed, with bills to the amount of £4000 out in his name.

Palmer too showed an indecent haste in preparing the body for interment, and in obtaining the usual certificate.

After this the step-father insisted upon a post-mortem, which was conducted somewhat carelessly.

The intestines were, however, preserved and sent for analysis, but it was proved that Palmer tried hard to get possession of the jar containing them, and even sought to upset the vehicle by which they were being conveyed a part of the way to London.

The examination of the stomach betrayed the presence of antimony in large quantities, but no strychnia, and it was on the entire absence of the latter that the defence was principally based when Palmer was brought to trial.

All the circumstances were so suspicious that he could not escape the criminal charge.

He had already been arrested on a writ issued at the instance of the money-lenders, and an action had been commenced against Mrs. Palmer on her acceptances.

It came out at once that these had been forged, and the whole affair at once took the ugliest complexion.

A government prosecution was instituted, and Palmer was brought to Newgate for trial at the Central Criminal Court.

There was not much reserve about him when there.

He frequently declared before and during the trial that it would be impossible to find him guilty.

He never actually said that he was not guilty, but he was confident he would not be convicted.

He relied on the absence of the strychnia.

But the chain of circumstantial evidence was strong enough to satisfy the jury, who agreed to their verdict in an hour.

At the last moment Palmer tossed a bit of paper over to his counsel, on which he had written, "I think there will be a verdict of Not Guilty."

Even after the death sentence had been passed upon him he clung to the hope that the Government would grant him a reprieve.

To the last, therefore, he played the part of a man wrongfully convicted, and did not abandon hope even when the high sheriff had told him there was no possibility of a reprieve, and within a few hours of execution.

He suffered at Stafford in front of the gaol.

Palmer speedily found imitators.

Within a few weeks occurred the Leeds poisoning case, in which the murderer undoubtedly was inspired by the facts made public at Palmer's trial.

Dove, a fiendish brute, found from the evidence in that case that he could kill his wife, whom he hated, with exquisite torture, and with a poison that would leave, as he thought, no trace.

In the latter hope he was happily disappointed.

But as this case is beyond my subject, I merely mention it as one of the group already referred to.

Three years later came the case of Dr. Smethurst, presenting still greater features of resemblance with Palmer's, for both were medical men, and both raised difficult questions of medical jurisprudence.

In both the jury had no doubt as to the guilt of the accused, only in Smethurst's case the then Home Secretary, Sir George Cornewall Lewis, could not divest his mind of serious doubt, and of which the murderer got the benefit.

Smethurst's escape may have influenced the jury in the Poplar poisoning case, which followed close on its heels, although in that the verdict of "Not Guilty" was excusable, as the evidence was entirely circumstantial.

There was no convincing proof that the accused had administered the poison, although beyond question that poison had occasioned the death.

Dr. Smethurst was long an inmate of Newgate, and was tried at the Central Criminal Court.

He had all the characteristics of the poisoner--the calm deliberation, the protracted dissimulation, as with unshrinking, relentless wickedness the deadly work is carried on to the end.

Smethurst's victim was a Miss Bankes, with whom he had contracted a bigamous marriage.

He had met her at a boarding-house, where he lived with his own wife, a person of "shady" antecedents, and whom he left without scruple to join Miss Bankes.

The latter seems to have succumbed only too willingly to his fascinations, and to have as readily agreed to marry him, in spite of the existence of the other Mrs. Smethurst.

Probably the doctor had told her the story he brought forward when tried for bigamy, namely, that Mrs. Smethurst had no right to the name, but had a husband of her own, one Johnson, alive--a story subsequently disproved.

Miss Bankes seems to have counted upon some species of whitewashing, no less than the repudiation of the other marriage, and told her sister as much when they last met.

For some months Smethurst and Miss Bankes lived together as man and wife, first in London, and then at Richmond.

She had a little fortune of her own, some £1700 or £1800, and a life-interest in £5000, a fact on which Smethurst's counsel dwelt with much weight, as indicating a motive for keeping her alive rather than killing her.

But probably the lump sum was the bait, or perhaps Smethurst wished to return to his temporarily deserted first wife.

Whatever the exact cause which impelled him to crime, it seems certain that he began to give her some poison, either arsenic or antimony, or both, in small quantities, with the idea of subjecting her to the irritant poison slowly but surely until the desired effect, death, was achieved.

As she became worse and worse, Smethurst called in the best medical advice in Richmond, but was careful to prime them with his facts and lead them if possible to accept his diagnosis of the case.

Smethurst was found guilty by the jury, and sentenced to death.

