Another ease of suspected poisoning by a surgeon. Mr. Charles
Gordon Sprague, practising at Ashburton, was charged with poisoning his wife, and her father and mother (Mr. and Mrs. Chalker), and the servant, Mary Jane Pigeon, last Sunday, by introducing a deadly vegetable poison called atropine into rabbit- pie of which they had eaten. It seems that all the four persons who touched the pie were seized with the most violent symptoms of sick- ness and paralysis of the limbs, that after using strong emetics they recovered, and that Mr. Herapath of Bristol discovered, or believes he discovered, after hearing the symptoms described, atropine in the pie. It is certain that the prisoner was supplied both with atropine and aconitine by Mr. Evans, wholesale chemist, of Exeter, as late as on the 2nd of June last. Mr. Sprague does not seem to have lived very happily with his wife's relations, and is said by a servant, whose evidence is, however, impugned by her mistress, to have once said that if he poisoned the family he could not be hanged, as he had once been in an asylum. On the other hand, Mr. Chalker himself, though one of the sufferers, offers bail for his son-in-law, and it is clear that Mrs. Chalker is strongly on his side ; the symptoms might most of them have resulted from putrid meat, and the prisoner's manner is not that of a guilty man. Also bail for 1,0001., with two sureties for 500/. each, was accepted by the magistrates, which looks as if they did not think it a case of murder.
