On the 3rd of November 1816, at the house of her son-in-law, Robert Sawle Donnall, Elizabeth Downing had scarcely drunk her second cup of cocoa when she complained of violent sickness. She gave what remained to her son Samuel, who set it down upon the table. A fortnight earlier, she had already been seized with illness after taking tea beneath that same roof. She returned home almost immediately, racked by spasms. By morning, she was dead. Five months later, Donnall stood at the bar of the Launceston Assizes, charged with having administered poison. The Crown marshalled debts, an inheritance, a cup, and a physician who believed he had detected arsenic; the defence opposed to his tests a series of experiments capable of mimicking the very same results.
Elizabeth was about sixty-four years of age. A widow and mother of six children, she resided at Falmouth, hard by the dwelling of her daughter Harriet and her son-in-law. Donnall had established himself there some years before as a medical practitioner; he had married Harriet in the summer preceding these events. Counsel for the prosecution, Mr. Serjeant Lens, opened the case by presenting a possible pecuniary motive. Donnall stood indebted to Gabriel Abrahams and to Samuel Downing, the deceased woman’s son. Elizabeth possessed a considerable fortune, and her estate had been carefully settled by the marriage covenants. This depiction proceeded from the prosecution; it did not, in itself, constitute proof of a crime.
Abrahams deposed that he had lent fifty pounds to Donnall in February 1816, and a further fifty in May. The surgeon had promised repayment following his nuptials. Shortly before Elizabeth’s decease, Abrahams repeatedly demanded his money. He recalled that Donnall had answered him that the sum would shortly be discharged, adding that “Mrs. Downing would not live long.” Yet, under cross-examination, he admitted he could not swear to the precise words; he rendered only their general tenor, drawn from a conversation with a man with whom he was intimately acquainted. Such an utterance might well strike a jury, but the frailty of its phrasing was made manifest from his very first deposition.
An earlier seizure had already linked Elizabeth’s distress to Donnall’s hearth. On the 19th of October, having dined at her son’s house and feeling in good health, she drank tea with the Donnalls. Upon her return home, she was seized with vomiting, violent pains in the stomach, and cramps. She remained indisposed for several days, then recovered. Her daughter, Mrs. Jordan, related that she had applied hot cloths to her mother’s belly; Donnall was said to have recommended this treatment. To the prosecution, this recurrence laid the scene for the following month. For the defence, it established no single cause: identical symptoms might proceed from diverse origins.
On Sunday the 3rd of November, Elizabeth hesitated before returning to her son-in-law’s table. She was said to have remarked that she had been taken ill on the previous occasion. She went thither nonetheless for tea. Her son Samuel Downing described the disposition of the small parlour: Elizabeth was seated near the fire; Donnall sat opposite; other members of the family were gathered about the table. The cocoa was brought from the kitchen. Donnall rose, passed behind several of the company, and handed bread and butter to his mother-in-law. At that same moment, some tea was spilt upon her gown. Her son Edward asked him what he was doing; Donnall returned no answer. He resumed his seat, and was soon called from the room to draw a tooth.
Elizabeth had begun her second cup of cocoa when her countenance changed. She declared she felt exceeding ill and handed the remainder to Samuel, who placed it upon the table. She begged that the door be opened and made her way home. Shortly thereafter, she vomited and called for a bason. Her daughter Mrs. Jordan recalled her dread of suffering a return of the October illness. The house was filled with no theatrical commotion; the narrative turns upon ordinary domestic gestures, a cup displaced, and recollections reconstructed many months later.
During the night, Samuel urged that a physician be summoned. Donnall replied that milder remedies ought first to be tried, stating he had given his mother-in-law something to settle her stomach. Towards four o’clock in the morning, Dr. Edwards arrived. He found Elizabeth drowsy, her pulse faint. Donnall had spoken to him of cholera morbus, an acute affection of the bowels. Edwards judged her to be in imminent danger. Towards eight o’clock, she expired. The testimony imparted to the malady an unquestionable urgency; it was not yet agreed what had occasioned it.
