The Press. — London, England, 1857-07-11 00:00:00

674 Xaln an Volitt. THE GLASGOW POISONING CASE. Ix our last we brought down this extraordinary• trial to the close of its third day. On Friday the examination of witnesses for the prosecution was resumed. Christina Haggart, one of Mr. Smith's servants, deposed to having frequently seen L'Angelier at the house. He used to come in by the back gate about ten o'clock at night. Miss Smith would take him into the laundry. The door was shut, and L'Angelier usually remained about Lief an hour. The night of the 22nd March witness remembered well. She heard nothing in the course of that night, nor knew of any stranger being in or about the house. She left Miss Smith in the dining•room. Charlotte M'Clean, another servant, went to bed at eleven o'clock on the night of the 22nd of March, and heard no noise throughout the night. The constable on the Blythswood•square beat, who had seen L'Angelier on the previous occasions in the neigh bourhood, saw nothing of him that night. But a strong point in favour of the prosecution was that L'Angelier, previous to his death, had expressed his belief that " he had been poisoned by some cocoa." Mrs. Towers, a lady living at Glasgow, remembered L'Angelier visiting her at Portobello, near Edin burgh He dined with us. He talked of his health almost the whole time. He said he had been given cocoa and coffee, but after taking them they had disagreed with him, and he bad been very ill. He said he had not been accustomed to them. He made the remark that he thought he had been poisoned. This was after speaking of the coffee and cocoa. Nothing was said or asked about who had poisoned him. kr. Towers gave similar evidence : He told us he had had a very •iolent bilious attack or jaundice. He said he had had two attacks after taking cocoa or coffee. He said he thought himself poisoned after taking the cocoa and coffee. I remarked who woula poison him, or what object could there be for that ? but d o not recollect he made any answer. Miss Perry, who appears to have been L'Angelier's most intimate friend, gave stronger evidence upon this point : He dined with me on the 17th of February. He told me then that he expected to see Miss Smith on the Thurs day following. I did not see him again till the 2nd of March. He was then looking extremely ill. We had some conversation about his illness. He said, "I never expected to have seen you again, I have been so ill." He did not tell me he had seen Miss Smith on the 19th of February. He told me had had a cup of chocolate, which bad made him ill. It was on the 9th of March he told me this, when he took tea with me. On the 2nd he said he could not attribute it to any cause, but on the 9th he said, " I can't think why I was so unwell after getting tbat coffee and chocolate from her." I understood him to refer to two occasions. He was talking of Miss Smith when he said " her." He did not say if the illness he had on getting the chocolate was the same illness of which he had spoken on the 2nd of March, but I did not know of his having any other illness. On the 9th of March he was talking of his extreme attachment to Miss Smith. He said, " It is a perfect infatuation I have for her ; if the were to poison me I would forgive her." I said, " You ought not to allow such thoughts to pass through your mind. What motive could she have to do you any harm ?" He said, " I don't know that ; perhaps she might not be sorry to get rid of me." All this was said in earnest. I interpreted the expression to mean to get rid of her en gagement. There seemed to be some suspicion on his mind as to what Miss Smith had given him, but it was not a serious suspicion. I never saw him again alive. Upon Saturday the letters of the prisoner were read. They were very numerous, very passionate, and • sufficiently proved the nature of the intimacy that existed between her and L'Angelier. We will extract a few passages in support of this assertion. On the 29th April, 1856, she writes : Dearest, I must see you. It is fearful never to see you at all. P. ( papa) has not been a night in town for some time ; but the first night he is I shall tell you, and we shall spend a night of bliss. Only C. H. will know. C. H. stands for Christina Haggett, the servant, and the confidant in this amour since its commencement. In a letter without a date, but bearing the postmark 3rd May, 1856, she says : P. has been unwell for two days, but you CAD come just the same ; but you had better leave the steamer at Helens• burgh. Come to the gate; you know it, and wait till I arrive. The next letter is on the 7th of May, and she 9 Is : My own beloved husband,—T trust you got home safe, and not much the worse of being out. I thank you for coming so far to see me: Beloved, if we did wrong last night Yes, beloved, T did truly love you with my whole soul. Am I notyour wife? Yes, I am, and you may rest assured, after what has passed, that I cannot be the wife of any other. In a letter inclosed in an envelope, the date of which is illegible, she answers that she never will marry any one else, and in another letter, which is inclosed in the same envelope, she sari:— .THE PRESS, Our intimacy has not been criminal, as I am your wife before God. lam