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A FAMOUS TRIAL RECALLED.
720
NOTES, COMMENTS,
AND
ABSTRACTS
It seems incredible nowadays that such a prosecution have succeeded. Its prospects had been Serjeant Ballantine wrote in his Reminiscences gravely prejudiced by Dr. Taylor’s famous mistake. that the speculations of scientific men, however He had examined various bottles found in Smethurst’s eminent, ought never to be made the basis of a criminal room. In pne bottle Taylor discovered arsenic. prosecution. He had in mind the once-famous trial So, at any rate, he swore at the police-court proceedof Thomas Smethurst, now reprinted in the " Notable ings, and so his assistant swore at the inquest. Taylor British Trials " series, with an admirable introduction later found that this arsenic was due to an impurity by Dr. Leonard Parry.1 Ballantine had himself in the copper gauze used in his tests. The instrument prosecuted Smethurst for the murder of Isabella employed for detection had itself furnished the Bankes, and had secured his conviction in spite of a poison. He corrected his mistake before the trial at strange error by the chief medical witness for the the Old Bailey, but critics were not slow to point out Crown. Ten doctors thought death was due to that his error might well have hanged the accused. poisoning, seven thought the symptoms sufficiently Ballantine’s Reminiscences half hint that Smethurst explained by dysentery and pregnancy. If the laid a trap for the Crown witnesses by arranging the medical practitioners called by the prosecution were contents of the bottle between his first and second wrong, it was another medical practitioner who put apprehensions. An ingenious speculation was built matters right. Acting at a period some 60 years upon the fact that Smethurst wrote some notes " On the Excision of Teeth," which were published before the constitution of a Court of Criminal Appeal, the Home Secretary, impressed by the outburst of in THE LANCET in June, 1844. Our issue of that date evoked by the verdict, referred the proceed- contained one of a series of articles by Fresenius criticism ings to Sir Benjamin Brodie, the foremost surgeon on the detection of poisons in medico-legal inquiries. of the day. On Brodie’s advice, Smethurst received It was suggested that Smethurst learnt from these To Lord Chief Baron Pollock, who articles that Reinsch’s test for arsenic was untrusta free pardon. had tried the case, the Home Secretary explained worthy in the presence of chlorates, and that he that the necessity for the pardon arose not from any deliberately gave chlorate of potassium to Miss Bankes fault in the tribunal but " from the imperfection of to defeat the usual test. Dr. Leonard Parry rejects medical science and from the fallibility of judgment, the suggestion on three grounds. Smethurst could in an obscure malady, even of skilful and experienced not be sure that Taylor would (as he did) employ medical practitioners." The medico-legal interest Reinsch’s method only ; chlorates might not have of the trial is thus obvious. We may, perhaps, be destroyed the value of the test entirely; finally, forgiven for adding that Smethurst, himself a medical Fresenius had recommended as the best method for practitioner, had been a contributor to our columns. detecting arsenic a test which involved adding It has even been suggested, as will presently be seen, chlorate of potassium ; if such a method had been that he learnt from THE LANCET how a poisoner used, Smethurst might have been contributing to his While in gaol awaiting trial, Smethurst own downfall. might escape the gallows. In December, 1858, Dr. Thomas Smethurst, who sent a letter to THE LANCET fully discussing the had retired from practice, left his elderly wife and medical aspects of the case. This was naturally went off to live with Miss Isabella Bankes, first going withheld from publication while his defence was in hands of his legal advisers, but it was printed through a form of bigamous marriage with her. Next the March Miss Bankes began to suffer from violent after the trial in our issue of Sept. 3rd, 1859. In diarrhoea and vomiting. Smethurst, nursing her with commenting on the verdict, we observed that the main point on which satisfaction was required was whether apparent devotion, called in Dr. Julius (a local practi- the medical and chemical evidence was sufficient to tioner with a Lambeth doctorate in medicine), Dr. Bird (Julius’ partner), and finally, by way of special prove that Smethurst committed murder. Dr. Parry, of the case, thinks, like Sir opinion in a difficult case, Dr. Todd, physician to in a careful analysis that the evidence failed to prove Brodie, Benjamin King’s College Hospital. The patient grew no better. Julius, suspecting wilful poisoning, had one of the guilt. Lord Chief Baron Pollock, in a final letter to evacuations analysed by Dr. Alfred Swaine Taylor, the Home Secretary, objected that Brodie had taken Professor of Chemistry at Guy’s Hospital, who found no account of the suggestion that Smethurst’s motive arsenic. Smethurst was arrested, but, strangely was to procure abortion-a point little mentioned the trial. In