Classic Scottish Murder Stories

by Molly Whittington-Egan

  Mrs Smith drove back to her farmstead with her spoil. She was now fully equipped for murder, although there is always a bridge to cross between the means, and the using of it. The purgative may be a red herring. She had not obtained a sufficient quantity for an heroic attempt at inducing abortion by that agent. Her personal need for the stuff could have been genuine. Poisoners have, of course, been known to mask their acquisition with an innocent purchase, and some time later Mrs Smith did go to Mrs Jolly, druggist of Dundee, for one ounce of castor-oil, which might have had some white mustard with it. One ounce of castor-oil might constitute two doses, so that it is not a massive prescription. It was to be suggested that purgatives were employed as the vehicle for the arsenic. The victim would recognise the familiar, reassuring taste of jalap or castor-oil.

  If, theoretically, Mrs Smith, at least at the beginning, intended only to induce abortion, brewing up remedies like a witch and drawing upon her countrywoman’s lore, it is only fair to state that arsenic has been used as an abortifacient. Taylor’s Medical Jurisprudence has, for example, a fatal case of a 22-year-old girl, over five months’ pregnant, who had been advised by someone to take a large dose of arsenic, which did not even have the desired effect.

  The harvest of 1826 had been early, and much of the corn had already been cut, but there was one field of oats, immediately in front of the farmhouse on its sheltering eminence, which had been slower than the rest to ripen. This was the arena chosen by Mrs Smith as a physical ordeal for Margaret Warden, which certainly made the girl think that Mistress was helping her to get rid of the baby. Together with Ann and Agnes Gruar, she was set to shearing the field, and she was seen forking the corn with a will, like Ruth, gleaning in the fields of barley. Mrs Smith had told her that a régime of fasting and hard work, in conjunction with what she would be giving her, would do the trick. Nothing is heard of the young swain, George, who must have witnessed the activities, unless his mother had found an excuse to banish him.

  On Monday, September 4th, however, her strength failed and she sat down by the ungathered sheaves and confided her miseries to her two companions. She said that ‘She was not able for her work, must leave Denside, and did not know where to go because she would rather take her own life than endure the cruelty of her relatives.’ She threatened to ‘put an ill end to herself’. ‘God keep me!’ said Ann Gruar, and went away in fear. There is a legend, apparently a mere tale, although it would have been in character, that at this moment, the Wife o’ Denside glided over from the house and offered the wilting girl a flagon of tea, which revived her.

  On the Tuesday, she toiled all day without complaint, and, in the evening, fell asleep in a chair by the fire while Jean Norrie was working around the kitchen. When it was the girls’ usual bedtime, at 10 o’clock, and they were sitting by the ingle, Mrs Smith came in from the parlour with a glass of liquid, which she kept stirring with a spoon. It was a pretty large dram-glass, about full. Saying that she had already taken her share, she administered one spoonful to Jean – straight into her mouth – and gave the rest, in the glass, to Margaret and the girl drank it in one go. Then she presented Margaret with a lump of sugar.

  Jean said that the liquid was ‘white-like’. It did not taste of castor-oil, which her mistress had given her once before. She had seen cream of tartar in the past, and that was what it really looked like. The girls clambered into their bed in the cupboard and slept. The next morning, when Jean woke up, she found Margaret, nauseous, weakly trying to light the fire. She was cold and shivering. Jean helped her back to bed and then had to leave her, to work outside. At dinner-time, she was still in bed and sorry for herself. In the evening, she was prostrate, with a ‘sore side’ and internal pains.

  ‘Oh!’ she said, taking hold of her friend’s hands. ‘What I ha’e bidden [suffered] this day!’

  ‘Have the Smiths been owning [looking after] you?’

  ‘Rather too weel.’

  Jean mentioned the Grim Reaper, and Margaret said, ‘Some fowk wad be glad o’ that.’

  That night, the two girls shared the bed again, uncomfortably, and Jean found Margaret wide-awake in the early morning. All day long she vomited and purged and begged for water, which she could not retain. All day long she cried for her mother, but Mrs Smith told her, ‘Wheesht and haud your tongue till your physic operate,’ and brought her yet more ‘castor-oil’. Would whisky help poor Margaret? (she asked Jean Norrie.)

  ‘She has got enough of that, or something else,’ the servant replied, ‘for such purging and vomiting I never saw.’

  Mrs Smith went away, vexed. ‘Say nothing to her about it,’ Margaret begged. She whispered to Jean that Mistress had burned her inside with whisky. Jean urged her to take no more of the drinks. ‘Mistress says they’re good for the “wheezle” in my breath.’ ‘Dinna tell me it’s your breath. I ken better!’ said Jean, and Margaret murmured then, ‘I ken ither things, too.’

