The Sun.
London, England, 1862-10-03 00:00:00

SHOCKING DEATH THROUGH SUCKING

ARTIFICIAL GRAPES.

Yesterday Mr. John Humphreys held an inquest
at the Sash and Cocoanut Tree public-house, White-
cross-place Wilson-street, Finsbury, respecting the
death of Elizabeth Ann Abdella, aged 14 years, the
daughter of a man of colour, who died from the ef-
fects of a poison imbibed by sucking the composition
off some imitation grapes.
The Mother stated that on Saturday last, while
she was engaged in her household duties, deceased
had charge of the baby. Deceased was playing with
a quantity of artificial grapes, and she saw her suck-
ing several of them, when she told her it was im-
proper, for they contained poison. They were of an
emerald green colour, and they had been given to
deceased by a girl named Elizabeth Hull, who was
in the service of Mrs. Chapman, a haberdasher,
carrying on business in Clifton-street. The deceased
was subsequently taken very ill, and on Sunday
morning a surgeon was sent for, but the deceased
shortly afterwards expired.
Elizabeth Hull, the girl referred to, was exa-
mined, and:said that they had been given her by her
mistress, and she (witness) took them to the house
of deceased on her way home. Deceased took one
of the grapes and sucked, and a few were dropped
'upon the iron floor. Witness only saw the de-
ceased suck one grape, and those that fell upon the
floor were broken by the fall. The father of the
deceased was present and scolded her. Witness
did not know that they were poisonous until her
own father toldher of the fact.

By the Coroner—The grapes had been in her pos-
session about a fortnight, and 'no person had touched
them. The grape, when sucked, left a blue glass
bead. The deceased spat the composition into the
fender and was sick.
Mr. Thomas Chandler, M.R.C.S., said that he
was called to see the deceased on the morning
in question, and found her in an insensible state.
Tie said that deceased had been taking poison. The
mother said deceased had been sucking some com-
position grapes of a light emerald green colour.
He administered antidotes, but she shortly after-
wards expired. He had made a post mortem exa-
mination, and found a perforation in the stomach,
through which food had passed. The mucous mem.
brane of the stomach exhibited patches of inflam-
mation of the size of half-a-crown, the effect of a
powerful irritant. There was a moderate quantity
of food in the stomach,
and the patches found
would he produced by arsenical poisoning.
By the Coroner.
_He did not find any Vomiting,
which he attributed to the quantity of solid food in
the stomach. The state of the lining membrane of
the stomach was clearly the result of a powerful
irritant. He had since received some green and
blue artificial grapes, and the green contained ace-

tate of copper, and the blue contained cobalt. The
former was a deadly poison.
The Coroner at this stage of the proceedings said
before closing the inquiry he should ascertain
whether one grape would cause death, and he should
therefore adjourn the inquiry.

MYSIE.RIOUS DEATH OF A FOREIGN

GEN7LEMAN.

Last evening Dr. Lankester, the Central Middle-
sex coroner, held an inquest at the Elephant and
Castle, King's-road, Camden-town, touching the
death of au unknown foreign gentleman, under
very mysterious circumstances.
John Searle, an eating -house keeps:; at 228,
Blackfriars-road, was the first witness callen, and
stated that the deceased came to his house last Tues-
day fortnight in the evening with a carpet bag. He
went to bed, got up between 9 and 10 in the morn-
ing, had breakfast, and went out. At 8 p.m. he
came back, dined, and soon after went to bed. He
stayed with witness in that way until Friday, be•
tween 3 and 4 p.m., when he came home in a cab
and said he had just received a letter and must go
away directly in haste. He could not wait for some
linen sent to be washed, and told him he could
keep it. He appeared to be a German, could speak
but little English, paid liberally for all he had, and
seemed to have plenty of money. Witness knew
nothing of his name and antecedents, but recollected
that while he was there he (deceased) communicated
with the police about being robbed of £4 in gold
Napoleons, and a pass ticket, value £3, by a girl
with whom he had been in the City.
Gustavus Foster deposed that he was landlord of
the Iron Duke Hotel, 14 and 15, Weston-place,
King's.cross. About four p.m. on Friday the de-
ceased gentleman entered the hotel and took a bed
for the night. He had a carpet bag and bundle
with him, was evidently a German, and spoke
French and German fluently. He described him,
self as a gentleman who had been to the Exhibi-
tion, and was travelling for information. He was a
fine man, and appeared in perfect health. He had
a first-class dinner, and ate very hearty. At ten he
went to bed, after requesting to be called in the
morning at six. He was certainly sober. The next
morning he was awoke by a great noise occasioned
by a female servant knocking at deceased's bedroom
door and not being able to make him answer. She
at last went away, and finding deceased had not got
up at 12 o'clock his suspicions were aroused, and he
sent his porter to the window of the room by way
of the window of an adjoining room, which the
porter found open. He got into the room and un-
locked the door from the inside. Witness found the
deceased gentleman undressed in bed, insensible,
and breathing very heavily, the bedstead broken
almost to pieces, and the bed-clothes all ruffled as
if from struggling. A clasp knife with a small
blade and open, and a pint bottle containing a small
quantity of liquid, which he thought was poison,
but which tasted of rum, with the cork out of the
bottle, were lying in bed by his side, and a loaded
cane near the head of the bed. He took possession
of the carpet-bag, watch, &c. A letter was found,
addressed " Mr. Shroot," from the City Central
Police-court, Fleet-street, in reference to the rob-
bery alluded to. The only writing he had to identify
him was the initials "F. S." on his linen. He sent
for medical assistance, and he died about four hours
afterwards.
Other evidence elicited from a male and female
servant threw no light upon the mystery which
enshrouded the case.

