Helen Barrell - Poison Panic

For my grandparents: Jack, Amy, Bert and Beryl

The lowest and vilest alleys in London do not present a more dreadful record of sin than does the smiling and beautiful countryside.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

First published in Great Britain in 2016 by
Pen & Sword True Crime
an imprint of
Pen & Sword Books Ltd
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Copyright Helen Barrell 2016

ISBN: 978 1 47385 207 5
PDF ISBN: 978 1 47385 210 5
EPUB ISBN: 978 1 47385 208 2
PRC ISBN: 978 1 47385 209 9

The right of Helen Barrell to be identified as the Author of this Work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

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Contents

Map of Essex.

Illustrations

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Note on Text

T he primary sources used for this book are contemporary newspapers, censuses, parish registers, wills, Home Office documents and Old Bailey proceedings. Direct speech has been taken from reports of inquests and trials in newspapers. It should go without saying that the newspapers referred to in this book no longer report on trials in the same way they did in the 1840s. They scrupulously follow press guidelines and the various pieces of legislation that have come into place in the intervening years.

Whilst the aim of this book is not to solve the mysteries of these deaths, the reader is left free to formulate their own theories.

Introduction

The Poison Shop

I n a satirical sketch called The Poison Shop, published in 1849, Punch magazine mocked how easy it was to buy poisons. A widow requests threepence worth of laudanum all the money she has in the world; she presumably intends to take her own life. A little girl says her mother has sent her for as much Arsenic as you can for twopence-halfpenny, to kill rats. The assistant, named Bottles, says, Rats! Eh! Father belong to a burial club? And following the child are six other customers who want arsenic too. Then a mysterious stranger asks for the strongest poison in the shop; Bottles has many for him to choose from prussic acid, strychnine, belladonna, digitalis and vitriol. The scene ends with Bottles aside to the audience: Ha! A pretty good mornings work; and if the undertakers dont get a job or two out of it and perhaps Jack Ketch too I shall be astonished rayther.

British readers in the late 1840s would have well understood the satire the newspapers of the day were filled with inquests from across the country, where deaths were caused by poison. Trials were reported in detail and the deceaseds close relative or friend stood in the shadow of the hangman. Leading articles in The Times boomed that something must be done to tighten up the civil registration of deaths and to regulate the sale of poisons and the running of burial clubs. With their generous payouts intended to cover funeral costs, the burial clubs presented the motive; easily obtained poisons provided the weapon; and loose rules for registering deaths concealed the crime.

The English south-eastern county of Essex loomed large in the public imagination, one of the locations where many arsenic murders had allegedly taken place. Sarah Chesham, Mary May and Hannah Southgate would all stand trial, accused of poisoning with arsenic. Their names were linked in the newspapers, the press claiming they were part of a poisoning ring of women who taught each other how to kill with white powder. Their victims were husbands, sons and brothers, and they were murdered, so the papers said, for burial club money or to clear the way for a new man. While mainland Europe in the 1840s was convulsed with revolution, the Essex poisonings crystallised the fear that British society was under threat.

One of many anti-poison satires to appear in Punch.

Arsenic, arsenic, everywhere

Although it is naturally occurring, the arsenic bought for mere pence from Victorian chemists and grocers was usually the chemical compound arsenic trioxide. A by-product of the ore refining process, this white, flour-like powder was available in large quantities during the Industrial Revolution in Britain. It had many legitimate uses glass-makers needed it to remove the green tinge from otherwise clear glass, and it was used in the manufacture of perfectly spherical shot. Farmers used it to control pests, and it was a highly effective fungicide; it was present in sheep dip and was used to steep seeds. Arsenic had medicinal and cosmetic uses too, but perhaps its best-known nineteenth-century use was as a dye called Scheeles Green or emerald green. As a metal, it was popular because it wouldnt fade like vegetable dyes, and so was used for wallpaper (which may have killed Napoleon Bonaparte), clothing, and even in food. This had predictably dreadful results: in Northampton in 1848, two men were found guilty of manslaughter when one man died and many other diners fell ill after eating blancmange that had been coloured with emerald green.

Around many ordinary nineteenth-century homes, arsenic in its white powder form was used to kill rats and mice, which were a problem in the badly maintained cottages of the poor. Shops sold commercial preparations that had arsenic as an ingredient, but some would buy white arsenic neat as it was cheaper. A common method was to spread the poison on a slice of buttered bread and leave it by mouse holes.

The Hungry Forties are well known for the tragedy of the potato blight that caused death and emigration on a huge scale in Ireland and the Scottish Highlands. In mainland Europe, food shortages caused by bad harvests stoked feelings of desperation that led to unrest. Potato blight affected crops elsewhere in Britain, too, and the Corn Laws, keeping the price of grain inflated to protect landowners from cheap imports, meant that food for the ordinary British person was expensive, especially as wages were falling. Although the Corn Laws were abolished in 1846, wages remained depressed and protecting scanty food by lacing the home with deadly poison was a risk that some families felt worth taking.

The Victorian medicine chest