4t 31Irtrapulim.
A deputation of architects waited on Lord Palmerston on Wednesday. It included Mr. Cockerell, Mr. Bell, Mr. Barry, Mr. Smirke, and Pro- fessor Donaldson. Mr. Tite, himself an architect, introduced the depu- tation to the Premier. The deputation represent 200 out of 230 of the architects who responded to the appeal of the former government for com- peting designs. Their remarks were directed against the Gothic style. Mr. Coningham, M.P., who had been invited to express his opinion, con- curred in the remarks that had been made, which he thought were con- firmed by the private edifices of the present time. Ho regarded the Gothic fashion as a retrogression like pre-Raphaelitism, and hoped that its abettors, finding that taste was a question for each individual mind, would be enabled to follow the path already trodden by Goethe and Eeckford, who commenced their career of amateurs with a lavish adu- lation of Gothic, and ended it as admirers of a totally different style. Referring to the intention of erecting a new Indian-office, the speaker concluded by expressing his anxiety that while adopting the general feature of Italian architects, monotony and uniformity should be avoided at Whitehall and Westminster, instead of a variety of eccentricities that are fashion, not taste. Lord Palmerston was glad to receive the assurance that trained men of science and judgment approved the course which he had felt it his duty to pursue.
He could excuse the mania in some quarters for building Gothic habita- tions in the country, by recollecting that those might be prompted by the vicinity of the Elizabethan manor-house, which itself was the successor of the Gothic castle. But in regard to those building Gothic habitations in towns he felt that there were people who had notions which were totally out of date. A public office was, in fact, the habitation of the chief and his staff during the day, and Lord Palmerston knew of no style so suitable to an English habitation as the horizontal, or classic, or Italian, or whatever name its branches might have gained. A public building ought to be hand- seine externally, while convenient in the interior; and the style which he preferred undeniably gave buildings which combined those qualities. He believed that in the erection of a handsome building the style that he pre- ferred allowed a reasonable economy to be observed internally ; the contrary., with regard to Gothic, had been practically taught him at Itestininster and elsewhere. He felt that he had only to repeat the statement made on a previous occasion, viz., that he had so strong an objection to the Gothic style for the present purpose that he should think it his duty, in office or otherwise, to protest against the erection of a building different from that which he saw gave him such grounds for selection ; he could say, in short, that his mind was determined not to have Gothic, but Italian. He might feel satisfied with his conviction that Mr. Tite's sentiments were correct as to the comparative cost of the opposed styles.
The trial of Dr. Thomas Smethurst, for the murder, by poisoning, of Isabella Baukes, his wife by a second, but illegal, marriage, was resumed on Monday, at the Central Criminal Court, before the Lord Chief Baron. [It will be remembered that the trial had to be adjourned last sessions owing IA) the illness of a juror. We reported the case at the time, but we now repeat the leading facts of the story.]
Dr. Smethurst and his wife, a lady much older than himself, were staying at a boarding-house in Bayswater, where Miss Isabella Bankes, a lady having nearly 1800/. in funded property, and a life interest in 5000/., was also residing. After a short time Dr. Smethurst deserted his wife, and having gone through the ceremony of marriage with Miss Bankes, took her to Richmond to live with him as his wife. A letter from Dr. Smethurst to his wife, written while residing at Richmond with Miss Bankes, speaks of hisubseuce, for which he gives a professional excuse, as probably only for a time. On the 28th of March (about three months and a half after she went to live with Smethurst), Miss Bankcs fell ill. When her illness had continued for five days, Dr. Smethurst said he must have medical advice, and at the suggestion of the landlady he called in one of the best physicians in Richmond, Dr. Julius. Ile, with his partner, Dr. Bird, visited the lady, and acting on Dr. Smethurst's information as well as on his own obser- vation, treated her for diarrlicea' but after many days' treatment he observed that his medicines appeared to have a directly contrary effect to what was intended, as if they were counteracted by some stronger medicine. The ill- ness continued; Miss Louisa Bankes went to see her sister at her request, and with Dr. Smethurst's full consent, but was not left alone with her, and her offer to make her some tapioca or arrowroot, was set aside by him on sonic excuse -, and her future visits were forbidden in a friendly manner on the ground that Miss Bankes was injuriously agitated by seeing her. On the 27th of April, Dr. Todd, of King's College Hospital, was at the sug- gestion of Dr. Smethurst, called in to a consultation, and from what he saw he suspected that the lady was suffering from the effects of some mineral poison. Dr. Julius and Dr. Bird had already arrived at the same opinion. The patient continually complained of a burning sensation in the throat and mouth, and showed