professor taylor’s report on poisoning. 
181 
In November, 1858, a confectioner at Bradford wishing to adulterate his peppermint 
lozeuges with some cheap white material in order to save the cost of white sugar, sent a 
boy to a druggist for 12 pounds of “ daff ” (plaster of Paris, or sulphate of lime). The 
druggist, being at the time ill, directed his shopboy, a lad eighteen years of age, and 
who had been only three weeks in the business, to procure the “ daff ” from an attic in 
which it was kept with other chemicals. The boy was simply told that the “ daff” was 
in a cask in the corner of the attic. He found a cask containing something white, 
which he concluded to be the article required. He weighed out twelve pounds of what 
he thought was plaster of Paris, but which was subsequently proved to be white arsenic. 
The confectioner mixed this large quantity of poison with four pounds of gum and 
water, forty pounds of sugar, and an ounce and a half of peppermint. The whole was 
made into lozenges, and delivered to a dealer in four parcels for sale in the open market 
on a Saturday. The man who made the lozenges suffered severely from sickness, from 
one o’clock until nine at night, without any suspicion of the cause. Large quantities of 
the lozenges were sold at the remarkably low price of two ounces for three-half pence, 
the admixture with the supposed plaster of Paris enabling the dealer to sell them at a 
great profit at this price. Many persons purchased two ounces, this quantity containing 
about half an ounce of arsenic. Some of the lozenges were subsequently found on 
analysis to contain nine grains and a half of the poison; others from eleven to sixteen 
grains. On an average each lozenge contained one-third of its weight of arsenic. 
Some children who had partaken of the poisoned lozenges died on the evening of the 
day on which they had purchased them, and it was at first supposed that they had died 
from a severe attack of cholera. On the following day other persons were attacked with 
similar symptoms, and it was then found that all who had thus suffered had partaken 
of lozenges purchased of the same dealer in the market on Saturday. It was difficult 
to determine the exact amount of illness and mortality caused by this serious mistake ; 
but I have been informed on good authority that more than 200 persons who had eaten 
the lozenges suffered from the usual symptoms of poisoning by arsenic, many of them 
in so severe a form that seventeen died, twelve from acute poisoning and five from the 
secondary or chronic effects of arsenic. Many were for a long time ill.* 
The druggist who sold the arsenic by mistake for plaster of Paris was tried at the 
York winter assizes in 1859 on a charge of manslaughter, and acquitted by the 
direction of the judge, the late Baron Watson. He directed the jury that there had 
been no negligence in the case, to make the prisoner or any one legally responsible 
for the deaths of those who had eaten the lozenges. Criminal negligence must be 
proved, in order to convict a person of manslaughter under such circumstances. 
The facts in reference* to the custody of the arsenic were these :—A police inspector 
visited the attic or loft where drugs were kept, and he found a cask containing two 
hundredweight (224 pounds) of arsenic, two or three yards from the corner of the room. 
There was no label on it; but it was subsequently found that the cask was resting on 
the labelled end, and was too heavy to be turned over,—hence it was not visibly labelled. 
In the same room, but in a corner, was the “daff,” or plaster of Paris, in a similar cask. 
A boy of only three weeks’ experience in a druggist’s shop, was thus sent with verbal direc¬ 
tions to procure plaster of Paris in a loft in which a large quantity of arsenic was kept in 
a similar cask, and without any visible label. He was not required to bring the sample 
to his master to let him see that no mistake had been made, but to make the best selec¬ 
tion that he could from a three weeks’ experience in drugs. The loss of seventeen lives , and 
the serious illness of one hundred and eighty-three persons were the results of this mistake, 
and no negligence could be legally established against any one! The learned judge re¬ 
marked that “ he did not know that a man could do more (thau the druggist had done), 
except not keep arsenic.” 
The case, however, conveys this warning, if we desire to prevent the wholesale destruc¬ 
tion of life. If arsenic and plaster of Paris, which present a somewhat similar appear¬ 
ance in powder, are kept in similar casks in the same loft, they should be at least plainly 
and distinctly labelled, so that no mistake could be made by even an experienced man. 
If, however, the poison and the innocent substance are kept in the same place in similar 
casks unlabelled, a youth of three weeks’ experience in drugs, who admitted that he 
* See Pharmaceutical Journal and Transactions, 1858, pp. 297, 340, and January, 1859, 
p. 390 
