On the morning of 6 June 1765, Thomas Ogilvie refused to drink a second time from the bowl tendered to him. "I have found my death in it already," a servant later recalled him saying. A few hours hence, he lay dead at Eastmiln. This single utterance, gathered in hindsight, was to echo through a forty-three-hour trial, amid its witnesses, its silences, and its letters, leading to the question that no mere narrative can resolve: did the bowl contain poison, and who had administered it?
The trial of Katharine Nairn, widow of the laird of Eastmiln, and Patrick Ogilvie, her brother-in-law, commenced in Edinburgh that August. The libel charged them with incest and the murder of Thomas by arsenic. An indictment sets forth what the prosecution undertakes to establish; it does not convert its assertions into fact. In the courtroom, witnesses recounted what they had seen or presumed to understand. The panels answered at times—and then fell silent.
A Brother Driven from the House
Patrick, a lieutenant in a foot regiment, had resided at Eastmiln alongside his brother Thomas and Katharine, whom Thomas had wedded in January. By late spring, domestic relations had grown strained. Crown witnesses testified to having surprised gestures between the young wife and the lieutenant which they deemed overly familiar. Others spoke of whispered conversations, ajar doors, and suspicious absences. None of these occurrences were observed alike by all; counsel for the defence challenged both the interpretation and the veracity of those who accused them.
Thomas himself was said to have upbraided his brother for his intimacy with his wife and banished him from the house. Patrick departed, yet Katharine wrote to him. The letters were retrieved and produced at trial, though with a vital caveat: certain papers discussed in court were neither formally proved nor lodged in process. One, attributed to Katharine, opened with "Dr Captain" and breathed an amorous impatience; others touched upon Patrick’s desired return. The prosecution perceived therein an illicit correspondence. The defence urged that letters, even if genuine, did not in themselves substantiate the capital crime of murder.
To the charge of incest was soon joined that of poisoning. James Carnegie, a surgeon of Brechin, deposed that a few days prior to Thomas’s death, he had delivered to Patrick a quantity of laudanum and powdered arsenic. He alleged that the lieutenant had requested the arsenic to destroy troublesome dogs. Patrick, in his first declaration before the sheriff, stated on the contrary that he had entrusted Andrew Stewart with a phial of laudanum and two doses of purgative salts intended for Katharine, who had complained of illness. He denied having dispatched poison for his brother.
Stewart confirmed receiving a phial and a packet from Patrick and handing them to Katharine, who, he stated, placed them in a drawer. Anne Clark, a kinswoman lodging at Eastmiln, claimed to have overheard Patrick disclose the packet’s contents to Katharine, and to have subsequently warned Thomas of her suspicion that an attempt would be made upon his life. This warning was a matter of deposition before the court; it did not prove that the contents had been mingled with the tea. Patrick maintained the remedies had been sent solely for Katharine’s ailments. The defence underscored that Thomas had long been subject to colic and violent digestive disorders.
The Bowl by the Bedside
On the morning of 6 June, the household stirred earlier than was customary, as Stewart was to take his departure. According to his testimony, Katharine prepared tea with milk and sugar, stating that she would carry it to her husband, who was still abed. Anne Sampson, a servant maid, confirmed seeing her prepare the bowl, affirming that she saw nothing introduced into it. She followed her toward a closet adjoining the bedchamber, but quitted the room without observing what Katharine did there. A young lad in the service likewise saw Katharine in the closet, yet could not state what she held in her hand.
Thomas arose between nine and ten o'clock, went abroad to view his horses, and conversed with his tenants. Sampson deposed that she saw him seized with vomiting on his way back, and still more violently in the kitchen. He was conveyed back to his chamber. Crying out for drink, water was brought to him in the tea bowl; recognizing it, he recoiled in indignation and bade them take it away, the maid describing it as having a greasy or whitish scum inside. Other witnesses spoke of violent retching, purging, burning thirst, and internal torment. Thomas died that very day.
The medical witnesses were divided in their testimony. Certain appearances noted days after the burial were deemed by some compatible with the effects of poison; others argued that decomposition precluded any certain deduction. The body was never opened. A surgeon observed that the gastrointestinal symptoms might equally arise from a bilious colic. Another noted that the tongue presented an unusual appearance, though he acknowledged the strict limits of his conclusions. The white powder discovered in a drawer during a search was analyzed by apothecaries and declared to be saltpetre, not arsenic.
The prosecution thus possessed a phial, reported conversations, a suspicious bowl, and a sudden death; it had neither post-mortem examination nor chemical analysis demonstrating the presence of arsenic in the body or in the vessel. Counsel for the prisoners countered this circumstantial chain with Thomas’s chronic distempers, the uncertainty of medical science, and the bitter rivalries of the household. They mounted a fierce attack upon Anne Clark, whose motives and impartiality they disputed. That she swore to having heard plots of murder did not compel the court to accept her word as truth merely because it had been uttered under oath.
Refusal to Answer
When examined by the sheriffs in June, the prisoners’ answers diverged. Katharine explained that she had received laudanum and salts from Patrick for her own ailments, denying that she had poured anything into the tea. Patrick acknowledged having forwarded a medicine to his sister-in-law, which he claimed to have kept by him since his return from the East Indies. Yet in Edinburgh, on 22 June, when pressed with a series of interrogatories regarding the medicines, the letters, and the fatal day, he declined to answer. Katharine, interrogated two days later, maintained a similar silence upon the advice of her friends and procurators. Such silence might be construed as suspicious, yet it could not amount to a legal confession.
The sittings dragged on amidst oppressive heat and sheer exhaustion. The printed narrative notes recesses, jurors dispersing, and procedural disputes as to the regularity of the diet. Following the verdict, the defence objected that jurors had held private communication, that the prisoners' exculpatory proof had been curtailed, and that the panels had been denied the final plea. The prosecution replied that the trial had proceeded under the perpetual eye of the court, and that the jurors had merely retired for necessary refreshment. The Lords repelled the objections and sustained the verdict.
On 14 August, following their deliberations, the jury returned a verdict by a great majority finding Katharine and Patrick guilty of incest, Katharine guilty of the murder of her husband by poison, and Patrick guilty art and part. Such was the judicial determination; it did not repair the voids in the medical record nor transmute every spoken deposition into physical proof. Patrick was sentenced to be hanged at the Grassmarket on 25 September, his body thereafter to be delivered to the Professor of Anatomy for public dissection. The record confirms the sentence passed upon him.
For Katharine, the immediate outcome took another course. Pleading that she was about three months gone with child, she prayed that execution of sentence be superseded until the truth thereof might be determined. On 16 August, five midwives were sworn to inspect her person; they reported that they could neither affirm nor deny her condition. The court thereupon adjourned the pronouncement of her doom until the third Monday in November, directing that further inspections be conducted in the interval. The printed trial terminates upon this suspended judgment.
Thus persists the contrast between two destinies: for Patrick, a day of execution was appointed; for Katharine, a portal was left ajar, awaiting an examination whose outcome finds no place in these pages. And behind the verdict, the bowl of tea remains forever silent. The court declared their guilt; the printed memorial preserves the doubts out of which the jury had to forge their judgment.