The Invention of Murder (76 page)

272
returned in refreshments:
Reprinted from the
Manchester Examiner
in the
Morning Chronicle,
‘Sporting Intelligence: William Palmer of Rugeley’, 12 September 1856.
poison bottles of Palmer: Pall Mall Gazette,
‘The Value of Murderers’ Relics’, 28 October 1892.

273
very uncommon name: The Times,
‘Lord Selborne and the Rugeley Poisoner’, 26 November 1875.
laughable farce:
Anon., ‘Monti the Poisoner’, unpublished playscript, for performance at the Britannia Saloon, May 1856, Lord Chamberlain’s Plays, BL Add MSS 52959 (Y);
The Rugeley Tragedy,
playbill reproduced in
John Bull,
‘Stage Morals’, 20 September 1856.
to be of good cheer:
Mary Elizabeth Braddon,
Aurora Floyd
(London, Tinsley Bros., 1863), p.183.

274
before his marriage:
For the ages of Smethurst and Mrs Smethurst, see the Old Bailey trial transcripts, refs. t18590815–785 and t18591128–86, where Smethurst’s age is given as a fact, and Mrs Smethurst’s is estimated from her appearance by her landlady.
Tait’s Edinburgh Magazine,
‘Circumstantial Evidence’, September 1859, pp.548–53, suggested nearly thirty years’ difference between the couple in one sentence, in the next only eighteen. The purchase of Smethurst’s medical degree, Richard Altick,
Victorian Studies in Scarlet
(London, J.M. Dent & Sons, 1972), p.165.

275
for
fourteen years: Forbes,
Surgeons at the Bailey,
pp.138–9.
she had been poisoned:
The analysis of Taylor’s statements is in Rowbotham and Stevenson,
Criminal Conversations,
p.147.
until 1932:
Mant, ‘Science in the Detection of Crime’, p.554.

276
in twenty minutes:
The details of the case of Dr Smethurst are compiled from: Old Bailey trial transcripts, refs. t18590704–683, 18590815–785 and 18591128–86 (the first two references are to the murder trial, the latter to the bigamy case);
Bell’s Life,
21 August, 11 September, 4 December 1859;
Daily News,
5, 9, 14, 21, 26 May, 1, 16, 17 June, 8, 9 July, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27 August [and letters passim on following days, to 6 September], 1, 5, 6, 8, 12, 19 September, 10 October, 14, 21 November, 1 December 1859;
Era,
13 November 1859;
Examiner,
3 September 1859;
John Bull,
20, 27 August 1859;
Leader,
7, 14 May, 27 August, 10 September 1859;
Liverpool Mercury,
22 August 1859;
Lloyd’s Weekly,
15, 22 May, 5 June, 10 July, 21, 28 August, 4, 11, 25, 28 September, 13, 20 November 1859;
Morning Chronicle,
7 May, 23, 25 August, 5, 30 September, 12 November 1859.
T.G. Geoghan’s
Observations on the Medical Evidence in the Case of the Queen v. Smethurst
(Dublin, Hodges, Smith & Co., 1859) is useful, as are two summaries of the case: Browne and Stewart,
Reports of Trials for Murder by Poisoning,
and Leonard A. Parry,
Trial of Dr
Smethurst
(Edinburgh, W. Hodge, 1931). Forbes,
Surgeons at the Bailey,
is good on the forensic/medico-legal questions; and Ginger S. Frost,
Living in Sin: Cohabiting as Husband and Wife in Nineteenth-century England
(Manchester, Manchester University Press, 2008) on the questions raised by the trial.

277
clean and bright: Daily News, 4 February 1848, p.8.
prevention of crime: Lancet,
‘The Scientific Evidence on the Trial of William Palmer’, 1, 1856, p.667.

278
morally impossible: The Times, 23 July 1856, p.12.
Immoral. How true:
Charles Dickens,
The Mystery of Edwin Drood,
ed. Arthur J. Cox ([1870], Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1985), p.222.
of Smethurst’s guilt: Brodie cited in Browne and Stewart, Reports of Trials for Murder by Poisoning, p.479.
with their opinions:
[Charles Dickens], ‘Five New Points of Criminal Law’,
All the Year Round,
24 September 1859, pp.12–13.

280
black scoundrel:
Dickens to John Forster, 25 August 1859, cited in Collins,
Dickens and Crime,
p.246.
low wickedness:
Charles Dickens to John Forster,?15 September 1857, Dickens,
Letters,
vol. 8, pp.446–7.
dire insensibility:
Charles Dickens, ‘The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices’,
Reprinted Pieces and The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices,
introduction by Charles Dickens the Younger (London, Macmillan, 1925), p.396.
interpretation of villain roles:
Frank Rahill,
The World of Melodrama
(University Park, Pennsylvania State University Press, 1967), pp.208–9.

