morphia and antimony in Paris on May 31 was brought up against him.
Shortly after his arrest Castaing had said that the cats and dogs about
the hotel had made such a noise on the night of May 30 that they had
disturbed the rest of Auguste, who, in the early morning, had asked
Castaing to get some poison to kill them. He had accordingly gone all
the way, about ten miles, to Paris at four in the morning to purchase
antimony and morphia to kill cats and dogs. All the people of the
hotel denied that there had been any such disturbance on the night in
question. Castaing now said that he had bought the poisons at Auguste's
request, partly to kill the noisy cats and dogs, and partly for the
purpose of their making experiments on animals. Asked why he had not
given this second reason before, he said that as Auguste was not a
medical man it would have been damaging to his reputation to divulge the
fact of his wishing to make unauthorised experiments on animals. "Why
go to Paris for the poison?" asked the judge, "there was a chemist a few
yards from the hotel. And when in Paris, why go to two chemists?" To all
these questions Castaing's answers were such as to lead the President
to express a doubt as to whether they were likely to convince the jury.
Castaing was obliged to admit that he had allowed, if not ordered, the
evacuations of the sick man to be thrown away. He stated that he had
thrown away the morphia and antimony, which he had bought in Paris,
in the closets of the hotel, because, owing to the concatenation of
circumstances, he thought that he would be suspected of murder. In reply
to a question from one of the jury, Castaing said that he had mixed
the acetate of morphia and tartar emetic together before reaching Saint
Cloud, but why he had done so he could not explain.
The medical evidence at the trial was favourable to the accused. Orfila,
the famous chemist of that day, said that, though the symptoms in
Auguste Ballet's case might be attributed to poisoning by acetate of
morphia or some other vegetable poison, at the same time they could
be equally well attributed to sudden illness of a natural kind. The
liquids, taken from the stomach of Ballet, had yielded on analysis no
trace of poison of any sort. The convulsive symptoms present in Ballet's
case were undoubtedly a characteristic result of a severe dose of
acetate of morphia.(14) Castaing said that he had mixed the acetate of
morphia and tartar emetic together, but in any case no trace of either
poison was found in Auguste's body, and his illness might, from all
appearances, have been occasioned by natural causes. Some attempt was
made by the prosecution to prove that the apoplexy to which Hippolyte
Ballet had finally succumbed, might be attributed to a vegetable poison;
one of the doctors expressed an opinion favourable to that conclusion
"as a man but not as a physician." But the evidence did not go further.
(14) It was asserted some years later by one medical authority in
Palmer's case that it might have been morphia and not strychnine that
had caused the tetanic symptoms which preceded Cook's death.
To the young priest-like doctor the ordeal of his trial was a severe
one. It lasted eight days. It was only at midday on the sixth day that
the evidence was concluded. Not only was Castaing compelled to submit to
a long interrogatory by the President, but, after each witness had given
his or her evidence, the prisoner was called on to refute or explain any
points unfavourable to him. This he did briefly, with varying success;
as the trial went on, with increasing embarrassment. A great deal of
the evidence given against Castaing was hearsay, and would have been
inadmissible in an English court of justice. Statements made by Auguste
to other persons about Castaing were freely admitted. But more serious
was the evidence of Mlle. Percillie, Auguste's mistress. She swore that
on one occasion in her presence Castaing had reproached Auguste with
ingratitude; he had complained that he had destroyed one copy of
Hippolyte Ballet's will, and for Auguste's sake had procured the
destruction of the other, and that yet, in spite of all this, Auguste
hesitated to entrust him with 100,000 francs. Asked what he had to say
to this statement Castaing denied its truth. He had, he said, only been
in Mlle. Percillie's house once, and then not with Auguste Ballet. Mlle.
Percillie adhered to the truth of her evidence, and the President left
it to the jury to decide between them.
A Mme. Durand, a patient of Castaing, gave some curious evidence as to
a story told her by the young doctor. He said that a friend of his,
suffering from lung disease, had been persuaded into making a will in
his sister's favour. The sister had offered a bribe of 80,000 francs to
her brother's lawyer to persuade him to make such a will, and paid one
of his clerks 3,000 francs for drawing it up. Castaing, in his friend's
interest, and in order to expose the fraud, invited the clerk to come
and see him. His friend, hidden in an alcove in the room, overheard the
conversation between Castaing and the clerk, and so learnt the details
of his sister's intrigue. He at once destroyed the will and became
reconciled with his brother, whom he had been about to disinherit. After
his death the brother, out of gratitude, had given Castaing 100,000
francs.
