At six or seven o’clock in the morning, Mrs. Moore entered the house of William Higgins to inquire of Mary Anne whether William were truly dead. Mary Anne confirmed it, and thereupon went forth to purchase mourning apparel. Finding the dwelling in disorder, the neighbour set about putting things to rights. In the pantry, she observed two basins of pea soup: the one yellow, as was customary; the other whiter and of a thicker consistency. This circumstance did not as yet establish the presence of poison. It was nevertheless destined to precede the chemical examination of fluid drawn from the dead man’s stomach, and the subsequent trial of his niece and Edward Clarke.
The Warwick Assizes heard the case on 9 August 1831. The indictment charged Mary Anne Higgins and Clarke with the wilful murder of William Higgins, committed on 22 March by the administration of three drachms of arsenic. A second count indicted Clarke as an accessory before the fact. The account by Camden Pelham, published several decades later, records the charge, the depositions he deemed material, a brief summary of the defence, and the verdict. It does not constitute a verbatim record of the proceedings.
William Higgins, a man of humble condition, had accumulated upwards of one hundred pounds in savings. Following the death of his only brother, he had taken into his home one of the four or five children left behind; he reared Mary Anne as his own daughter and intended to leave her his worldly goods, being himself unmarried. In the early months of 1831, she formed an attachment to Clarke, an apprentice in a Coventry watchmaker’s manufactory. Pelham’s opening passages note their disparity in years—she being nineteen and he twenty-one—and relate that he was seen in possession of more money than had been his habit, including guineas resembling those reputed to form part of the uncle’s hoard. He had reportedly boasted that he had only to apply to the old man whenever he stood in need of coin. These observations awakened suspicion, yet they were insufficient to establish what Clarke may have known concerning the poison.
On Tuesday, 22 March, Mary Anne entered a druggist’s shop and asked for two-pence worth of arsenic, alleging she wished to destroy rats. The shopman declined to sell it to her without a witness. She made an identical attempt at another shop, after which she encountered Elizabeth Russell in the street. The young woman was on her way to the manufactory; Higgins begged her to accompany her to the shop of Mr. Wyly, the druggist. In Russell’s presence, she obtained the powder wrapped in paper bearing the printed warning, “arsenic, poison.” She inquired how it ought to be employed against vermin; the shopman advised her to mix it with bread or some other edible substance. Upon leaving, she tore away the label. The chronicle relates that she subsequently asked Russell why the vendor had affixed it.
The two young women parted company at the manufactory, whence the artisans emerged for dinner around one o’clock. Clarke joined Higgins and walked with her toward her uncle’s residence. A carter passing by witnessed Clarke enter the house; Higgins closed the door behind him. At two o’clock, Clarke returned to his labours, remaining there until eight in the evening. Towards nine, he was observed at the entry of the yard connecting the dwelling to an outhouse. The old man was just then returning from that direction. A singular sound was heard, and the ground afterwards bore the appearance of someone having vomited there. The chronicle thus places Clarke near the house in the evening; it records no witness who saw him administer any poison.
Towards one o’clock in the morning, Mary Anne knocked at the door of Mrs. Green, an elderly neighbour, imploring her to attend her uncle, whom she represented as desperately ill. On her way, Mrs. Green encountered a man who had overheard two voices within the house, though he could not identify to whom they belonged. The neighbour found William stretched upon his niece’s bed, his head supported upon his hand, in the posture of a man who had been retching. At first she fancied she perceived a faint breath, but the body was already rigid. Knowing the old man was subject to an infirmity she termed the “water-swamp,” Mrs. Green proposed going downstairs to prepare tea. While they were below, Higgins declared she heard her uncle groan. They went upstairs again; this time, the neighbour concluded he was dead. Upon examining him, she estimated that life had been extinct for at least half an hour.
Higgins explained to Mrs. Green that her uncle had partaken of pea soup, had fallen sick, and had retired to rest. According to her narrative, after she had retired to her own bed, she discovered him in agony and assisted him onto her own couch. Mrs. Green observed that the deceased man’s bed, in his own chamber, was violently disarranged, as though someone had tossed upon it in severe distress; upon the floor lay a quantity of water containing two small pieces of bread, apparently rejected from the stomach. She subsequently departed; when Mrs. Moore arrived, she made inquiries regarding the two basins in the pantry. Higgins replied that the one had been thickened with flour and the other with oatmeal. The source does not record that this explanation was ever verified by chemical analysis of the soup.
Mrs. Moore delivered the white basin to a carpenter who had arrived to take measurements for the coffin, and he locked it within the chamber where the corpse lay. A surgeon was summoned. He opened the body and discovered the stomach to be red and highly vascular. He removed about a pint and a half of fluid, which he submitted to several chemists in the presence of four or five medical practitioners. The tests reported, according to Pelham, uniformly demonstrated the presence of arsenic within this gastric fluid. The soup itself was never submitted to chemical analysis. A portion was given to the dog; the animal cast it up and survived. The two basins and the contents of the stomach thus do not constitute the same piece of evidential proof.
Apprehended by an officer named Gardiner, Higgins at first denied having purchased any arsenic. Upon being informed that Elizabeth Russell could attest the purchase, she admitted having procured it, but maintained she had intended it for destroying rats. She even pointed out a chair beneath which a dead animal was said to lie. A mouse was indeed found there; an examination of its stomach revealed none of the inflammatory symptoms the narrative presumed characteristic of arsenical poisoning. Upon being searched, Higgins was found in possession of several boxes and a purse containing guineas, a half-guinea, and a seven-shilling piece. The compilation does not prove that this money had been purloined from her uncle’s savings.
Pelham next recounts an interview of a far more contentious character. On the journey to gaol, whilst no third party was present, Gardiner asked Higgins how she could ever have been persuaded to commit such a deed. She replied, according to him, that no one had persuaded her, and that she had done it entirely alone. She was also said to have confessed having put two teaspoonfuls of arsenic into a basin and poured the soup over it. This quantity does not correspond to the indictment, which alleged three drachms; the two statements cannot be assumed to be identical. At the trial, the learned judge severely censured Gardiner for the manner in which he had interrogated the young woman. The declarations reported by the officer cannot, therefore, be confounded with a voluntary confession tendered before the court.
As for Clarke, the account specifies that no evidence existed to warrant a positive conclusion that he knew the poison had been purchased or mingled with the soup. In his written defence, he urged the weakness and circumstantial nature of the evidence, declaring his innocence. Higgins likewise maintained that she had not committed the crime, committing her fate to her counsel. Following their deliberations, the jury acquitted Clarke and found Higgins guilty. The distinction between the two verdicts reflected that which the narrative had already drawn between Clarke’s physical presence near the house and proof of his complicity regarding the poison.
The judge sentenced Mary Anne Higgins to be executed at Coventry, and ordered her body to be dissected. She was hanged on 11 August 1831. Pelham records that she wept upon hearing her doom, subsequently declined to afford any explanation of the crime, and engaged in prayer before the execution. The chronicle supplies no motive originating from her own lips for the death of her uncle. Within its pages there remain side by side two basins of unanalysed soup, the gastric fluid declared positive for arsenic, and two divergent verdicts: Clarke was acquitted, and Higgins condemned.