Note 118 — Chapter VI

Regarding this third charge in the light of probabilities, the Dean said:—“If you believe the evidence of the Crown, he suspected the prisoner of having tried to poison him. But my learned friend says his suspicions were then lulled—she had become more kind to him before he left town. I thought my learned friend said he was brooding over it when in Edinburgh, and spoke of it in a serious tone to the Towerses. That was on the 16th of March, after which date he had nothing to change his mind in the shape of kindness from the prisoner, and therefore if he did once entertain the suspicion, however unfounded, there was nothing to remove it from his mind anterior to the 22nd of March. A man, whose suspicions are excited against a particular person, is not very likely to take poison at that person’s hand; and yet, what are we asked to believe that he took from her hand that night? That he took from her hand a poisoned cup, in which there lurked such a quantity of arsenic as was sufficient to leave in his stomach after death 82 grains; such a dose indicating the administration of at least double—aye, I think Dr. Christison said the administration of at least half an ounce (240 grains)—and that he took it that evening from the hand of the prisoner, with all his previous suspicions that she was practising on him. It is a dose which, as far as experience goes, was never successfully administered by a murderer. There is not a case on record in which it has ever been shown that a person administering poison to another ever succeeded in persuading him to swallow such a quantity.” [But note as to confidence after suspicion, that of Cook in Palmer, after the suspicious illness at Shrewsbury.—See Palmer’s Case, ante; and as to quantity administered by murderers, note ante, p. 319, and Appendix B., p. 358.]