every sign of a persistent internal irritation which no medicine could allay. The administration of antimony or arsenic in small doses would have accounted for all these symptoms, and as Dr. Smethurst was the only person who attended on Miss Rankest sitting up with her at night and alone giving her her medicine and nourishment, sus- picion fell upon him. The patient gradually sank, and he was arrested on a charge of poisoning her. The magistrates, before whom the prisoner was taken, released him on his own recognisances, but on the death of the lady a few days after, lie was again arrested. A post mortem examination was then made' and Dr. Taylor examined twenty-one bottles containing the in- testines of the deceased. In twenty of them he found no traces of arsenic, but he found some slight traces of antimony in the lower intestines. In the course of this analysis Dr. Taylor made a mistake, which he thus admitted in his examination on Wednesday :— By the Court—By the destruction of the copper the arsenic contained in it was set free, and this destroyed the effect of the experiment. Cross-examined by Serjeatit Ballantine—" The quantity of arsenic that I dis- covered 1 should say was less than half a grain. I discovered the presence of arsenic by using copper gauze of the same description that I used afterwards to the contents of the bottle No. 21 In the experiment I made with this bottle the ar- senic was deposited by myself. The reason of the failure of the experiment was that this bottle was the only one that contained chlorate of potass, and this de- stroyed the copper. Dr. Ociling also eame to the conclusion that the bottle con- tained arsenic, and we both stated that fact in our examination before the magis- trates and the coroner ; and we were, of course, both mistaken. We believed, no doubt, at the time, that the arsenic we found was contained in the liquid. I also told the magistrates that I had tested all the materials I used in my tests, before I connuenced making the ana() de, to see if the were pule. I have used the MU= description of copper gauze for a great many years, and never, before, discovered the presence of arsenic in it. I shall certainly continue to use it, but I shall take care not to do so with chlorate of potass.
Dr. Taylor expressed, however, his decided opinion that, from the symp- toms described, Miss Bankes died of the effects of the administration of an irritant poison. Dr. Julius and Dr. Bird gave, on oath, the same opinion, as did several other medical men. One added that the symptoms were not such as to arise from acute dysentery. He accounted for the absence of
arsenic in the tissues by the supposition that chlorate of potass or BarTle such medicine which would wash away the traces of arsenic, was administered to the deceased.
The defence, opened on Wednesday by Sergeant Parry, was that Miss Bankes was a person of delicate health long before she met Dr. Smethurst; that the pregnancy which followed her marriage acted on a weakly body and produced, as is not unusual, dysenteric diarrhma, and that this was the internal irritation observed during her illness. Even Dr. Todd, one of the prosecuting medical witnesses, after attributing her death to poison, had said "the only disease that could in any way account for the symptoms of the deceased would be what is called acute dysentery." In support of this view, and in opposition to the other medical witnesses for the prosecution who had attributed the death to irritant poison alone, and who had denied that the symptoms could be those of dysentery, the counsel for the prisoner called several medical men. Dr. B. Ye. Richardson deposed that the symp- toms as described were more like those arising from acute dysentery than from slow arsenical or antimonial poisoning, and that pregnancy was often aceompanied by dysenteric diarrhcea. Mr. J. E. D. Rodgers, chemist, gave similar testimony, and with reference to Dr. Taylor's supposition that chlorate of potass would remove the traces of antimony said, "If slow doses of arsenic or antimony were administered to a human subject, chlorate would not have the slightest effect in eliminating the poison." The other medical witnesses in support of these statements were Dr. Tatingham, lec- turer on experimental chemistry at the Grosvenor Place School of Medi- cine, and a pupil of Liebig ; Dr. F. C. Webb, lecturer of medicine at the same school, and one of the physicians of the Great Northern Hospital ; Dr. Girdwood, an accoucheur in extensive practice; Mr. James Edmonds, sur- geon to the H division of police, and to the Royal Maternity Charity ; and Dr. Tyler Smith, an aceoucheur in large practice. Dr. Smith's evidence was especially pointed. It went generally to show that the symptoms ex- hibited by Miss Bankes were not uncommon amongst women in the state she was. Such symptoms, when of a violent character, were sometimes mistaken for those of poison. In such cases of excessive vomiting no food could be retained upon the stomach, and persons died of starvation just as much as though food had been withheld from them. The very smell of food would cause vomiting, and it would even come on without food being given or being near. Charlotte Bronte, the authoress of Jane Eyre, had suffered in this way from excessive vomiting; it ceased, and she was able to take food; but it came on again, and she died. The face in such oases (death by vomiting) presents the appearance of death from starvation.
