Northern Times.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1857-08-11 00:00:00

she was a little better on the Thursday night. At
this time the prisoner and his wife were on terms of
courtesy, but not of affection. Her lather again saw her
and spent sometime with her, giving her some toast and
water, and she-toutinued to get better while her father was
wii h her, but when left to the care of her husband she
again got worse. On Sunday, the ;let of March, she was
decidedly improved in health, and was able to eat meat and
potatoes, and retained this food on her stomach. On Monday,
the 24ad of 'March, she still continued to improve. On
Tuesday, the 3rd of March, the prisoner went to Dr.
Smith, and git some mixture and some powders for her,
and told Dr. Smith she was much better, and only wanted
to get up her strength. On this day the prisoner met a
woman named Toefield, and to her he decribed his wife
as exceedingly ill, and toll her to call and tell deceased's
father that she was a deal worse, and had began to be so
that morning, as soon as she got her breakfast ; that she
had then began to vomit, and he thought it would be
a job for her this time. The vomit of the
deceased was of an extremely yellow appearance,
and the surgeons would state that antimony would have a
great tendency to produce that appearance, by increasing
the secretion of bile. In the course of this Tuesday the
prisoner purchased for his wife a quantity of buttermilk
from a person named Derbyshire. They would hear that
Derbyshire's family partook of this same buttermilk, and
that it was perfectly harmless. This buttermilk the
prisoner had divided, and had placed a part of it in a jug,
f)r his wife A neighbour came in and tasted it, and
thought it had a very l outlier taste of soap or alum, and
askew the prisoner what ha had put in it? He said
nothing, tasted it, and said it was very bad, and threw it
into the ashes, On Thursday, the sth, the deceased con-
tinued ill, and was extremely purged and vomited; she
became much exhausted, and got worse and worse till she
died. She appeared black under the eyes, she had a
dewy, clammy skin, aching of the limbs, and was blue and
cold at the extremities. Dr. Smith her medical
attendant, attributed her death to gastro enteritis,
or inflammation of the bowels. She was buried,
and after' her funeral remarks prejudicial to the prisoner
began to be made ; inquiries were instituted, and ulti-
mately the hod/ was exhumed eleven days after burial,
and a post mortem examination and inquest were held.
It was found that the body gwe out no offensive odour,
an unusual circumstance where death arises from natural
causes. This is a peculiarity known to be the effect of
poisoning by arsenic or antimony. The stomach, on being
examined, presented bright red patches, as also the'
duodenum and rectum. In the case of death from an
irritant poison this would be likely to be the case, as the
poisoned contents of the stomach ware retained by the
mechanical formation of these viscera longer in them than
in other parts of the bowels. Ths cesophaens was also in
a state of inflammation, which they would hear was an
indication of the administration of an irritant poison. A
cireful analysis of the contents of the stomach was made
by a gentleman named Watson, an analytical chemist of
celebrity, who resided at Bolton, and he found in all the
parts of the intestines which were subjected by him to
caemical tests traces of antimony, an unquestionable
poison, and also slight traces of arsenic. The
amount found was not great —from one-half to
three quarters of a grain of antimony, and about
the 200th part of a grain of arsenic, Some, however,
would have passed away with the vomiting and purging,
an&that found would be no indication of the amount
taken. All the medical men were of opinion that this
woman came by her death from antimony or arsenic, or
both combined. If she died by poison, by whom had it
been administered ? This inquiry was of most grave im-
parlance. At an earlier date than this, some months befere,
the prisoner was found to be possessed of tartar emetic,
which was only another name for tartarised antimony, and
ho was also aware of its qualities. A person named Neald
came to him and complained that he was ill, and wanted a
dose of medicine to purge him.' The prisoner told him he
could give him something which would work him, and he
mixed a glass of beer some powder which he had in a
paper,which he handed to Neald. Neald took it, and it did
work him, making him purge and vomit. In February he
purchased a drachm, or 60 grains, of tartar emetic, from a
chemist named Gorman, which he said he wanted to give to
a horse. This was a poison used only for medical pup ltses.
Arsenic was a poison of another character ; it was used ex-
tensively in manufactures, and necessary to be sold.
