34 ESSAY ON THE RATIONALE OP 



containing opium the corrosive sublimate bottle, which stood next it. 

 This was certainly an improbable error, considering that opium was 

 in powder, and the sublimate in chrystals. But it was not the only 

 one which he alleged that he had committed. Not long after his 

 wife took ill, the physician sent the prisoner to the shop to prepare 

 for her a laudanum draught, with water for the menstruum. When 

 the prisoner returned with it, the physician, in consequence of observ- 

 ing it to be muddy, was led to taste it, before he gave it to the sick 

 lady, and, finding it had the taste of corrosive sublimate, he preserved 

 and analyzed it, and discovered that it did contain that poison. The 

 prisoner stated in defence, that he had a second time committed a 

 mistake, and, instead of water, had accidentally used for the menstru- 

 um a corrosive sublimate injection, which he had previously prepared 

 for another patient : but this was proved to have been impossible, 

 since the injection contained only five grains to the ounce, while the 

 draught, which did not exceed one ounce, contained fourteen grains.* 

 James Greenacre was tried before the Central Criminal Court, at 

 the Old Bailey, on the 10th of April, 1837, for the murder of Han- 

 nah Brown. The prisoner and the deceased were to have been mar- 

 ried ; in the prospect of which event the deceased had converted 

 nearly all her goods into money. On the morning of the 24th of 

 December the deceased left her home, stating to a neighbour that she 

 was going to the house of her intended husband at Camberwell, but 

 should return in the evening. On the 28th of December the trunk 

 of a female was found in the Edgeware Road, without its head or legs ; 

 on the 6th of Januaiy a female head was found in the Regent's Ca- 

 nal ; and on the 2nd of February the legs of a female were found in 

 an ozier-bed, at Camberwell : these several parts were clearly ascer- 

 tained to belong to the same body, and were identified as the re- 

 mains of the deceased. Upon his apprehension the prisoner at first 

 denied all knowledge of the deceased ; but he subsequently admitted 

 that, on the evening of the day on which the deceased left her home, 

 she came to his house, and he stated that they had had an altercation, 

 in consequence of her duplicity in the statement of her property ; and 

 that, during this conversation, the deceased was moving backwards 

 and forwards in her chair, which was on the balance ; that he put his 

 foot to the chair, and , she fell back, with great violence, against a 

 block of wood ; and that, finding life extinct, he made up his mind, 



• Edinburgh Medical and Surgical Journal, xxii., p. 438 ; and Christison, 

 On Poisons, p. 81. 