the mass of interesting contemporary enough, was forthwith released to return to the at comment reprinted by Dr. Parry is a letter criticising of victim. Next she his died, bedside day supposed and Smethurst was arrested afresh on a charge of the medical education of the day for its inattention murder, on which he was found guilty. The fact to midwifery. The pregnancy of Isabella Bankes, told against him that, a fortnight before her death,a possible explanation of many of her suspicious he brought a solicitor to Miss Bankes one Sundaysymptoms, apparently took the practitioners by ; one medical witness after another had morning to make a will which left him most of hersurprise that he " never studied that branch." It is said on The rather the dwelt property. judge heavily clear from other letters that the medical profession immorality of Smethurst’s domestic life and on the had misgivings about the part it played in the wickedness of fetching a lawyer rather than a clergyman to the dying woman. But it could be said Smethurst proceedings. Just when public opinion and the reprieve seemed in Smethurst’s favour that, if he stood to gain 1800 by the will, he stood to lose- the income on £5000 to be rehabilitating Smethurst’s character, he was in which she had a life interest. As for the poisoning, put upon his trial for bigamy. A too confident the Crown witnesses suggested repeated doses of reference by his counsel to the pardon in respect of the But no arsenic was found in murder charge drew from Baron Bramwell the some irritant poison. the body, and only from a quarter to a half a grain of dictum that a pardon is no more a certificate of antimony. No arsenic or antimony was found in innocence than a jury’s verdict of " not guilty." Smethurst’s possession, or in his house, or in any of the Although Smethurst was sentenced to a year’s hard food. Ballantine, in his final address to the jury, labour for the bigamy, he had, in one sense, the last admitted that the prosecution did not pretend to say word with the law. Not long after he came out of positively that death was due either to antimony prison, he succeeded in proving Isabella Bankes’s will. or arsenic ; all they said was that death was due "to some poison or other." A FAMOUS TRIAL RECALLED.
could
I
1 Trial of Dr. Smethurst (Notable British Trials). Edited by Leonard A. Parry, M.D., B.S., F.R.C.S. Edinburgh and London: Wm. Hodge and Co. Pp. 259. 10s. 6d.
IT is proposed to endow a bed in the Royal Mineral Water Hospital, Bath, as a memorial to the late Mr. Frederic Weatherly, K.C., who is more widely known as the writer
of songs than
as a
lawyer.
NOTES, COMMENTS,
AND
ABSTRACTS
It seems incredible nowadays that such a prosecution have succeeded. Its prospects had been Serjeant Ballantine wrote in his Reminiscences gravely prejudiced by Dr. Taylor’s famous mistake. that the speculations of scientific men, however He had examined various bottles found in Smethurst’s eminent, ought never to be made the basis of a criminal room. In pne bottle Taylor discovered arsenic. prosecution. He had in mind the once-famous trial So, at any rate, he swore at the police-court proceedof Thomas Smethurst, now reprinted in the " Notable ings, and so his assistant swore at the inquest. Taylor British Trials " series, with an admirable introduction later found that this arsenic was due to an impurity by Dr. Leonard Parry.1 Ballantine had himself in the copper gauze used in his tests. The instrument prosecuted Smethurst for the murder of Isabella employed for detection had itself furnished the Bankes, and had secured his conviction in spite of a poison. He corrected his mistake before the trial at strange error by the chief medical witness for the the Old Bailey, but critics were not slow to point out Crown. Ten doctors thought death was due to that his error might well have hanged the accused. poisoning, seven thought the symptoms sufficiently Ballantine’s Reminiscences half hint that Smethurst explained by dysentery and pregnancy. If the laid a trap for the Crown witnesses by arranging the medical practitioners called by the prosecution were contents of the bottle between his first and second wrong, it was another medical practitioner who put apprehensions. An ingenious speculation was built matters right. Acting at a period some 60 years upon the fact that Smethurst wrote some notes " On the Excision of Teeth," which were published before the constitution of a Court of Criminal Appeal, the Home Secretary, impressed by the outburst of in THE LANCET in June, 1844. Our issue of that date evoked by the verdict, referred the proceed- contained one of a series of articles by Fresenius criticism ings to Sir Benjamin Brodie, the foremost surgeon on the detection of poisons in medico-legal inquiries. of the day. On Brodie’s advice, Smethurst received It was suggested that Smethurst learnt from these To Lord Chief Baron Pollock, who articles that Reinsch’s test for arsenic was untrusta free pardon. had tried the case, the Home Secretary explained worthy in the presence of chlorates, and that he that the necessity for the pardon arose not from any deliberately gave chlorate of potassium to