now a wife, a wife in every sense of the word, and it is my duty to conduct myself as such. In another letter she says : Emile, my own beloved husband, yon have just left me. Oh, sweet darling, my heart and soul beats at this moment with love for you, my sweet one. My nightdress was on when you saw me. I wish to God you had been in the same attire. Upon the face of these letters there can be no doubt that a criminal intercourse took place, and that at one period Miss Smith was most warmly attached to L'Angelier. After the first burst of passionate love a reaction set in, she oocled, perceived that Mr. Minnock's offer would be far more advantageous to her in a worldly sense, and finally desired to break off her engagement with L'Angelier. This L'Angelier refusedto accede to. He would bear of nothing of the kind She was, de facto, his wife, and she should marry no other man. In his jealousy he would not restore her letters, and threatened to show them to her father. This threat alarms her. She appeals to his honour, she implores and beseeches him not to expose her—" to keep her secret from the world." The last letter she ever wrote to L'Angelier was with the view of having an interview for the purpose of entreating him to give her back her letters. These letters closed the case for the prosecution, and the defence was commenced on Monday. The first witnesses called deposed to the tendency L'Angelier had to commit saicide. Baker, a waiter at the Rainbow Tavern, Edinburgh, said : I took him for a quiet sort of person, but he was very easily excited. Be was at times subject to low spirits. Latterly he told me, on more than one occasion, he was tired of his existence, and he sometimes spoke of suicide. On one occasion he got up in the night, and opened the window : I got up and asked him what he was doing, and he said if I had not disturbed him he would have thrown himself out. Baker and tho deceased ware in the habit of taking morning walks together : We occasionally walked to Lcith pier. He one morning told me he had a good mind to throw himself over, as he was quite tired of his exiitence. I have heard him read of newspaper cases of suicide, and he would say this person had done what he should do if he had the same courage. Cross.exarnined by the Loan ADVOCATE : L'Angelier was a Jersey man, and I had met him there some time about 1846. Re-examined and shown No. 1, first inventory for pri soner: That is a letter from him to me, written in Dun dee. (In that letter he says, after saying he had just landed in Dundee and had got a situation in which he was working for board and lodging only, and with almost no salary :—" I never was so unhappy in my life. I wish I had courage to blow my brains out.") Two other witnesses, Laird and Pringle, declared that upon one occasion, when L'Angelie: had been disappointed in a previous love affair, he had ex hibited great excitement : He told me it was reported the lady was to be married to another, but that he scarcely believed it, as he did not think she could take another, because (as I understood him to say) she was pledged to him. He told me who she was. I believe she was in the middle station of life. After this I saw the lady's marriage in the newspapers. I said what I could to soothe him ; but he said he was truly miserable, and he wished he was out of the world, or something to that effect. He was in a very melancholy state after this. He was gloomy and moody, and never spoke to any one. I had frequent conversations with him. William Pringle, nephew to the last witness, and for some time his apprentice, deposed I slept with the deceased, and had frequent (immerse !ions with him. I told him I had heard of a marriage being in the newspapers—that such a lady had been married. He seemed much agitated, and he ran once or twice behind the counter, and then he took hold of the counter•knife and held it as if to stab himself. I ate pped forward, and be put it down again. I don't remember what he said. He was particularly melancholy after this, and I felt a little afraid be might do himself some mis chief. Smith, an upholsterer in Dundee, thought him " a very excitable sort of character; he was often in very high spirits and often in very low." He referred to the Flintshire lady having broken off the match, and said that he frequently "felt inclined to destroy himself ": He sometimes spoke about drowning himself, and said that he could never be happy again. I have a faint re membrance that he said he had once gone to the Dean bridge, in Edinburgh, to throw himself over, because this lady hail jilted him. Ile did not say what had hindered him. Self-destruction was a very frequent subject of conversation with him. William Ogilvie, of the Dundee Bank, made a most important statement. Talking once of travel ling in France, L'Angelier mentioned that the horses were very much knocked up with some long journeys, and that he had given thorn arsenic to recruit them He told me he had given it in order to enable them to accomplish the journey better. Ise said it M*4o them longwinded, and thus he was enabled to accomplish a feat. I asked, was he not afraid of poisoning the horses ? And in reply to that he said, "So far from that, I have taken it myself." I