CIRCUMSTANTIAL EVIDENCE. ■& 



which she stated to be to relieve her from pain, after which she twice 

 washed her hands. The servant remarked to the prisoner upon this, 

 as an unusual mode of administering a powder. The prisoner cau- 

 tioned the servant not to take of any thing out of vessels used by the 

 deceased, falsely representing her to be dirty in her habits ; and cau- 

 tioned her not to tell the deceased that she had put anything into the 

 gruel, representing that if she knew there was anything in it she 

 would not take it. The prisoner carried away what was left of the 

 gruel ; and in a few minutes after the deceased had partaken of it she 

 complained of being poorly, and in half an hour became ill ; vomiting, 

 purging, and violent pain ensued, and in about two hours she expired. 

 The prisoner had employed a man, about six days before this event, 

 to purchase arsenic in order to poison rats, a pretext which was proved 

 to be groundless. The deceased was buried on the 28th of October, 

 but her friends did not hear of her death until many months after- 

 wards. From the change which took place in the prisoner's habits 

 and mode of living after Mrs. Smith's disease, from her denial that 

 the deceased had left any property, and from some other circum- 

 stances, suspicion was excited, and the corpse was disinterred and ex- 

 amined on the 24th of December, 1834, and found to be in a re- 

 markable state of preservation. Without detailing all the appear- 

 ances, it is sufficient to observe that the mucous membrane of the 

 stomach and duodenum was smeared very thickly with a large quan- 

 tity of a yellow substance, which penetrated in patches the coats of 

 the stomach and intestines ; and where the spots had so penetrated, 

 the inside of the intestinal canal was stained to a much greater extent 

 than the outside ; so that it must have penetrated from the interior to 

 the exterior, as would be the effect of the matter having been taken 

 into the stomach. Mr. Herapath, the lecturer on chemistry and che- 

 mical toxicology at the Bristol Medical School, submitted the yellow 

 powder found in the stomach to various experiments. Having dried 

 it, he ground some of it up with carbonate of soda and charcoal, and 

 introduced it into a reducing tube, and immediately formed a volatile 

 metallic body, which was metallic arsenic ; he then oxidized the me- 

 tallic arsenic, and it sublimed into a white volatile oxide, which was 

 characteristic of arsenious acid ; he then made a solution of the oxide 

 by infusing two drops of water, and added a small portion of ammo- 

 niacal nitrate of silver, when there was formed the characteristic yel- 

 low precipitate. He put into another portion a minute quantity of 

 ammoniacal sulphate of copper, which immediately produced the 

 green precipitate of Scheele ; and, finally, he reduced a larger quauti- 