Miss Bankes fault in the tribunal but " from the imperfection of to defeat the usual test. Dr. Leonard Parry rejects medical science and from the fallibility of judgment, the suggestion on three grounds. Smethurst could in an obscure malady, even of skilful and experienced not be sure that Taylor would (as he did) employ medical practitioners." The medico-legal interest Reinsch’s method only ; chlorates might not have of the trial is thus obvious. We may, perhaps, be destroyed the value of the test entirely; finally, forgiven for adding that Smethurst, himself a medical Fresenius had recommended as the best method for practitioner, had been a contributor to our columns. detecting arsenic a test which involved adding It has even been suggested, as will presently be seen, chlorate of potassium ; if such a method had been that he learnt from THE LANCET how a poisoner used, Smethurst might have been contributing to his While in gaol awaiting trial, Smethurst own downfall. might escape the gallows. In December, 1858, Dr. Thomas Smethurst, who sent a letter to THE LANCET fully discussing the had retired from practice, left his elderly wife and medical aspects of the case. This was naturally went off to live with Miss Isabella Bankes, first going withheld from publication while his defence was in hands of his legal advisers, but it was printed through a form of bigamous marriage with her. Next the March Miss Bankes began to suffer from violent after the trial in our issue of Sept. 3rd, 1859. In diarrhoea and vomiting. Smethurst, nursing her with commenting on the verdict, we observed that the main point on which satisfaction was required was whether apparent devotion, called in Dr. Julius (a local practi- the medical and chemical evidence was sufficient to tioner with a Lambeth doctorate in medicine), Dr. Bird (Julius’ partner), and finally, by way of special prove that Smethurst committed murder. Dr. Parry, of the case, thinks, like Sir opinion in a difficult case, Dr. Todd, physician to in a careful analysis that the evidence failed to prove Brodie, Benjamin King’s College Hospital. The patient grew no better. Julius, suspecting wilful poisoning, had one of the guilt. Lord Chief Baron Pollock, in a final letter to evacuations analysed by Dr. Alfred Swaine Taylor, the Home Secretary, objected that Brodie had taken Professor of Chemistry at Guy’s Hospital, who found no account of the suggestion that Smethurst’s motive arsenic. Smethurst was arrested, but, strangely was to procure abortion-a point little mentioned the trial. In the mass of interesting contemporary enough, was forthwith released to return to the at comment reprinted by Dr. Parry is a letter criticising of victim. Next she his died, bedside day supposed and Smethurst was arrested afresh on a charge of the medical education of the day for its inattention murder, on which he was found guilty. The fact to midwifery. The pregnancy of Isabella Bankes, told against him that, a fortnight before her death,a possible explanation of many of her suspicious he brought a solicitor to Miss Bankes one Sundaysymptoms, apparently took the practitioners by ; one medical witness after another had morning to make a will which left him most of hersurprise that he " never studied that branch." It is said on The rather the dwelt property. judge heavily clear from other letters that the medical profession immorality of Smethurst’s domestic life and on the had misgivings about the part it played in the wickedness of fetching a lawyer rather than a clergyman to the dying woman. But it could be said Smethurst proceedings. Just when public opinion and the reprieve seemed in Smethurst’s favour that, if he stood to gain 1800 by the will, he stood to lose- the income on £5000 to be rehabilitating Smethurst’s character, he was in which she had a life interest. As for the poisoning, put upon his trial for bigamy. A too confident the Crown witnesses suggested repeated doses of reference by his counsel to the pardon in respect of the But no arsenic was found in murder charge drew from Baron Bramwell the some irritant poison. the body, and only from a quarter to a half a grain of dictum that a pardon is no more a certificate of antimony. No arsenic or antimony was found in innocence than a jury’s verdict of " not guilty." Smethurst’s possession, or in his house, or in any of the Although Smethurst was sentenced to a year’s hard food. Ballantine, in his final address to the jury, labour for the bigamy, he had, in one sense, the last admitted that the prosecution did not pretend to say word with the law. Not long after he came out of positively that death was due either to antimony prison, he succeeded in proving Isabella Bankes’s will. or arsenic ; all they said was that death was due "to some poison or other." A FAMOUS TRIAL RECALLED.
could
I
1 Trial of Dr. Smethurst (Notable British Trials). Edited by Leonard A. Parry, M.D., B.S., F.R.C.S. Edinburgh and London: Wm. Hodge and Co. Pp. 259. 10s. 6d.
IT is proposed to endow a bed in the Royal Mineral Water Hospital, Bath, as a memorial to the late Mr. Frederic Weatherly, K.C., who is more widely known as the writer
of songs than
as a
lawyer.