Shortly before his wife's illness the prisoner went to Pres-
ton, and at the shop of a Mr. Critchley, a chemist, he
bought half a pound of anomie, which he represented
that he wanted to kill begs. The chemist wanted a re
ference to some person he knew, and asked him if he did
not know a lea-her dresser in the town, he representing
himself as a shoemaker He said he did not, and
gave an untrue account of this, al he dealt with one
of the leather dressers in the town, and owed money
to him. He also gave a wrong address. The arsenic was
supplied to him coloured with indigo. Af erwards, when
asked what he had done with it, he said he had broken the
nt Tools tea d- pobitter." &Trig" when fie we ni to
Dr. Smith for the powders for his wife, he brought them
hack tied up with string The witnesses who administered
these powders wool I tell them they were whi e. Dr. Smith
did not tie up the powders with string, and the powders
he sent were gray. A woman waiting on the decease i
tasted one of these powders, and it produced a burning
unpleasant taste in her month A woman cleaning the
house, two days after the death of his wife, had thrown the
last of those powders away. The prisoner saw her find a
paper with some white powder in it ; he sprang up and
said, " Give it to me, it is poison." After the burial the
prisoner went into the house of a neighbour, and said it we 3
vary fortunate the police had not found this paper when
they searched his house, as it contained poison. Tnree days
afterwards he want to the police-office and said some
persons had been raising scandalous reports about him,
and he wished to know wilat it was all about. The
policeman told him he had not behaved well to his wife,
and people would be stare to speak of it. The prisoner
said, when they lived at Brindle, shortly after their
marriage, they did not live happily together, but since
they had lived at Botany they had been as happy as
most couples. This would be shown not to be true. On
one occasion she was seen to be crying, and ho called her
" a great blubbering devil," and said that " her blubber-
ing made 'maple think he did not tre it her wall." In the
gaol at Preston he had stated to a prisoner that he had
received 411 from various burial clubs on account
of his wife's funeral, and " that if he had let her live two
months more he should have got £8 more." As a motive
for the commission of such a dreadful crime he had
already slated that differences of religious creed had ren-
dered their union an unhappy one. They had quarrelled
as to the faith in which their child shoal I be brough; up.
More than ones the prisoner bad alluded to another
woman, and had stated that that woman should soon be
his wife. After his wife's death he had sent a message to
a woman named Sherrington, asking her to came an! see
him, and telling her she had nothing to do but to come
and hang her bonnet up in his house, and that if she di I
not choose to come there was another ready who would
These were the facts and circumstances on which,
on behalf of the prosecution, the learned couosol
asked the jury to come to the conclusion that the
p isoner was guilty of the crime imputed to him ; and,
these being for the most pirt proved, the case for the
prosecution was closed, and the Court stemmed at
eight o'clock at night. —His Lordship took his seat on
the bench neat morning at nine o'clock, and, the prisoner
having been placed at the bar, the trial was resumed. Mr.
Overend rose to make his address to the jury on th ) part
of the prisoner. He said he deeply felt the importance of
the situation in which he was placed, seeing that the life
or death of a fellow-creature was placed in his hands. The
case was one of eircumstantid evidence, and that was by
some considered to be, when fully established, the most per-
fect of all evidence. It was not his duty to show that the
prisoner was innocent; it was the duty of the prosecution to
prove that he was guilty. The prosecution must prove that
not only was poison found in the body of the deceased,
but that the unfortunate woman had died of it. Bit',
though poison bad been found in the body, it had to bs
proved beyond doubt, that that poison had been ad-
ministered by the prisoner. He would admit —and he
must admit, although it might appear prejudicial to his
client, that both arsenic and antimony had been found in
the body. The most eminent man of the day had been
brought forward, and his opinion upon a hypothetical case
was that ta-e deceased had died from tire effects of antimony.
But what was the amount of poison found ? Oaly from half
to three quarters of a grain of antimony, and the 200th part
of a grain of arsenic. And though the poison was found
there was no evidence that the prisoner hadadministered it,
and he trusted to be able to show that he had not adminis-
tered it. He thought the prosecution had abandoned the
idea of the deceased havingbeen poisoned by arsenic, and
the question would now be, did she die of antimony, and
was that administered in one dose or more? The learned
counsel then repeated the circumstances of the illness of the
deceased, and said it would be for them to be satisfied that
more than one dose of antimony had been administered.
