The Strychnine Poisoner

The law

Many people look back on the Victorian era as the golden age of poisoning, because of a few high-profile murder cases and the relatively easy availability of toxic substances such as strychnine and arsenic. At the same time the life insurance industry was growing in popularity, making murder by poison even more attractive since it produced little evidence — no marks, blood or noise.

The inequality of strength and access to weapons between the sexes made poisoning a favoured choice for women in the 19th century. Madeleine Smith, for example, fell under suspicion for just such a killing. The young Glaswegian aristocratic was accused of poisoning her lover with arsenic.

Since women were in charge of the home, rat poison could be bought without question. Arsenic was anyway used to improve the complexion. Few poison controls existed. Anyone buying toxic substances was simply required by law to sign a poison book which was kept in every chemist and hardware shop, stating what they had bought.

At the same time toxicology as a branch of forensics began to take off, with two important tests for arsenic developed in 1836 (the Marsh test) and 1841 (the Riensch test).

Perhaps one of the most famous cases of poisoning occurred shortly after the Victorian era, in 1910. Suspicions were aroused when the wife of homeopath Dr Harvey Crippen disappeared and his secretary Ethel Le Neve, with whom he was having an affair, moved in with him and began wearing his wife's clothes. Human tissue revealed at his home was found to contain the poison hyosine, which it was discovered Crippen had bought. He was convicted of murder and hanged. Some people believe he was innocent and gave the poison to his wife as a homeopathic remedy.

During that late 19th and early 20th century, public anxiety led Parliament to enact various laws requiring doctors to register deaths and drastically restricting the sale of poisons. Simultaneously, the forensic science of toxicology was increasingly able to detect fatal toxins, reducing the attraction of traditional poison as a weapon of murder. In drama it lives on in works by the likes of Agatha Christie.

Now there is a state-controlled list of prohibited substances which cannot be sold or bought without licence, greatly reducing the chances of using poison to kill.

Prostitution and consent

Paradoxically for a period when there was a reigning queen, women during the Victorian era were politically and economically second class subjects

Prostitution was not itself illegal and many poverty-stricken young girls would have had little choice but to sell their bodies. The age of consent for girls was 12, though through the later 19th century after campaigns from the likes of Charles Dickens the age limit was raised. During the 20 years from 1870 various Acts raised the age of consent from 12 to 13, then to 14 and 16. But there was, believe it or not, opposition to the moves on the grounds that the children should be allowed to choose how to make their money.

Murder

The legal definition of murder stretches back to the early part of the 17th century. The hugely influential English jurist, Edward Coke laid down a description that still stands today:

‘Murder is when a man [interpreted to mean woman as well] of sound memory, and of the age of discretion , unlawfully killeth within any country of the realm any reasonable creature in rerum natura [natural] under the king’s peace, with malice aforethought, either expressed by the party or implied by law, so as the party wounded, or hurt die of the wound or hurt within a year and a day after the same.’

The year and a day rule put a limit on the time an assailant could be charged with murder. Without this such a person would remain under threat of prosecution for their victim's murder forever. Murder is in fact simply an acceleration of death. What matters is whether the wound inflicted by an attacker caused the death and jurists felt that it would not be possible to show this link after more than a year and a day had elapsed.

In addition, the attacker would have to be shown to have intended to kill or been so reckless as to the consequences of his or her acts that the law would imply such an intention. Malice aforethought does not mean that the attacker needed to have planned the assault for any length of time, but rather that, according to a rule laid down in 1975:

1. The suspect intended to kill
2. The suspect intended to do an act knowing that it was probable that it would kill a person
3. The suspect intended to cause grievous bodily harm [serious injury] to any person
4. The suspect intended to do an act knowing that it was probable that it would cause grievous bodily harm to any person.

Up until the 1960s the death penalty was the sentence for murder, but in the Murder (Abolition of the Death Penalty) Act 1965, this ultimate punishment was suspended and has never been re-introduced.

Similar considerations to the 1975 rules of intention applied in the Victorian era, but little regard was given to extenuating circumstances that may have led the suspect to kill. This qualification arrived after Ruth Ellis was hanged in 1955 for shooting dead her lover who was trying to end their tempestuous affair. Such was the public outcry that followed her execution, that the Homicide Act 1957 was introduced. It allowed a person to escape the death penalty through a lesser conviction for manslaughter if it could be shown to the jury’s satisfaction that the attacker were provoked in a way that ‘was enough to make a reasonable man do as he did’.

Manslaughter, rather than murder, may also apply if the suspect cannot be shown to have had malice aforethought. This would include assailants intending to inflict some, but not serious, harm or gross negligence in performing a duty, such as an operation.

What was in the mind of the poisoner in Victorian London?

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