The Damnation of John Donellan (4 page)

I am, sir, your obedient and humble servant, Wm Wheler.

It was at best a holding letter, and one which was by now several days overdue; the sympathies were extended more to the ladies than to Donellan, as would have been proper. Perhaps Wheler's attentions were divided between two grieving families, his friends the Sitwells and the Boughtons? It would not have been expected of him to descend without invitation or notice; nevertheless, his concern for Anna Maria in particular is distant, bearing in mind that she had lost her only son and had no husband to support her. Interestingly, although Sir William notes that the death was
‘sudden and very untimely' he does not ask for the exact details.

Wheler did nothing more that day. It was on the Sunday, 3 September, that he was really stirred into action.

The local vicar, the Reverend Piers Newsam – the same priest who had been seen speaking to John Donellan on the Saturday before Theodosius's death – arrived at Sir William's house with a letter (which was not available at the trial) from the Earl of Denbigh. Lord Denbigh, alias Basil Feilding, lived in the mansion of Newnham Paddox at Monks Kirby, equidistant between Lawford Hall and Wheler's own residence.

The arrival of such a letter from a superior being, one who was used to being both heard and obeyed, would have acted as a sharp warning. The Denbighs were aristocracy of a different calibre to the Boughtons: Basil Feilding was an earl whose title dated back three centuries. Earls could literally lord it over baronets. The Denbighs were also superior to the Boughtons in property, and their home – Newnham Paddox – was huge. (It was demolished in 1950, the then countess condemning it as a ‘365-room monstrosity'). Days of destruction were far away, however: in 1780 Newnham, then a superlative Palladian mansion, dominated the countryside.

And when the Denbighs spoke, the countryside listened.

To Sir William's consternation, the earl had picked up on the rumour of poison, a rumour that he himself had not yet acted upon. (There is no actual written or recorded evidence of the rumour or ‘report' – other than what Wheler says in his letters and what he and others refer to at the trial.) In a flurry of sudden activity, Wheler sent for the apothecary, Powell. And then he wrote to Donellan.

Wheler's letter bears all the hallmarks of a man who has been, metaphorically at least, shaken by the scruff of his neck; he suddenly remembered that he was supposed to be looking after Theodosius. But again, it is quite remarkable that Sir William did not write on the day that the Reverend Newsam visited him. With Theodosius's body deteriorating quickly in the heat, and every hour precious if an autopsy was to be carried out with any accuracy, Sir William took another day to put pen to paper. His next letter to Donellan is dated 4 September:

Dear Sir,

Since I wrote to you last, I have been applied to, as the guardian of Sir Theodosius Boughton, to inquire into the cause of his sudden death; and the report says that he was better the morning of his death than he had been for many weeks, and that he was taken ill in less than half an hour, and died in two hours after he had swallowed the physic. There is great reason to believe that the physic was improper … I find I am very much blamed for not making some enquiry into the affair …

Next he went on to explain why he had called Powell:

… his character is at stake; I dare say it will be a great satisfaction to him to have the body opened … it will appear from the stomach whether there is anything corrosive in it.

From here, the letter takes on a note of near panic:

As a friend to you, I must say … it is reported all over the country that he was killed either by medicine or by poison. The country will never be convinced to the contrary unless the body is opened, and we shall all be very much blamed …

The body was still at Lawford Hall, about to be sealed in a lead coffin.

Wheler then told Donellan that he had asked that ‘Dr Wilmer of Coventry or Mr Snow of Southam, in the presence of Dr Rattray or any other Physician that you and the family think proper' should perform an autopsy.

He added:

Mr Powell is now with me, and from his account it does not appear that his medicine could be the cause of death; he has not given him any mercury since June … Mr Powell says it will be a great satisfaction to him to have the body opened, and for
the above reasons, I sincerely wish it. I will only add that this affair makes me very unhappy … I beg of you to lay this affair before Lady Boughton … to point out to her the real necessity of complying with my request, and to say that it is expected by the country.

