The Damnation of John Donellan (33 page)

But Egerton's misgivings about the suitability of the union proved to be unfounded. John Ward and Theodosia Leigh were married for fifty-seven years. In time, John assumed the name Ward-Boughton-Leigh; the couple had eight surviving children. Their marriage in fact preserved William Boughton and Anna Maria Beauchamp's line, which had looked set to fail when so many of Theodosia's children had perished.

Egerton Leigh died seven years later, on 27 April 1818, aged fifty-six.

It would not have been surprising if the much-bereaved Lady Leigh now retreated into the shadows of widowhood and kept a low profile; but Theodosia Beauchamp Leigh was made of stern stuff. She was sixty-one, but Sir Charles's daughter Lady Templeton suspected that she had had designs on her own father for some time. Several years previously, she had written to him saying that she knew that Theodosia wrote to him, and added, ‘Her usual flow of spirits are returned and I make no doubt of it that if Sir Egerton died she would make you tipsy with champagne and then by it persuade you to marry her .. I could not
bear
the thought.' But she need not have worried. The seemingly indestructible Theodosia did marry again, though not to Sir Charles. On 10 February 1823, aged sixty-six, she married Barry O'Meara, who had been surgeon to Napoleon on St Helena.

Despite being what was then perceived as a very old lady, Theodosia was not only still capable of catching a husband but she was as sharp as a tack. She kept up a constant stream of letters to her solicitor, George Harris, complaining most frequently about over-spending
²⁷
and ordering him to keep locals off their land so that her new husband could fish, shoot and hunt without their ‘molestation' or ‘impediments'.

One wonders if the thought crossed her mind of the brother who had spent his last night fishing the same stretch of river some forty-five years before. How different life might have been for her if John Donellan had not been accused of Theodosius's murder. Other Donellan children would have been born; Lawford Hall would not have been demolished. It would have been John Donellan's children who would have established a flourishing line of descendants, not the daughter of Egerton Leigh; and it might have been John Donellan's son who had the living of Newbold church, and not Egerton Leigh's grandson.
²⁸

Dame Theodosia Beauchamp Leigh, having lived a life of extraordinary drama, died on 14 January 1830, aged seventy-three.

Six days later she was buried in the Boughton family vault at Newbold.

‘I think your family were always of the opinion that Donellan was
innocent …'

Edward Allesley Boughton Ward-Boughton-Leigh to
Sir Charles Rouse-Boughton, 8 November 1882

‘Where there was no poison, there was no poisoner.'

S. M. Phillips,
Famous Cases of Circumstantial Evidence
(1873)

SAMUEL MARCH PHILLIPS
hit the nail on the head when he wrote on the Donellan trial in his
Famous Cases of Circumstantial Evidence
: ‘the argument turned upon the breath, the smell of a woman.'
¹
A smell which, as James Stephen had pointed out ninety years earlier, Anna Maria had not even mentioned at either of the coroner's inquests. ‘But did the deceased die of poison?' Phillips persisted. ‘For if he did not, there is an end to the whole. Where there was no poison, there was no poisoner.'

Did Donellan's trial prove beyond a shadow of doubt that the mixture that Theodosius took on 30 August 1780 was prussic acid, distilled from laurel leaves? And did it prove that no other cause of death was possible?

No. The case against Donellan rested solely on Anna Maria
Boughton's testimony that the medicine she gave Theodosius smelled of bitter almonds, but no one could prove that this was true.

No other testimony mentioned such a smell, except for that of Rattray, who claimed to have smelled and tasted something ‘acrid' in his mouth at the dissection. None of the other doctors or surgeons mentioned it, let alone proved that the ‘acrid' smell was poisonous. Catharine Amos did not say that there was a smell of bitter almonds from Theodosius when she was wiping his mouth, and it is inconceivable that the prosecution did not try their best to get her to say so; similarly, Powell did not say that the recently dead corpse smelled of it. And if Anna Maria's second deposition to the coroner – the one that resulted in Donellan's arrest – was true, then a residue of the mixture had been thrown on the bedroom floor; but no smell was noted in the room.

