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rence, when fire caught the wood-work, and the vessel became unmanageable. Two hundred persons were burned or drowned, the fire or the water taking in some cases one of a family, in others, leaving only one; while those who were saved from the burning wreck were left destitute at the very threshold of their future home. The three events form the principal accidents, as they are termed, of a month. "Accidental" erroneously describes the negligence by which in each case they occurred. They were the consequences of carelessness-culpable and punishable carelessness-and a reckless disregard of life is the origin of more than one-half of the great accidents that from day to day occur in our own and in other lands. The steamer is said to have been on fire before leaving Quebec, and its destruction is supposed to have been caused by the erroneous use of timber work, altogether unprotected, near the furnace. Another and rival steamer was slightly in advance ; and therefore the furnace was heated rapidly for a race. This is the common supposition, and it is probably true. The fire in the harbour may have been extinguished before the vessel commenced the upward voyage; but the warning was neglected. Severe punishment was awarded in Scotland to the surviving officers of a wrecked steamer, who were charged with negligence and recklessness in working their vessel; and until the American and Colonial officers meet punishment instead of sympathy for affairs of this nature, hundreds of passengers will continue occasionally to be burned or drowned in maintaining races on the rivers, that on an average, perhaps, do not save twenty minutes in as many hours.

The railway companies of this country have recently been fined heavily in the form of damages on the occurrence of accidents, arising from the omission of duties by their servants, and in addition to the loss by the destruction of their own property; but it does not appear that these inflictions have convinced them that the employment of an adequate number of servants is the cheaper mode of conducting their business. They accept the risk for a doubtful, and certainly a very small gain, in the meantime; and they will only abandon that course by the pecuniary pressure of verdicts. Personal punishment has been proposed as the better security for safe travelling, but it only reaches subordinates, for the real authors of the mischief cannot be held personally responsible for the acts of their servants; although the latter may have been selected from an inferior class, may be too few for the work, or wrought down into absolute stupidity at the time.

The mail at the close of last month brought lamentable intelligence from India. At Delhi and Meerut the mutinies of native soldiers had been attended by cruelties of a very gross kind, and by the death of European ladies and children. The slaughter of men in combat by mutineers might require a red retribution. The slaughter of ladies and children is another kind of wrong for which

Europeans, or certainly Europeans of the West, admit and ask no apology and no excuse. It closes for ever, or for all time, the door of mercy. The reply to that is the extermination of the parties engaged in the offence. This opinion was plain and settled from the first intimation of these murders received by telegraph. Next day orders were out, and regiments engaged in preparations for the circum-Africa voyage. Vessel after vessel departs with its many armed men. Years will come and pass before any of them can look on home, and homely scenes again. Many of them will "return no more." An army of twenty-five thousaud men are under orders for the East; and armies of double or treble that number will follow, if they be needed. The slaughters of the past will be obliterated in those of the future; and the mutineers of Delhi will learn months hence, if they have not learned ere now, that the western arm may be distant, but is strong; and western wrath often cool, but when cool, most stern and terrible in its dealings.

A comparison between the importance of these events is scarcely practicable. The first, second, and third comprehend a known quantity of suffering, or one that might be ascertained; but the fourth implies consequences that no man could estimate, and that already greatly transcend those of a calamitous accident, even of the greatest magnitude.

The interest felt in the accidental calamities, or even in the revolt, has been very limited indeed, when contrasted with that bestowed on crime and its history. If mystery be an inciting element in popular feeling, the Indian mutiny has mysteries that might gorge the greatest appetite for horrible tales. Still the death of one person by poison, and the consequent danger to the life of another, has occupied a larger portion of "British reading" during the month, than the thrilling histories of the catastrophe on the Jumna.

That case will form one among the celebrated causes of the century, and its termination has even enhanced its interest; yet the public sentiment on these subjects requires amendment, for it seems most unreasonable that the crimes of two individuals, confined closely to their personal proceedings, should occupy a greater part in the public mind than events that involve almost necessarily the lives of ten thousand men.

The case of William Palmer, of Rugeley, was not more notorious last year than the trial of Madeleine Smith in the present month; but the result has been different, and the romance of the Glasgow trial involves a class of considerations remote from the gambling and horse racing that induced the Staffordshire crime.