  On Friday, Margaret was drowsy and ‘queer-like’. Jean Norrie, in close proximity, was only too well-placed to witness her inexorable decline. Faintly, the dying girl said, ‘You ken, Jean, wha has been the occasion o’me lyin’ here?’

  ‘No,’ said Jean.

  ‘Dinna say naething.’

  ‘Dinna you say naething,’ said Jean, ‘for I dinna ken.’

  ‘They’ll get their rewards.’

  ‘If it’s onybody you’re blamin’, you’ll surely forgi’e them,’ and Margaret agreed that she would.

  ‘I’ve told you before no to tak ony mair o’thae drinks the mistress gi’ed you.’

  At last, Margaret’s mother was at her bedside. When Jean was out of the room, she asked her daughter, ‘Has onybody given you onything, or has onybody hurt you?’ This seems a plain enough suspicion, and one would not put it past Mrs Smith to attempt abortion with an instrument.

  ‘My mistress ga’e me it,’ was Margaret’s reply. Her mother felt ‘so sorry’ and ‘there was naething more said on the subject.’ The girl was crying out in great pain and ‘burning’. Her mother felt her hands. They were cold as the coffin and Margaret said pitifully that they ‘wad be caulder yet.’

  At last, a doctor was called. It was the mother, not Mrs Smith, who summoned Dr Taylor, of Broughty Ferry. He arrived at noon on that Friday. Mrs Smith was at the door, ‘knitting her stocking’, a picture of nonchalance. She took him into her parlour and told him that her servant had been ill with vomiting and pain in her bowels, ever since Tuesday. Why had he not been sent for sooner? Because, said the spidery one, ‘She was not aware that her complaint was so serious, and she was a light-headed cutty1 and they had not paid that attention to her that they might have done.’ She had given her nothing but castor-oil during the course of the illness. Then Mrs Smith asked a curious question. It was reported that the girl was with child: would the doctor know so if he saw her? Very likely, he told her, with some irony. Was it not likely, she persisted, that the vomiting and purging would carry off the child, if there were one? She confided in him that a baby ‘would be a stain on the family’.

  Why was she saying all this to the doctor? Was she still not sure that there was a pregnancy? Was she trying to fpuSe his thoughts along the lines of an attempted abortion, howsoever effected, or by whom, in order to distract him from graver suspicions? Dr Taylor was beginning to dislike the direction of the discussion, anyway, and said shortly that he had come for the purpose of seeing the patient, and did not choose to indulge in such conversation.

  He was taken to the kitchen, where he found Margaret Warden just coming out of a fit of vomiting. She looked very ghastly and fell over, almost insensible. The heartbeat was indistinct and rapid – 150 to 160 a minute. He could detect no pulse at the wrist or temples. The extremities were perfectly cold, and there was a cold perspiration all over the body. The arms had a dark appearance. He tried to rouse the girl, but the simplest question exhausted her, and he did not feel justified in continuing. He said later that, ‘I understood her to be with child for
about three months. She said nothing from which I could infer that she had done herself ill.’

  The doctor finished his examination, and Mrs Smith drew him back into her parlour. What did he think of Warden? The straight answer was that she would be dead in a few hours’ time. He did not prescribe any medicine, because he made it a rule not to prescribe for a dying patient. Mrs Smith merely remarked that she had sent for a medical man to take the responsibility off her own shoulders. Was there a pregnancy, then? The doctor said that he had every reason to believe so. The vomiting and purging might displace it, or, on the other hand, might not. Mrs Smith commented that ‘she would take care, though, that it did, as the gudeman [her husband] would tear down the house about her’. I think that this should have been reported as ‘she would not care’. She would hardly have told the doctor that she was contemplating some positive action to encourage miscarriage. The doctor departed. Mrs Smith need not have worried, because he was under the impression that it was a fatal case of cholera.

  After three days of unalleviated suffering, at 9 o’clock on the evening of Friday, September 8th, 1826, Margaret Warden expired. As the grieving mother and friends saw to her body, they marvelled at its dark colouration. Next day, Mrs Margaret Smith, the farmer’s sister-in-law, called to enquire. She asked if it was the fever that Warden had died of, and Mrs Smith said that was right. The girl had been in the family way, she (our Mrs Mary Smith) had heard, but personally, she did not believe it. Why was the body blue? Oh! The doctor had advised her that all who died of the fever were blue. (Dr Taylor did not corroborate that exchange, and he was to repudiate a later assertion by Mrs Smith that he had intimated that the illness was ‘water in the chest’ – i.e. probably left ventricular failure.)

