She Stands Accused | Page 6

both cases the
guilty were so far able to banish ``all trivial fond records'' as to dispose
of kindred who might have been dear to them: Mrs Holroyd of husband
and son, with lodger's daughter as makeweight; the Liverpool pair of
nephew, husband, stepdaughter (or son, brother-in-law, and stepniece,
according to how you look at it), with again the unfortunate daughter of
a lodger thrown in. If they ``do things better on the
Continent''--speaking generally and ignoring our own Mary Ann--there
is yet temptation to examine the lesser native products at length, but
space and the scheme of this book prevent. In the matter of the
Liverpool Locustas there is an engaging speculation. It was brought to
my notice by Mr Alan Brock, author of By Misadventure and Further
Evidence. Just how far did the use of flypapers by Flanagan and
Higgins for the obtaining of arsenic serve as an example to Mrs
Maybrick, convicted of the murder of her husband in the same city five
years later?
The list of women poisoners in England alone would stretch
interminably. If one were to confine oneself merely to those employing
arsenic the list would still be formidable. Mary Blandy, who callously
slew her father with arsenic supplied her by her lover at
Henley-on-Thames in 1751, has been a subject for many criminological
essayists. That she has attracted so much attention is probably due to
the double fact that she was a girl in a very comfortable way of life,
heiress to a fortune of L10,000, and that contemporary records are full
and accessible. But there is nothing essentially interesting about her
case to make it stand out from others that have attracted less notice in a
literary way. Another Mary, of a later date, Edith Mary Carew, who in
1892 was found guilty by the Consular Court, Yokohama, of the
murder of her husband with arsenic and sugar of lead, was an
Englishwoman who might have given Mary Blandy points in several
directions.
When we leave the arsenical-minded and seek for cases where other
poisons were employed there is still no lack of material. There is, for
example, the case of Sarah Pearson and the woman Black, who were
tried at Armagh in June 1905 for the murder of the old mother of the

latter. The old woman, Alice Pearson (Sarah was her daughter-in-law),
was in possession of small savings, some forty pounds, which aroused
the cupidity of the younger women. Their first attempt at murder was
with metallic mercury. It rather failed, and the trick was turned by
means of three-pennyworth of strychnine, bought by Sarah and mixed
with the old lady's food. The murder might not have been discovered
but for the fact that Sarah, who had gone to Canada, was arrested in
Montreal for some other offence, and made a confession which
implicated her husband and Black. A notable point about the case is the
amount of metallic mercury found in the old woman's body: 296
grains--a record.
Having regard to the condition of life in which these Irishwomen lived,
there is nothing, to my mind, in the fact that they murdered for forty
pounds to make their crime more sordid than that of Mary Blandy.
Take, again, the case of Mary Ansell, the domestic servant, who, at
Hertford Assizes in June 1899, was found guilty of the murder of her
sister, Caroline, by the administration of phosphorus contained in a
cake. Here the motive for the murder was the insurance made by Ansell
upon the life of her sister, a young woman of weak intellect confined in
Leavesden Asylum, Watford. The sum assured was only L22 10s. If
Mary Blandy poisoned her father in order to be at liberty to marry her
lover, Cranstoun, and to secure the fortune Cranstoun wanted with her,
wherein does she shine above Mary Ansell, a murderess who not only
poisoned her sister, but nearly murdered several of her sister's
fellow-inmates of the asylum, and all for twenty odd pounds? Certainly
not in being less sordid, certainly not in being more `romantic.'
There is, at root, no case of murder proved and accepted as such which
does not contain its points of interest for the criminological writer.
There is, indeed, many a case, not only of murder but of lesser crime,
that has failed to attract a lot of attention, but that yet, in affording
matter for the student of crime and criminal psychology, surpasses
others which, very often because there has been nothing of greater
public moment at the time, were boomed by the Press into the
prominence of causes celebres.
There is no need then, after all, for any crime writer who wants to fry a
modest basket of fish to mourn because Mr Roughead, Mr. Beaufroy
Barry, Mr Guy Logan,