132 
ACCIDENTAL POISONING. 
(Mr. Liddell) would not attempt to define what negligence was, because he believed 
it to be impossible to define it. He had looked through a great number of cases upon 
the point, and had read many books upon the point, and he defied anybody to give an 
accurate definition of what negligence was in that case. But this much he would say, 
that the question of negligence 'was the question for the jury, and for the jury only ; 
and he should submit to them and to his Lordship that to make out negligence suffi¬ 
cient to justify the jury in finding the prisoner guilty of the felony of manslaughter, to 
say the least of it, it must be something more than mischance. Therefore, as he put 
it to the jury, the point that they would have to try, assuming, without admitting, 
that strychnine was given by the prisoner for James’s powder, the question for them 
would be, did the evidence show that his conduct was the result of gross and culpable 
negligence, or was it not rather proved that the accident was the result of mischance ? 
Before examining the evidence adduced, he wished to make a passing remark, viz. that 
experience would teach them that, in all cases of that kind, when preliminary in¬ 
quiries took place, when the matter was fresh in the mind of the public, and when the 
public mind was a good deal excited by sympathy for the poor deceased, there was a 
natural tendency to fix the blame upon somebody. And generally it very often hap¬ 
pened that with that natural tendency upon their minds to satisfy doubts, it was said 
“ Oh! it was so-and-so’s fault,” and that that somebody was a subordinate, and that 
he had to bear a great portion of the blame that attached to his superior. It was so 
in the case of the Egham accident, and he (the learned counsel) could not help ex¬ 
pressing his surprise at reading the remarks made by the learned judge upon that case 
in his address to the grand jury. He said that in his opinion it was not right to throw 
the blame, when accidents of that kind took place, on persons in an inferior position ; 
and that inferior persons employed upon the railway ought not to be made responsible 
for anything that occurred in consequence of a want of proper management or proper 
arrangements. Now he could not help drawing the attention of the jury to those re¬ 
marks, which were made by a very learned judge. In that case, when the evidence 
was sifted, it turned out that proper arrangements were not made, and the prisoners 
arraigned were acquitted. If the jury, in considering the evidence in this case, should 
find that proper precautions were not taken to separate the poisons from the ordinary 
drugs ; if they found that even in the state in which they were proper precautions 
were not taken to mark the poisons, not only by putting a label upon them, but also 
to make them distinguishable to the touch ; if they found the prisoner was a well-con¬ 
ducted, careful person, bearing a high character for his position in life, who had al¬ 
ways conducted his business in a careful and proper manner, and who had conducted 
his business upon that day in the ordinary manner, and had taken the ordinary pre¬ 
cautions—there was no suggestion that he was drunk, that he was careless ; there was 
nothing offered to show that by any act of his he was incapacitated to do his duty— 
and then if they found that in the hurry of his business, and possibly, in the gloom 
of the dark part of the shop, at half-past five o’clock in the evening, by a mere slip of 
the hand he took down the wrong bottle, and that, having done so, there was nothing 
to attract his attention to it, he made up the prescription in the usual way, taking 
the usual precautions before sending it out;—he hoped, if he was able to make that 
out, the jury would exercise their discretion, and say it was rather a mischance acci¬ 
dent than one due to gross and culpable negligence. After carefully going through 
the evidence, the learned counsel said that, supposing the strychnine had been kept at 
Messrs. Clay and Abraham’s establishment in a crystallized state, and had been kept 
in corrugated bottles, the accident never would have arisen. There was the clearest 
admission on the part of the prisoner’s superiors that they had not exercised proper 
precaution, in the fact that since the coroner’s jury had made a presentment that the 
drugs should be separated from the poisons, they had been placed in a separate cup¬ 
board. Therefore the whole of these precautions being omitted, the prisoner was not 
answerable for that. He (Mr. Liddell) did not ask the jury for their sympathy,—he 
scorned to ask for it; but he asked them as honest men and Englishmen, when they 
found that all the precautions he had alluded to had been omitted,—if they thought 
the accident arose in consequence of it,—he entreated them not to visit it upon the 
head of the young man who was then at the bar. The learned counsel called wit¬ 
nesses as to the prisoner’s character. 
