Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 01.pdf/294

Rh son's house to dinner, and Mrs. Turner ordered Eliza to make some yeast dumplings. When dinner-time came, the three Turners sat down at table and began to discuss the savory dish. The dumplings had scarcely been tasted, however, when all three were seized with sharp and agonizing pains. The dish was taken out into the kitchen, and there Gadsden, one of the apprentices, partook of it, and also fell violently ill. Eliza herself next ate of the dish, and was attacked by the same strange symptoms. The apprentice King and Sarah the maid, who had dined earlier, did not taste the dumplings, and were not ill.

The physician who was called declared the symptoms of the sufferers to be those of poisoning by arsenic. Then every component part of the dish of dumplings was examined. It was clear that the poison was not in the sauce, of which the elder Turner had not partaken; neither was it in the flour, for a pie-crust made of the same flour had been eaten by King and Peer with impunity. Some of the dough of which the dumplings were made was examined, and poison discovered therein. It appears that Turner used arsenic for killing rats, and was in the habit of leaving it carelessly in an open drawer.

Suspicion at once fell upon Eliza Fenning, and she was arrested and arraigned on a charge of attempting to poison the Turners. From the first, she earnestly protested her innocence. It was proved that she, and she alone, had mixed and made the dumplings; the circumstantial evidence went to show that no one else could have had access to them until they were served upon the table. She had been in the kitchen all the time that they were there, and most of the time alone; here, then, was proved opportunity. It was shown that when the apprentice Gadsden was on the point of eating some of the dumplings, Eliza urged him not to do so, saying that they were cold and heavy. It was in evidence that Eliza had not taken the poisoned food until she observed its effect upon others, and it was thence inferred that she either took it to conceal her crime or with a suicidal idea. It moreover appeared that Eliza's statements about the matter were inconsistent, contradictory, and in some instances untrue. She declared that the poison must be in the milk, and not in the dumplings. Now, the milk had been fetched by Sarah Peer; it was thence inferred that Eliza was trying to divert suspicion from herself to her fellow-servant. The analysis proved conclusively that the arsenic was in the dumplings, and not in the milk. To further disprove the presumption of innocence raised by her eating herself of the poisoned food, it was shown that she had shortly before had a hearty meal off a beefsteak pie, and therefore was not likely to have eaten the "cold and heavy" dumplings, as she described them to Gadsden, because she was hungry. Having tried in vain to persuade people that the poison was in the milk, she turned around and declared that it was in the yeast. The yeast was proved by analysis to be perfectly pure.

Here, then, was a group of important circumstantial evidence. Opportunity was proved, so was an instrument (the arsenic) at hand in a drawer to which she had free access, and a desire betrayed to conceal the crime by diverting suspicion to another, and by telling untruths. Upon the evidence, as we have sketched it, Eliza Fenning was convicted by the jury and sentenced to death. The case, however, created so wide-spread an agitation in the public mind, that justice hesitated to execute its fatal decree. The utter absence of a conceivable motive was a serious blow in the case. Why should this light-hearted, amiable young girl, whose worst-known fault was her coquetry with the apprentices, poison a whole family? The great Irish advocate Curran, then in the height of his fame, exclaimed in burning eloquence against the horrible cruelty of her fate. She was reprieved for three months, in the hope that new evidence would transpire to save her. None was forthcoming.