Police-constable 121 S said he was called in and
saw the bed on which deceased lay; the bedstead was
broken, and the bed-clothes ruffled. He took an
account of deceased's property, amongst which were
an Exhibition Guide, five gold Napoleons, a silver
jewelled watch, £3 10s. in other money, and two
suits of clothes. Every inquiry had been made by
the police commissioners, in England and Paris,
but no information of his identity could be obtained.
Witness said the five Napoleons were found in a
leathern bag round his neck.
Mr. Collins Curtis, house surgeon of the Great
Northern Hospital, attended deceased. He made a
post mortem examination, and the only opinion he
could form as to the cause of death was from tuber-
culous disease of the lungs, and some [disease of the
heart and liver, accelerated from drinking a large
quantity of alcoholic liquor, of which he smelt very
strongly.
Murray, the summoning officer, was unable to
get further evidence.
The Coroner remarked at length on the myste-
rious nature of the death, and the jury deliberated
and returned an open verdict, " That deceased, an
unknown foreigner, died with disease of lungs,
&c. ; but that the exact cause of death was not
proved."

CARTES DE VISITE OF CELEBRI7IES.

(From the Saturday Review.)

There are fear periods of a peaceable man's life more de-
serving
the proverbial name of " un mauvais quart d'heure"
than the space of time he is beguiled into spending in a
photographer's studio. Of itself, the attempt to select your
own best expression of countenance is a perplexing effort;
and the consciousness that the face you put on, whatever it
may be, will be the one by which, in all future time, all who
look into your friends' albums will know you, does not
diminish the embarrassment. You have a vague impression
that to look smiling is ridiculous, and to look solemn' is
still more so. You desire to look intelligent, but you are
hampered by a fear of looking sly. You would wish to look
as if you were not sitting for your picture; but the effort
to do so only fills your minds mere completely with the me-
lancholy consciousness that you are. All these conflicting
'feelings, pressing upon your mind at the critical moment,
are very painful ; but they are terribly aggravated by the
1 well-meant interposition of the photographer. To prevent
a tremulous motion of your head, which the bewildered state
of your feelings renders only too probable, he wedges it
into a horrible instrument called a head -rest, which gives
you exactly the appearance as if somebody was holding on
to your hair behind. In such a situation you may be par-
doned if a somewhat blank look comes over your usually
intelligent features. The photographer, of course, sees this
defect, and does his best to remedy it by a little cheerful
exhortation; but naturally with no other result than that
of making matters much worse. " Just a little expres-
sion in your countenance, if you please, sir—perhaps if
you could smile," is a most distressing admonition to re-
ceive at such a moment, just when you know that the
photographer has his hand upon the cap. If you are weak
enough to listen to him, and extemporise "a little expres-
sion," you come out upon the plate with a horrible leer
looking like the Artful Dodger in the act of relating his ex-
ploits. If, as is more probable, you are too much absorbed
in the uncomfortableness of your own position to regard his
exhortations, you aro immortalised with an expression of
agonised sternness upon your features, unpleasantly sug-
gestive of a painful internal disorder. There is always too