I am … your sincere friend and obliged humble servant, Wm Wheler.

One thing is very clear from this letter. Wheler's tone is not accusatory; there is no hint that he might hold Donellan responsible. The sense is that between the two of them, they must now contain a rapidly spreading lie. Wheler is ‘very unhappy' but a very long way from crying ‘Murder!' The letter is an attempt to make the family see and hear what he had been seeing and hearing outside Lawford Hall. The opening of the body was to quell rumour, a rumour that contended that Theo was ‘killed either by medicine or by poison'; but the tone is all about containment of a rumour, not investigating a crime. And even if a crime were uppermost in Wheler's mind he did not at this stage suspect Donellan of having a part in it – or he would hardly have warned him, asked for his help or referred to him as a ‘friend'.

It is also interesting that Wheler had been contacted by Lord Denbigh rather than Anna Maria. If her suspicions had genuinely fallen on her son-in-law, it is reasonable to suppose that she would have asked Wheler for help herself, or told him of her suspicions – after which Wheler would naturally have bypassed Donellan. But she remained silent.

One other element is also disturbing.

If Donellan himself believed that Theo had been poisoned, why didn't he himself act? Why didn't he tell Wheler how Theo had died in his first letter? Did he believe, instead, that the death had been natural? And what exactly was going on at Lawford Hall as the rumours spread about the countryside?

Donellan did not waste a moment in reply. He responded to Sir William the same day, telling him that the whole family ‘Most cheerfully' wished for the body to be opened. That afternoon
Wheler answered: two surgeons and Mr Powell should open the body as soon as possible. He continued, ‘I hope that you understand it is not to satisfy my curiosity, but the public', adding, for the third time, his usual anxious proviso: ‘to prevent the world from blaming any of us'.

It was getting dark that evening when the physician and the surgeon nominated by Sir William, plus another unidentified man, arrived at the house; they later testified that Powell, the apothecary, was already there.

David Rattray is listed in the Universal British Directory for Coventry in 1791 as a ‘Doctor of Medicine'. According to the E. H. Cornelius Library of the Royal College of Surgeons, Rattray was forty-one years old at the time of this case and practising in Coventry, having obtained his degree from Edinburgh. In the Coventry Directory, Bradford Wilmer is listed as a ‘Surgeon'. Having trained at St Bartholomew's Hospital in London, Wilmer went on to practise in Coventry for forty years. He had been – interestingly as regards the subsequent trial – a pupil of Sir John Hunter, the renowned anatomist. He had also become famous locally for reporting the curious case of Mary Clunes of Coventry: Mary, an alcoholic, had been found in her bedroom completely consumed by fire, ‘leaving only the legs and all the other bones covered in a whitish ash' but with very little damage to the rest of the room.

But in 1780 neither a surgeon nor a doctor of medicine – no matter how lurid or famous their cases – were as we would recognise them today. The practice of medicine was largely uncontrolled by any official body – it was not until the Medical Act of 1858 that a register of qualified practitioners was published nationally and, even of those named then, only 4 per cent had a medical degree from an English university.

Surgeons such as Wilmer were licensed
only
to perform surgery, and then only in the presence of a physician like Rattray, who was
only
qualified to diagnose internal problems and was therefore there to act as his assistant. The whole profession was an overlapping medley of barber surgeons, surgeons, doctors, ‘men-midwives',
unqualified and untrained midwives, apothecaries and druggists, many of these jobs having sprung up in the previous century when medicine had been routinely combined with other employment – innkeeping and distilling among them. The profession of medicine was rising, but in 1780 it stood somewhere on the boundaries between experiment, folklore and scientific discovery. Donellan was opening the door to a profession – but not to professionals as we would recognise them.

In evidence later, cranking up the mystery a notch, Rattray said that he had received an anonymous note asking him to go to Lawford and ‘open the body of Sir Theodosius Boughton'; it asked that he take Mr Wilmer with him.

