Ill Met by Gaslight: Five Edinburgh Murders (9 page)

It is impossible to mark the moment of decision, or at least the moment of commitment. In February 1850 he went to the shop of William MacDonald, an apothecary practising in the Kirkgate, Leith, and purchased arsenic from Mrs MacDonald. MacDonald knew Bennison as `a Christian and a pious man’. All the same Mrs MacDonald, who admitted that she never liked serving customers with arsenic, asked him why he wanted it. He replied that his wife had asked him to get it, and introduced the subject of the rats. (Sometimes one feels these stories could write themselves, so predictable are the characters’ moves, as though they followed the prescribed steps of a country dance.) Mrs. MacDonald warned him to be careful, and gave him the arsenic screwed up in twists of white-brown paper.

It would seem that at this point he can only just have met Margaret Robertson. One of the neighbourly witnesses, Mrs Ramsay, said that Bennison had been seen going to prayer meetings with Margaret once or twice a week for the two months before Jean’s death. That would bring their meeting back to the middle of February - about the time he bought the arsenic. Others put the period of his attentions to Margaret at no more than six weeks, which would make their encounter subsequent to the purchase of the poison. It even looks as if the two might not have been connected. Yet, if they were not, the element of premeditation, which no one has doubted, begins to look unreasonable. Why should Bennison buy arsenic to get rid of his wife at that moment? Either Margaret was the spring of his motive, in which case it was simply fortunate that he already had arsenic to hand (an unlikely hypothesis), or he had met her-earlier and clandestinely; or he already intended to kill jean for some other reason. Finally, one cannot entirely exclude the possibility of innocence or of the existence of the rats.

Nothing appears to have happened till 12 April. It may be that there was a previous, unsuccessful and therefore unrecorded, attempt. It may be that he retained the arsenic in his possession for two months, brooding on his purpose. If we knew more of the movements of Mrs Moffat, the lodger, who was away on a visit to Dalkeith on the weekend of the death, we might be better able to come to a satisfactory resolution of the problem. Perhaps Bennison was waiting for a weekend when she should be out of the house. On the other hand, it may be that she went to Dalkeith every weekend; there is no evidence one way or the other; merely assumptions. Nobody questioned her at the trial about her habits and movements, no significance being attached to Bennison’s choice of time. Possibly of course, the arsenic had indeed been bought for the celebrated rats, employed on them, but not exhausted. It seems unlikely. Mrs Moffat declared that, `she had never heard Mrs Bennison speak about rats, and the deceased visited the coal-cellar every night’. It would then be interesting to know what was in Bennison’s mind in the two months between the purchase of the arsenic and his wife’s death. Did he hope that somehow or other Jean would die, and relieve him of the responsibility of action? Could he perhaps kill her obliquely, simply by the exercise of the will? Would the Almighty take a hand and smooth his servant’s path? Given his temperament, his consciousness of virtue, it seems unlikely that his hesitation was caused by uncertainty of the rights and wrongs, but he may have wondered whether he could get away with it.

There was no reason why he should not. In the nineteenth century it required no more than common prudence and tolerable competence to poison someone successfully. The celebrated practitioners like Drs Pritchard and Palmer cut swathes through their acquaintance before being discovered. What did for them in the end was lack of restraint; so many died around them that suspicion could not fail to be aroused. But for anyone less extravagant, prepared to limit himself to the essential elimination, the job was not too difficult and the prospect of discovery sufficiently remote to make the risk worth taking. No doctor’s certificate of death was necessary before burial. Most of the poor died far from the reach of the medical profession. Only if doubt were already entertained were questions likely to be officially asked.

On the 9 April Bennison took another step. He joined a second Funeral society. This showed meanness and greed, quite characteristic of a certain type of murderer, and Bennison was later to display these unattractive qualities still more unpleasantly. Doubtless he saw no reason why he should pay for murdering his wife; indeed he could even make a bit on the side. The prudent man counts the pennies, and he was one of the respectable, the deserving, poor. Mrs Moffat, whose evidence of course contributed a good deal to the picture of Bennison that emerged at the trial, reported that she `had a conversation with him about Benefit Societies, and he said that he would get £3 for the burial of his wife, besides one shilling a piece from each of the workmen; and he joined one on the ninth of the month.’ Andrew Carr, secretary of the Benefit Societies, later said that Bennison would get fifty shillings from each; the equivalent of several weeks’ wages, though few might think it merited a murder.

