The Press.
London, England, 1857-07-04 00:00:00

THE PRESS, JULY 4,1857.

was at the coast," meaning, as I understood, the Bridge of
Allan. I said, " You never took enough of medicine." He
said he never approved of medicine. He was chilly and
cold, and wished hot water to his feet and stomach. 1 got
this for him. I got ajar of hot water to both. 1 threw
three or four pairs of blankets and two mats over him. He
became a little easier, but at four he got bad again.
About seven he got black about the eyes and choked
when he tried to drink. Dr. Steven, who had.
previously attended him, was called in and prescribed,
and remarked " He'd get over it the same as before."
L'Angelier said to him, "This is the third attack I
have had. The landlady says it is bile, but I never
was subject to bile." About nine o'clock deceased
got worse, and said he was far worse than the doctor
thought :
I went in about nine o'clock, and he looked very bad
like. 1 said, "Is there nD one you would like to see ?"
He said, " 1 would like to see Miss Perry, Renfield•street."
I sent for her. After this he said, " Oh, if you please, draw
the curtain; if I could get five minutes sleep I think I
would be better." I left him, and was back in five or ten
minutes. I came quietly out, thinking he was sleeping.
The doctor came in, and I told him he had only newly
fallen asleep. He wished to see him. He felt the pulse
and raised the head. I said, "Is there anything wrong ?"
He said, " Draw the curtains aside, the man is dead."

Where he bad passed the night, at present does
not appear. Miss Smith from the first denied
that she had seen him the evening previous to his
death. Her appointment was for Saturday evening,
and she had not seen him on the Sunday. She
repeats this in her declaration, and swears that, upon
there being " no tapping at the window," she went to
bed at eleven, and remained in bed till the usual
time next morning.

'Mc circumstances of L'Angelier's death were suffi-
ciently suspicious. He might have committed suicide,
but a post-mortem exami nation was made of the
body, when an astonishing quantity of arsenic, nearly
ninety grains, were detected ; " considerably more,"
observes Professor Penny, " than sufficient to de-
stroy life." His symptoms too, in each case of
illness, were precisely those of a person poisoned by
arsenic. " I have no doubt," observes Dr. Christison,
" the cause of death was poisoning by arsenic, and
that being the case, I should have entertained strong
suspicion as to that being also the cause of his prior
illness." Both medical men were also of opinion
that so large a dose could easily be administered in
a cup of cocoa or chocolate, if boiled with it before-
hand. The question, therefore, was by what process
the poison bad been administered. Miss Smith
admits that upon ono occasion, when conversing with
him from her bedroom-window, which was on the
ground-floor, she gave him a cup of cocoa which she
had prepared herself, and was at the time drinking
—L'Angelier scarcely tasted it. But at this time
Miss Smith is known to have been in the
habit of purchasing and possessing arsenic. She
used it as a cosmetic. One of her young friends,
Miss Buchanan, who was to be bridesmaid to her on
her marriage with Mr. Minnock was with Miss
Smith on ono occasion when she bought arsenic ; at
another time her sister Bessie was with her. The
purchase was openly made, there was no conceal-
ment, and in each case she signed the register with-
out hesitation.

Apart from the symptoms L'Angelier experi•
need at and previous to his death, it was elicited
in evidence that, constitutionally or an irritable tem-
perament, he suffered much from Miss Smith's cold-
ness towards him of late. On her asking him for
her letters, he was much affected, but refused to give
them up, declared that she should never marry
another man so long as be lived, end wished himself
dead. He suffered frequently from bowel com-
plaint and cholera, and was in the habit of taking
laudanum.

"I have seen M. L'Angelier take laudanum several
times," says M. Thuot, a brother clerk :
I told him once that be took a good deal—that he took
too much. He said he could not sleep wi►bout it. He
once told me he had taken a great deal of laudanum. I
have seen him take it f.)ur or rive times.

By the COI:LIT : I ne►•er saw him take much laudanum,
except may be when he was suffering a great deal.

M. de Meau remembers L'Angelier telling how
last year he had suffered Prom an attack of cholera.
He told him also on another occasion, " how he had
been attacked by a burning pain at the heart ;" and
once, in the summer of 1855, a curious incident oc-
curred:—

I lived at Helensburgh in the summer of 18.55. L'An-
gelier visited me there. He once came on a Saturday
evening. We spent the whole evening together. On Sun•
day we went a g 'od distance on the Glasgow-mad, and
returned. L'Angelier, instead of following me, went down-
stairs, and in a short time I went down to inquire why he
did not come to his dinner: but I met him returning,
when I found him excessively pale. I asked him what
had been the matter; and he told me he had been fright-
fully sick, vomiting all the time downstairs.