President: Castaing, did you tell this story to Mme. Durand?
Castaing: I don't recollect.
Avocat-General: But Mme. Durand says that you did.
Castaing: I don't recollect.
President: You always say that you don't recollect; that is no answer.
Have you, yes or no, made such a statement to Mme. Durand?
Castaing: I don't recollect; if I had said it, I should recollect it.
Another lady whom Castaing had attended free of charge swore, with a
good deal of reluctance, that Castaing had told her a somewhat similar
story as accounting for his possession of 100,000 francs.
Witnesses were called for the defence who spoke to the diligence and
good conduct of Castaing as a medical student; and eighteen, whom he had
treated free of expense, testified to his kindness and generosity. "All
these witnesses," said the President, "speak to your generosity; but,
for that very reason, you must have made little profit out of your
profession, and had little opportunity for saving anything," to which
Castaing replied: "These are not the only patients I attended; I have
not called those who paid me for my services." At the same time Castaing
found it impossible to prove that he had ever made a substantial living
by the exercise of his profession.
One of the medical witnesses called for the defence, M. Chaussier, had
volunteered the remark that the absence of any trace of poison in the
portions of Auguste Ballet's body submitted to analysis, constituted an
absence of the corpus delicti. To this the President replied that that
was a question of criminal law, and no concern of his. But in his speech
for the prosecution the Avocat-General dealt with the point raised
at some length--a point which, if it had held good as a principle of
English law, would have secured the acquittal of so wicked a poisoner as
Palmer. He quoted from the famous French lawyer d'Aguesseau: "The corpus
delicti is no other thing than the delictum itself; but the proofs of
the delictum are infinitely variable according to the nature of things;
they may be general or special, principal or accessory, direct or
indirect; in a word, they form that general effect (ensemble) which goes
to determine the conviction of an honest man." If such a contention as
M. Chaussier's were correct, said the Avocat-General, then it would
be impossible in a case of poisoning to convict a prisoner after his
victim's death, or, if his victim survived, to convict him of the
attempt to poison. He reminded the jury of that paragraph in the Code
of Criminal Procedure which instructed them as to their duties: "The Law
does not ask you to give the reasons that have convinced you; it
lays down no rules by which you are to decide as to the fullness or
sufficiency of proof... it only asks you one question: 'Have you an
inward conviction?'" "If," he said, "the actual traces of poison are a
material proof of murder by poison, then a new paragraph must be added
to the Criminal Code--'Since, however, vegetable poisons leave no trace,
poisoning by such means may be committed with impunity.'" To poisoners
he would say in future: "Bunglers that you are, don't use arsenic or any
mineral poison; they leave traces; you will be found out. Use vegetable
poisons; poison your fathers, poison your mothers, poison all your
families, and their inheritance will be yours--fear nothing; you will go
unpunished! You have committed murder by poisoning, it is true; but the
corpus delicti will not be there because it can't be there!" This was
a case, he urged, of circumstantial evidence. "We have," he said, "gone
through a large number of facts. Of these there is not one that does not
go directly to the proof of poisoning, and that can only be explained on
the supposition of poisoning; whereas, if the theory of the defence
be admitted, all these facts, from the first to the last, become
meaningless and absurd. They can only be refuted by arguments or
explanations that are childish and ridiculous."
Castaing was defended by two advocates--Roussel, a schoolfellow of his,
and the famous Berryer, reckoned by some the greatest French orator
since Mirabeau. Both advocates were allowed to address the jury. Roussel
insisted on the importance of the corpus delicti. "The delictum," he
said, "is the effect, the guilty man merely the cause; it is useless to
deal with the cause if the effect is uncertain," and he cited a case
in which a woman had been sent for trial, charged with murdering her
husband; the moral proof of her guilt seemed conclusive, when suddenly
her husband appeared in court alive and well. The advocate made a good
deal of the fact that the remains of the draught prescribed by Dr.