much of the studio in these carte de visite portraits. We
do not merely refer to the extraordinary backgrounds
which some of these operators employ. Why a respectable
old lady is to be represented as sitting without her bonnet
in a chair placed upon a Brussels carpet in the middle of a
terraced garden, is always very perplexing; and it is
equally difficult to understand what the foundations can be
for the theory, which seems to have possessed the minds of
several of the photographers, that the middle-aged men of
England generally spend their lives leaning against a Co-
rinthian pillar, with a heavy curtain flapping about their
legs, turning their backs to a magnificent view, and obviously
standing in a frightful thorough draught. But the studio
shows itself, not only in the accessories, but in the very
face of the sitter. The whole scene is reflected there. The
irritation of the head-rest, the despairing desire to fulfil the
operator's injunctions, the ill-humour at having been
placed in an uncomfortable or unbecoming attitude, and
the consciousness that that attitude is being photographed
—all speak in the face of the sitter, and communicate a
very unflattering likeness of him to the world. Many
shades of distress cross the face of a man who is sitting to
be painted; but the painter is not forced to copy them.
The camera is too slow to be able to be so truthful with
impunity. Portrait photography will be very far from per-
fection until the apparatus is rapid enough to take the
sitter unawares.
This want of the artis Ware artem, which is the great
fault in the camera's peformances in portraiture, unfortu-
nately shows itself very strongly in the pictures of the
celebrities which line the shops in our great thoroughfares.
It is the only drawback to a series of likenesses which
aro otherwise admirable. Statesmen are decidedly favour-
able subjects for photograhy, because the character of
their faces depends on form, and not on colour. Their in-
tellectual power has usually given them strongly-marked
features, and their Parliamentary labours have given them
complexions upon which the tones of the photograph are an
unquestionable improvement. But on the other hand, their
faces are too expressive to permit them to conceal the fact
that they are sitting for their pictures, and, consequently,
there is an unnatural appearance about almost all of them.
If the pictures are preserved to after times posterity will be
much puzzled to recognise the expressions of some of
them with the recorded history of their lives. A gentle,
benignant smile upon Lord Derby's face, a look of decided
merryuess on Lord Russell's, and au aspect of stern
and settled gravity upon Lord Palmerston's, will be a sad
perplexity to the physiognomists of the future. Mr.
Gladsl one's likeness is more in character. Being pos-
sessed of a vivid imagination, he has evidently contrived
to persuade himself for the momentgrt spirit
tt
ttohtehephpoitcotugrrae-.
photogra-
pher is a Protectionist, and is mentally engaged in denounc-
ing him with a fury that gives great
Lord Shaftesbury is as languid as Mr. Gladstone is fierce.
Five minutes spent in fruitless efforts to put himself into
an attitude that shall satisfy the photographer have evi-
dently left their impress on his face in a look of unutterable
weariness. Lord Clyde's aspect is one of gentle but resolute
suffering. Head-rest is written in every line of his fea-
tures. But, as a soldier, he cannot be expected to have
had much practice in the concealment of his feelings. The
, diplowatists are naturally more gucceuful. Lord glen