The prisoner, whose trial in Edinburgh commenced on the last day of June, and ended on the 9th of July, was a young lady, not more than twenty-one years of age, the daughter of a professional gentleman in Glasgow, very highly and widely celebrated in his profession, and occupying an excellent position in society. The accused girl

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USE OF ARSENICATED MIXTURES.

had been celebrated for personal attractions, even in a town which olaims to be the second in the empire. At the end of January last she had engaged to marry a partner in one of the oldest mercantile firms in that city-a man of great commercial reputation-and matters proceeded in the usual way for nearly two months, when a horrible disclosure occurred.

495

somebody being hanged without adequate cause or clear evidence. The legal gentlemen proved the purchase of arsenic by Madeleine Smith in two shops on three days, without concealment; for, in each case a receipt was signed, and in one of them the arsenic was charged to her father's account. The purchases were alleged to be made for the destruction of rats at their country house, but the gardener there proved that they had no rats to be destroyed, and the arsenic was said to be used for cosmetic purposes, by solution and washing with arsenicated water. Some medical men alleged that the custom was very dangerous, and they are correct; because the face is the object of cosmetic attention, and arsenicated water can neither be beneficial for the eyes, nor in close proximity with the mouth; but the assertion that it would produce immediate and injurious consequences on the skin, although benevolently intended perhaps, was erroneous. One medical gentleman on the opposite side prepared a wash, and chivalrously operated on his own hands and face to prove the error of his opponent. He was successful, for no apparent evil befel their texture; yet the Lord Advocate assured him that he might yet suffer for his

The lady had a prior friend, occupying a different position, certainly, from her own, or from that of her second suitor a subordinate clerk in a Glasgow house-who died suddenly on the 23rd of March, and was found to have been poisoned by a gigantic dose of arsenic. The connexion of Madeleine Smith with his death was established, so far as that he would not have died in Glasgow on that day, except for a note which she had written, requesting him to meet her. She evidently wrote that note in ignorance of his absence from town, and appointed Saturday night, the 21st, for their meeting. He was at Bridge of Allan, some thirty miles out of Glasgow, and only received this note on the morning of the 22nd of March. This circumstance was not explained when the tale found its way into the newspapers, and was told with exaggerations and mystifications in every house-argumentum ad hominem in his person. hold; and so it was clear to the apprehension of every gossip in the land, and the several millions of good people who decry and eschew the frailty of gossiping, that a young lady had very deliberately murdered one lover in order that she might marry another, and a wealthier friend; for it was ascer. tained that she had made three separate purchases of arsenic some time previously to the death of her earlier acquaintance, and in each instance, under a false pretence.

The evidence on the trial proved the facility of obtaining this poison in Glasgow. Storekeepers at chemical and print works admitted that they place large quantities of arsenic in open casks in their warehouses. The persons engaged in their business, and even visitors, have access to these casks, and those who have them more particularly under their charge admit that they could not discover the abstraction of considerable quantities. The phrase, in their language, means quantities that would destroy a battalion of men or a squadron of horses. They keep and sell, or use, this mineral poison, not by the ounce or the pound, but in tons. These circumstances must have been generally known before this trial; yet the Legislature in endeavouring to regulate the sale of poisons, some time since, confined their measure exclusively to apothecaries' shops; or obedience to its enactments has been confined to them alone; yet the business done by druggists in this particular poison must be very limited indeed, when contrasted with its delivery and use for manufacturing purposes.

The comparative ignorance of the world evinced by the legal and scientific gentlemen engaged in "forwarding the ends of justice," in this case, would be amusing, if it might not possibly lead to

The worthy doctor might have been spared this danger by any one of five hundred witnesses who, in the present state of science, require to use arsenicated mixtures, with no design whatever on their complexions, but in the ordinary course of their labour. The artizans in more than one trade, or the shepherds in the pastoral districts, bring this poison not for a few moments, but for hours, into contact with their arms and hands in their common duties. They do not immediately meet with any inconvenience from its use, but it must be opposed to their general health, and would be still more dangerous if the skin were broken. The discovery of a substitute for its use in these cases would be an achievement worthy of science, but the differences among the scientific witnesses respecting the possibility of doing what is done daily, by hundreds of honest artizans and shepherds, in their calling, were not calculated to inspire confidence in scientific opinions.

The practice could only be followed by extremely foolish persons for cosmetic purposes; especially as the object sought-a piece of unhealthy deception-cannot be obtained by that risk; for those who are obliged to allow this mixture to get into connexion with their arms and hands are unable to see any advantage, or anything whatever, immediately resulting from its use; but that fact merely shows "the possibility" of having done what some gentlemen professed to doubt could have been effected; and what other gentlemen do not seem to know is performed, on a large scale daily, at their doors, not certainly upon the face, for that must be hazardous; although not for the cutaneous reasons suggested in these examinations.