The trial heard that Donellan had a still, but did not prove that he made laurel water in it. Francis Amos testified that laurel trees grew in the garden, but not that any had been picked for distilling. These are possible sources of poison, but there is no proof that they were the
actual
source.

Hunter testified that the symptoms Theodosius displayed before he died were not certain proof that the cause of death was poison, and he discounted the other medical testimony that had suggested that the autopsy proved poison. Wilmer was adamant that
no cause
could be distinguished. All the experiments which had been done on animals by Rattray, Wheler and Wilmer only proved that laurel water killed animals in a certain way. The jury was then asked to make the leap from the way the animals died to the way that Theodosius had died, based only on Anna Maria's evidence.

Hunter despaired for some time about his performance at the trial, and the unprofessional nature of the other medical witnesses; he warned his students that they should be aware of how the law worked and adjust their answers accordingly. ‘A poor devil was lately hanged at Warwick,' he said, ‘upon no other testimony than that of physical men whose
first experiments
were made upon this occasion.' In his diary, Hunter recorded various arguments that he
had afterwards about Donellan. The Irish inventor Richard Lovell Edgeworth defended Hunter in one such row, saying that ten years earlier he had heard Hunter say that he had swallowed ‘enough laurel water to kill twenty dogs and lived to tell the tale'.

As Phillips had it: ‘Theodosius was
supposed
to have been poisoned because it was
believed
to have been laurel water; and it was
believed
to have been laurel water because he was
supposed
to have been poisoned … they were but conjectures unsupported by any proof, and formed against all the rules of law.'

James Stephen, in his angry pamphlet published after the trial, quotes a ‘learned source' which echoes this point: ‘The law never admits an inference from an inference. The question is never as to what
a thing is like
' – as in Anna Maria's evidence that it ‘smelt like bitter almonds' – ‘but the witness must swear to his belief as to what it
is
. The circumstance itself is never to be presumed, but must be absolutely proved.'

Analysing the case in 1825, the medical writer John Gordon Smith said that above all it was the evidence of the scientific witnesses that most prejudiced the outcome. ‘It cannot be evidence,' he said, ‘on the part of a scientific witness as to the identity of poison, that another person whose opinion cannot be authoritative, such as Lady Boughton, described it to “smell like the taste” of a second substance.'
³

Even if it were to be accepted that a murder took place, was it proved that Donellan was the murderer?

The classic considerations of murder are motive, means and opportunity. Donellan's motive was given by prosecuting counsel and Justice Buller as ‘avarice' – the desire for Theodosius's fortune, which would become the property of Donellan's wife.

But did Donellan actually stand to gain in this way? Undoubtedly Theodosia was the main beneficiary under the terms of her father's will; but a large part of the estate was mortgaged. Donellan had been promised two church livings which were in the gift of Theodosius and worth £500 a year. It is true, however, that once her brother was dead, Theodosia would have been able to give
these to her husband, and probably with less fuss. Theodosius had been known to argue with Donellan and resent the way that the older man ruled the show at Lawford Hall; perhaps Donellan felt that Theodosius would get his own back when he became master, and withhold the church livings?

Equally, Donellan may have dreaded the day when Theodosius came into his fortune, not because of the amounts of money involved, which were modest, but because now the whole family would be dependent on a young man who had so far in his life betrayed nothing but recklessness. Donellan may have worried that the money would soon be gone, and the family plunged into debt – protection of his wife in this situation may certainly have been a motivating factor.

Additionally – and this was never mentioned as a motive in court – Donellan may have cared not so much for himself as for his children, to whom he was devoted. He had a son who might one day inherit. He also had a young wife who could have been reasonably expected to produce more offspring. How was he to look after them if his income were dependent upon Theodosius? Donellan perhaps envisaged a lifetime of pleasing the arrogant young baronet, trying to wheedle a few more financial favours in order to secure a happy life for his family.

