The Damnation of John Donellan (15 page)

Donellan then explained that he rinsed out one bottle and put its contents in a basin to taste it but ‘I could not tell what it tasted of'. He then said that Samuel Frost had the bottle which contained
the physic: ‘He tells me that one that was left in the kitchen is it, which he has.' (In his later
Defence
Donellan said that he himself had the bottle, and had taken it from the kitchen to the parlour.)

After the last deposition, the coroner closed business for the day and adjourned the inquest until the following day at three o'clock. No follow-up was recorded the next day, however. In 1781 the
Scots Magazine
reported that the coroner had dismissed the jury at 5 p.m. and ordered them to attend the next day at 3 p.m., but that he himself did not turn up and at 8 p.m. he sent a message that he would fix the hearing for some date in the future. The jurymen went to their local JP, Lord Denbigh, who, with a Reverend Blomfield, ‘appeared in the vindication of the rights of society thus violated' (presumably this means that Lord Denbigh leaned heavily on the coroner) and the next hearing was promptly fixed for 14 September.

Captain Murphy's
Life of Captain John Donellan
, published in 1781, gives a more detailed version of events. According to Murphy, the jury were utterly mystified by the delay on 10 September; although he suggests that perhaps the coroner was ‘confused by the novelty of the business' or ‘by his delicacy for the honour of a respectable family'. He notes, however, that the delay simply fanned the flames of the rumours that something was badly awry at Lawford Hall.

The prosecution brief at the trial gives another, more detailed and altogether more revealing explanation. This claims that ‘when the Jury were attending to hear the evidence, Captain Donellan was present the whole time, even against the desire of the Jury, so that he in great measure kept Lady Boughton and such of the servants as were witnesses in awe … when she mentioned the circumstance of the rinsing of the bottles he immediately pulled her by the sleeve …'

By the time that the inquest was next convened on 14 September, Lord Denbigh had stepped in to take control: ‘At the meeting,' the prosecution brief continues, ‘Lord Denbigh and the Reverend Bromfield (another Justice of the Peace) [presumably the same person as the Reverend
Blomfield
referred to by the magazine] thinking before the Coroner had not done his duty, attended to see that the
inquest was properly held. In consequence of their attendance, Lady Boughton and the other witnesses were all separately examined in their presence; Lord Denbigh strongly objecting to Captain Donellan being present … to prevent the restraint the witnesses seemed to be under before …'

Denbigh's presence helped Anna Maria Boughton to see Donellan's actions in a significantly altered light.

On 14 September, Anna Maria Boughton testified a second time. This version of events was markedly different from her first. The time of administering the medicine, the time of Donellan's entering the room, and of Anna Maria's leaving the room, and the approximate time of Theodosius's death – all of which had been referred to in her first deposition – were not now mentioned. This second statement centred completely on Donellan's actions. Anna Maria explained as follows:

… the circumstance of John Donellan swilling the bottle led her to suppose that some unfair dealings had been carried on respecting her son, and that he had died by the medicine she had given him; and that she herself was so much alarmed at it, that she declared she should like to be opened when she died.

In other words, Anna Maria was afraid that ‘unfair dealings' could extend to her – so much so that she mentioned her own death and her request for an autopsy as if it might be imminent. An intriguing detail was revealed the following year in a commentary written in April 1781 in ‘A Gentleman's Reply'.
²

It claimed that ‘Lord D' – presumably the Earl of Denbigh – ‘had a private interview for upwards of half an hour with Lady Boughton before she went into the room to be again examined; there does not remain a doubt that his Lordship had something which very much terrified her, for every time that something was said which was thought to mitigate against Mr Donellan, she looked at his Lordship, who never failed in return a nod of approbation.'

This seems proof that, while Denbigh ensured that Donellan was not there to oversee proceedings, he
was
.