The case was considered a complete and remarkable example of circumstantial evidence.

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on the score that something, which might not jar
with bachelor habits, was unbecoming in married
life. He was frequently ill; but he seemed able
to gather up his spirits after each complaint, and,
somehow, procured introductions to persons of good
standing in society, and to others of none. His
prospects as a junior clerk at thirty years of age
were not peculiarly good; and he appeared to have
no better quality than vanity, which bore him
through his difficulties well.

Public feeling was roused against the prisoner and | upon the occurrence of his own marriage, and
the crime. A host of crown lawyers and their
clerks were employed in the collection of more
evidence, and the prepartion of papers. The trial
was removed to the High Court of Justiciary, and
yet the prisoner was obliged in Scotch phraseology
"to run her letters," which, being translated into
our modern language means to avail herself of an
old Scotch law, whereby if the crown do not pro-
ceed to the trial of an accused person within the
time allowed by law after the accused has given
notice of the wish to be tried, the proceedings ter-
minate. That law was the safeguard of Scotland,
against those imprisonments, before trial for inde-
finite periods that disgrace continental countries;
and was adopted for political purposes probably,
although it has been applied to all cases.

Emile L'Angelier, was a person of thirty years of age, a native of Jersey, who was in Edinburgh in 1851, in search of a situation as a seedsman. His father was a market gardener in Jersey, and he had come to Scotland in the hope of obtaining employment. He indulged in vague statements of former greatness among the persons in Edinburgh, whom he knew, and those whom he met in Dundee, where he obtained the employment that he required. He had fought in the revolutionary collisions of France, and although a native of Jersey where the vernacular is not very pure, he spoke French sufficiently well to convince his friends in Dundee, that he might have gone through the adventures in France which he related. He seemed to be more fortunate in attracting the attention of ladies than of employers. He had an affair of the heart in France; but that was perhaps apocryphal. An English lady of eminent wealth-not the least useful attraction-had next stolen his heart, and then trifled with his affections in a manner that drove him mad, sent him running wild through the country for fourteen days, and induced him to contemplate suicide. A lady of Fife had next reciprocated his tender regards, and after promising to make the refugee happy, had prudently gone and made herself happy with some other person, whom she married in a most commonplace manner. This additional misfortune was one of the more prominent in a life of disappointment connected with females.

L'Angelier, while in Dundee, boasted that he used arsenic-that there was no danger in it-and that it improved the complexion. This circumstance was established upon unimpeachable evidence during the trial. His character altogether was of a kind that even the Lord-Advocate gave up as entirely indefensible, in his accusation of Miss Smith.

L'Angelier, as he appeared in Glasgow some. years since, occupied the position of a junior packing clerk in the house of Huggins and Co. He was a person of insinuating address, and assumed, in some quarters, religious professions and views. His character appears to have been broadly mixed, for one of his friends broke off the acquaintance,

Madeleine Hamilton Smith, when she returned from school to her father's house, was a girl of eighteen to nineteen years of age. She was casually introduced to L'Angelier in the street by a young friend. He improved the opening, and having corrupted this young girl's mind by a clandestine acquaintance, and a correspondence conducted against her father's will, she stood, at twenty one years of age, for nine days at the bar of her coun try's highest court, charged with the murder of the man who, moving in a very different sphere in society from that in which she had been for some years esteemed and respected, had been her seducer.

This was the charge supported by an array of eighty to ninety witnesses, by all the talent of the Crown lawyers: and by a complicated chain of circumstantial evidence, which was nevertheless defective alike in fact and motive; as was instinctively felt by the audience as the proceedings went on to the close, ending in a verdict of not guilty on one point and not proven on the others—a verdict received in a singular manner for a Scotch Court by long and loud applause; but a verdict which might have been reversed if Madeleine Smith had been absolutely friendless and poor.

Therefore the proceedings are extremely im portant, for they show the danger of trusting implicitly to circumstantial evidence. For that reason, and for another, we propose to notice the leading features of this trial, and we may follow the track of the Lord Advocate's speech as the best guide in the matter. We shall not reproduce the correspondence read in the court, or minister in any manner to the minds diseased, that find pleasure in tracing the mazes of moral pollution; or, to another class who live upon the details of horrible tragedies. But this strange trial, and the strange events in which it originated, possess characteristics of enduring and public interest.