On Friday 12 April Bennison came home from his work complaining, `and seemed rather dull’, as Mrs Moffat put it. She attached no significance to his mood and set off for Dalkeith. Bennison seems to have spent the evening at home, which was by that time unusual. There was general agreement with Helen Glass’s observation that `he did not spend much of his time at home’. To explain this he had told his wife that, after working all day, `he required exercise’; nobody had much doubt about the form this took; Euphemia Ingram, niece, of neighbours called Porteous, had seen `Margaret Robertson and Bennison walking together after it was dark’.

However there was none of that this Friday. Instead it was a quiet domestic evening. Mrs Porteous later reported that Jean had been `in good health that day’, but, according to Bennison’s Declaration, she retired to bed early and then expressed a desire for porridge. Nothing unusual about that, of course, porridge not then being a dish more or less restricted to breakfast time, but the standard food of the poor throughout the day. `They’re grand food, the parritch,’ as David Balfour’s Uncle Ebeneezer said in Kidnapped.

Bennison cooked the porridge in an iron pot and then served it to her in the traditional wooden bowl. He stated that he had not been hungry himself and had therefore eaten nothing. Some porridge was left in the pot; he put it down for Sandy Marr’s dog the next day. Now he settled jean for the night and retired to bed himself.

She woke him early on the Saturday morning about seven o’clock, coming to his bedside and saying she had been unwell during the night. She had vomited several times. About an hour later she began to vomit again: There is no evidence for this account beyond Bennison’s declaration, but nothing jean said in the next forty-eight hours contradicted it.

He went to call Mrs Porteous, and asked her to come and look at his wife. She heard his story, saw jean, and advised him to call the doctor. Bennison was loath to do so. When Mr Porteous came round and repeated the advice, Bennison told them the story of a certain Mrs O’Miggle, an acquaintance of his, who got a powder from her doctor and `never spoke more and he did not like them’. Mr Porteous continued to advise that one be called; he remained obstinate. During the two hours that she stayed that morning she noticed that, ‘whenever Bennison gave jean anything he always stood at the crown of her head and reached forward’. It was the sort of oddity of behaviour that sticks in the mind, even though no explanation may suggest itself to account for the awkwardness.

In the afternoon the Porteous’ niece, Euphemia Ingram, came in. One thing stands out clearly from the story, and that is the closeness of the community in Stead’s Place. There was a constant coming and going of neighbours, who all seemed to know the Bennisons’ way of life well enough too. Bennison had hardly a moment to himself the whole weekend. Perhaps he preferred it that way; it must have been a strain though. Actually his own actions contributed to this. He himself fetched Mrs Porteous, and he sent on Saturday night to acquaint Helen Glass of her sister’s illness. However she was away from home, tending a sick friend, and it was not till the Sunday morning that he was able to fetch her. His behaviour may be interpreted as stupid, over-confident, innocent, or as a prudent attempt to allay suspicion.

Euphemia Ingram found jean still retching a good deal, though there was little for her to bring up. There was some frothy water in a bowl by the bed. Euphemia saw the porridge in the iron pot and some potatoes in the kitchen. She asked if she could give the potatoes to the sow. Bennison said `no’, but she could give the porridge to Sandy’s dog if she liked. This is one of the most mysterious incidents of the whole case, for the dog died the next day. If it was poisoned Bennison’s stupidity passes belief. Certainly the death of the dog contributed to the suspicion that was to gather about him, even though he himself said, `the death of the dog is nothing’. As such it might be read as one of those lapses, which would be incredible if they were not so frequent, lapses so easily avoidable that, when made, they seem to indicate a wilful dismantling of the defences that the murderer had erected with such care around his crime; so that one might almost think he desired, despite himself, to be discovered. However that might be, what is really strange about this incident is that the postmortem examination of the dog discovered no arsenic. The dog had simply died.

