Pittsburg dispatch. [volume] (Pittsburg [Pa.]) 1880-1923, 1892-05-15
.STRYCHNIA FOR EIGHT
Done Up in Long Pills and Given to
Two Young Women in London,
THE MURDERER STILL AT LARGE,
and No Effort to Capture Him Is Likely to
Re Made by the Police
ACCUSED OF ANOTHER POISONING
rBY CABLE TO THE prsPArcH.l

LONDON, May H-[Copyight Just q
month ago Alice Marsh and Emma Shriyell.
two Young women of decent family and
loose morals, were found dying in their
lodgings in Stamford street, Blackfrlars
They lived just long enough to state that q
mysterious person, whom they knew as
George Clifton, gave them "three long
pills, " and that they became i'll immediate
ly after taking them. A post mortem e1-
animation proved that each pill contained
three grains of strychnine, so that the girls
actually swallowed, between them, nine
grains of deadly poison, or sufficient to kill
at least seven or eight persons.
There is no room for doubt that these
Young women were foully and deliberately
murdered, and a mass of circumstantial
evidence points to the conclusion that
George Clifton was the murderer; but al
though this man, who is in apparently good
social position, was seen in the girls COM
pany upon more than one occasion and by
quite half a dozen persons, and although
the police have in their possession a letter
written by him to Miss Marsh, dated from
the Hotel at Chatham, he is still at large
Accused of Another Murder.
The probabilities are that he will never
be arrested, except possibly in connection
with some fresh crime. 1t is believed that
he murdered girl named Ellen Donworth,
who was found dying in tavern near
Stamford street, last October, from the ef-
fects of strychnine and morphine given to
her in glass of wine by casual acquaint-
ance answering the description.
London newspapers have reported, in
perfunctory fashion, frequently adjourned
inquest on the Stamford street victims, but
they have quite failed TO grasp the fact that
there is at this moment at large in this big
city another atrocious criminal, differing
from the Whitechapel fend only in his
methods of work. London newspapers seem
TO require blood and mutilation to stimulate
them into appreciation of a great crime
From a Medical Point of View.
The British Medical Journal to-day, COM
menting on the case from a medical point of
view, says:
1t has been suggested that the pills were
really caps ules a supposition not improp-
able. If so. they must surely have been
either prepared by the person himself or by
some pharmaceutical chemist. If by a
chemist, he wouid probably have been told
that the strychnine was to poison a horse or
some animal. Should a chemist have re-
ceived such an order 1t is his bounden
duty to come forward ana assist
in the discovery of the criminal. Capsules
are difficult to prepare by amateurs. 1t
takes a knowledge of pharmacy and some
little skill. But whether the long pills were
really capsules, or whether they were
bulky pills prepared by hands unaccus-
toned to pill making and therefore
deviating Considerably from ordinary
pills in shape, he who prepared
them had considerable store OF
strychnine and a knowledge of its effect.
Such knowledge argues no special medical
education, for arsenic, phosphorus, lauda-
mum, carbolic acid, oxalic acid and strych-
nine are known by every one to be poisons.
The very largeness-the unnecessary large
ness of the dose, indeed-rather argues
against the doctor theory. A doctor knows
very well that a dose of over grain is fatal,
and would not be likely to give nine times
that amount.