In her first deposition of 9 September, Anna Maria had said that John Donellan had rinsed out the phial with water into a bowl and that he had tasted the mixture and said it was ‘nauseous'. In her second deposition Anna Maria says that Donellan took the bottle off the chimney piece, swilled it out and ‘threw the water and the medicine which was left at the bottom of the bottle away together upon the ground.' Donellan then took a second bottle from the chimney piece and also threw its contents to the ground. Next he instructed Sarah Blundell, who was in the room, to take the bottles away. Anna Maria stated that she objected, but that Donellan insisted and the bottles were removed.

Then came another damning indictment. Anna Maria testified that when she and Donellan had returned to Lawford Hall after her first deposition, he had expressed ‘surprise and disapprobation' at her previously volunteering information about his swilling-out the bottles. She then said that it had been Donellan's idea to keep Theodosius's medicines in an outer, unlocked room.

After Anna Maria's new statement, the servant girl Sarah Blundell was called again. She swore that Donellan had instructed her to take away the used medicine bottles (plural) just as Anna Maria had said.

Meanwhile, John Donellan wrote a letter dated Thursday 14 September to ‘The Coroner and Gentlemen of the Jury at Newbold'. He evidently felt it wise to add more detail to the account he had already given to the Reverend Newsam. He wrote:

Gentlemen:

I hold it my duty to give you every information …

During the time Sir Theodosius was here, great part of it was spent in procuring things to kill rats, with which this house swarms remarkably. He used to have arsenic by the pound weight at a time, and laid the same in and about the house, in various places and in as many forms.

We often expostulated with him about the extreme careless manner in which he acted, respecting himself and the family in
general; his answer to us was, that the men servants knew where he had laid the arsenic, and for us we had no business with it.

At table we have not eaten anything for many months past which we perceived him to touch, as we well knew his extreme inattention to the bad effects of the various things he frequently used to send for, for the above purposes, as well as for making up horse medicines; he used to make up vast quantities of Gulard, from a receipt which he had from Mrs Newsam; she will give you a copy of it, if you please, and it will speak for itself.

Since Sir Theodosius's death, the gardener collected several fish which Sir Theodosius laid: he used to split them and rub the stuff upon them; the gardener was ordered to bury the fish …

Lady Boughton, my wife and self have showed the utmost willingness to satisfy the public respecting Sir Theodosius's death, by every act within the limits of our power … every one that came to the house should see the corpse before it was put into the coffin on the fourth day; and the eighth day the corpse was sent to the vault at Newbold.

I am, gentlemen, your most obedient servant, John Donellan.

Five days had passed since both John Donellan and Anna Maria Boughton had attended the first coroner's hearing on 9 September. In that time, Anna Maria had decided that ‘unfair dealings' had occurred, while John Donellan centred his account on the poisons freely available in the house, brought there by Theodosius himself without any apparent regard for the safety of the rest of the family – the implication being that, if Theodosius died by poison, it was through some accident or design of his own. Why Thomas Hewitt's testimony as to a possible source of poison is not mentioned by Donellan is confusing, as ingestion of picrotoxin would have produced a very quick death such as that experienced by Theodosius.

What is so curious about Anna Maria's depositions, though, is not only the change in her evidence – in the first, Donellan tastes
the residue from a basin; in the second he throws it, untasted, on the floor – but that if she had suspected Donellan from that very first morning of poisoning her son, why had she allowed him to supervise the visits by the doctors? Why had she not written to or visited Sir William to express her fears? Why had she not prevented the funeral? Anna Maria had power; she had influence; if she had the slightest misgivings, would it not have been natural to express them to Sir William or the family solicitor at the earliest opportunity? Why had she waited until public disquiet had forced an autopsy?

The explanation that Anna Maria gives in her second deposition is that she had been disturbed by Donellan's irritation at her mentioning the bottles at all in the first deposition. Consequently, she had thought over the events in the light of his bad humour and concluded that ‘unfair dealings had been carried on'. Her renewed examination of the events of the morning had, apparently, resulted in her deciding that Donellan had acted quite differently to her first account. But this version is not simply an addition to or expansion on the first version. It is a completely
different
account of his actions and, by implication, his motives and mood.