The second reason which induces us to notice the proceedings on the trial is its treatment by the public prosecutors. The letters and papers found in the desk and the drawers of the poi soned man were not inventoried. They were handed from one person to another. The clerks might even have taken the letters home for their own amusement and the gratification of their friends. The utmost looseness practicable in a case of this nature was followed, and then the defence was refused a copy of the documents on which the prosecution was to found.

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FACTS OF THE CASE.

The refusal may be consistent with the habit in these cases, but it is a very bad habit, and one that should be abandoned.

Profes

497

knowledge. If he did take it at once, would he live for nine or ten hours? If it were administered to poison, how could it be conveyed? Not The ends of justice are perpetually quoted as in liquids certainly, because the necessary quantity reasons for several evils, by those who forget would be more than any person could swallow. that they speak in the plural number: that there Nothing is more difficult than to suppose that the really are ends of justice, and not one end only, prisoner could have given to L'Angelier so much as they seem to suppose. Justice has two ends: arsenic by any contrivance, yet to the public proseacquittal and condemnation, and is not more satis-cutor nothing was clearer than that she did give fied by the second than by the first. him the poison. sional men, we fear, forget that truth. They are employed, or they think that they are employed merely to secure the conviction of the prisoner. That may, or may not be the end of justice required, in the case before them. The death of an innocent person could not consist, with the ends of justice; yet we have had lamentable examples of this nature, originating perhaps in the dash of colour thrown over the evidence by the anxiety of the prosecuting official to cbtain a verdict. For that purpose he should not resort to misrepresentation. That is inconsistent even with the position of the prisoner's counsel, and far more inconsistent with that of the public prosecutor.

The Lord Advocate in this case commenced by telling the jury that the evidence did not leave the possibility of escape for the prisoner; although being an intelligent man he must have felt that the entire evidence had broken down. One fact seemed undeniable, namely-that L'Angelier died on the 23rd March, from arsenic. The Lord Advocate allowed that the quantity found in his body was very great. It was so great that the medical witnesses for the prosecution thought that it could not have been taken involuntarily. From two to six grains of arsenic cause death. That body contained 200 grains. L'Angelier had been ill on the 22nd February, and, prisoner purchased arsenic on the 19th of that month.

The public prosecutor, without observing the declaration of the person with whom L'Angelier resided, that he did not leave her house on the 22nd, asserted broadly and distinctly that he had been by her poisoned. The latter bought arsenic again at a subsequent date. She requested to see L'Angelier on the 21st March; he came to town on the 22nd. No evidence was adduced that he had been on that night near the residence of the prisoner, he told no person that he was going there, no person that he had been there: but after being out of his lodgings for five and a-half hours he returned ill-he became worse- he was seen by no medical man for four hours further, and he died in seven hours. We revert to the 200 grains which his body contained. Where did they come from? If this girl had thrice attempted to poison her seducer, because he held that position, the first and second doses must have contained between them under twelve grains, for they were unsuccessful, and that would leave 188 grains for the third and final attempt. The medical witnesses admit that no man would take that amount of arsenic without his

She purchased arsenic, however, three times. She misrepresented the purpose for which it was required; but she bought it publicly, in shops where she was well known, to use, she said, as a cosmetic, and she gave a receipt in each case. If she only bought her arsenic for poisoning purposes, she needed not so many purchases. One would have been sufficient. The fact of three quantitie being bought within a short time, so far as it demonstrates anything, proves that it was required for some purpose, not creditable and not criminal. The Lord Advocate took a different view unfairly.

The arsenic purchased by her was either coloured with indigo, or mixed with soot. The sooty arsenic could not have been swallowed to the extent of 88 grains, without leaving traces of soot in the stomach. The indigoed arsenic must have left colour. The Lord Advocate surmounted these facts by telling the jury that the chemists who investigated the stomach of L'Angelier were not desired to look for indigo or soot; but they would have found them without looking specially, and must have seen them if they had been there. The fact disconnects the purchases by Miss Smith from the poison of which this man died.

It is imprudent to hang people upon suspicion, and without evidence that an opportunity existed of committing crime. The Lord Advocate could not trace L'Angelier to Miss Smith's house on the 22nd of March; but her time was accounted for as clearly as that of any person's can be, who retires to rest at eleven to half past eleven, and is found in bed at eight next morning. L'Angelier was strictly forbidden from making the slightest noise at door, or window, or even on the pavement.