The three men were met by Donellan – ‘in the passage with a candle in his hand' – in the hallway of the house, where they noticed that Powell, the apothecary, was standing by the great table reading a letter. Turning to Powell, Donellan took the letter and saw that it was addressed to him. Apologising, Powell said that he had opened it by mistake (according to Donellan's later written
Defence
).

All five men went into the parlour while, upstairs, the lead coffin was being unsoldered. They were offered supper and, while they were eating it, Rattray read the letter that had been taken from Powell. It was from Sir William, saying that he himself would not come to see the autopsy because he ‘conceived no person was proper to be there but the surgeon and physician sent for'. (There is no record of Wheler coming to Lawford until the funeral; a curiously detached response but one that would make sense if he had confidence that his instructions were being carried out by Donellan.)

Donellan was, meanwhile, searching in his waistcoat pocket for another letter, but instead pulled out an empty envelope. Afterwards, he insisted that he was looking for some more correspondence from Sir William which proved that he had the guardian's full confidence.

Rattray grew impatient. It was late; he ‘wished to get over such little matters as these'.

Obeying Wheler's instructions that only the doctors should examine Theodosius's body, Donellan stayed at the foot of the stairs while they went up to perform the grisly task of viewing the corpse.

It did not take long.

Wilmer went into the room first; but he came back out again quickly. He had only looked at Theo's face, and ‘expressed surprise that the body was so putrid; it would serve no purpose to open it'. But the other two wanted to form their own opinions, so the three men returned to the laying-out room together, only for Rattray to agree: ‘the body seemed to us to be in such a very disagreeable state that we did not like to enter into the investigation of it, not knowing that any particular purpose was to be answered by it, except the satisfaction of the family.'

An amazing admission to modern ears: a doctor employed to carry out an autopsy says that a body is so revolting that he does not want to examine it. However, in 1780 it was believed that the odours alone from a corpse could be fatally infectious. More interesting is Rattray saying that he did not know that the purpose of the autopsy was to dispel the rumour of poisoning. Donellan had said nothing about that; nor had Sir William's letter, but it is odd that neither Wilmer nor Rattray nor their anonymous friend had heard the rumours. Wilmer later said that he would have certainly opened the body, ‘disagreeable state' or not, if poison had been mentioned.

They went back downstairs to speak to Donellan, who quite correctly did not ask for their conclusions – those were for Sir William to hear first – and asked them instead, ‘Shall you see Sir William Wheler?'

The two medical men disagreed later on what their reply was. Rattray insisted that he told Donellan that he had to go to somewhere called Brookswell the next day and so would not be going home that night; Wilmer flatly contradicted this, testifying that Rattray said he would see Sir William and ‘give him an account of the business'. At any rate, Donellan was satisfied that one or both of the doctors would tell Wheler their conclusions, which he took to be that nothing could be proven by opening the body because it was too far decayed.

At the front door of the Hall, according to Donellan's
Defence
, Wilmer and Powell were given five guineas each for their trouble, and Rattray two guineas, as he had been perceived to be acting merely as an assistant. According to Donellan, Anna Maria appeared to bid the men goodbye, but she refused to pay them, saying that she carried no money with her. Donellan obliged instead.

The next morning, Donellan wrote again to Sir William:

Dear Sir,

I sent for Dr Rattray and Dr Wilmer; they brought another gentleman with them; … upon receipt of your last letter, I gave it to them to peruse and act as directed … I wish you would hear from them the state they found the body in, as it will be an additional satisfaction to me that you should hear the account from themselves.

The ‘other gentleman' may have been Wheler's apothecary, Bernard Snow, but this was never specifically confirmed. Donellan then, for the first time, described what he thought was the cause of death:

Sir Theodosius made a very free use of ointment and other things to repel a large boil which he had in his groin. So he used to do at Eaton … I repeatedly advised [him] to consult Dr Rattray … but … you will not wonder at his going his own way, which he would not be put out of … Lady Boughton expressed her wishes to Sir Theodosius that he would take proper advice for his complaint; but he treated hers as he did mine.