Her illness was treated by Dr. Smith as gastrceenteritie,
or inflsanma ion of the stomach and bowels, which might
arise from natural causes, and the treatment, and the way
in which her health had improved, forbade the assump-
tion that there had been any attack from the Tuesday
to the Tuesday follow ng, when she had some mussels,
buttermilk, blaekberry wine, and other things improper
for a person in her state of health, got worse, and on
to Thursday she died. He should account for the poison,
and show that, though her death might be attributable to
poison, it might have been administered by mistake and
without any murderous intention. The woman had lately
been confined, had gone to Chorley, caught cold, and had
got some broth; and the prisoner, on her being taken ill, j
had gone to A neighbour's and told her it was the broth; I

and had still stuck to that as the cause of her illness, and
that was the strongest possible proof of his innocence, as
had he been guilty he would not have mentioned the broth
if he had placed poison in it as suggested. Buttermilk
had been assigned as the cause of her illness, but there was
no proof that the prisoner touched it, and even the con-
tradictory evidence as to the taste was proof that there
was no poison in it. The next thing was the powders sent
by Dr. Smith, and it was said that the prisoner , had,
instead of those, substituted powders of his own. There
was no evidence of it. D. Smith admitted that he was in a
hurry, and that the bottle containing tartar emetic, stood
immediately over that containing Dover powder, and it was
probable that a mistake was made by Dr. Smith in taking
down the wrong bottle. And if that mistake were made,
then the who!cs of the woman's illness and the discovery of
poison in her body after death was fully accounted for, and
he should with confidence look forward to their verdict in
his favour. He submitted that if the prisoner had changed
the powders, he would never have left the third powder on
the table from Thurs lay to Saturday. The act would be
that of a madman. The learned counsel then reviewed the
conduct of the prisoner, and dwelt strongly on his calling
in so many of the neighbours during her illness, and he
implored them to review his conduct both before and
during the illness of his wife, and say whether it was
the conduct of a guilty man or not. It was said that he
had received money from funeral clubs; but from the
nature of the funeral he must have been a loser rather than
a gainer; and then, when the rumours got abroad relative
to his character, he went boldly to the police-office and
challenged inquiry. That the pisoner had bean in the
possession of tartar emetic he would not deny ; he bad
openly paraded it, and administered it to Neild in the
presence of Bradsworth. He had bought sixty grins in
February, and that had been found by the girl Bolton
after his wife's death, and he told her it was poison. The
learned counsel then went into an analysis of the wiles
parts of the evidence, contending that they would tend to
exculpate the prisoner. He (Mr. Overend) had shown
that he had been in possession of tartar emetic, oxalic
acid, and arsenic, and explained theta all. Toe butter-
milk had never reached her, the both hal never been
touched by the prisoner, and he had shown that, according
to medical testimony, her illness was the result of natural
causes. It had been said that the prisoner and his wife
di 1 not live happily together, but there had been no
evidence of any unkindness at Botany Bay, and the only
evidence on that point was that about two years ago
they quarrelled, when residing at Brindle; and as to the
other motive, that he wanted to have another woman; in the
Crown and Anchor a lot of rough people were joking him,
and he said he should not be long before he got married
again. As ts, the other point, religious disputation, the
evidence only shows that he had said she had promised to
turn to his religion, and had not done so ; and ho had said
he would bring up her child in his own way. They had
never once quarrelled on the subject. The learned counsel
concluded a lenghty and forcible address by entreating a
calm consideration of the case, and urging that if his
statements were correct, they would be relieved from the
painful duty. of finding the prisoner guilty. His lord-
ship said en this case the jury had two things to
consider whether the deceased died from the effects of
poison, and, if so, was the prisoner the person who ad-
ministered it. As to the first proposition, his lordship
went over the evidence of the medicel men, tending to
show conclusively that the deceased had died of poison,
and then proceeded with the other evidence adduced by
the prosecution to show that the prisoner was the person
who administered it In coming to a conclusion on the
latter point, they would have to look at the way in which
they lived, t,gether by themselves, with only a little girl
coming to nurse occasionally. Was she likely to have
.cemmitted suicide ? Was the prisoner in possession of
poison ? And • was that poison administered
by a person in the house ? The jury were
locked up, and at the expiration of about 2) minutes
returned into c curt with a verdict of Guilty of wilful murder.
His Lordship, having put on the black cap, proceeded to
pass sentence noon the prisoner. He said : Edward Hard-
man, you have been convicted, after a full and painful in-
vestigation, of the crime of wilful murder—of the murder
of your own wife—a murder committed under circumstnnees
of the most painful kind. I quite concur in the verdict
of the jury. It is imposs:.ble for me to hold out any
hope of escape from the full punishment of the law, and
I advise you most earnestly and solemnly to, apply your-
self to the spiritual consolation which will be afforded
you. Your days are numbered, and I wonld entreat
you earnestly to throw yourself before the throne of
grace, wh-re there is mercy for every sinner that repenteth
I will not aggravate your feelings at the present moment,
but proceed to pass upon you the sentence of the law,
which is that you be taken from hence to the place from
whence you came, and from thence to the place of execu-
tion, there to be hanged by the neck until you are dead,
when your body is to be taken down and buried within he
precincts of the gaol where you have been confined previous
soul. The prisoner, who slightly trembled, and had turned
verypale, was then removed from the dock. His Lerdsh
was deeply affeca.d during the passing of the sentence

The Post contains the following telegraphic despatch :
"BERLIN, August 9.—Austria has addressed representa-
tions to our cabinet relative to the protest handed in by
Prussia against the elections in Moldavia. These repre-
sentations have been fruitless."