Pigache, a spoonful of which Castaing had given to Auguste Ballet,
had been analysed and showed no trace of poison. Against this the
prosecution set the evidence of the chemist at Saint Cloud, who had made
up the prescription. He said that the same day he had made up a second
prescription similar to that of Dr. Pigache, but not made out for
Auguste Ballet, which contained, in addition to the other ingredients,
acetate of morphia. The original of this prescription he had given to a
friend of Castaing, who had come to his shop and asked him for it a few
days after Ballet's death. It would seem therefore that there had
been two bottles of medicine, one of which containing morphia had
disappeared.
M. Roussel combatted the suggestion that the family of Castaing were in
a state of indigence. He showed that his father had an income of 10,000
francs, while his two brothers were holding good positions, one as an
officer in the army, the other as a government official. The mistress
of Castaing he represented as enjoying an income of 5,000 francs.
He protested against the quantity of hearsay evidence that had been
admitted into the case. "In England," he said, "when a witness is
called, he is asked 'What have you seen?' If he can only testify to mere
talk, and hearsay, he is not heard." He quoted the concluding paragraph
of the will of Auguste Ballet as showing his friendly feeling towards
Castaing: "It is only after careful reflection that I have made
this final disposition of my property, in order to mark the sincere
friendship which I have never for one moment ceased to feel for MM.
Castaing, Briant and Leuchere, in order to recognise the faithful
loyalty of my servants, and deprive M. and Mme. Martignon, my
brother-in-law and sister, of all rights to which they might be legally
entitled on my death, fully persuaded in soul and conscience that, in
doing so, I am giving to each their just and proper due." "Is this,"
asked M. Roussel, "a document wrested by surprise from a weak man,
extorted by trickery? Is he not acting in the full exercise of his
faculties? He forgets no one, and justifies his conduct."
When M. Roussel came to the incident of the noisy cats and dogs at Saint
Cloud, he was as ingenious as the circumstances permitted: "A serious
charge engrosses public attention; men's minds are concentrated on
the large, broad aspects of the case; they are in a state of unnatural
excitement. They see only the greatness, the solemnity of the
accusation, and then, suddenly, in the midst of all that is of such
tragic and surpassing interest, comes this trivial fact about cats and
dogs. It makes an unfavourable impression, because it is dramatically
out of keeping with the tragedy of the story. But we are not here to
construct a drama. No, gentlemen, look at it merely as a trivial
incident of ordinary, everyday life, and you will see it in its proper
light." M. Roussel concluded by saying that Castaing's most eloquent
advocate, if he could have been present, would have been Auguste Ballet.
"If Providence had permitted him to enter this court, he would cry out
to you, 'Save my friend's life! His heart is undefiled! He is
innocent!'"
M. Roussel concluded his speech at ten o'clock on Sunday night, November
16. The next morning Berryer addressed the jury. His speech in defence
of Castaing is not considered one of his most successful efforts. He
gave personal testimony as to the taste of acetate of morphia. He said
that with the help of his own chemist he had put a quarter of a grain
of the acetate into a large spoonful of milk, and had found it so
insupportably bitter to the taste that he could not keep it in his
mouth. If, he contended, Ballet had been poisoned by tartar emetic, then
twelve grains given in milk would have given it an insipid taste, and
vomiting immediately after would have got rid of the poison. Later
investigations have shown that, in cases of antimonial poisoning,
vomiting does not necessarily get rid of all the poison, and the
convulsions in which Auguste Ballet died are symptomatic of poisoning
either by morphia or antimony. In conclusion, Berryer quoted the words
addressed by one of the Kings of France to his judges: "When God has not
vouchsafed clear proof of a crime, it is a sign that He does not wish
that man should determine it, but leaves its judgment to a higher
tribunal."
The Avocat-General, in reply, made a telling answer to M. Roussel's
attempt to minimise the importance of the cats and dogs: "He has spoken
of the drama of life, and of its ordinary everyday incidents. If there
is drama in this case, it is of Castaing's making. As to the ordinary
incidents of everyday life, a man buys poison, brings it to the bedside
of his sick friend, saying it is for experiments on cats and dogs, the
friend dies, the other, his sole heir, after foretelling his death,
takes possession of his keys, and proceeds to gather up the spoils--are
these ordinary incidents of every-day life?"