boldly puts a good face on the matter, and plunges his
hand into his pocket. Lord Cowley is not quite so
confident of his control over his features, and judiciously
hides his face in his hands, pretending to have the tooth-
ache. Some of our public men aro cruelly- treated by the
photographers in the matter of accessories. Lord Brougham
is represented in the act of making an oration irk
a passage, which is not a probable situation for a distin-
guished man to find himself in, unless, indeed, he. is in the
habit of trying his speeches upon the hall porter, Lord
Stanley was unfortunate enough to light upon a photo-
grapher who possessed a favourite chair. To common eyes
it is not a very remarkable chair—a common eaoy chair,
lined with Utrecht velvet. But the photographer evidently
thought it much more worthy of immortality than his sit-
ter. The picture as sold in the shops is the picture of the
chair. One of the accessories is a fragmentary portion of a
rising statesman looking over the back of it, not apparently
at ease in his very subordinate position. The clergy, on
the wh62e, make much more satisfactory sitters. They
are far mord accustomed in the practice of their voca-
tion to wear a driii,?d expression of countenance. States-
men, when they appear in public, are generally
in the act of speaking, and are too much engrossed
with what they are saying to fil2d time to compose their
features. Clergymen, on the other hand, when they appear
in public, are mostly engaged in the more mechanicol act
of reading, so that they have ample leisure for thinking
what the crowd, who are looking, think of them. A sell-
conscious cast of countenance, therefore, sits naturally on,
them, and does not so forcibly suggest the idea that they are:
sitting for their pictures. There is a very large assemblage-
of them to be seen. In fact they are the only class which
furnish to the shop windows a great many portraits of MIX
perfectly unknown. It is to be presumed that each of them
has an admiring crowd of purchasers, and that the affectiola
which used to express itself in the manufacture of stoles.
and slippers finds a cheaper outlet now in the purchase of
cartes de visite. They undoubtedly form an admirable sub-
ject for the art; for the usual complaint against photo-
graphy is that its only colours are black, white, and grey ;
and the clothes and complexion of a model clergymanought
to consist mainly of these three tints. They belong indiffe-
rently to all sects an& churches, and give a good opportu-
nity for studying the aesthetic effects of various creeds, both
upon dress and personal appearance. The picturesque reli-
gion of the past, and the comfortable religion of the present,
are admirably symbolised by Dr. Manning and Mr. Spur-
geon. The typical character of the two creeds is so faithfully
preserved that one can hardly believe the figures to be the
work of the truthful camera. A caricaturist could not im-
prove upon the contrast between the wasted, ascetic look of
the one, and the very contrary appearance of the other.
Mr. Spurgeon is fond of his own portrait, and has bestowed
himself upon the public in several different aspects. But he
is quite right to be careful that the local habitation of so
great a soul should not be forgotten. There will be consi-
derable historical value in the record which these photo-
graphs are preserving of the type of manly beauty which
the English middle classes of the 19th century specially
admired.

The Royal portraits, of course, form the leading feature
of the display. A nervous partizan of monarchy might fear
that so intimate an acquaintance with Royal physiognomies
might be apt to produce the proverbial result of familiarity.
In the ease of our own Royal family the constantly increas-
ing sale of the cartes de visite seems to show, on the con-
trary, that photographic acquaintance has been a consider-
able stimulus to English loyalty. The Princess Alexandra
is still the cause of a formidable obstruction upon the
footway in Regent-street. It is to be hoped that when she
comes to her future kingdom she will allow her beauty to
be reproduced by a more skilful race of artists. In one of
the pictures she appears to have fallen into the hands of a
military photographer, who looks upon " eyes right" as
the most effective of all pictures. But, with the exception of
our own royal family, the cause of monarchy is not likely
to be much aided by photography. Tho career of the Em-
peror of the French has a romance about it which is wholly
dissipated by a glance at his picture ; and the photogra-
phere have been pleased to mar the effect of the Empress's
beauty by taking her with down-looking-eyes. This atti-
tude was, no doubt, adopted to avoid the blank expression,
as of a blind person, which light eyes are apt to present in
a photograph, but it gives the imperial couple the appear-
ance of having been photographed at the close of a con-
jugal quarrel in which she had decidedly got the worst of
it. The other sovereigns make a still less presentable ap-
pearance. The picture of Victor Emmanuel is not redolent
with the " divinity which doth hedge about a king." A
physiognomist would be tempted to believe that the title
with which his subjects have decorated him was, as the
Germans would say, an overflow of their own subjectivity.
The Emperor of Austria and Francis of Naples look just
like the men who would lose 20 empires if they had them.
The expression of the latter's face in one picture is very
curious. There is an expression of peevish scorn at the
miserable plebeian to whom ho was condescend-
ing to sit, as if he thought that the honour of developing
a king's sacred outlines was one to the like of which the
base mechanic was not often preferred. Any one who, dur-
ing the past summer, was inclined to regret on political
grounds that the Viceroy of Egypt was not made more of
at the English Court, is recommended to neutralise these
feelings by purchasing his photograph. W o will venture
to answer for it that the antidote will be complete. What'
a pity we have not the photographs of the heroes of ancient
times ! Most of them, if we may believe what history tells
of their lives and conversations, would probably have
looked like Sayd Pasha.

COUNTRY MARA:626.

b.,

MANCHESTER-OCT. 2.

This morning the English wheat offering was again
in poor condition, and experienced a slow sale, at nominal
values. Foreign, on the contrary, held firmly at late rates.
Flour, except the best sorts, receded 6d to is per sack and
barrel. Old oats and oatmeal unaltered—new declining
is per load. Egyptian beans the turn dearer, but English
rather lower. Indian corn in favour of sellers.