But a long public discussion followed, and in consequence he was reprieved.

The Home Secretary, in a letter to the Lord Chief Baron, stated that "although the facts are full of suspicion against Smethurst, there is not absolute and complete evidence of his guilt."

Smethurst was therefore given a free pardon for the offence of murder, but he was subsequently again tried for bigamy, and sentenced to twelve months' imprisonment.

Catherine Wilson was a female poisoner who did business wholesale.

She was tried in April 1862 on suspicion of having attempted to poison a neighbour with oil of vitriol.

The circumstances were strange.

Mrs. Wilson had gone to the chemist's for medicine, and on her return had administered a dose of something which burnt the mouth badly, but did not prove fatal.

Wilson was acquitted on this charge, but other suspicious facts cropped up while she was in Newgate.

It appeared that several persons with whom she was intimate had succumbed suddenly.

In all cases the symptoms were much the same, vomiting, violent retching, purging, such as are visible in cholera, and all dated from the time when she knew a young man named Dixon, who had been in the habit of taking colchicum for rheumatism.

Mrs. Wilson heard then casually from a medical man that it was a very dangerous medicine, and she profited by what she had heard.

Soon afterwards Dixon died, showing all the symptoms already described.

Soon afterwards a friend, Mrs. Atkinson, came to London from Westmoreland, and stayed in Mrs. Wilson's house.

She was in good health on leaving home, and had with her a large sum of money.

While with Mrs. Wilson she became suddenly and alarmingly ill, and died in great agony.

Her husband, who came up to town, would not allow a post-mortem, and again Mrs. Wilson escaped.

Mrs. Atkinson's symptoms had been the same as Dixon's. Then Mrs. Wilson went to live with a man named Taylor, who was presently attacked in the same way as the others, but, thanks to the prompt administration of remedies, he recovered.

After this came the charge of administering oil of vitriol, which failed, as has been described.

Last of all Mrs. Wilson poisoned her landlady, Mrs. Soames, under precisely the same conditions as the foregoing.

Here, however, the evidence was strong and sufficient.

It was proved that Mrs. Wilson had given Mrs. Soames something peculiar to drink, that immediately afterwards Mrs. Soames was taken ill with vomiting and purging, and that Mrs. Wilson administered the same medicine again and again.

The last time Mrs. Soames showed great reluctance to take it, but Wilson said it would certainly do her good.

This mysterious medicine Wilson kept carefully locked up, and allowed no one to see it, but its nature was betrayed when this last victim also died.

The first post-mortem indicated death from natural causes, but a more careful investigation attributed it beyond doubt to over-doses of colchicum.

Dr. Alfred Taylor, the great authority and writer on medical jurisprudence, corroborated this, and in his evidence on the trial fairly electrified the court by declaring it his opinion that many deaths, supposed to be from cholera, were really due to poison.

This fact was referred to by the judge in his summing up, who said that he feared it was only too true that secret poisoning was at that time very rife in the metropolis.

Wilson was duly sentenced to death, and suffered impenitent, hardened, and without any confession of her guilt.

Although murder by insidious methods had become more common, cases where violence of the most deadly and determined kind was offered had not quite disappeared.

I will mention two cases of this class, one accompanied with piracy on the high seas, the other perpetrated in a railway-carriage, and showing the promptitude with which criminals accept and utilize altered conditions of life, more particularly as regards locomotion.

The first case was that of the 'Flowery Land,' which left London for Singapore on the 28th July, 1863, with a cargo of wine and other goods.

Her captain was John Smith; the first and second mates, Karswell and Taffir; there were two other Englishmen on board, and the rest of the crew were a polyglot lot, most of them, as was proved by their subsequent acts, blackguards of the deepest dye.

Six were Spaniards, or rather natives of Manilla, and men of colour; one was a Greek, another a Turk; there were also a Frenchman, a Norwegian (the carpenter), three Chinamen, a "Sclavonian," and a black on board.

Navigation and discipline could not be easy with such a nondescript crew.

The captain was kindly but somewhat intemperate, the first mate a man of some determination, and punishment such as rope's-ending and tying to the bulwarks had to be applied to get the work properly done.

The six Spaniards, the Greek, and the Turk were in the same watch, eight truculent and reckless scoundrels, who, brooding over their fancied wrongs, and burning for revenge, hatched amongst them a plot to murder their officers and seize the ship.

The mutiny was organized with great secrecy, and broke out most unexpectedly in the middle of the night.

A

simultaneous attack was made upon the captain and the first mate.

The latter had the watch on deck.

