The Express.
London, England, 1857-07-10 00:00:00

THE EXPRESS, FRIDAY EVENING, JULY 10, 1811/.

his fellow-lodger ; and Miss PERRY, an intimate ac-
quaintance—spoke to two previous attacksof illness,
similar in all their symptom to the third Mal one.
Neither Mrs. Jestenes nor M. THIME could specify
the exact date of the first illness. Miss PERRY
attributed to it the date of the 19th of February ;
but, in the first place, her evidence was merely a
statement of something L'Ancenutel bad said to
bee in as variation ; and, in the second place, the
'uses.. to have been suggested to her by the
deb of the Procurator Fiscal. But more than this,
the 19th of February preceded the earliest ascer-
tained purchase of poison by the prisoner. The
jury, therefore, very properly dismissed this charge
as utterly untenable ; returning, in reference to it, a
verdict of " Not Guilty."
The date assigned in the indictment to the second
alleged attempt was the night of the 22nd or the
morning of the 23rd of February. At that time the
prisoner was in possession of arsenic. She attempted
to explain her purchases by alleging that she used
arsenic as a cosmetic. lice own letters, however,
convict her of such a systematic disregard of truth,
that little importance could be attached to any of
her assertions. Besides, 31 ounces of arsenic in the
course of one month, it a quantity which no stretch
of imagination can conceive to have been used for the
purposes of a cosmetic. No attempt was made to
show that she had ever purchased arsenic before the'
21st of February, and she assigns the year 1832 ns li
the period at which she was advised to use it as •
cosmetic. Besides, an inquiry she made three days
later than the date of her first purchase, of
the person who sold it to her, shows that at
the time she was utterly ignorant of the appearance
of arsenic as sold in the shops. The evidence, how-
ever, as regards this charge, stopped short at show-
ing that the prisoner bad a strong motive to wish
for the death of the deceased; and that she was pos-
sessed of poison, and had given a false account of
the purpose for which she procured it. In her de-
claration, it is true, she admits that she once gave
VAnuaLien a cup of cocoa from her bedroom win-
inw. One of her letters, too, appears to relate
W this same incident. It is evidently written
at • time when L'Anneuett was confined to
the house by sickness. It states that he looked
ill on the Sunday night. It adverts to his having
been taken ill when walking home on that
occasion. It attributes that illness in part to
want of solid food. It states that the writer
herself is indisposed, and that much illness is going
about. Why all this anxiety to assign a cause fur
his illness, and to persuade him that he is only
suffering in common with others? In connexion
with this letter, and the admission in the declara-
tion, we must take L'Ason.tEn's statement to Miss
PERRY, that he bad been taken ill after having had
cocoa or coffee given to him by Miss SMITH. There
is nothing, however, to fix with precision the time of
these incidents. The letter is w ithont a date; and
M. Tntse "did not think L'Astisuea was out
of the house" the night before his second illness.
It was also proved that L'ANGELIER had had
several choleraic attacks/SU occasions when no pion
could have been administered. The medical man,
too, who attended him during his second illness,
had no suspicion of the administration of an irritant
poison, until after the pose mortens examination of
L'ANGELIERN body. Under these circumstances the
Jury returned a verdict in favour of the accused on
the second charge : not, indeed, of " Not Guilty,"
but of " Not I'roven." To the effect of this verdict
we will advert hereafter.
The darkness which brooded over the third charge
was less obscure than that which rested over the
two which preceded it. Arsenic had been found in
the body, so there remained no doubt as to the cause
of death. To the suspicious circumstances that the
prisoner had procured poison, and that she had a
strong motive to use it to get rid of the deceased,
there 11,104 now added a third. L'Asta.usa bad
returned to Glos.:ow sooner than was expected,
unknow n to his fricuds, in consequence of receiving
a letter from the prisoner requesting a meeting with
him at her father's house. It appears from more
than one of her letters that she had on former °eva-
sions succeeded in introducing him into the house,
unknown to the servants, who slept near her,
unknown to her sister, who slept with her. At this
point, however, the evidence stopped short. No
proof could be obtained that I:ANc.F.I.IEIt had been in
or near the house on that fatal night. lie had been
seen about nine o'clock walking along a neighbour-
ing street, in a direction which might have led him
to the house. Ile had called about half-past nine at
a house within five minutes' walk from Miss
Swern's residence. But from that time all trace of him
is lost, till he is found at the door of his lodgings, at
half-past two in the morning, in agonies which were
the precursors of death. 'The watchman on the beat,
who had repeatedly, on previous nights, seen him
loitering in the vicinity of Miss SMITH'S residence,
did not see him that night. Nothing a:curled that
induced any of the inmates to suspect that a stranger
hail that night been introduced into the house. Nay,
more, it is possible that seeing the appointment was
made for the preceding night, and that no commu-
nication could have passed between the parties,
VANGELIER may have waited till lie could make a
new appointment, or that ho may have failed in his
attempts to intimate his presence to Miss Seam.
There is here • break in the continuity of the chain
of evidence for which nothing can compensate,
Suspicion may point the pregnant finger; we may
feel morally convinced that the accused wished,
intended to poison the deceased; but in the
absence of all proof that lie was brought
within her reach, that she had an opportunity of
carrying her dire intentions into effect, no one has
a right to say that she did so. In this dilemma the
Jury again had recourse to the neutral verdict
allowed by the law of Scotland—they declared the
third charge against the prisoner "Not l'roven."
The nature and effect of this verdict appears to be
as follows. In Scotland, as in England, a criminal
trial is a " wager of law." The Prosecutor under-
takes to convince a jury that the accused is guilty ;
the accused, to satisfy the jury that he (or she) is
Innocent The jury are not expected to do more
than express the conviction produced on their
minds by the statements of the witnesses
and the arguments of the lawyers. Their
conviction may be such as they would find
it difficult to assign a reason for; still it
is held to be conclusive as to the facts. In England
the jury are called upon to declare distinctly either
Mat they bold the accused guilty or that they hold
him innocent. The more considerate law of Scot-
land makes allowance for that neutral state of mind
be which plain, unprofessional men may have an im-
pulsion of the accu-ed's culpability too strong to
abaft of their conscientiously declaring him inno-
cent—too weak to admit of their incurring the re-
sponsibility of exposing him to punishment. In
this case they are allowed to have recourse to the
temporising declaration—" not proven." Of this
privilege the Jury on Mir MADELLINE SMITH
Dace availed themselves, and the rather tantalising
result of • protracted and exciting inquiry is simply
this :—That L'ANGELIER died of poison, but not of
poison administered by himself; that sufficient
evidence. has not been obtained to carry home con-
viction to the guilty, though suspicions have pointed

strongly in a certain direction. Tho cause of '
L'ANGALIEIeti poisoning will, therefore, take its
place--wt least 'for the prewat—among the causes
sililorse, not only o account of the horrible fascias-
Oen which attschis to all awes of poisoning, but
ea account of the mystery which rests upon the
story. Like soother Edinburgh case—that of the
murder of PORTLOCS--it may long remain a theme
for ingenious conjecture.