It was nine o'clock at night when the jury retired to consider their
verdict. They returned into court after two hours' deliberation. They
found the prisoner "Not Guilty" of the murder of Hippolyte Ballet,
"Guilty" of destroying his will, and "Guilty" by seven votes to five
of the murder of Auguste Ballet. Asked if he had anything to say before
judgment was given, Castaing, in a very loud voice, said "No; but I
shall know how to die, though I am the victim of ill-fortune, of fatal
circumstance. I shall go to meet my two friends. I am accused of having
treacherously murdered them. There is a Providence above us! If there
is such a thing as an immortal soul, I shall see Hippolyte and Auguste
Ballet again. This is no empty declamation; I don't ask for human pity"
(raising his hands to heaven), "I look to God's mercy, and shall go
joyfully to the scaffold. My conscience is clear. It will not reproach
me even when I feel" (putting his hands to his neck). "Alas! It is
easier to feel what I am feeling than to express what I dare not
express." (In a feeble voice): "You have desired my death; you have it!"
The judges retired to consider the sentence. The candles were guttering,
the light of the lamps was beginning to fade; the aspect of the court
grim and terrible. M. Roussel broke down and burst into tears. Castaing
leant over to his old schoolfellow: "Courage, Roussel," he said; "you
have always believed me innocent, and I am innocent. Embrace for me my
father, my mother, my brothers, my child." He turned to a group of young
advocates standing near: "And you, young people, who have listened to
my trial, attend also my execution; I shall be as firm then as I am now.
All I ask is to die soon. I should be ashamed to plead for mercy." The
judges returned. Castaing was condemned to death, and ordered to pay
100,000 francs damages to the family of Auguste Ballet.
Castaing was not ashamed to appeal to the Court of Cassation for a
revision of his trial, but on December 4 his appeal was rejected. Two
days later he was executed. He had attempted suicide by means of poison,
which one of his friends had brought to him in prison, concealed inside
a watch. His courage failed him at the last, and he met his death in a
state of collapse.
It is not often, happily, that a young man of gentle birth and good
education is a double murderer at twenty-six. And such a soft, humble,
insinuating young man too!--good to his mother, good to his mistress,
fond of his children, kind to his patients.
Yet this gentle creature can deliberately poison his two friends.
Was ever such a contradictory fellow?
Professor Webster
The best report of Webster's trial is that edited by Bemis. The
following tracts in the British Museum have been consulted by the
writer: "Appendix to the Webster Trial," Boston, 1850: "Thoughts on the
Conviction of Webster"; "The Boston Tragedy," by W. E. Bigelow.
It is not often that the gaunt spectre of murder invades the cloistered
calm of academic life. Yet such a strange and unwonted tragedy befell
Harvard University in the year 1849, when John W. Webster, Professor of
Chemistry, took the life of Dr. George Parkman, a distinguished citizen
of Boston. The scene of the crime, the old Medical School, now a Dental
Hospital, is still standing, or was when the present writer visited
Boston in 1907. It is a large and rather dreary red-brick, three-storied
building, situated in the lower part of the city, flanked on its west
side by the mud flats leading down to the Charles River. The first
floor consists of two large rooms, separated from each other by the main
entrance hall, which is approached by a flight of steps leading up
from the street level. Of these two rooms, the left, as you face the
building, is fitted up as a lecture-room. In the year 1849 it was
the lecture-room of Professor Webster. Behind the lecture-room is a
laboratory, known as the upper laboratory, communicating by a private
staircase with the lower laboratory, which occupies the left wing of the
ground floor. A small passage, entered by a door on the left-hand side
of the front of the building, separated this lower laboratory from the
dissecting-room, an out-house built on to the west wall of the college,
but now demolished. From this description it will be seen that any
person, provided with the necessary keys, could enter the college by
the side-door near the dissecting room on the ground floor, and pass
up through the lower and upper laboratory into Professor Webster's
lecture-room without entering any other part of the building. The
Professor of Chemistry, by locking the doors of his lecture-rooms and
the lower laboratory, could, if he wished, make himself perfectly secure
against intrusion, and come and go by the side-door without attracting
much attention. These rooms are little altered at the present time from
their arrangement in 1849. The lecture-room and laboratory are used for
the same purposes to-day; the lower laboratory, a dismal chamber, now
disused and somewhat rearranged, is still recognisable as the scene of
the Professor's chemical experiments.
