New-York daily tribune. [volume] (New-York [N.Y.]) 1842-1866, 1856-01-24

POISONING In ENGLAND.

There were few men who had keener insight
into the character of his cOuntrymen than the late
witty canon of st. Pauls, the Rev. Sydney Smith,
and among his many jOcular sayings so full of caus
tic shrewdness, was one in which, after cOntnu-
Gus recurrence Of disastrous railway accidents he
wrote to the Press that the public life will never
"be safe until Bishop is killed. The sufferers
happened in every instance to be mere" working
men, whose lives to use favorite English express
sion in such cases, were not worth the fuss. We
have been forciby struck by the strong illustration
of the truth of the witty Wing parsons saying,
which the picture of social England, presented hv
he last mail, affords.
1t has been patent for several years to all who
have looked into her semi-annual calendar of dark
crimes, that infantcide was just as common in the
mining districts along the Severn as ever it was in
days of old on the banks of the Ganges; and even
in the rural districts, where the esthetcs of crime
are unknown, each assze has furnished numerous
instances of stealthy miAisterings of death of
wives poisoned by their husbands and husbands by
their wives, for the very motive which has melted
to the recent poisonngs that have sent cold
horror to the heart of England from one end Of the
island to the other In the one case, however, the
motive was to obtain few pounds, or even shil.
lngs from bural-club. In the other it is gentle
man of the turf who administers poison to a wife,
brother and friend and, as is believed many others,
to obtana large sum Ofinsurance- money and cancel
q racing debt; and now England opens her eyes to
the fact that in her civilized center, deeds have been
done that eclipse the foul fame Ofs Borgia and
Brnyilliers. Indeed, in the excitement which for
the moment these recent horrid revelations in the
cases of Wolmer and Palmer have awOke, Sevas-
topol and the Gar and the Alliance appear to be
forgotten, ard England broods over her feast Of
horrors with morbid and gaping curiosity.
II is impossible to picture the diseased and I'M
healthy feeling Of interest which fevers the vein Of
every class there in regard to great criminals and
crimes. At the time Of the Manning murders,
lines of omnibuses were started from every part
of London to the scene of the crime, and hundreds
of beings, more like beasts than men, might be
seen gathered round the spot, feeding their appe-
tite with foul tales and surmises. Nor is this
morbid feeling confined to the middle and lower
classes. Some years since, when it was discovered
iected to a system of slow pOisoning-very similar
TO that with which Mr. Palmer is now charged
by TWO French mistresses, in whose favor he had
been induced to make will, nothing could equal
the prurient excitement in the clubs and salons,
which was heightened from the reserve and mystery
thrown around the whole affair. In these recent
poisoning cases, however the interest is not con.
fined to London as d class, but appears to have
gathered in the whole country; and as undoubtedly
these two cases will occupy, from their singular
character, permanent place in the records of
crime, We give their story in plain unvarnished
form.
The first ease was that of Mr.. Womer of Bur.
don, in England, who was recently tried before
Baron Martin on a charge of poisoning his wife,
He was gentleman apparently Of refined culture,
with considerable pharmaceutic knowledge and
taste for chemical inquiry; and during the illness
Of his wife, which extended over period of seven
weeks exhibited the most tender sOlicitude and de-
voted care. On her death, however, suspicious
which for some weeks had preyed upon the minds
Of her physicians that arsenic had been admins.
tered in email doses, were converted, on a post
norton examination of her body, into certainty,
and her husband was placed on trial for the crime
For the hypothesis of suicide there appeared no
grounds, and equally absurd was that preached
that she had adopted the practice described BY
Won Tschudi, which is so prevalent among women
in Syria of taking small doses Of arsenic and thus
Tightening beauty BIZ a radiant glow Indeed The