Glasgow poisoning case : unabridged report of the evidence in this extraordinary trial.

Date:
1857
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Glasgow poisoning case : unabridged report of the evidence in this extraordinary trial. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    8/96 (page 4)
    * * Now, as regards Miss Smith, she occupies a very different rank in social scale. She is the daughter of a retired architect, moving in the In Glasgow circles; is youug, handsome, accomplished, and indeed recei;i i her finishing education at a boarding-school near London ; we may presuh too, that she is what is called well brought up, as she appears to h;-; regularly frequented a place of public worship, and attended family pray in her father’s house. It is abundantly proved by the very remarkat letters read during the progress of the trial—a pas? innate series of epist that are on a par with the world-renowned letters of Heloise to Abelai and those of her prototype and namesake, Rousseau’s ramous heroine, tk to one portion of the intercourse, secret and guilty as it might be, betwe- d Madeleine Smith and L’Angelier, she had Ihe most intense love for 1: paramour. This love gradua ly paled before the advances of another suit i who presented himself before her with honourable intentions, and back with her father’s anprival. L’Angelier, it seems, would not be shaken dfi 1 but at the first hint she gave him of a desire to cancel their eDgagemen he turns upon her, and threatens to place her letters in her father’s han.i the result of w lich would be, as she sorrowfully pleads, that £,he woiff put me from him as a guiTy wretch. On mv bended knees I write yc and ask you, as you hope for m»rcy on the judgment-day, do not inform cic 1 me, and bring your once-loved Mimi to an open shame. Oh, for Got I sake, for the love of Heaven, hear me. I grow mad.” Then it is, accor; ing to the case as presented on the part of the Crown, that Madelein Smith seeks to rid herself of her lover. “The first important point in the inquiry,” observed the Lord-Advocat: in his masterly summing up of the evidence, “is that Emile L’Angelic died of arsenic. The sympto ns he exhibited were those of poisoning 1 arsenic; the stomach and iutestiues when examined and analysed wei found to contain a great quantity of arsenic. The next question is—B> whom was that poison administered ? What is the evidence that connecU the prisoner at the bar wi h the death of L’Angelier? This young lad (the prisoner) recurned from a Loudon boarding-school in the year 185® She met L’Angelier somewhere I believe about the year 1855. L’Aii gelier’s history has Dot been very clearly brought out. It is plain, ur, questionably, that iu 1851 he was in very poor and destitute circumstances:i Of his character, I say nothing at present but this—that it is quite cleao that by epergy and attention lie had won his way up to a position that wa at least respectable—a position in which those who came in contact witli him plainly had for him a very considerable regard. When Miss Smith therefore first become acquainted with L’Angelier lie was a man moving in a respectable position, bearing a respectable character, liked by all those!