The Dorset County Express and Agricultural Gazette. — 1876-08-22 (Dorchester, Dorset, England)

THE BRAVO MURDER. The solicitors of Mrs. Charles Bravo, Bfessrs. Brooks, Jenkins, and Co., of Doctor'scommoons, have issued a public notice, in which they say —"We: have been roviested to state. ofil lahalf of Mrs. C. Bravo, that sloe is quote unable to reply to the many hundreds of lettem o oyolopathy she has received since the dose of this (the Hallam) inquiry." The documents adds, "She and her fricuols dimply feel the expressions of kinoltima which have been conveyed to her, forming, as they do, a great muitiolation in the severe trials she has gone through." "Mrs. C. Bravo desire, by this statement to express her sincere gratitude to the writers of the letters she has reoiived."  A writer in the nityraidt in a most ably argued letter says : Let me turn to the positive evidence. Mr. Bravo was a young man with all the freshness of youth still about him. He WAS 111S0 a man of the world, knowing his rights andcapable of insisting upon them. He was also a man in good health, with a keen aPPreciation of those enjoymenta which make existence tolerable. To say nothing of other things, he liked a good dinner, was a judge of burgunsly, enjoyed a ride, and generally had a very notion of taking care of himself. Such a man is the lost man in the world to commit suicide. We are :raked to believe that he wan " ungenerous,- " welfish," " brutal." and so fcrth. An ungenerous' selfish, brutal nia.n married to a rich wife is far more likely to poison his wife than poison himself. We are further asked to believe that Mr. Bravo took either tartar emetic or else laudanum first, and tartar emetic afterwards. Now not only did he know a very great deal about medicine—as the evidence of Mr. Reyes Bell conclusively shows - but he also, AS a barrister, must have had easy act-vex --even if he did not possess a copy himself to Tavlon 'Medical Jurtsprudenoc." Now in Taylor's "June. prudence "—a b.s,k which ought to have been as familiar to Mr. Bravo as "Chitty on Contracts "-I flied that tartar emetic produces "great heat and constriction of the throat, with difficulty of awallowing, violent burning paiu in the region of the stomach, followed by incessant vomiting, profuse purging, faintnese, and extreme depression. Should the case prove fatal, death may be preceded by giddiness, insensibility, great prostration of strength, and sometimes violent spasms of the muscles of the extremities, which may assume either a chronic or tetanic character." Mr. Bravo if he had not actually read these words, yet, at any rite, knew where to look for the law on a cane of charter-party or bailment. Is it likely than that, Intending to commit suicide, he deliberately chose the most painful method of carrying such a purpose into effect? Again, If he really poisoned himself with either antimony or laudamun, one would at least expect some sort .4 evidence as to where the poison was procured, and how it was taken. There is no proof whatever that Mr. Bravo ever purchased any tartar emetic, although a reward of i.:500 was offered to any who would be sufficiently obliging to swear that he had done so. Where is the bottle from which he took the deadly dose, or where is the paper in which the drug was wrapped, or where is there any proof that he was ever possessed of any poisonous drug whatever beyond a little chloroform, which undoubtedly he had not taken, and a little laudanum, which was certainly not what killed him? Lastly, 118 against this hypothesis of suicide, we have the whole character of the man. If one thing is more clear than another, it is that he was A most unlikely man to court a v iolent death in a moment of pique. I will not dwell on little details such as the order he gave with reference to his Mktg, or the fact that he had asked a friend down to play lawn' tennis with him the next day. I prefer to put the matter on the broader ground, that if Mr. Bravo had been, as we are asked to believe, thoroughly miserable and unhappy in his domestic relations, he yet must have known perfectly well how to free him. self from his troubles, and was a man of sufficient strength of character to take, if necessary, very bold steps. He could have obtained a judicial separation from his wife, or have taken proceedings for doing so ; or he could have forced upon her a 'separation by mutual consent; or he could simply have left her, gone back to his own parents, and thrown upon her the responeibility of taking her own course. What we are asked to believe is that, being wretchedly unhappy in his married life, he preferred to Hem' himself rather than to go his way and leave his wife to go here ; that, being a barrister and having some assmaintame with medicine, he deliberately chose about the most painful of all possible methods of committing enicide ; and that, being a thoroughly selfish man, who had never cared for has wife, and had only married her for her money, he yet WAS capable of deliberately annmitting suicide because her affections were not sufficiently set upon him. People who can deal with hissmsistencies of this kind can deal with anything, and are welcome, if they please, to believe everything that Mrs. Cox has at any time sworn or stated during the amuse of the inquiry.