In the prosecution brief there is a telling little story which never came to court. Sukey Sparrow, the nursemaid, said that she had heard Donellan say to Theodosia that it had been a lucky thing that it had not been he who had given Theodosius his medicine; and later the same day – the day that Theodosius died – she saw him cradling the baby, John, in his arms saying, ‘Now, you little rogue, you will be heir to thousands a year.' Did Donellan indeed murder Theodosius, but for the sake of his children?

As for the means, Donellan disputed that he was ever in Theodosius's bedroom after the medicine was delivered the previous evening; but that is not to say that Donellan could not have got another, discarded bottle of Powell's various ‘purges', filled it with laurel water and substituted it at some time during the night. Or he could simply have put a second bottle on the chimney shelf at
any time in the previous few days: Anna Maria testified that there were two, not one.

Donellan admitted to having a still; he admitted that he had a recipe for distilling laurel leaves; and he admitted – though not to the court – that he had made a dilute mixture ‘to bathe his feet'. So he had ample means and opportunity.

Interestingly, an article in the
Coventry Mercury
of 4 June 1781 posed a series of questions to Donellan's solicitor (which one is not specified). The newspaper claimed that Donellan's
Defence
had been published only to make money for Inge and Webb. It also said that Donellan's guilt was expressed freely by them ‘In the Three Tuns Inn the morning after Captain Donellan's trial'.

The paper claimed that the unnamed solicitor had declared that there were ‘fifty' more incriminating facts about Donellan – one of them being that a carpenter called Burton had been willing to testify, if called, that Donellan sent a servant to intercept a message that Bucknill had sent to Snow on the afternoon of the funeral. On arriving at the house, Snow had been told by Donellan that Bucknill would not return for hours, so Snow had no option but to allow the funeral to proceed.

It was also claimed that ‘during his confinement' Donellan had dismissed Theodosius's death, saying that ‘a greater piece of work was made about killing one man in England than about killing twenty in Ireland'.

If what was said in the Three Tuns was reported correctly, then it shows Donellan in a bad light. If he
did
intercept a message from Bucknill to Snow, it may have been to get the funeral over with for the sake of the assembled mourners; or it may have been a final attempt to conceal his crime. The remark – again, if true – about killing one man could mean that he simply accepted that Theodosius
had
been murdered; or it could mean that he held other men's lives pretty cheaply.

Donellan's statement in court was not enough to dissuade the jury of his guilt. Only his
Defence
, once he had been sentenced, answered many of the accusations made against him. But by then, of course, it was too late. And there was no defence at all against
a legal team so willing to gossip about him in a local inn while he was still alive.

Of the other members of the family, Edward Boughton had a financial incentive to kill Theodosius. Unlike Donellan, he would gain a baronetcy as well as the fortune, and Edward had been convinced that all Theodosius's estates and rents came with the title, until he was disappointed by Dunning's advice and Anna Maria's flat refusal. He also put pen to paper to say how wonderful it was that Theodosius was dead, although, to be fair to him, ‘wonderful' had a slightly different connotation in eighteenth-century English – surprising, curious, or shocking in an ironically entertaining way.

Local people, Edward reported in his letters, certainly thought that he was the guilty man: for a while it was rumoured that it was he, not Donellan, who had been locked up in Warwick Gaol.

But Edward Boughton was not short of money. Theodosius's estate and baronetcy were attractive, as Edward's mother showed in her letters, but were they worth murdering for? Edward, after all, had an estate of his own worth hundreds of thousands of pounds, and he also had a family of his own of whom he was very fond. It is not likely that he would have gambled their happiness and security – which he valued so highly that he rejected the usual practice of marrying an heiress to consolidate his fortune – not to mention the reputation and happiness of his own siblings, on a distant cousin's estate in Warwickshire.

The servants at Lawford Hall had plenty of opportunity. They had access to both house and garden. But what possible motive could a servant have for killing Theodosius?