One half of the mutineers fell upon him unawares with handspikes and capstan-bars.

He was struck down, imploring mercy, but they beat him about the head and face till every feature was obliterated, and then, still living, flung him into the sea.

Meanwhile the captain, roused from his berth, came out of the cabin, was caught near the 'companion' by the rest of the mutineers, and promptly despatched with daggers.

His body was found lying in a pool of blood in a night-dress, stabbed over and over again in the left side.

The captain's brother, a passenger on board the 'Flowery Land,' was also stabbed to death and his body thrown overboard.

The second mate, who had heard the hammering of the capstan-bars and the handspikes, with the first mate's and captain's agonized cries, had come out, verified the murderers, and then shut himself up in his cabin.

He was soon summoned on deck, but as he would not move, the mutineers came down and stood in a circle round his berth.

Leon, or Lyons, who spoke English, when asked said they would spare his life if he would navigate the ship for them to the River Plate or Buenos Ayres.

Taffir, the second mate, agreed, but constantly went in fear of his life for the remainder of the voyage; and although the mutineers spared him, they ill-treated the Chinamen, and cut one badly with knives.

Immediately after the murder cases of champagne, which formed part of the cargo, were brought on deck and broached; the captain's cabin ransacked, his money and clothes divided amongst the mutineers, as well as much of the merchandise on board.

Leon wished to make every one on board share and share alike, so as to implicate the innocent with the guilty; but Vartos, or Watto, the Turk, would not allow any but the eight mutineers to have anything.

The murders were perpetrated on the 10th September, and the ship continued her voyage for nearly three weeks, meeting and speaking one ship only.

On the 2nd October they sighted land, ten miles distant; the mutineers took command of the ship, put her about till night-fall, by which time they had scuttled her, got out the boats, and all left the ship.

The rest of the crew were also permitted to embark, except the Chinamen, one of whom was thrown into the water and drowned, while the other two were left to go down in the ship, and were seen clinging to the tops until the waters closed over them.

The boats reached the shore on the 4th October.

Leon had prepared a plausible tale to the effect that they belonged to an American ship from Peru bound to Bordeaux, which had foundered at sea; that they had been in the boats five days and nights, but that the captain and others had been lost.

The place at which they landed was not far from the entrance to the River Plate.

A farmer took them in for the night, and drove them next day to Rocha, a place north of Maldonado.

Taffir, the mate, finding there was a man who could speak English at another place twenty miles off, repaired there secretly, and so gave information to the Brazilian authorities.

The mutineers were arrested, the case inquired into by a naval court-martial, and the prisoners eventually surrendered to the British authorities, brought to England, and lodged in Newgate.

Their trial followed at the Central Criminal Court.

Eight were arraigned at the same time: six Spaniards, Leon, Blanco, Duranno, Santos, and Marsolino; Vartos the Turk, and Carlos the Greek.

Seven were found guilty of murder on the high seas, and one, Carlos, acquitted.

Two of the seven, Santos and Marsolino, were reprieved, and their sentences commuted to penal servitude for life; the remaining five were executed in one batch.

They were an abject, miserable crew, cowards at heart; but some, especially Lopez, continued bloodthirsty to the last.

Lopez took a violent dislike to the officer of the ward in charge of them, and often expressed a keen desire to do for him.

They none of them spoke much English except Leon, commonly called Lyons.

After condemnation, as the rules now kept capital convicts strictly apart, they could not be lodged in the two condemned cells, and they were each kept in an ordinary separate cell of the newly-constructed block, with the "traps," or square openings in the cell door, let down.

A full view of them was thus at all times obtainable by the officers who, without intermission, day and night patrolled the ward.

On the morning of execution the noise of fixing the gallows in the street outside awoke one or two of them.

Lyons asked the time, and was told it was only five.

"Ah!"

he remarked, "they will have to wait for us then till eight."

Lopez was more talkative.

When the warder went in to call him he asked for his clothes.

He was told he would have to wear his own.

"Not give clothes?

In Russia, Italy, always give chaps clothes."

Then he wanted to know when the policemen would arrive, and was told none would come.

"The soldiers then?"

No soldiers either.

"What, you not afraid let us go all by ourselves?

Not so in Russia or Spain."

The convicts were pinioned one by one and sent singly out to the gallows.

As the first to appear would have some time to wait for his fellows, a difficult and painful ordeal, the seemingly most courageous was selected to lead the way.

This was Duranno; but the sight of the heaving mass of uplifted, impassioned faces was too much for his nerves, and he so nearly fainted that he had to be seated in a chair.

The execution went off without mishap.