281
to hear about it:
Emily Eden,
The Semi-Detached House
([1859], London, Virago, 1979), pp.177–8.
miserably wanting: Wynne, The Sensation Novel, pp.14–15.

282
without fear of detection: Braddon, Trail of the Serpent, p.161.

283
most effectively removed: Cited in W.N. Roughead, ed., Classic Crimes: A Selection from the Works of William Roughead (New York, New York Review Books, 2000), pp.149–50.
That is a fact:
Jane Carlyle to Thomas Carlyle, 26 July 1857,
Letters,
vol. 32, p.201.

284
guaranteed to contain Arsenic: Hearth and Home, 13 January 1898, p.421.

286
immoral hussy:
This demolition of the prosecution’s case was performed by Alexander Forbes Irvine, ‘Report of the Trial of Madeleine Smith, before the High Court of Justiciary at Edinburgh …’
Edinburgh Review,
108, October 1858, pp.343–76. The paraphrase of the judge’s remarks at the end is, of course, my own.
not proven:
For the details of the crime and trial of Madeleine Smith, see, among many other reports:
Aberdeen Journal,
8 April, 15 July 1857;
Bell’s Life,
12 July 1857;
Caledonian Mercury,
4 April, 1, 7 July 1857;
Daily News,
2, 4, 6, 8, 9 10 July 1857;
Era,
12 July, 9 August 1857;
Examiner,
4 April 1857;
Glasgow Herald,
10, 13 April, 15 June, 1, 3, 6, 8, 10, 13, 15, 17, 31 July, 7 September 1857;
Lloyd’s Weekly,
5 April, 5, 12 July 1857. The journals also covered this case thoroughly:
Dublin Review,
‘A Complete Report on the Trial of Miss Madeleine Smith, for the alleged poisoning of Pierre Emile L’Angelier’, 43, September 1857, pp.128–71; [Alexander Forbes Irvine],
Edinburgh Review,
‘Report of the Trial of Madeleine Smith, before the High Court of Justiciary at Edinburgh …’;
Reynolds’s Miscellany of Romance,
‘Madeleine Smith, the Alleged Poisoner’, 19, August 1857, p.72;
Tait’s Edinburgh Magazine,
‘Circumstantial Evidence’, August 1857, pp.163–8;
Illustrated Times,
‘Glasgow Poisoning Case. Extra Number’, 11 July 1857 (16 pp.); ‘Incidents of the Trial of Madeleine Smith’, 18 July 1857, p.61. An unusually high number of trial pamphlets appeared, among them: ‘Historicus’,
The Story of Minie L’Angelier or Madeleine Hamilton Smith
(Edinburgh, Myles MacPhail, 1857); Alexander Forbes Irvine,
Report of the Trial of Madeleine Smith …for the Alleged Poisoning of Pierre Emile L’Angelier
(Edinburgh, T. & T. Clark, 1857); John Morison,
A Complete Report on the Trial of Miss Madeleine Smith, for the alleged poisoning of Pierre Emile L’Angelier
(Edinburgh, William P. Nimmo, 1857); Anon.,
Glasgow Poisoning Case.
Unabridged Report of the Evidence in this Extraordinary Trial…
(London, George Vickers, 1857). Modern studies include: Peter Hunt,
The Madeleine Smith Affair
(New York, Collier, 1965); Karin Jacobson, ‘Plain Faces, Weird Cases: Domesticating the Law in Collins’s
Law and the Lady
and the Trial of Madeleine Smith’,
Tennessee Studies in Literature,
41, 2003, pp.283–312; F. Tennyson Jesse, ed.,
Trial of Madeleine Smith
(London, William Hodge & Co., 1949); Douglas MacGowan,
Murder in Victorian Scotland: The Trial of Madeleine Smith
(Westport, CT, Praeger, 1999).
was overwhelming:
Letters of Blackwood, Eliot and Lewes, in
The George Eliot Letters,
ed. Gordon S. Haight (London, Oxford University Press/Yale University Press, 1954–78), 7, 12 July 1857, vol. 2, pp.360–63.
aware of this: Mary S. Hartman, Victorian Murderesses: A True History of Thirteen Respectable French and English Women Accused of Unspeakable Crimes (London, Robson, 1977), p.82.

