The daily morning journal and courier., 1906-09-29

Chantrelle was tried before Lord
 Justice Clerk Moncriff on May ', The
 prosecution was conducted by the ! Lord Advocate, after Lord Watson;
 the Solcltor- General, MT. J. H. Mac
 donald, now Lord Kingsburgh, and
 Messrs. Muirhead and Burnet, advo-
 cates depute. For the prisoner appear
 ed Mr, afterward Lord Trayner; Mr.,
 now Lord Robertson; and the pres
 ent Lord Advocate, MT. Thomas Shaw.
 As is well known Scotch crimial pro- cedure admits of no opening speech from counsel, and the jury have to
 wrestle as best they may the ap- parently disconnected facts as they ac-
 cumulate. The elevancy of much of the earlier evidence is liable to be missed, and when, as in the Arda- mont case, the Crown opens with a mass of complicated financial details, fifteen good men and true are be-
 wildered in a fog, from which they do not always emerge.
 In Chantrelle's trial, however, the
 evidence fell automatically into logi-
 cal and consecutive order Mary
 Bryne was clear as to to the absence of
 any smell of gas when she entered
 her mistress's bedroom; she first mo-
 ticed it on returning thither after her
 master had sent her off to see if the
 baby was crying, and as she opened
 the door she saw him coming from
 the window where the broken pipe was
 afterwards discovered Byrne also
 swore that the lemonade in the glass
 had been nearly all consumed since
 she left it the night before and that one
 of the quarters or ''liths," of orange
 had disappeared from the plate. She
 was confident that the dark stains on the bed linen were not there when she said good night, Evidence was
 called that among the frequent threats of violence to his wife Chantrelle had
 booster. that he knew a way of poison ing her which defed detection. He had not only insured her life recently for
 G100O against accident, but he had made particular inquires whether accident included death after par taking of unwholsome dishes such as toasted cheese. The date of taking out the policy November, 1S77) concided With the purchase of particular ex- tract of opium, of which no trace could be found among the drugs in his and during the closing months of the year he was dunned for small bills in debt to the tune of over e1OO. Not the least pathetic incident in the trial was the evidence of the prisoners ten-y year-old son, a strange unchildish elf, who nursed his baby brother, tried to comfort his mother and was the good spirit of that un- happy households:
 My papa and mamma got on well L don't know any reason 1 why they did not get on well. He call her bad names. l have heard him swear at her. Mamma never used bad | words to him. Mamma left the room when he used bad words and some times she cried. I also cried sometimes when did so. have seen him strike her. He struck her with his hand on | the side of the head fl
 The Crown admitted that no traces of opium were to be found in the body and relied entirely upon the analysis of the linen stains, but their medical wit ness insisted that it would have been idle to expect to find vestiges of so easily absorbed a narcotic twenty four hours after it had been swallowed, The prisoner had been the last personJ with his wife. on the evening before | she died, and he had enjoyed full op- portunity of dosing the fruit, and pos sibly the lemonade, with extract of op- ium. The declaration" emitted by him in Scotch fashion consisted large ly of groundless charges of infidelty, | against his wife. He insisted that she had been poisoned by an escape of gas which, so he said, completely fill ed her bedroom.
 MT. Trayner's speech was vigorous and ingenious, but unconvincing. He | limited himself to contend | ing that the prosecution had not made | put their case. "He was not there to say that Mime. Chantrelle died from poisoning by coal gas; he was not there | to say from what she died; but he was there to say she did not die from op- un administered to her by the pri- soner" Incidentally he labored to prove that the truth of the medical ! evidence, as well as the facts of the case, were favorable to the gas hy- oothesis, and that the attempt to bring home the severance of the gas pipe to the prisoner had failed, But his l main lines of defence were negative that majority of the common symp- | toms of poisoning by opium were ab- | sent, both during the unconsciousness of the deceaed and on her post-mor- tenn examination; that the length of l time for which Mime. Chantrelle had | was entirely contrary to the usual course of narcotic poisoning; | that the tests to which the linen stains had been subjected were imperfect, | and that even if they satisfied the Jury l as to the presence of opium, they fail ed utterly to show that substance had even been in the mouth or stomach of | the edeceased. Finally, he made it a the death and the funeral the prisoner could have made away with the bed | linen or obliterated the stains. It was the stock defence of a good advo- cate who has little or nothing in the way of fact to rely on and is driven | to rebut hypothesis by hypothesis.
 Lord moncrieff compressed into an hour and twenty minutes a charge on which many English Judges would nave deemed day well spent Its deadly candnr left nttle home fnr the