Sir William, in the later trial, makes no mention of having been approached by Theodosius's mother. He deposited with the court a full and complete set of the letters that had passed between himself and John Donellan, but made no mention of any correspondence with Anna Maria.

If Anna Maria had really seen Donellan throw the contents of the bottle on the ground, would that not have
immediately
struck her as suspicious? Yet if Donellan had, as per her original deposition, simply rinsed out the bottle, tasted its contents and pronounced them ‘nauseous', that would not necessarily have aroused any suspicion at all, and so her silence after her son's death is more understandable.

At what point in the intervening five days had Anna Maria decided to change her evidence, and why? And, aware of the difference between the two depositions, what gave her the confidence to do so?

The decision now lay with the coroner and a jury which he had summoned from the neighbourhood. In 1780, a coroner was a substitute for the High Sheriff of the County. There was no concept of the Crown bringing a case to court; the Director of Public Prosecutions was not instituted until a century later. Nor were there any police or public prosecutors. The prosecution of almost all criminal offences was private; it was up to the victim to pursue the perceived offender. Charges had to be filed with a local magistrate, evidence presented to a jury and then subsequently provided for the trial. There was no overriding concept of ‘the people' protecting society; it was one person against another. Anna Maria filed her charges against Donellan.

The
Coventry Mercury
newspaper reported on Monday 18 September that ‘on Friday last' – that is, on 15 September, the day after Anna Maria Boughton's second deposition – John Donellan was arrested and brought under guard to Warwick Gaol, ‘where he is now confined, charged with the wilful murder of Theodosius Boughton'.

‘Isolation is the sum total of wretchedness to a man.'

Thomas Carlyle

THE FULL IMPACT OF THEODOSIUS'S DEATH
slowly began to filter through to the Shukburgh side of the family. On 28 September, Lucy Wright, Edward Boughton's sister, wrote to their brother Charles:

I am now most impatient to receive some further account than the newspaper gives of the horrible affair in Warwickshire … I have written two letters to my brother and rec'd no answers to them … my brother's business at Lawford Hall [was] occasioned I find by a most base and infamous poisoning. Pray tell me who it was who first detected the fact and occasion'd the Grave to be opened?

On 6 October, her mother Mary also wrote to Charles, but the matriarch's mind was still on money:

I very sincerely rejoice in yr Brother's acquisition tho the cause is shocking to a dreadful degree … I've never been able til now
by yr Letter to know what Estate yr Brother got, whether an old family mansion came with it …

By 12 October, however, Edward was back at Poston Hall and writing to Charles with news of Anna Maria, and an exasperated complaint about the locals:

My good Aunt fears that poor Sir Theo was ill prepared for so early and sudden summons into Eternity. I have had a letter from Caldecott, in which he mentions that Donellan had retain'd almost all the Counsel who come to that Circuit. I found when I came there that a strong idea prevailed among the Country people that I was the person committed to Warwick Gaol. I wonder most at their extreme stupidity.
¹

Edward's letter shows how much gossip was still circulating even after Donellan's arrest – and its capacity to get the facts dramatically wrong.

As for Anna Maria – Edward's ‘good Aunt' – the
Scots Magazine
of 1781 later reported that Lady Boughton had been ‘distracted' and ‘frantic' since Donellan's arrest, ‘and to add to the calamities of the family, the daughter is far advanced in pregnancy'. Although edited by the redoubtable James Boswell, the magazine had its facts wrong here. Anna Maria may or may not have been ‘frantic', but it is very unlikely that Theodosia had a ‘far advanced' pregnancy. It was only just over two months since her last child had been born.

It was going to be a very long winter for John Donellan.

The County Assizes were over for that year; he would have to remain in prison until they reconvened in April of 1781.