The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1885-1921, 1905-03-12

The San Francisco detectives at-work
on the Stanford case are going ahead
as though there had been no coroner
inquest whatever. The indications, in
on the part of those nearest to Mrs.
Stanford to set up a condition, If the
thing can be done, whose existence VIII
destroy both the theories of murder
theory of accident, or the entire rea-
sonabIeness of the theory of hysteria,
which are all that are left, must one or
the other be taken up.
First. as to whether Mrs Stanfords $
death could have been the result of ac-
cident. To admit this hypothesis, it
must be shown that the strychnine
was taken knowingly, but that too
much was taken. In behalf of this it
is urged that Mrs. Stanford took more
of the bicarbonate than it has appear
or that she changed her mind after
receiving one cascara capsule from the
hands OF Miss Berner, and took more
than one The capsule, it Will be re-
meu1bered, contained one-thirtieth of
a grain of strychnine, and one table
spoonful of the bicarbonate mixture
possibly contained as much more The
difficulty in the way here lies in the
fact that Mrs. Stanford, while she
maintained her faculties with absolute
clearness to the last, said nothing
whatever about having taken any more
of either medicine than had been laid
out for her.
II she had taken more. she would
almost certainly have said so. AT least,
it is a reasonable supposition that she
would being probably desirous of CIV
ing the attending physician all the
light possible. Against this theory or
accident. moreover, stands the tesu-
Inony of the chemists as to the ex-
ceeding smallness of the quantity OF
strychnine found in the stomach, but
that in turn is counterbalanced by the
physiological fact that an empty stom-
ach would have taken UP poison. The
one weak point in the accident theory
seems to lie in the fact that Mrs Stan |
ford herself said nothing before she
died about having increased her dose.
And that weak point destroys the
theory
On the other hand. in proceeding up |
on the assumption of hysteria, the de- |
tectives must first get over the un- |
doubted fact that a trace of strychnine |
was found in the dead woman's stom-
ach by the chemists. That fact. must |
be admitted at the start of any inves-
tigation- Perhaps it can be best met |
by the assertion, equally borne out by
the evidence, that the trace of the |
presence of strychnine was only shown
by the color test-which is not infalli-
bIe-and that the trace was so faint
that it almost escaped detection alto
gether
Now, it is in evidence that Mrs STAN
ford took a tablespoonful from the
contents of a phial containing alto
gether 50 of a grain of strychnine-
or but little more than the smallest
recorded fatal dose for an aduIt-in BIZ
carbonate of soda, and that likewise
she took a cascara capsule containing
of a grain of strychnine
and some brucine, a related poison.
The point is. could she have obtain
ed enough poison from both these
to cause death, even 10 an old
woman upon whom very much less
than the adult dose of strychnine might
have produced fatal results? That ques-
ton it is up to the San Francisco de-
tectives to answer
On the other hand. Mrs. Stanford was
a woman who lived in dread of death by
She is said to have feared