287
deserved commiseration:
James Gray: cited in Roughead,
Burke and Hare,
p.28; the
Caledonian Mercury
fund is cited in a broadside in ibid., pp.402–4; Eliza Chestney and Emily Sandford:
Norfolk Chronicle,
reprinted in
John Bull,
16 April 1849, p.234; Madeleine Smith:
Berwick Advertiser,
reprinted in
Leeds Mercury,
25 July 1857, p.4,
Era,
9 August 1857, p.9; Roughead,
Classic Crimes,
p.151; Wainwright: Walter Wood,
Survivors’ Tales of Famous Crimes
(London, Cassell & Co., 1916), p.42.
utility man generally:
This description of his job was given by Wardle in his ‘Reminiscences of William Morris’, British Library, BM Add MS 45350. I am grateful to Fiona MacCarthy for this reference, and for her information on George Wardle’s background.
La Femme Sage: Racing Times, 20 July 1857, p.229.

288
lo, it was a Dream:
Anon.,
Madeline Smith’s Dream in Prison: A Poem
(London, T. Dawson, 1857). Only two copies appear to have survived; no copies appear in WorldCat, a compilation of the catalogues of more than 10,000 libraries worldwide. I suspect that the publisher named on the title page of one copy (the second has none) is false: it appears nowhere else in either the UK’s Copac or WorldCat.
worse than death:
[Emma Robinson],
Madeleine Graham
(London, John Maxwell & Co., 1864).

289 White,
at that:
Lyn Pykett, ‘The Newgate Novel and Sensation Fiction, 1830–1868’, in
The Cambridge Companion to Crime Fiction,
ed. Martin Priestman (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2003), p.27.
shall hear it now: Wilkie Collins, The Woman in White, p.9.
Yes or No:
Clive,
Paul Ferroll,
introduction by Charlotte Mitchell, p.xiii.

290
concluding number of
Little Dorrit:
Caledonian Mercury,
‘Miss Smith’s Trial’, 1 July 1857.
resident of Bedlam:
These links are discussed by Wynne,
The Sensation Novel,
pp.47ff.
as Miss Smith’s had:
Wilkie Collins,
The Law and the Lady,
ed. Jenny Bourne Taylor ([1875], Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1999), in particular pp.157–71.
of her inheritance:
Maurice-Méjan,
Recueil des Causes célèbres, et des arrêts qui les ont décidées
(Paris, Garnery, 1808–09). The story of the Marquise de Douhault appears in vol. 2, pp.5–344 and vol. 6, pp.5–92.

291
two years previously:
Clyde K. Hyder, ‘Wilkie Collins and the Woman in White’,
PMLA,
54, 1, March 1939, pp.297–303.
his protestations:
Wilkie Collins,
Armadale,
ed. John Sutherland ([1864–66], Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1995), p.70.
It was true:
Wilkie Collins,
Poor Miss Finch
(London, Richard Bentley & Son, 1872), p.v; Wybert Reeve,
From Life,
p.112. I am grateful to Paul Lewis for directing me to this reference.

292
close by: Wynne, The Sensation Novel, p.41.
in her honour:
Noted by John Sutherland in the introduction to his edition of Wilkie Collins,
Armadale,
p.vii.

294
vanished after his death:
Sheridan Le Fanu,
Uncle Silas: A Tale of Bartram-Haugh,
ed. Victor Sage ([1864], Harmondsworth, Penguin, 2000), pp.159–63; ‘The Murdered Cousin’ first published in
Dublin University Magazine,
1838, in Sheridan Le Fanu,
Ghost Stories and Tales of Mystery
(Dublin, James McGlashan, 1851).
missing the point:
[Seymour Hicks and Laurence Irving], ‘Uncle Silas’, unpublished playscript, for performance at Toole’s Theatre,? Feb [semi-illegible] 1893, Lord Chamberlain’s Plays, BL Add MSS 53520 (D).

295
mansion, long-decayed:
‘The Murders in the Rue Morgue’, in
Edgar Allan Poe: Poetry and Tales
(New York, Library of America, 1984), pp.400, 412, 425.
reappropriated by the house:
Wilkie Collins, ‘A Terribly Strange Bed’, in
Mad Monkton and Other Stories,
eds. Norman Page and Kamal Al-Solaylee (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1994).
a descending ceiling: Anon. The Poor Boys of London, or, Driven to Crime. A Life Story for the People ([London, Temple Publishing Co., c.1866]), pp.116–18. Doyle, ‘The Engineer’s Thumb’, in The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes.

296
watchings… listenings: Dickens, Bleak House, pp.62–3, 260, 410.
watch people:
George R. Sims,
Dorcas Dene, Detective
([1897], London, Greenhill, 1986), p.10.
father’s suspicions:
Slater,
Two Classic Melodramas,
p.72; James Fitzjames Stephen, ‘Detectives in Fiction and Real Life’,
Saturday Review,
xvii, June 1864, pp.712–13.
is something terrible:
Braddon to Bulwer, cited in introduction to Braddon,
The Trail of the Serpent.
Braddon was discussing the requirements of ‘halfpenny readers’, from her penny-blood days, but sensation readers seemed to require the same.