Following her death, Donnall urged that a coffin be prepared without delay, asserting that the corpse would swell and that a discharge was already issuing from the nose. Dr. Edwards stated he had observed no such signs, nor any necessity for a hasty interment. Donnall went also to the churchyard at Morley, where the family vault was being made ready. He explained that he had occasion to visit patients at Elford or Monachorum and had passed that way; a waterman testified that he had not seen him cross the ferry that day. Samuel Downing declared that the prisoner had returned to the churchyard and pressed the workmen to make haste. Each of these particulars assumed, at the hearing, the complexion of a clue; taken alone, none proved the administration of poison.
An anonymous letter addressed to the Mayor of Falmouth transformed private misgivings into a public inquisition. It set forth that Elizabeth had fallen ill after taking tea twice at her son-in-law’s house, and compared her symptoms to those of poisoning. Samuel showed a copy of this paper to Donnall. He remembered that his brother-in-law trembled as he read it, letting it fall from his hand. Donnall was said to have exclaimed that the letter would ruin him in the town. Samuel made clear that he harboured no suspicion of him at that time; he had deemed it a malicious calumny. The pamphlet thus preserves the disparity between the retrospective impression produced at the trial and the witness’s actual thoughts at the moment.
The body was examined some days after death. Edwards opened the stomach and poured its contents into a bason, desiring that it should not be touched. When he turned round, the vessel was empty. Donnall acknowledged having emptied the liquid into a chamber-pot containing water; he explained that he did not conceive it to be of any consequence. The water had diluted the matter, rendering its analysis far more arduous. Edwards observed an inflammation of the stomach and intestines. He concluded that this appearance could not be accounted for by natural causes, and that arsenic had occasioned the death.
Edwards’s chemical tests formed the very core of the scientific dispute. He added nitrate of silver to the fluid and perceived a yellow precipitate; with sulphate of copper, he obtained a green precipitate. He regarded these reactions as positive proofs of the presence of arsenic. Dr. Street confirmed the inflammation and likewise judged that a corrosive poison had been swallowed. Yet arsenic was not reproduced in its metallic state: the remaining fluid, already diluted, proved insufficient to repeat the process which men of science deemed the only decisive test.
The defence thereupon called several physicians and chemists. Dr. Neale, John Tucker, and Dr. Cookworthy maintained that these two tests were by no means infallible. Acids naturally present in the human body, or certain aliments, were capable of producing similar precipitates. They adverted to Elizabeth’s dinner, which had consisted of rabbit and onions, and reproduced in the laboratory a green precipitate from a decoction of onion and sulphate of copper. They did not prove that Elizabeth had died of cholera; they disputed that the tests were sufficient to demonstrate the presence of arsenic. Several practitioners considered that the symptoms might equally accord with that disease.
The defence brought forward further witnesses concerning the domestic habits of the household. The maidservant stated that the cocoa was prepared in the kitchen; she had drunk what remained in the cup after Elizabeth’s departure and suffered no indisposition. A servant-lad confirmed that a woman had come to have a tooth drawn by Donnall on the evening of the 3rd of November, which had called him from the parlour. Neighbours and professional brethren described him as a humane and charitable man. This portrait did not resolve the material question of the cup, but it formed part of the body of evidence submitted to the jury.
The pamphlet observes that the learned judge summed up the facts “nearly” in the terms printed. In his charge, Mr. Justice Abbott propounded two distinct inquiries: whether Elizabeth had died of poison, and whether Donnall had administered it. He reviewed the seizures following the two visits, the testimony of Dr. Edwards, and the strictures of the scientific witnesses. As to the second question, his Lordship observed that no one had seen who poured out the first cup, nor what it contained. Donnall’s passing behind his mother-in-law might indeed have afforded an opportunity, yet the witness had not seen him infuse any substance whatever. The judge reminded the jury also that terror upon reading an accusatory letter, or an attempt at flight, did not necessarily prove guilt.
After an absence of about twenty minutes, the jury returned a verdict of not guilty. The record does not reveal whether the panel concluded upon a natural death, an absence of poison, or merely a failure of proof against Donnall. It allows us no more to transform the verdict into a scientific certificate of innocence than it permits the suspicions of the prosecution to be converted into guilt. The trial concludes upon this distinction: a woman died after two visits to her son-in-law; chemical reactions and disquieting actions were debated; the jury, sworn to try the man and not an abstract hypothesis, pronounced him not guilty.