Messalina, Locusta, Lucretia, Theodora, they step aside in this
particular review of peccant women. Cleopatra, supposed to have poisoned
slaves in the spirit of scientific research, or perhaps as punishment
for having handed her the wrong lipstick, also is set aside. It were
supererogatory to attempt dealing with the ladies mentioned in the Bible
and the Apocrypha, such as Jael, who drove the nail into the head of
Sisera, or Judith, who cut off the head of Holofernes. Their stories are
plainly and excellently told in the Scriptural manner, and the adding
of detail would be mere fictional exercise. Something, perhaps, might
be done for them by way of deducing their characters and physical
shortcomings through examination of their deeds and motives--but this
may be left to psychiatrists. There is room here merely for a soupcon of
psychology--just as much, in fact, as may afford the writer an easy turn
from one plain narrative to another. You will have no more of it than
amounts, say, to the pinch of fennel that should go into the sauce for
mackerel.
Toffana, who in Italy supplied poison to wives aweary of their husbands
and to ladies beginning to find their lovers inconvenient, and who thus
at second hand murdered some six hundred persons, has her attractions
for the criminological writer. The bother is that so many of them have
found it out. The scanty material regarding her has been turned over so
often that it has become somewhat tattered, and has worn rather thin
for refashioning. The same may be said for Hieronyma Spara, a direct
poisoner and Toffana's contemporary.
The fashion they set passed to the Marquise de Brinvilliers, and she,
with La Vigoureux and La Voisin, has been written up so often that the
task of finding something new to say of her and her associates looks far
too formidable for a man as lethargic as myself.
In the abundance of material that criminal history provides about women
choice becomes difficult. There is, for example, a plethora of women
poisoners. Wherever a woman alone turns to murder it is a hundred to one
that she will select poison as a medium. This at first sight may seem a
curious fact, but there is for it a perfectly logical explanation, upon
which I hope later to touch briefly. The concern of this book, however,
is not purely with murder by women, though murder will bulk largely.
Swindling will be dealt with, and casual allusion made to other crimes.
But take for the moment the women accused or convicted of poisoning.
What an array they make! What monsters of iniquity many of them
appear! Perhaps the record, apart from those set up by Toffana and the
Brinvilliers contingent, is held by the Van der Linden woman of Leyden,
who between 1869 and 1885 attempted to dispose of 102 persons, succeeded
with no less than twenty-seven, and rendered at least forty-five
seriously ill. Then comes Helene Jegado, of France, who, according to
one account, with two more working years (eighteen instead of sixteen),
contrived to envenom twenty-six people, and attempted the lives of
twelve more. On this calculation she fails by one to reach the der
Linden record, but, even reckoning the two extra years she had to work
in, since she made only a third of the other's essays, her bowling
average may be said to be incomparably better.
Our own Mary Ann Cotton, at work between 1852 and 1873, comes in third,
with twenty-four deaths, at least known, as her bag. Mary Ann operated
on a system of her own, and many of her victims were her own children.
She is well worth the lengthier consideration which will be given her in
later pages.
Anna Zwanziger, the earlier 'monster' of Bavaria, arrested in 1809, was
an amateur compared with those three.
Mrs Susannah Holroyd, of Ashton-under-Lyne, charged in September of 1816
at the Lancashire Assizes with the murder by poison of her husband,
her own son, and the infant child of Anna Newton, a lodger of hers, was
nurse to illegitimate children. She was generally suspected of having
murdered several of her charges, but no evidence, as far as I can learn,
was brought forward to give weight to the suspicion at her trial. Then
there were Mesdames Flanagan and Higgins, found guilty, at Liverpool
Assizes in February 1884, of poisoning Thomas Higgins, husband of the
latter of the accused, by the administration of arsenic. The ladies
were sisters, living together in Liverpool. With them in the house in
Skirvington Street were Flanagan's son John, Thomas Higgins and his
daughter Mary, Patrick Jennings and his daughter Margaret.
John Flanagan died in December 1880. His mother drew the insurance
money. Next year Thomas Higgins married the younger of the sisters, and
in the year following Mary Higgins, his daughter, died. Her stepmother
drew the insurance money. The year after that Margaret Jennings,
daughter of the lodger, died. Once again insurance money was drawn, this
time by both sisters.
Thomas Higgins passed away that same year in a house to which what
remained of the menage had removed. He was on the point of being buried,
as having died of dysentery due to alcoholism, when the suspicions of
his brother led the coroner to stop the funeral. The brother had heard
word of insurance on the life of Thomas. A post-mortem revealed the fact
that Thomas had actually died of arsenic poisoning; upon which discovery
the bodies of John Flanagan, Mary Higgins, and Margaret Jennings were
exhumed for autopsy, which revealed arsenic poisoning in each case. The
prisoners alone had attended the deceased in the last illnesses. Theory
went that the poison had been obtained by soaking fly-papers. Mesdames
Flanagan and Higgins were executed at Kirkdale Gaol in March of 1884.