told him I should not like to follow the same example, but he used some expression to the effect that there was no danger. He said another effect of it was that it improved the complexion. I inferred that he took it himself for that purpose, but he did not say so in so many words. He also said lie sometimes complained of pain in his back and had difficulty in breathing, and that he had taken it, and it had a good effect in relieving This witness also thought ho could recall L'Angelier once showing him " something white in a paper, and said it was arsenic." He had seen him several times take poppy seeds in large quantities : I expressed on one of these occasions my surprise, as I understood they were poisonous ; and he said, so far from that he could take them in large quantities, and that they were better than filberts or nuts. He said he had taken. these poppy seeds in great quantities, till he had become ' quite giddy. He said he had done so when he was at Dickson's, in Edinburgh. David Hill, a market•gardener, corroborated thA last witness's evidence as to L'Angelier using arsenic : - _ recollect one day finding a small parcel in a wood north of Dundee which 1 thought was arsenic. I brought it to Dundee, and was to!d it was arsenic. This was befure L'Angelier came to Dundee, but 1 toll him of the circumstance afterwards, and he said, " Oh, that was nothing strange, uhe used it regularly." He did not tell mo for what purpose he used it. I have been trying to remember, but I cannot now do so. Alexander Millarjbelieved L'Angelier to be easily depressed On one occasion he said he wished he was dead. He has spoken to me about people taking their own lives. He said he did not consider there was any sin in a person taking away his life to get out of the world when tired of it, and hiving lost all happiness in it. Mr. William Roberts, a merchant of Glasgow, deposed to L'Angelier having dined with him ou Christmas, 1853, and to his having been suddenly seized with illness and leaving the room : I sat a considerable time and wondered what kopt him. I opened the dining•room door and heard groaning and vomiting. I went to the closet and found him vomiting and purging. I sent upstairs for cholera mixture, and I think he got a good deal of it. Cholera had been lately in town, and we got very much frightened. He was afterwards taken home in a cab. He appeared to get better, for he called on me next day, or the one following, to apologise for having become ill. I think he was fully an hour absent before t went out to seek for him. Letters from the prisoner to the deceased were then put in and read. The first was a letter in an envelope, with the postmark September 18, 1855. It said : Beloved Emile,—l have just received your note. shell meet you. I do not care though I bring disgrace upon myself. To see you I would do anything. Emile, you shall yet be happy; you deserve it. You are young, and you, who ought to desire life, wishing to end it. Oh, for the sake of your once•loved Mini, desire to live and succeed in life. Every one must meet with disappoint. ments. I have suffered from disappointment. I long to see you, sweet Emile. The next letter bore the postmark Oct. 10, 1855, and was to this effect : Beloved Emile,—Your kind letter I received this morn ing. Emile, you are wrong in thinking that I loved you for your appearance. I did and do admire you, but it was for yourself alone I love you. I can give you no other reason, for I have got no other. If you had been a young man of a Glasgow family I have no doubt there would be ' no objection, but because you are unknown to him (Papa) he has objected to you. Emile, can you explain this sentence in your note—" Before long I shell rid you and all the world of my presence." God forbid you ever do. My last letter was not filled with rash promises. No ; these promises given by me in my last letter shall be kept, and must be kept. Not a moment passes but I think of you. Dr. Robert Paterson made a singular statement — viz., that in several cases of suicide by arsenic which had come under his care not one of the patients disclosed betore death that they bad taken poison : I inquired of several of them if they had been taking poison or arsenic, but they all denied it. In the case of the recovery the young woman did not admit she had taken it until after her recovering from the secondary effects of the poison. In the previous part of her illness she was sullen and morose. Other medical evidence was called to prove the impossibility of dissolving arsenic to any extent in cold water ; and Miss Janet Smith, younger sister of the prisoner, and whose appearance created intense excitement, gave important evidence relating to the night of the 22nd of March I remember Sunday the 22nd of March. We went to bed together that night about half•past ten, or afterwards. We went downstairs together from the dining•room. We were both undressing at the same time, and we both got into bed nearly about the same time. We might take about half an hour to undress. We were in no hurry that night in undressing. My sister was in bed with me before I was asleep, and she was undressed as usual, in her night clothel. I clo not know which slept hrst. We fell asleep JULY 11, 1857.