Lancaster Standard and County Advertiser. — 1898-10-28 (Lancaster, Lancashire, England)

POISON DEVICES.  The ingenuity of man in devising schemes to perpetuate life has almoet bees equalled by his ingenuity in framing devices to abridge it. In all ages there have been men who hated convention, even conventional murder. When they desired to remove an enemy secretly, they had ',emirae to poison; but not to ordinary schemes of poisoning. They made it an art. An interesting device, very palpably suggested by the famous sh.rt of Nessus, is a shirt charged within with poison of groat acerbity, which no acted upon the skin of us wearer as to inflame and then blister with incredible malignity, until the victim died in horrible agonies. Various hypotheses have been put forward : with respect to the history of this shirt, which is now in an American museum; but there seems every reason Pi believe that it is the garment mentioned in a German work of the 15th century by Adolph Heckert as having been exhumed with, the body of a Greek military captain, having been guilty of grows insubordination, amounting to treason, ho was ordered to denude himself ot his garments in the presence of the soldiers, and don the fatal tunic.  Of equal, if not greater antiquity, was the device in vogue among the Tartar princes. When a prince desired to despatch an inconvenient subject, he was invited to a game of hockey, participated in by the various nobles, officers, and officials of the Court. The Royal Chamberlain always took great care that the technical miscreant should play with a special atiek, within whose swelled kilt lurked the deadly poison. But even the drug would have been scarcely sufficient to destroy tile if there had not been also concealed in the handle a number of microscopic needle points which, tiny as they were, and almost unobserved at the first handling, were quite sufficient after a few minutes play to puncture the skin.  In this connection we may advert to the vast number of swords and daggers extant whose tips were impregnated with poison; these are to tie found in nginy museums in Europe. There are not a few even in our own Scotland Yard. Although legit mmtely poison devices, they betray little ingenaity. A pair a. gauntlets are said to have been the property of a great foreign political notability. Ones wail on the hands of the victim, a species of gum, with which the interior was lined, adhered with such tenacity to the flesh that it was next to impossible to remove the gloves, except by cutting them away; and even then the gum remained iniperviouti to water,or of solution, until iritammation was nocceeded by festering, and tadesa amputation of the whole arm followed, death inevitably ensued. Several deaths from the wearing of poisoned boots have been recorded, notably that of Andre Nololaki, courier to the Russian Empress Catherine the (treat, who was discovered some nine miles from Moscow, lying prone dead on the side of the road, with apparently not a mark of disfigurement, until someone removed his boots. Then a surgeon discovered that tiny poisoned needles had pierced his feet. Poisoned rings were not unknossm to the Roma.. A hollow duet was contained in half the ring, from which poison was supplied to a needle of infinitesimal sire at the opposite side. Ths other half of the circle enclosed a very delicate mechanism for operating the needle. When, with a slight pressure, the hand of the enemy was clasped with apparent cordiality and good fellowship, it gently punctured the skin without exciting suspicion. Another device was in very common use amongst the Chineae up to a century ago. It consisted of a bowl heavily coated with a colourless soluble poison on the inside. Upon any hot liquid, such as tea, being poured into this cup, the poison became dissolved. A. a whole services? this ware might come into the possession of one family without suspicion, it is not difficult to credit the fact that in spite of every precaution about food, iieven or eight persoos were often exterminated by this procees.—'llareasworth's Magazine."