At the Lambeth Police Court, on Monday, Martin Ryan, lately a stoker in the London Gas Company, now on "strike," was charged with assaulting Edward biacklin on Saturday last in a public-house and grossly abusing him. Macklin was civil to Ryan, and told him as he had a wife and family to support he could not afford to be idle. Ryan retorted that if others were of the same mind as himself, he would "cut the guts Out of all such persons," as he was, "who kept men out of work, and that as long as they stopped in the factory they should know no peace." Mr. Jones, chief en- gineer to the company, said police interference had been necessary for a fortnight past to protect the willing workers. Mr. Norton contrasted the earnings of these gas workmen—from 24s. to 298. a week and their com- paratively short hours—" with the miserable pittance allowed the police constables," something less than 20s. a week for sixteen hours a day. Being the first offence, this violent "turn-out" was sentenced to three weeks' hard labour.
At Worship Street, George Jones and Thomas Williams, who both re- fused their addresses, were charged with burglariously entering the house of Mr. Oswald, a tailor and draper in Old Street Road, and packing up cloth, ready-made coats and waistcoats, for purposes best known to themselves. They were captured by the ingenuity of Mr. Fisher Stranger, a watchmaker living opposite. Concealed from the observation of the thieves by his bower of window plants, he saw them cautiously "apply a key to the lock and go into the passage." He knew the family was out, and that the premises were all frontage. He sent for the police, hastened across the road and thrust a stout oaken cudgel "through the knocker, to serve as a fulcrum," and to prevent egress by the door. His stratagem succeeded, and a crowd soon collected to witness it. "Lights were being carried about the upper rooms by the unconscious burglars, when Piekthorn and two more constables entered the premises and arrested them, just as the owner of the property returned." They were remanded.
At Marlborough Street, Thomas Davis, a woodcutter, pleaded " guilty " to stealing from the mansion of Lord Kinnaird a silver watch and some wearing apparel belonging to the butler, and was sentenced to six months' hard labour.
On Tuesday, Mr. Norton was applied to by a middle-aged fashionable woman—who was uncertain as to her own name from the fact of her having married a man who was either Captain William Denby Sloper Harris, or Harrison—for his advice under the following circumstances. [The lady left the Court to procure her marriage certificate, which decided in favour of Harrison.] She was a widow with a handsome income. While attend- ing a lecture at St. James's Hall in March last, she met a gentleman about her own age, who introduced himself as the son of an earl, made passionate love to her, and vowed he would shoot her unless she married him. She had been his wife not quite two months, had never received any of the magnificent things he had promised her, suspected his aristocratic con- nexions to be a sham, and— was she obliged to supply her husband with clothes, particularly as he was in the habit of going out in a very good suit and coming home in a very bad one ? " Was she obliged to support him as he said she should ? Mr. Norton was afraid so. He understood her hus- band wished for a divorce. "Then I'll do so; I only wish I had it now. I had an excellent offer from a barrister just before, and was fool enough not to accept it. I wish your worship would take the trouble of just reading the letter sent to me by my husband before our marriage, and then the letter of the barrister, making me an excellent offer." Mr. Norton had "no great curiosity in such matters ; " and the humorous colloquy which ensued between the magistrate and the duped complainant, ended in his advising her to go home, and her determining not to take his advice, but to go to Brighton.
At the Mansion-house, on Tuesday, William Forge, a Billingsgate fish- salesman, was fined by the Lord Mayor 1/., a mitigated penalty—for having offered stinking fish for sale. So bad were these fish—four pads of mackerel condemned by the clerk of the market—that George Farrow, a labourer at the market, who had carried the fish to the lock-up, said his "coat stank so much in consequence that he had never been able to wear it since ; " and the Mansion-house officer was obliged to fumigate the office "with burnt brown paper and sprinkle the place with vinegar to get rid of the stench" of the fish that had been brought there for inspection. The inspector of the market thought the fish good, other witnesses were of the same opinion, but the Lord Mayor put the case in a nut-shell. "Now," said he to Mr. Smithers, who saw one of the fish referred to, which was "part good and part bad,"—" was it such a fish as you would send to me?' Witness- " No, nor to any other gentleman." Hence the fine, which was paid.
Several cases of detriment to human life from the exhalations of chemical and manure factories on the notorious Bow Common, Bromley St. Leonard, Middlesex, were brought before Mr. Yardley, at the Thames Police Court, on Monday. Mr. Croll, a largo chemist and alum manufacturer, undertook to make the sanitary improvements suggested by the magistrate ; Mr. Pound, night-soil manufacturer, had spent a deal of money to meet the wishes of the Board of Works, and these cases were dismissed, but 51.15s. costs, and a promised formal order from the magistrate for the abatement and non-recurrence of the nuisance, was inflicted on Mr. Thomas Cary, manufacturer of stinking fish, for his obstinate conduct and contrivances to evade the law.
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