Yorkville enquirer. [volume] (Yorkville, S.C.) 1855-2006, 1884-05-01
EATING POISON IN COURT.

nous criminal lawyer of Chicago, ate pois-
oned biscuit before Michigan jury, and by
that act secured the acquittal of a 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 as is
known the true version has never appeared
in print. Since the incorrect story of the
matter has received such wide circulation,
a reliable narrative of the incident will
doubtless prove readable to many.
Somewhere between the years of 1910 and
1916 the wife of farmer of Hillsdale coun-
ty, Mich, baked some biscuits one Sunday
morning and then went to church, leaving
her husband to take dinner 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 eat
en- more than half biscuit. Both were
soon taken violently i'll and displayed strong
symptoms of arsenical poisoning. The
young man recovered from his sickness af-
ter some days of intense suffering, but the
farmer fingered in a dying condition for
more than year, and finally expired.
Sixteen years before this time the farmer
had married his wife for her money. She
brought him $4,000. He purchased farm
with this amount and in few years he
became quite forehanded. His greatest en-
joyment, apparently, was to annoy his wife
in every conceivable manner. His favorite
amusement was to pull their little child out
of bed 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 81 800 for
the support of herself and child. The mort
gage was made out and placed in lawyers
hands to await the divorce. The wife, in
quit-clam deed to all her husbands proper
ty. On the eve of the granting of the di-
vorce the farmer secured the mortgage and
destroyed 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 a
reconciliation and went back to live with
him. One day she disguised herself in male
attire, went to Hinsdale and purchased
quantity Of arsenic. This she mixed in a
batch of biscuits and left them for her huS-
band 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 in
dicted 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 testified against the accused.
He was the only chemist that Detroit af-
forded, 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 arse
mic. From this quantitative analysis he
swore positively that the husband had sWal-
lowed less than grain of arsenic. The
chemist further swore thata 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
Arman, who had studied chemistry in his
youth, and had even delivered lectures on
the subject, plainly saw the Frenchman'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, there
fore, must have become fatally i'll through
some other agency than poison in the bis
CullS. Ile Couiu piouuCe Ho oAPelU 'e"ei-
mOny to substantiate his theory because no
experts were within reach. Knowing that
a grain Of arsenic would not affect the hu-
man system, he caused number Of bis
cults to be baked by a physician of the
town, each Of them containing q grain OF
the deadly substance. Fortunately for his
client, there were none of the original bis
cults to be had, and the jury could not MUIR
muir against the substitution of new ones.
Having proved by the physicians who
made them that the biscuits were properly
poisoned, Mr.. Van Arman, near the begin
ming 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 they very promptly acquitted 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 bis
cults just as he closed his final argument,
and that, after making his bow to the jury,
he fastened out of the court room and swal-
lowed vast quantity of emetics as soon as
the door closed behind him. This incorrect
story is said to be quite annoying to MIR.
Van Arman, as it represents him resOrting
to disgraceful trick to secure the acquittal