On the second floor of the hospital is a museum, once anatomical, now
dental. One of the principal objects of interest in this museum is a
plaster cast of the jaws of Dr. George Parkman, made by a well-known
dentist of Boston, Dr. Keep, in the year 1846. In that year the
new medical college was formally opened. Dr. Parkman, a wealthy and
public-spirited citizen of Boston, had given the piece of land, on which
the college had been erected. He had been invited to be present at the
opening ceremony. In anticipation of being asked to make a speech on
this occasion Dr. Parkman, whose teeth were few and far between, had
himself fitted by Dr. Keep with a complete set of false teeth. Oliver
Wendell Holmes, then Professor of Anatomy at Harvard, who was present at
the opening of the college, noticed how very nice and white the doctor's
teeth appeared to be. It was the discovery of the remains of these same
admirable teeth three years later in the furnace in Professor Webster's
lower laboratory that led to the conviction of Dr. Parkman's murderer.
By a strange coincidence the doctor met his death in the very college
which his generosity had helped to build. Though to-day the state of the
college has declined from the medical to the dental, his memory still
lives within its walls by the cast of his jaws preserved in the dental
museum as a relic of a case, in which the art of dentistry did signal
service to the cause of justice.
In his lifetime Dr. Parkman was a well-known figure in the streets of
Boston. His peculiar personal appearance and eccentric habits combined
to make him something of a character. As he walked through the streets
he presented a remarkable appearance. He was exceptionally tall, longer
in the body than the legs; his lower jaw protruded some half an inch
beyond the upper; he carried his body bent forward from the small of his
back. He seemed to be always in a hurry; so impetuous was he that, if
his horse did not travel fast enough to please him, he would get off its
back, and, leaving the steed in the middle of the street, hasten on his
way on foot. A just and generous man, he was extremely punctilious in
matters of business, and uncompromising in his resentment of any form
of falsehood or deceit. It was the force of his resentment in such a
case that cost him his life.
The doctor was unfailingly punctual in taking his meals. Dr. Kingsley,
during the fourteen years he had acted as his agent, had always been
able to make sure of finding him at home at his dinner hour, half-past
two o'clock. But on Friday, November 23, 1849, to his surprise and
that of his family, Dr. Parkman did not come home to dinner; and their
anxiety was increased when the day passed, and there was still no sign
of the doctor's return. Inquiries were made. From these it appeared that
Dr. Parkman had been last seen alive between one and two o'clock on the
Friday afternoon. About half-past one he had visited a grocer's shop
in Bridge Street, made some purchases, and left behind him a paper bag
containing a lettuce, which, he said, he would call for on his way home.
Shortly before two o'clock he was seen by a workman, at a distance of
forty or fifty feet from the Medical College, going in that direction.
From that moment all certain trace of him was lost. His family knew that
he had made an appointment for half-past one that day, but where and
with whom they did not know. As a matter of fact, Professor John
W. Webster had appointed that hour to receive Dr. Parkman in his
lecture-room in the Medical College.
John W. Webster was at this time Professor of Chemistry and Mineralogy
in Harvard University, a Doctor of Medicine and a Member of the American
Academy of Arts and Sciences, the London Geological Society and the St.
Petersburg Mineralogical Society. He was the author of several works
on geology and chemistry, a man now close on sixty years of age. His
countenance was genial, his manner mild and unassuming; he was clean
shaven, wore spectacles, and looked younger than his years.
Professor Webster was popular with a large circle of friends. To those
who liked him he was a man of pleasing and attractive manners, artistic
in his tastes--he was especially fond of music--not a very profound
or remarkable chemist, but a pleasant social companion. His temper was
hasty and irritable. Spoilt in his boyhood as an only child, he was
self-willed and self-indulgent. His wife and daughters were better liked
than he. By unfriendly criticics{sic} the Professor was thought to be
selfish, fonder of the good things of the table and a good cigar than
was consistent with his duty to his family or the smallness of his
income. His father, a successful apothecary at Boston, had died in 1833,
leaving John, his only son, a fortune of some L10,000. In rather less
than ten years Webster had run through the whole of his inheritance. He
had built himself a costly mansion in Cambridge, spent a large sum
of money in collecting minerals, and delighted to exercise lavish
hospitality. By living consistently beyond his means he found himself
at length entirely dependent on his professional earnings. These were
small. His salary as Professor was fixed at L240 a year;(15) the rest of
his income he derived from the sale of tickets for his lectures at the
Medical College. That income was insufficient to meet his wants.
(15) I have given these sums of money in their English equivalents
in order to give the reader an idea of the smallness of the sum which
brought about the tragedy.