A FAMOUS POISONER.*
WHETHER we regard them from a psychological, a dramatic, or a legal point of view, there is an interest in famous trials which no other form of printed matter possesses. They bring us closer to the dismal tragedy of life than fiction or history. The obvious economy of their speech, their stern suppression of local colour, the essential truth of their design, give us a sensation of reality that we cannot find elsewhere. The issue, too, when murder is the charge, is an issue of life and death. As we read a Judge's summing-up we seem to feel the close air of the Court, we share the tension of the spectators, we find ourselves hoping unjustly for an acquittal with the sanguine temper of the prisoner himself. Nor is the style used by the lawyers and the witnesses without
its dignity. Curt and plain, it goes to the heart of truth without circumlocution, and it might teach an excellent lesson in restraint and modesty to the lovers of ardent rhetoric. The trial of Dr. Pritchard, for instance, possesses an interest which the quality of the culprit's per- formances nardly merits. As a poisoner, the doctor was a sorry bungler. In skill he fell far below Palmer of Rugeley, upon whom he appears to have modelled himself. He did his work so openly and clumsily that he aroused a general suspicion, and had it not been for the pusillanimity of a colleague, Dr. Paterson, he would have been hanged before he had a chance of killing his second victim. But the trial was conducted with so admirable a pomp, so distinguished were the advocates and Judges who assisted at the condemnation, that we read the report, now learnedly edited by Mr. Roughead, with a profound interest in the logic of the argument and in the character of the panel.
Edward William Pritchard, who in 1865 poisoned his mother-in-law and his wife with antimony, was the son of a naval Captain. Educated as a doctor, he was gazetted an Assistant-Surgeon in her Majesty's Navy when no more than twenty-one. He made many voyages in the Pacific and Northern Oceans, and brought back with him a vast, if inaccurate, knowledge of Pitcairn and other islands. After his marriage he practised for some years at Hunmanby and Filey, which he did his best to advertise in guide-books and articles, and in 1860 he settled in Glasgow. Wherever he went he gained the same doubtful opinions. He was amiable and untrustworthy. Like all criminals, he was inordinately vain, and was proud both of his accomplishments and his appearance. It was his constant ambition to be well with all men, and to attain this end he was gentle in manner and kindly in disposition. As the voice of Williams, the murderer of the Marrs, brought instant tranquillity to the mind of a poor girl whom he designed to kill, so Pritchard deceived even his victims by an air of benevolence. He was lavish in his protestations of affection towards his wife, and he treated his mother-in-law with unfailing sympathy. But his manner corresponded in no way with his feelings. His acts were as mendacious as his words. He lied even to his diary ; for, like Palmer, he kept a diary ; and his description of the murders committed by himself are master- pieces of cynical hypocrisy. When his mother-in-law succumbed to his wolfish cruelty, he wrote as follows :— " 25 Saturday. About 1 a.m. this morning passing away calmly—peacefully—and the features retaining a life-like character—so finely drawn was the transition that it would be
• Trial of Doctor Pritchard. Edited by William Roughead, Writer to the Signet. London: Sweet and Maxwell. [5s. net.]
impossible to determine with decision the moment when life may be said to be departed." Still more brutally cynical is the record of his wife's murder :—" 18 Saturday. Died here at 1 a.m. Mary Jane, my own beloved wife, aged 38 years—no torment surrounded her bedside—but, like a calm, peaceful lamb of God—passed Minnie away." It is not surprising that not even the counsel for the defence thought it expedient to produce in evidence these carefully prepared documents.
Such was the man who, within a month, killed two amiable women who wished nothing else than to serve him. He killed them in cold blood, and with deliberate cruelty. The method of death which he chose for them was long and painful. And he seems to have committed his horrible crimes for their own sake. There is nothing more remarkable in this squalid trial than the absence of an adequate motive. Palmer and Wainewright, with whom Pritchard may fairly be compared, profited by their murders, even though long habit had made poisoning a necessity to them. Pritchard gained nothing, and could have gained nothing, by the deaths of his wife and her mother. The intrigue which he had carried on with a servant-girl proved his infidelity ; it did not explain why he administered large doses of antimony to two women who trusted him. But the absence of an ascertained motive does not in the slightest degree weaken the case for the prosecution. Inglis, the Lord-Justice-Clerk, most eloquent of advocates and most erudite of Judges, put the question to the jury with irresistible lucidity :—
"In truth, the existence of any adequate motive for the perpe- tration of a great crime is impossible ; there is no adequate or sufficient motive for the commission of a great crime. Still, there may be what is called an intelligible motive—the existence of some evil passion, or some immediate and strong excitement, which in a moment of half frenzy, drives a man to the commission
of murder But when we find that, in the opinion of the prisoner's counsel, there is no motive for the perpetration of this crime, it means no more than the motive has not been discovered if the crime has been committed, and that it was committed by somebody, I fear, admits of little doubt."
In other words, an undiscovered motive does not mean no motive at all. And the question is complicated by the in- consequence of criminals. They are, for the most part, men who misunderstand the relation of cause and effect. When Wainewright declared that he had no scruple in killing Miss Abercromby because she had thick ankles, he was merely putting into a literary shape the illogicality of his kind. Pritchard had not even an aesthetic excuse. We can say no more than that his vulpine nature drove him to murder. It was an opportunity for the weak, brutal nature to prove its strength. The man who had failed to gain a sufficient repute by hie lectures and pamphlets was determined to show to himself, at any rate, what cruelty could accomplish, to feed his vanity upon the spectacle of another's suffering. Fortunately, wild beasts in human form such as Pritchard are rare ; fortunately, also, they are wont to pay the last penalty on the scaffold.
The trial of Pritchard had an interest apart from the
character of the doctor. As we have said, he would have been hanged before he had killed his wife but for the scruple of Dr. Paterson, a colleague, whom with extraordinary
effrontery he had called in to see his dying mother-in-law. Now, Dr. Paterson was convinced that Mrs. Pritchard was being poisoned by antimony. But he was restrained by what he regarded as professional etiquette—needless to say, it was not an etiquette known to any sane member of the noble pro- fession which he disgraced—either from visiting her, or from warning her of the doom which he believed was overhanging her. She was not his patient, said he, and he had no right to interfere with any family without being invited. Such was the position which he assumed, and which he defended in a letter addressed to the public prints. Nor did he make this position stronger by asserting that in Edinburgh " there was a most decided bias against everything professional connected with Glasgow." The Lord-Justice-Clerk brushed away these trivialities with a strong band. Dr. Paterson, said he, replied, " in answer to a question I put to him, that his meaning was that he was under the decided impression, when he saw Mrs. Pritchard on these occasions, that somebody was practising upon her with poison. He thought it consistent with his professional duty, and, I must also add, with his duty as a citizen, to keep that opinion to himself. In that I cannot say that I concur, and I should be very sorry to lead you to think so. I care not for professional etiquette or professional
rule. There is arrule of life and a consideration that is far higher than these, and that is, the duty that every right-minded man owes to his neighbour, to prevent the destruction of human life in this world, and in that duty I cannot but say Dr. Paterson failed." That is the view of a sensible man and of a great lawyer, whose admirable charge to the jury lights up, the dark places of a dark tragedy, and dignifies a case which, after the lapse of forty years, has lost neither its legal nor its psychological interest.
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