Now, these are two cases which, if only minor in the wholesale
poisoning line when compared with the Van der Linden, Jegado, and Cotton
envenomings, yet have their points of interest. In both cases the guilty
were so far able to banish "all trivial fond records" as to dispose of
kindred who might have been dear to them: Mrs Holroyd of husband and
son, with lodger's daughter as makeweight; the Liverpool pair of nephew,
husband, stepdaughter (or son, brother-in-law, and stepniece, according
to how you look at it), with again the unfortunate daughter of a
lodger thrown in. If they "do things better on the Continent"--speaking
generally and ignoring our own Mary Ann--there is yet temptation to
examine the lesser native products at length, but space and the scheme
of this book prevent. In the matter of the Liverpool Locustas there is
an engaging speculation. It was brought to my notice by Mr Alan Brock,
author of By Misadventure and Further Evidence. Just how far did the use
of flypapers by Flanagan and Higgins for the obtaining of arsenic serve
as an example to Mrs Maybrick, convicted of the murder of her husband in
the same city five years later?
The list of women poisoners in England alone would stretch interminably.
If one were to confine oneself merely to those employing arsenic the
list would still be formidable. Mary Blandy, who callously slew her
father with arsenic supplied her by her lover at Henley-on-Thames in
1751, has been a subject for many criminological essayists. That she has
attracted so much attention is probably due to the double fact that she
was a girl in a very comfortable way of life, heiress to a fortune of
L10,000, and that contemporary records are full and accessible. But
there is nothing essentially interesting about her case to make it
stand out from others that have attracted less notice in a literary way.
Another Mary, of a later date, Edith Mary Carew, who in 1892 was found
guilty by the Consular Court, Yokohama, of the murder of her husband
with arsenic and sugar of lead, was an Englishwoman who might have given
Mary Blandy points in several directions.
When we leave the arsenical-minded and seek for cases where other
poisons were employed there is still no lack of material. There is, for
example, the case of Sarah Pearson and the woman Black, who were tried
at Armagh in June 1905 for the murder of the old mother of the latter.
The old woman, Alice Pearson (Sarah was her daughter-in-law), was
in possession of small savings, some forty pounds, which aroused the
cupidity of the younger women. Their first attempt at murder was with
metallic mercury. It rather failed, and the trick was turned by means of
three-pennyworth of strychnine, bought by Sarah and mixed with the old
lady's food. The murder might not have been discovered but for the fact
that Sarah, who had gone to Canada, was arrested in Montreal for some
other offence, and made a confession which implicated her husband and
Black. A notable point about the case is the amount of metallic mercury
found in the old woman's body: 296 grains--a record.
Having regard to the condition of life in which these Irishwomen lived,
there is nothing, to my mind, in the fact that they murdered for forty
pounds to make their crime more sordid than that of Mary Blandy.
Take, again, the case of Mary Ansell, the domestic servant, who, at
Hertford Assizes in June 1899, was found guilty of the murder of her
sister, Caroline, by the administration of phosphorus contained in a
cake. Here the motive for the murder was the insurance made by Ansell
upon the life of her sister, a young woman of weak intellect confined
in Leavesden Asylum, Watford. The sum assured was only L22 10s. If Mary
Blandy poisoned her father in order to be at liberty to marry her lover,
Cranstoun, and to secure the fortune Cranstoun wanted with her, wherein
does she shine above Mary Ansell, a murderess who not only poisoned her
sister, but nearly murdered several of her sister's fellow-inmates of
the asylum, and all for twenty odd pounds? Certainly not in being less
sordid, certainly not in being more 'romantic.'
There is, at root, no case of murder proved and accepted as such which
does not contain its points of interest for the criminological writer.
There is, indeed, many a case, not only of murder but of lesser
crime, that has failed to attract a lot of attention, but that yet,
in affording matter for the student of crime and criminal psychology,
surpasses others which, very often because there has been nothing of
greater public moment at the time, were boomed by the Press into the
prominence of causes celebres.
There is no need then, after all, for any crime writer who wants to
fry a modest basket of fish to mourn because Mr Roughead, Mr. Beaufroy
Barry, Mr Guy Logan, Miss Tennyson Jesse, Mr Leonard R. Gribble, and
others of his estimable fellows seem to have swiped all the sole and
salmon. It may be a matter for envy that Mr Roughead, with his uncanny
skill and his gift in piquant sauces, can turn out the haddock and hake
with all the delectability of sole a la Normande. The sigh of envy will
merge into an exhalation of joy over the artistry of it. And one may
turn, wholeheartedly and inspired, to see what can be made of one's own
catch of gudgeon.