TRIAL OF DR. PRITCHARD. 
81 
The Lord Justice Clerk, after referring to the great atrocity of the crimes laid to the 
prisoner’s charge, and the singular means by which it was alleged he had perpetrated 
these crimes, said there were three things of which the jury must be satisfied upon the 
evidence :—In the first place,.they must be satisfied that the deceased died by poison; in 
the second place, that the poison was wilfully administered for the purpose of destroying 
life; and, in the third place, that it was the prisoner at the bar who so administered it, 
or caused it to be so administered. Having gone over the medical evidence in regard to 
the first question, he said the jury would consider whether it was possible to resist these 
conclusions—first, that Mrs. Pritchard died from the action of antimony alone, adminis¬ 
tered in large quantities ; and, second, that Mrs. Taylor died from the action of anti¬ 
mony, either alone oi;in combination with the vegetable of aconite and opium. In the 
case of Mrs. Pritchard, the evidence of the poison having been taken continuously for a 
period of months excluded the possibility of either accident or suicide; and, therefore, it 
seemed impossible to resist the conclusion that the poison must have been administered 
by some one for the purpose of destroying her life. The character and conduct of Mrs. 
Taylor, and her general condition of body and mind, were such as not to suggest the 
idea of suicide in her case as a possibility at all; and whether she died through the influ¬ 
ence of antimony administered in several doses, as the chemical reports clearly bore out, 
or whether her death was brought about immediately through swallowing some of the 
contents of the bottle of Battley’s solution, it was very difficult to understand how her 
death was brought about by accident. The jury would consider whether they could re¬ 
sist the conclusion that the poison by which Mrs. Taylor was deprived of life was also 
wilfully given for the very purpose of destroying life. The third question, which was one 
of vital interest in the case, was whether the prisoner administered, or procured to be ad¬ 
ministered, to either or both of the ladies, the poison by which their lives were destroyed. 
His Lordship went minutely into the evidence relating to the illness and death of the two 
ladies, directing the attention of the jury to the fact, and characterizing it as “a very 
remarkable circumstance ” that throughout, whenever the prisoner had occasion to ex¬ 
plain to anybody what he thought was the matter with his wife, he called it gastric 
fever, when all the symptoms indicated the very reverse of her being under fever. He 
also pointed out to the jury that the prisoner reported to the registrar that Mrs. Taylor 
had been under paralysis for twelve hours, which he knew was an absolute falsehood, 
and that the disease whieh immediately preceded death was apoplexy, while the medical 
evidence had demonstrated that there was not a trace of apoplexy in the case. ; he jury 
would consider whether in the case of a professional man like the prisoner lie could, under 
the circumstances, if his wife died under the effects of antimonial poison, be so far deceived 
as to believe she died of gastric fever ; after noticing the evidence as to the poisoned 
cheese, the egg-flip and the tapioca, his Lordship said it appeared beyond a doubt that 
some one had been practising a system of poisoning, and that in possession of the pri¬ 
soner were the agents to carry it on. If he understood the theory of the prisoner’s 
counsel right, it was that Mary M‘Leod was the person who caused these murders, and 
that the jury must choose between her and the prisoner at the bar by balancing proba¬ 
bilities ; but the prisoner’s counsel did not seem sufficiently to advert to the possibility 
that both might be implicated, and if that was so they could have very little doubt who 
was the master and who set on the other ; but he (the Lord Justice Clerk) did not desire 
the jury to take this theory, and he thought it quite right that they should consider upon 
the balance of probabilities which of the two was the perpetrator of the crimes. Was it 
conceivable that a girl sixteen or seventeen years of age, in the position of a servant-maid, 
could have herself conceived or executed such a design ? And if she had conceived it, could 
she have executed it subject to the vigilance of the husband of her victim, himself a me¬ 
dical man ? That was very hard to believe, indeed. On the other hand, if the prisoner 
conceived and executed the design, it was not so difficult to believe that Mary M‘Leod may 
have been the perfectly unconscious and innocent instrument of carrying out his purpose. 
If they were satisfied the murder was committed, the parties who had access to Mrs. 
Pritchard only could have done it. Some of them were plainly innocent, and in case of 
others the probability of guilt was reduced to two of these—one*or two of them were 
guilty of the deed. 
The jury retired to consider their verdict about twenty minutes past one o clock, and 
returned in about an hour with a unanimous verdict of Guilty of both charges. 
The Lord Justice Clerk then sentenced the prisoner to be executed at Glasgow on the 
