THE PHARMACEUTICAL JOURNAL AND TRANSACTIONS. 
[December 21, 1872. 
491 
the 12th. In the house he died, a case appeared early 
in February, and in the same locality we had over twenty 
cases, and in other parts of the town say ten or twelve. 
I have had two cases in private, modified and mild. We 
have had five deaths, and no new case repeated since the 
24th of February.—Yours faithfully, 
“H. H. Boxwell. 
u Dr. Moore, King’s Professor of Medicine.” 
There were no cases of small-pox in any of the south¬ 
ern counties of Ireland, in December, 1870 ; hut the 
disease was epidemic in Glasgow at that time. 
{To be continued.') 
iparlismentars siti ibto framtogs. 
Charge of Arson against a Chemist and Druggist. 
At the Winter Assizes at Lewes, William Henry 
Funnell, 45, described as a chemist, was indicted on Tues¬ 
day last before Mr. Justice Byles for wilfully and felo¬ 
niously setting fire to his dwelling-house at Brighton, 
one Thomas Foat and other persons being therein at the 
time. 
The charge was varied in different counts of the indict¬ 
ment, and by one of them he was charged with attempt¬ 
ing to set fire to his house under such circumstances as 
that if the house had taken fire he would have been 
guilty of felony. 
Mr. Merrifield conducted the prosecution ; the prisoner 
was defended by Mr. Willoughby. 
The circumstances of this case were of a very ex¬ 
traordinary nature. It appeared that the prisoner occu¬ 
pied a house, No. 13, Charles Street, Brighton, and he 
used the front room on the ground floor as a chemist’s 
shop, and the hack room as a consulting-room, and the 
upper floors of the house were occupied by a Mr. Foat 
and his family, who rented them of the prisoner. On 
the 11th of October the prisoner seemed to have insured 
his stock in trade as a chemist in the front shop, and his 
furniture in the hack room, with the agent of the Scottish 
Union Fire Office at Brighton, for £100, and the fire that 
was the subject of inquiry took place on Monday, the 
4th of November. On the previous day, Sunday, the 
prisoner appeared to have gone to his shop, which was 
unusual for him, and it was suggested by the prosecution 
that he was engagedin making preparations for the event 
which took place on the following day. On the Monday 
morning he was at his shop about ten o’clock, and he 
then appeared to have informed Mrs. Foat that he had re¬ 
ceived a telegram which required him to go away immedi¬ 
ately, and he left in a hurried manner, having previously 
locked up his shop and the door that communicated from 
the shop with the back room. From this time no one 
could have had access to the prisoner’s premises, and 
nothing seemed to have occurred until about three o’clock 
in the afternoon, when the person who lived in the house 
adjoining the prisoner’s observed a peculiar blue flame 
burning in the partition between the two houses. An 
alarm was given, and it was at first thought that it was 
i n escape of gas, and a gasfitter named Slatter was sent 
for, and he broke into the room at the back of the priso¬ 
ner’s shop. He was astonished to find that the flames 
were proceeding from a hole that had evidently been 
purposely made in the wooden partition of the room, and 
the combustion was of such a character that although he 
poured a considerable quantity of water into the hole, it 
did not seem to have any effect upon the flames, which 
appeared, on the contrary, to burn all the more fiercely, 
and it was evident that the fire was not at all of an ordi¬ 
nary character. He then scraped out the burning 
material, which appeared to consist of a quantity of lint, 
sawdust, and paper, and a portion of the lint which was 
not lighted when he pulled it out burst into a flames 
"when.it fell upon the floor, and it was evident that some 
•■chemical ingredient had been used to occasion the fire. 
A portion of the lint was subsequently submitted to Mr. 
Schweitzer, an analytical chemist at Brighton, for ex¬ 
amination, and he ascertained beyond a doubt that it and 
the paper also had been impregnated with phosphorus, 
and he succeeded in extracting thirteen grains of pure 
phosphorus from a portion of the lint. He also explained 
that a person acquainted with chemistry, and the peculiar 
qualities of phosphorus, might have so arranged his pre¬ 
paration for the fire that the ignition would not take 
place for several hours, and that consequently all the 
arrangements for the fire might have been made by the 
prisoner at the time he was last seen at the house at ten 
o’clock, although no discovery took place until five or 
six hours afterwards. In consequence of the timely dis¬ 
covery it appeared that very little damage was done. In 
addition to these facts, which appeared to be almost con¬ 
clusive to show the guilt of the prisoner, evidence was 
given that the furniture in the back room was not worth 
more than £5, and that the stock in the shop was also of 
very trifling value. When the prisoner w T as apprehended 
and the warrant charging him with the offence of arson 
was read to him he made no reply, and he never attempted 
to give any explanation of the extraordinary facts that 
were apparent when the discovery was made. 
Mr. Willoughby, at the close of the case for the prose¬ 
cution, submitted that there had not been a sufficient 
burning of the house to support the first counts of the 
indictment. 
The learned judge, however, said that without deciding 
that question, it was certainly impossible for him to with¬ 
draw the last count, which alleged that the prisoner had 
set fire to the place under such circumstances as that if 
the house had taken fire he would have been guilty of 
felony, from the consideration of the jury. 
Mr. Willoughby then addressed them for the defence, 
and he endeavoured to show that the evidence with re¬ 
gard to chemical matter having been used to occasion the 
fire was purely theoretical, and that the charge, which 
was one of a most serious character, rested entirely upon 
circumstantial evidence, which was not sufficiently cogent 
to justify them in convicting the prisoner. 
Mr. Justice Byles having summed up, the jury, after 
a short deliberation, found the prisoner guilty of attempt¬ 
ing to set fire to the house. 
The learned judge said that the prisoner had been 
found guilty of a very serious offence. He must have 
known that persons were in the house when he made his 
arrangements for the fire, and although probably from 
the hour of the day at which the fire was likely to have 
broken out, they would not have incurred the same peril 
that they would have done if it had happened in the 
night, his crime was a very serious one, and he felt it his 
duty to sentence him to seven years’ penal servitude. 
It transpired in court that there had been three other 
fires in premises occupied by the prisoner, and that there 
w r as a suspicion in every case that they had been oc¬ 
casioned by some chemical agency.— Standard. 
Charge of Fraud against a Herbalist. 
At the Hull Police Court, on Saturday, December 
14th, Henry Jackson was charged with obtaining 
money under false pretences. The warrant only 
charged the prisoner with obtaining £25, but it 
was stated that the sum really obtained was upwards 
of F£250. The prosecutor was a farmer named John 
Richardson, residing at Easington, in Holdcrness. 
In the month of February, 1871, he was in Hull, and, in 
passing down Blanket Row, where defendant kept a 
herbalist’s shop, his attention was attracted by a bill dis¬ 
played in the window setting off the advantages of the 
“ Famous Indian Remedy ” as a restorer and establisher 
of life. At that time he was sickly and suffering from 
general debility, and, allured by the announcement in 
the window, he entered the shop and stated his case to 