He was a visitor, whom his friend waited and watched for at her window, without a light. He dropped his note in at the window, and their interviews for some time had been confined to that process. He had disregarded two appointments, for the prisoner clearly did not know that he was in the country, and it is improbable that she would wait on a night for which no appointment had been made. But, said the Lord Advocate, you cannot account for L'Angelier on that night. If he was not with you, where was he? The idea was the most absurd ever put in a court of justice. For persons have difficulty in proving their own proceedings, and far less can they explain those of another person, while the onus probandi rests not on the accused, but with the

accuser.

498

TWENTY-SEVEN YEARS OF A COSMOPOLITE'S LIFE.

Motives have to be examined in all accusations of this character, and unless the prisoner was the most stupid person in Glasgow, or thereby, no human being in or out of that city was more interested in preserving the life that was destroyed. He held possession of her letters. His death under any circumstances would place them in the hands of strangers. His death under suspicious circumstances would render them public. Her safety therefore consisted with his safety, and his death was ruin in her circumstances. The motive to commit the crime was not only therefore deficient, but all her interest lay in an opposite direction, at least for a time, and until the letters were returned.

She bought arsenic to use as a cosmetic. In a letter dated long previously to L'Angelier's death, she mentions to him that she is using the stuff. Was he likely to teach her the use of this dangerous mineral? Evidence was adduced that, five years siuce, he had advised its use to another, and stated that he took it himself. Thus, perhaps, the secret of the cosmetic application is reached. But one secret implies another. If L'Angelier had, five years previously, described himself truly as an arsenic eater, he continued the practice, probably. If so, the frequent and violent bowel complaints to which he was subjected would be explained. The want of the drug in his case would be fatal; and, having been in the country for some time, his usual stimulant may have run out, and he may have neither been poisoned nor committed suicide;

but died the victim of a horrible practice. Our purpose, however, is not to trace the circumstances of this case, but to complain of the conduct of the prosecutor. It matters not that the pri soner had been deceived and was become a deceiver-that her moral feelings were blunted to a most lamentable extent; or that she was endea vouring to over-reach a person of greater practice than herself in this kind of negotiations. These facts do not justify the public prosecutor in saying and repeating, and again repeating, the assurance that L'Angelier did go to that house; that it is certain he was there; that he did make his presence known; that he had an interview with the prisoner-matters that he was bound to prove if he could, and not to allege unless he could prove them. We refer to this matter on that account; for, if Madeleine Smith had been a young person in the same position in life as L'Angelierif she had been without friends, who could and who did expend several thousand pounds in her defence, it is probable, with similar diligence, similar concealments of one class of inferences, similar temerity in asserting another. She might have been hung ere now exactly as Eliza Fenning was hung in London, and certainly without being more guilty or more innocent than she was upon ber acquittal.

Circumstantial evidence is always dangerous, but is doubly hazardous if it be twined and twisted into unnatural positions by all the ingenuity the Crown lawyers can employ.

TWENTY-SEVEN YEARS OF A COSMOPOLITE'S LIFE;

BEING

PAGES OF ADVENTURE AND TRAVEL.

CHAPTER XVI.

CHITTOOR-CONTINUED.

ONE of the greatest attractions to the majority of our bachelor colony was undoubtedly the racket court, which was situated in a very central position, and crowded of a week day from 5 to 8 a.m., and from 4 to 6 p.m. by players and spectators;

the interval was far too hot to admit of such

violent exercise, either with pleasure or safety. Gambling prevailed to a limited extent, but not much was ever wagered on the results of a match, and after all the game depended entirely upon the skill and activity of the performers. My greatest antagonist was the black markee himself, with whom I have played, and lost, too, many a score games. After the morning racket matches, we usually separated for the forenoon, each one repairing to his respective home for breakfast, with

appetites keen set, and such fare as must make any old Indian's mouth water even at the bare

recollection. I do not know of anything that presents a more refreshing and enticing appearusually placed in the coolest and shadiest side of ance than an Indian breakfast, spread on a table nine o'clock, the usual breakfast-hour, the sun had the capacious and venetian-blinded verandahs. By generally managed to emit rays sufficiently hot to par-bake any European. It was, therefore, no make all speed towards the bath-room; where small luxury to jump off the pony's back, and stood a truculent palkee bearer, in ready attendance, with some half dozen large chatties of deliciously cool water, which in his course he soused over your head, taking away your breath, and causing a momentary shock, which was only

* Earthenware jars.

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