L'Angelier was a very vain person. One witness, Ste-
venson, remarks : "he was vain of his personal ap-
pearance, very much so." Another, M. de Mean,
believes his only fault to have been bragging, and

655

distinctly recollects a conversation he had with the
deceased upon the possibility of taking arsenic with-
out bein ginjured by it :
It was on a Sunday, I think in the winter of 1853 54
that we had a conversation about it, but I do not recollect
how it arose. We had a long discussion on the possibility
of a person taking arsenic without being injured by it. I
ridiculed the idea of its being possible to take it without
danger, while he maintained that it was possible to take it
in a small quantity.

But no trace of arsenic was discovered among his
private effects. A little aconite only was found in a
bottle, which if it had been full and all taken
would not have destroyed life.
_ _ _

With respect to Miss Smith's reasons for keeping
up a correspondence with L'Angelier after she bsd
become engaged to Mr. Minnock, Miss Smith, scxn
after L'Angelier's death, in an interview with M. de
Mean, declared that she did so " in order to try and
get back her letters."
At this stage the case rests at present. A vast
number of witnesses for the Crown remain to be
examined, not the least important among whom is
Miss Penny, a most intimate friend of L'Angelier.
The prisoner is described as a very young lady, of
short stature and slight form, with features sharp
and prominent, and restless and sparkling eye. On
Tuesday morning she stepped up the stair into the
dock with all the buoyancy with which she might
have entered the box of a theatre. During the
whole day she maintained a firm and unmoved
appearance, her keen and animated expression and
healthful complexion evincing how little, outwardly
at least, she had suffered by the period of her im-
prisonment and the horror of her situation. Though
on once looking round a dark veil was thrown over
her face, the interest she took in the proceedings
was yet evident. Her head never sank for a
moment, and she even seemed to scan the witnesses
with a scrutinising glance. Her perfect self-posses-
sion, indeed, could only be accounted for either by a
proud consciousness of innocence, or by her possess-'
ing an almost unparalleled amount of self-contro..
She even sometimes smiled with all the air and
grace of a young lady in the drawing-room, as her
agents came forward at intervals to communicate
with her. She was dressed simply, yet elegantly.
She wore a brown silk dress with black silk cloak,
with a small straw bonnet trimmed with white
riband of the fashionable shape exposing the whole
front of the head. She also had lavender-coloured

gloves, a white cambric handkercheif, a silver-topped
smelling bottle in her hand, which she never used,
and a wrapper thrown over her knee. Altogether
she had a most attractive appearance, and her very
aspect and demeanour seemed to advocate her
cause. To the indictment, which charged her with
the murder of Emile L'Angelier by arsenic or other
poison unknown, in cocoa or coffee, or some ether
article of food or drink, Miss Smith, in a firm
subdued voice, pleaded " Not Guilty," and the jury
were at once impannelled.

COLONEL WAUGH, whose case was called on this
week before the Bankruptcy Commissioner, put in
an affidavit, dated " Marseilles, 23rd June, 1857," to
the effect that he was so ill as to be utterly incapaci-
tated from surrendering to the Court of Bankruptcy.
An enlargement of time was granted to the 18th of

September.
Mn. CAMERON, who, with Mr. Humphrey Brown,
continues in the Queen's Bench Prison, was soindis-
creet last week as to permit his son to attempt to
smuggle in a private stock of brandy, against the
prison rules. Mr. Cameron, jun., was detected in
flagrante delicti, handed over to the police, and fined
3/. and costs.

A GOOD ANECDOTE IS GIVEN OF LORD JEFFREY In
the present number of Fraser :—" It happened, one
autumn, that the late Lord Jeffrey, after the rising
of the Court of Session, came to spend the long vaca-
tion in the parish of L--. Soon after his arrival,
the minister intimated from the pulpit that upon a
certain day he would hold a diet of catechising' in
the district which included the dwelling of the emi-
nent judge. True to his time, he appeared at
Lord Jeffrey's. house, and requested that the entire
establishment might be collected. This was readily
done; for almost all Scotch clergymen, though the
catechising process has become obsolete, still visit
each house in the parish once a year, and collect the
family to listen to a fireside lecture. But what was Lord

Jeffrey's consternatio❑ when, the entire household
being assembled in the drawing-room, the worthy
minister said in a solemn voice, . My lord, I always
begin my examination with the head of the family.
Will you tell me, then—What is effectual calling ?'
Never wes an Edinburgh reviewer more thoroughly
nonplussed. After a pause, during which the ser-
vants looked on in horror at the thought that a judge
should not know his Catechism, his lordship reco-
vered speech, and answered the question in terms
which completely dumbfounded the minister—' Why,
Mr. Smith, a man may be said to discharge the
duties of his calling effectually, when he performs
hem with ability and success.'