The Anderson intelligencer. [volume] (Anderson Court House, S.C.) 1860-1914, 1884-05-08
Eating Poison In Court.

Eating Poison In Court.
Forty years ago, Col. John Armen,
the famous criminal lawyer of Chicago,
ate poisoned biscuit before Michigan
Jury, and by that act secured the acquit-
tai Of woman charged with attempting
the murder of her husband. From that
time until now the story of the poisoned
biscuit has been told throughout the
Northwest many hundreds of times by
lawyers and others, and it has seldom
been told correctly. So far rs is known
the true version has never appeared in
print. Since the incorrect story of the
matter has received such wide circulation,
reliable narrative of the incident will
doubtless prove readable to many.
Somewhere between the years of 1910
and 1S45 the wife of a farmer of Hills
dale County, Mich, baked some biscuits
one Sunday morning and then went to
church, leaving her husband to take din.
ner alone. AS he sat down to his meal,
however, young farm laborer came to
the house and joined him at his repast.
Each ate of the newly baked biscuits,
but quickly found them unpalatable and
put them aside. Neither one had eaten
more than half biscuit. Both were
soon taken violently ill and displayed
strong symptoms of arsenical poisoning.
The young man recovered from his sick
ness after some days of intense suffering,
but the farmer fingered in dying con.
dition for more than q year, and finally
expired.
Sixteen years before this time the
farmer had married his wife foS her
money. She brought him $4,000. He
purchased farm with this amount and
in few years he became quite forehand-
ed. His greatest enjoyment, apparently,
was to annoy swite in every conceiva'
BILE manner. His favorite amusement
was to pull their little chilq out of he'd
in the night and beat it cruelty They
finally concluded to obtain divorce
from each other. The farmer agreed to
give his wife lien on his property for
$1,000 for the support of herself and
child. The mortgage was made out and
placed in lawyers hands to await the
divorce. The wife, in consideration of
the mortgage, signed quit-claim deed
to all her husbands property. On the,
eve of the granting Of the divorce the
farmer secured the mortgage and de-
stroyed it, intending to put the deed on
record after the divorce was granted.
His wife discovered the cheat and stopped
the divorce proceedings. She then
deliberately planned to kill her husband.
She sought reconciliation and went
back to live with him. One day, she
disguised in male attire, went to Hins.
dale and purchased quantity of arsenic.
This she mixed in batch of biscuits
and left them for her husband to eat.
In short time she was. arrested. BY
law the woman could not be tried for
murder because her husband had lived
more than year after he was poisoned.
She was indicted for poisoning and put
on trial in. Hillsdale. Mr.. Van Arman,
then young man with law office in
Marshall, Mich, defended her. A
young French chemist from Detroit tes
titled against the accused He was the
only chemist that Detroit afforded, and
he was very incompetent one. This
young man swore to the jury that he
had analyzed several of the biscuits
which the prisoner had made for her
husbands eating, and had found they
contained arsenic. From this quantita-
tive analysis he swore positively that the
husband had swallowed less than grain
of arsenic. The chemist further swore
that a grain of arsenic was deadly
dose, and that even less might be fatal.
There were no railroads in Michigan
at that early day, and there was not
another chemist nearer than Chicago.
Mr. Van Afman, Who had studied chem.
istry in his youth, and had even delivered
lectures on the subject, plainly saw the
Frenehman's testimony was woefully
incorrect. Mr.. Van Arman contended
before the jury, that grain of arsenic
was only medical dose and that the
defendants husband, therefore, must
have become fatally i'll through some
other agency than poison in the biscuits.
He could produce no expert testimony to
.substantiate- his theory because, no,
experts were within reach. Knowing
that grain of arsenic would not affect
the human system, he caused aumber
of biscuits to be baked by a physician of
the town, each of them containing
grain Of the deadly. substance. Fortu-
nately for his client, there were none of
the original biscuits to be had, and the
jury could not murmur against tie sub.
stitution of new ones.
Having proved by the physicians who
made them that the biscuits were proper
ly poisoned, Mr.. Van Arman, near the
beginning of his closing argument,
gracefully ate one of them before the
jury and continued to address them.
He remained in their sight for several
hours, and took pains to show them that
he swallowed no antidote. The grain of
arsenic produced no i'll effects on him.
The prosecuting lawyer could not argue
away the plain fact of the harmless,
though poisoned biscuit which the jury
had seen eaten. When the case was
given to them theyvery promptly acquit-
ted the prisoner.
The truth regarding the biscuits of
which the farmer partook was, that they
contained four or five times as much
arsenic as the young chemist swore they
did.
The commonly accepted version of
this famous story has always been that
Mr.. Van Arman ate one Of the original
poisoned biscuits just as he closed his
final argument, and that, after making
his bow to the jury, he FASTENED out. Of
the court room and swallowed vast
quantity of emetics as soon as the door
closed behind him. This incorrect story
is said to be quite annoying to Mr.. Van
Arman, as it represents him resorting to
disgraceful trick to secure the acquittal
of his client.