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278 the ailment by lowering her system, and disabling her powers of resistance. The enemy was active enough without the walls, and the traitor within damped the powder of the defenders. How is this form of injury to be met? It is idle to talk about the improbability that any person could be found capable of carrying out such wickedness. People are found capable of carrying it out. By some singular twist of the human mind or feelings they actually acquire a morbid taste for witnessing the effect of their drugs upon their victims. The Thugs of India took a professional pride in their work, and enjoyed a case of judicious strangulation. So it was with the child-poisoners of Essex a very few years ago. They would take the little creatures home, and pet them, and poison them—giving them now a kiss, and now a little arsenic. It was the same thing in the Borgia days—the same thing in those of Brinvilliers. At a later date Madame Laffarge brought poisoned cakes into such fashion in France that the position of a French husband had its drawbacks. We may be astonished that Miss Madeline Smith did not find more imitators; and there was good reason for fearing that Palmer might become the founder of a school. Although they did not make as many proselytes as might have been anticipated, it is grievous to be compelled to add that the crime of murdering by poison is on the increase, and that it is carried out for the most part in a way which makes detection difficult, if not impossible. We hear of certain cases—too many of them, indeed—but the general opinion is, amongst those who have had the best opportunities of looking into this matter, that a large proportion of murders by poison are never heard of at all. It is better to look the truth boldly in the face.

Now this method of attack upon the citadel of life is so treacherous, and so easily carried out, that all precautions you may take against it are insufficient. You may throw difficulties in the way of procuring poison—you cannot wholly prevent the sale. You may establish a careful system of registration on death, and require certificates as to the cause of it in every case, but these precautions are constantly evaded. Something more might possibly be done in either case; but when all is done we have only checked, not rooted out, the evil. Another point of very considerable importance would be if juries were a little more alive to the extent of the evil, and would resolve to do their duty with unusual severity whenever the crime of poisoning was in question. They seem to do the very reverse, and to reserve all their indecision and all their reluctance to incur responsibility for the cases in which they should be most decided, and least disposed to tamper with the obligations of their office. It is very possible that the fear of consequences, and the apprehension of death are not very powerful agencies for the prevention of crime which arises from the play of violent passion, or the pressure of extreme poverty. A man in a frenzy of excitement, or one who is driven desperate by destitution is very apt to leave results to chance. Not so with the poisoner. He, or she, pre-eminently calculates consequences. When such marvellous precautions are taken to escape detection, one may be very sure that all considerations which may affect the murderer’s safety are fully taken into account. Were the chances of acquittal upon reasonably clear evidence but slight, a poisoner would walk about for some time with the antimony, or whatever it might be, in his pocket, before he would dare to use it. When the chances of acquittal are considerable, of course precisely opposite results are produced. The poisoner, as matters stand, is aware that independently of the natural reluctance felt by jurors to convict upon a capital charge, there is the additional and still greater reluctance to convict upon scientific evidence. He is perfectly aware of this. It is a fact well known to all persons who practise in our Criminal Courts, that the behaviour of the poisoner in the dock is very different from that of any other prisoner who is charged with murder. He is neither depressed nor elated—neither stolid nor rash in admission. He knows that he is playing for his life, and plays the game out with his wits about him. Impress, therefore, upon this class of offenders that the crime with which they stand charged is so heinous in the eyes of their fellow-creatures that every effort will be made to bring them to punishment, if their guilt is established, and you at once deprive them of one strong incentive to crime in this particular form—namely, the strong probability of impunity. No one can read the evidence given last week before the Liverpool jury, and not feel considerable misgivings as to the propriety of the verdict. It was clearly established that the death of the unfortunate woman, Mrs. Ann James, was much accelerated by small doses of antimony. Her strength and system were so reduced by this treatment that she was unable to hold out as long as she would otherwise have done. It was proved that the prisoner was accustomed to the use of antimony, and knew its effects. Antimony was traced into his possession. It was shown that he occasionally prepared food for the deceased, and that she was violently affected after partaking of food prepared by his hand. In particular, there was a cup of sago which Thomas Winslow had prepared and placed at the bedside of Mrs. James in which antimony was found. He had a strong interest in her death, inasmuch as by a will she made during her illness, Townsend was left her sole executor, and he alone knew of certain property which she had in the Savings’ Bank, and in gas shares. Antimony was found in what passed from the poor woman’s body during life, and antimony was found in the body after death. Nor can it be said that anything like grave suspicion rested upon any other person, who had access to her bed-side during her last illness. Townsend, indeed, endeavours to cast suspicion upon her niece, one Jane Caffarata, and her husband; but the method of his so doing, only served to fix suspicion more heavily on himself. It would be well that jurors should reflect upon the consequences of their acts, before they allow this crime of poisoning to go unpunished, if for no other reason than this, that the poisoner is seldom or never a man of a single crime. It seems to be a law of mental pathology, that when you have poisoned one person, you poison several. Where