Molly Whittington-Egan - Murder on the Bluff. The Carew Poisoning Case

Murder
On the Bluff

THE CAREW POISONING CASE

Molly Whittington-Egan

Neil Wilson Publishing. Glasgow. Scotland

First published in 1996 by
Neil Wilson Publishing
www.nwp.co.uk

Molly Whittington-Egan, 2013

The author has established her moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this hook is available from the British Library.

Print edition ISBN: 978-1-897784-52-5
Ebook ISBN: 978-1-906000-43-1

CONTENTS

To the memory of Mimi,

at Lyonshall, who was still with me

when I began this book.

LIST OF PLATES

PLATES

FOOTNOTES

The classic murder mystery. Did Florence Bravo poison her husband Charles, or, was it her companion, Jane Cox or her ancient lover Dr Gully?

Sturdy realism perhaps. The Somerset and Dorset Railway, which served Glastonbury, was known as the Slow and Dirty!

V. Walter Bagehot. William Irving, Longmans, Green & Co. 1939.

For more details of the Porch-Churchill marriage see Jennie. Lady Randolph Churchill. Peregrine Churchill and Julian Mitchell. Collins, 1974.

What a country of greenery and shade, this Japan, what an unexpected Eden.

And it was raining, raining: falling so thickly that it nearly turned day into night ... And with it there was a wind, too: one could hear its deep, profound voice howling in the ravines.

Cubebs: the dried berry of Piper cubeba, a Sumatran climbing pepper shrub.

Copaiba: The balsam obtained from South American trees and shrubs of the genus Copaifera.

From Guinevere: Idylls of the King. Arthur reproaches his queen for her adultery with Lancelot.

A variety of the game, played with seven instead of five cards, and with two disclosed.

The ** represent tears in the paper.

In this case, and elsewhere, the omissions were deliberately made by official hands to protect named persons from publicity.

Samuel Rutherford Crockett (1860-1914). Scottish minister and prolific novelist, member of the kailyard school of fiction (from the cabbage patch kept outside cottages) in which, with much use of the vernacular, rustic life in Scotland was portrayed in a frankly sentimental manner.

Presumably Thomas Hardys Jude the Obscure which had just came out in novel form in 1895.

Ediths punctuation in the diary, not in anticipation of publication, is perfunctory, and relies on points and dashes. Therefore, it has been lightly standardised, for clarity.

The moment has come when the thing ought to be done. Or Its time to do it.

The horse mutilation crimes which were investigated by Arthur Conan Doyle.

Four grains of arsenic = one ounce of Fowlers solution. One grain of arsenic = 100-120 minims of Fowlers, depending on the way it is made up. One minim = one drop (roughly). Thus 200-40 drops would be needed to constitute the fatal dose of two grains.

The peasants of Styria, a former province of Austria, were avid arsenic eaters and had developed a tolerance. They were always invoked in these poisoning cases to illustrate how much arsenic a person could safely consume.

The sex disqualification, naturally, followed the law in England, where it was not removed until 1919.

The Pimlico mystery of 1886. Dyson procured some chloroform. Adelaide Bartlett allegedly used it to eliminate her husband. Neither was convicted.

No record has been found of an appeal to Shanghai.

Although Taylor also states that of 14 cases of ingestion of doses varying from a few grains to 40, only two proved fatal. Principles and Practice of Medical Jurisprudence, Alfred Swaine Taylor, 1865.

Short accounts had been included in Woman and Crime, Hargrave L. Adam, 1912; Noted Murder Mysteries, Philip Curtin, 1914; and Feminine Frailty, Horace Wyndham, 1929.