MATH Or A PHYSICIAN BY PRUSSIC ACID.—On Friday
morning. Mr. 'lncomes Stone Robertson, M.D., a physician,
residing at Assembly-row, Mile-end, was found dead in
his hod. It was evident be had taken hydrocyanic acid;
and a post mortem and other evidence showed he had
taken it with opium, to. relieve sickness and head-ache.
The coroner's jury returned a verdict to that offe.a.
True Naw Marianna BILL.—Our readers must bear in
mini (s tys the Leaier) that the bill now passing through
the Commons is, in the main, merely calculated to make
more easy, and therefore more general, the divorces which
peers and other wealthy persons now occasionably obtain
from the House of Lards. The caution is necessary, for
nne hears in society vague talk about the multiplicity of
divorces for any and every cease under "the new hia't
The new bill makes the adultery of the wife, and "adultery
and cruelty," or "incestuous adultery" by the Husband,
the only grounds of divorce. There is thus no increase,
bat there is an extension of the facilities of divorce, for
instead of the thr-e slits (criminal conversation, snit in
the ecclesiastical court, and special act of parliament) now
necessary, one suit in a new court will be sufficient for the
purpose. This will simply make dirorce easy to those
who have as good g,ounda for asking it as the wealthy
persons who now obtain it by special privilege. No prac-
tical man denies that this is a real "law reform."
THE LATE MURDER AT SHADWELL.—Late on Saturday
evening inforinatian was received at the King David-lane
Police Station, Shathvell, to the effect that the man
111,C1uNkv, who s'ands charged with the brutal murder of
S irate Hamilton, alias B .own, had been seen in the com-
p my of other foreign seamen, in the vicinity of St. Gauge-
street, Rateliff Highway. A number of active constables
were sent in search of the fellow, but after the onacerealad
visited nume.rons law dancing-rooms until midnight, they
were unsuccessful in their exertions to find him The
jury ernpanuelled to inquire into the death of the unfortu-
nate female, rrqtieetel Mr. William Baker, the coroner for
East Middlesex, to communicate with Sir George Grey,
the Secre:ary of State for the Home Department, with the
view of obtaining a reward for the apprehension of the
man M'Citplry. The coroner accordingly complied with
the wish of the jury, arid on Friday morning a letter was sent
to the Home-office, Weitehall, but on Saturday no answer
bad been received. It is fully expected that a, reward will
ba granted by Gevernmeat for the apprehension of the
accused. The police have been busily employed during the
last few days in searching various vessels lying in the docks
and on the river Thanes, but up to last night the accused
had not been captured.
DE-TRUCTIVE RAIN To:tam-I' —Scannortouon, AUG. 7,
—When the visltoas here were listlessly endeavouring to
b-guile the monatouy of a wet day at the seaside, counting
the rain-drops, arid bewailing the fate that condemned
them to the dreary nibusetneats of a maritime lodging-
house, they knew net that the elements were preparing
a downfall which for magnitude, long continuance, and
disastrous consequences; has seldom, if ever, been equalled
in England. The whole of yesterday was stormy and
wet. but at about 9 p.m., a water-spout appeared to
break over this unf r!unate town, laud cantintwes valumes
of water descended without the slighest intermission
till tax° this morning. It then appeared to moderate
its fury, though it broke out at intervals until eight.
The sad scene thus presented to the specie or is per-
fectly indescribable. As Scarbrough is built on a hill
side, a great p rt of the lower portion of the town was
for some Lours completely under water. What yesterday
wire coesfortable domiciles are now ravines. and water-
falls, and it is only by the sight of some fragment of
domestic furniture strangely mixed up with the wreck,
that we can realise the fact that in ens night such utter
devastation could have occurred. - Gas-pipes, water-pipes,
sewers, and drains, are, many burst, all severely damaged.
The fine old church yard, one portion of which is more
elevated than the other, has been washed away, and the
macadamised tomb-stenes, the fragrneats of coffins, the
human bones, the iron tomb railings, are all driven to-
gether in_ one heterogeneous ..mass, testifying to the
awful violence of the storm. An immense mars of the
Castle Cliff, a rocky promontory, 300 feet above the level
of the sea, has been washed away. The loss and damage
to house property must be immense. Altogether the
catastrophe, from its violence and awful consequences,
resembles a sudden earthquake—a great convulsion of
nature araciarily Confined to tro;ical regions,