Bennison also told Euphemia `to put some dirty water into a can as there was vomiting in it, and not to empty it till night; and she did so about ten o’clock into the sewer’. Perhaps this indicates respectability and tidiness rather than guilt, though anything can be made to seem sinister when presented in evidence in a murder trial. Nor should too much be read into his peremptory manner towards Euphemia. It was natural enough that he should expect a woman to do things in the house.

Despite Jean’s condition no doctor was summoned on the Saturday. That was inevitably to seem suspicious. Probably a doctor would not have saved her in any case; failure to summon medical assistance at an early moment could not itself fail to suggest that he feared the doctor’s chance of success. In the declaration he emitted on 19 April he claimed that he had left the house on the Saturday about twelve o’clock in search for a doctor, but had been unsuccessful. He had gone out again about four, but did not get a doctor, as his wife would not let him.

Nobody credited this, yet it is not entirely incredible. The poor were accustomed to get their medicaments from apothecaries and even grocers - the Bennisons usually obtained theirs from a Mr Kilgour, a tea-merchant who also sold pills. Still it would have seemed natural in the circumstances that he should have called a doctor. After all, as early as the Saturday morning, he told Mrs Porteous that, `he doubted her (Jean) very much in this bout’. His behaviour was certainly such as to warrant suspicion. Mrs Porteous for one found him not only strangely reluctant but secretive: she asked him if `the thing she had previously vomited was sour, and he answered very drily and firmly, “no”. Whenever the conversation was about his wife,’ she observed, `he answered in the same way.’ Mrs Porteous was not favourably impressed.

Saturday night was spent by the Bennisons alone, together. At no moment was there to be any evidence suggesting that Mrs Bennison suspected her husband. Even when she concluded on the Sunday night that she was dying, `she expressed how good the Lord was to her, that she had been the weakest vessel and was called away first’. Nothing that she said could be construed even by hostile witnesses as an accusation. If Bennison is to be believed on this matter, jean was ready for death. One of his workmates William Fairgrieve recalled a curious conversation he had had with him. Unfortunately Fairgrieve was unable to date it, putting it, with irritating vagueness, `from six to twenty-four days before her death’. He remembered clearly enough though that Bennison had said, `that his wife was taken ill, and that she had advised him to get another wife, as he would be poorly treated in lodgings’. If there was any truth in this report, jean cannot have been surprised by the course of events; it may even have been this piece of advice that prompted Bennison to use the arsenic he had already bought. One can imagine his tortuous selfjustification.

There was no improvement during the night. She weakened steadily. Sunday was for Bennison a day of frenetic activity, much of which is not easy to interpret. He seems to have decided during the night that he must now make a serious shift to fetch some sort of medical assistance or at least get advice. He presented himself at MacDonald’s, the apothecary’s, between seven and eight o’clock, and obtained powders made up of cinnamon, ginger and cayenne pepper, which would stop the vomiting. He called Helen Glass, who had to admit that she had got the message telling her of the illness on Saturday night, but had not then realised its seriousness. Bennison seemed to her `much agitated’. He asked her for a little spirits, and she gave him a glass of wine. There could be no doubt that he was in a highly nervous condition.

He was now anxious also to allay the suspicions that Mr and Mrs Porteous might be entertaining. Perhaps overnight reflection had made him realise how his behaviour was likely to be interpreted. He now told them that he had been to four doctors, and they were all engaged. He named one of them, MacDonald. Porteous pointed out that MacDonald was not a doctor at all; merely a druggist.

Bennison then had the good fortune to encounter a certain Dr Gillespie, who happened to be passing his house. He urged him to come in and examine jean. The doctor hesitated at first, `on account’, as he explained at the trial, `of it being a dispensary case’. Presumably he was worried about his fee. This hesitation was to draw adverse comment from the Lord Justice-Clerk who inquired whether such was the normal practice of Leith doctors; things were ordered better in Edinburgh itself, where the medical profession recognised its duties towards the sick. However, having at last consented to come in, Dr Gillespie found the patient weak and vomiting. In the circumstances there was little he could do. He recommended that a mustard poultice be applied and that she be given a tablespoonful of wine every hour. One may feel that Bennison was as well off with the druggist’s advice. However he pursued Gillespie to ask whether brandy would do as well as wine; he was told merely to reduce the dose.