On a Friday evening, the barber-hairdresser Ernst Eduard Dombrowsky brought his wife a bowl of sago he had prepared himself. Mathilde complained of a burning sensation in her stomach and refused to drink anything more save cold water. He urged her nonetheless to finish the bowl; when the glass vessel containing the remainder shattered in the oven, he carefully wiped away whatever had spilled. On 16 April, Mathilde died. Two days later, her father demanded an examination of the body.
Born Karoline Friederike Angelstein, the young woman was commonly called Mathilde. She had married Dombrowsky in December 1850. Eight years after the trial, Willibald Alexis devoted a retrospective chapter of the Neue Pitaval to the affair. The compiler depicts a troubled union: he attributes to the husband cruel jests, infidelity, and an avarice said to have wounded his wife, while acknowledging her own diligent care of the household and the children. On the eve of her illness, Mathilde had reportedly confided to a neighbour that her husband had bought her a theatre ticket and intended to escort her to the marksmen’s ball. On Monday, 11 April, she was unable to attend: the malady had seized her directly after breakfast.
Dombrowsky went to the ball and danced, even as his wife’s first agonies worsened. Guests later attributed to him remarks concerning his impending widowhood; others believed they heard him say she must die, just as his first wife had. These utterances, reported after the fact, fed the gathering suspicions. On Friday, the chronicle shows him bearing the bowl of sago to Mathilde; on Saturday evening, after her death, he was said to have smoked in the death chamber, then drunk with a visitor. He was further reported to have repeated that he would suffer no autopsy to be performed.
The dead woman’s father, Angelstein, who kept the parish register of the poor, demanded an examination of the corpse. On 19 April, physicians and an apothecary proceeded with the autopsy and the chemical analysis of the stomach and intestinal contents. The text records that they discovered metallic arsenic in considerable quantity—the indictment would specify nineteen grains within the stomach—and concluded that she had been poisoned. A first search of the hairdresser’s dwelling yielded nothing. The bill of indictment dates to 22 April the subsequent search, during which a jug of rat poison was discovered in the kitchen and powdered arsenic in the pockets of his dressing gown. The prosecution added that Dombrowsky had previously purchased “Fliegenstein,” the name then given to this poison, while stubbornly denying that he had ever possessed it. These objects, set against his denials, formed the central pillar of the accusation.
On 2 July, the formal indictment committed him to trial before a jury for the murder of his wife. It set out the case across twelve heads: their marital discord, the husband’s sudden alteration of manner before her illness, earlier purchases of poison, the presence of arsenic in the corpse and in his garments, the preparation of her food, statements uttered during her sickness, and the circumstances of her demise. The indictment maintained that the victim had received several doses and that the accused had enjoyed every opportunity to mingle them with her fare. It also held that he had carried away the vessel after her bouts of vomiting and had counselled against milk, which the prosecution presented as an antidote to arsenic. It noted, finally, that he had caused a deed of gift to be drawn up in his favour on 12 April, the very day after the onset of her symptoms. These contentions formed the theory of the public prosecutor; they must not be mistaken for admissions, for Dombrowsky denied the crime to the very end of the passages preserved.
The trial opened on 28 July. Dombrowsky was forty years of age. Interrogated as to his past, he recounted his apprenticeship as a hairdresser, his wanderings between Dresden, Berlin, Brunswick, and Wolfenbüttel, and his two marriages. The presiding judge reminded him of an old conviction for having retained part of a payment received in Berlin; the accused admitted the fact, but contested having been expelled from Prussia. When questioned concerning Mathilde, he acknowledged that she lacked education, but granted that she had been an upright mistress of the house and a devoted mother to his children. He denied having neglected her in her moral nature; yet, pressed regarding his conjugal duties, he conceded that he had perhaps been unable to render her all she expected of him.
As to his wife’s health, he spoke of former bouts of colic and asserted that she had refused all medical aid. The presiding judge announced that witnesses would affirm the contrary. Dombrowsky maintained that he had no liking for calling in a physician. He alleged, moreover, that Mathilde had occasionally taken to drinking rum, while refusing to name the persons who, he claimed, had taught her to drink. The chronicle notes that the witnesses called did not corroborate this habit. He further insisted that he did the marketing and cooking himself, and disputed the accounts of his absences from the hearth. In his version of Monday, 11 April, he spoke of a breakfast of sausage and brandy taken in the presence of three apprentices of the tailor Winter. He denied having gone out that morning, though a witness testified to having seen him abroad. The indictment, for its part, placed the onset of symptoms directly after the repast.
An older rumour already clung to the demise of his first wife, carried off by cholera in 1850. According to the compiler, an exhumation ordered in April 1853 had revealed no trace of poison. At Mathilde’s trial, the indictment distilled the single question laid before the jury: had Dombrowsky deliberately, by means of poison and with premeditation, brought about the death of his wife?
The jurors retired at half past three and returned after four hours of deliberation. Their foreman announced that they answered in the affirmative. He explained that they had weighed the question with grave solemnity, without malice or favour, and that the facts and testimony had led them to this answer despite the deep pain they felt in condemning a fellow man. This declaration did not disclose their individual reasons nor the weight assigned to each piece of evidence; it imparted to the verdict the collective form of a sworn conviction. The public prosecutor thereupon demanded the sentence of death, contending that the law permitted the court no mitigating discretion. Dombrowsky’s counsel conceded that the penal code sustained this motion, but invoked a judicial custom which, in the absence of a confession, had hitherto restrained judges from pronouncing capital punishment. He stressed that the trial by jury had transformed the foundations of penal proof, and pleaded that this evolution, together with the solemn gravity of sending a man to the scaffold, should weigh in the balance; if the judges could not take it into account, he hoped the Duke might yet exercise his clemency.
The court pronounced the sentence of death by decapitation. In the grounds recorded, the judges declared that the jury’s verdict formed the sole foundation of their decree: it was not their office to re-examine the direct or circumstantial evidence upon which it rested. They added that the statute punished murder by poison and murder committed against a spouse with death, leaving them no power to reduce the penalty. Dombrowsky lodged an appeal in cassation, drawn up by his counsel and signed by his own hand; he disputed, among other points, the lawful qualification of one of the jurors. The Court of Cassation dismissed this appeal on 20 September, having likewise reviewed the merits of the case.
A first petition for clemency was rejected on 3 October by Duke William. In his rescript, the sovereign deemed the objections against capital punishment unfounded, holding that the judicial proceedings left no room for doubt as to guilt. Dombrowsky submitted a second petition; it was dismissed on 10 October, and the execution was appointed for the 14th. Our documentary selection concludes at this announced date.