  Although the down-trodden, eleemosynary mother was too intimidated by Mrs Smith to make any noises of discontent, she did tell her other daughter, in confidence, when they were ‘coming to the coffining’, what Margaret had said to her about her mistress. She did not tell her son, ‘because it could not bring her back, and would fetch disgrace upon the Denside family’. Afterwards, she attributed her silence to gratitude to Mrs Machan, who had taken pity on her widowed state.

  In haste, on the Sunday, two days after her death, Margaret Warden was buried in an aura of shame, not suspicion, in the kirkyard of Murroes. The coffin bore the brief inscription, M.W., aged 25. The rumours began within a week. Information was lodged with the Sheriff of Forfarshire, and the body was exhumed by his order on September 30th. They laid the mortal remains of the light-headed cutty on a convenient, flat tombstone and carried out the post-mortem there and then. Carved on the stone underneath, an angel blew his last trump and the four deep occupants arose from their grave.

  Dr Taylor was there as signs of a three to four month pregnancy were found. Portions of internal organs, which were well preserved, were removed and sent to the Crown Agent at Edinburgh for analysis to be arranged. Arsenic was present passim. Mrs Smith was summoned for judicial examination before Christopher Kerr, Sheriff-Substitute at Dundee, but, no longer capable of knitting her stocking, she announced herself prevented from the stress of travelling, by reason of sudden indisposition. The Procurator Fiscal, Dr John Boyd Baxter, appointed Dr Johnston of Dundee, one of the post-mortem physicians, to test her. If he considered that she was well enough to go with him, it was proposed that her precognition should be taken at an inn known as the Four Mile House, situated midway between Denside and Dundee.

  On October 2nd, Dr Johnston examined Mrs Smith at her home and proclaimed her ‘not in excellent health’ but fit to meet the requirement. She was unwilling, but induced to travel in the chaise with him, supported by her husband and one of her sons. Not George, presumably. On the way, Mr Smith remarked bitterly that none of his friends could believe the rumours that had been spread abroad about his wife, and there must have been something more in the matter than he knew of, otherwise gentlemen would not be travelling about the country in carriages. He had heard that poison had been found in the stomach of the dead girl? That was the truth, the doctor assured him, and he trusted that none of his family had given it to her.

  Unwisely, Mrs Smith piped up, ‘Warden vomited so much before her death that I wouldn’t have thought anything could have remained on her stomach.’ Her husband hastily offered the suggestion that more than one of his servants had heard the girl say that she would put away with herself. In the lobby of the inn, when Dr Johnston was satisfied that Mrs Smith felt no worse, the judicial examination proceeded in due form. The husband was allowed to stay, and he made no objections. Mrs Smith was observed to be in her sound senses, quite calm and collected, until the last question was put to her, when she became agitated, gasped, and fell back on her chair, but as swiftly recovered.

  This was the first of two statements, and it did not match Dr Taylor’s recollections. She denied any knowledge of the girl’s pregnancy before she died. Margaret was sometimes not well enough to work, and her difficulty in breathing had been worse in the week before her illness. She herself had asked the doctor if the girl was with child because she was of rather loose character. She had given her a dose of castor-oil at bedtime about a fortnight before she became ill, and just one more on the 4th or 5th of September. It was mixed with some lozenger wine2 in a dram glass or tumbler. She had bought the castor-oil from Mrs Jolly on the previous Friday, together with some mustard and some ‘Arnetta’ for dyeing.

  To her knowledge, she had never had any poisonous substances about the house except that two years ago a ratcatcher had been brought in and he might have used poison for all she knew. The only drug that she had bought at the relevant time came from Mrs Jolly of Dundee. As she answered the questions about drugs, this was the occasion when Mrs Smith dramatically lost her composure. Since both a medical practitioner and an apothecary were waiting in the wings to attest to her purchase of arsenic for rats, she had clearly blundered, but knew not how to escape other than by plain denial. They committed her that night to the Tolbooth in Dundee for further examination.

  The following morning, Mrs Smith’s pack of connections prevailed upon the Sheriff Substitute to meet the Fiscal in the place of her confinement to take a second, voluntary statement from her. She wished to tell the truth and to make some corrections. She now recollected that on that crucial Friday she had acquired ‘something to put away rats’ from Dr Dick. She was not told that it was poison: there was some writing on it but she did not know what it said. She did noGalk for arsenic. Mrs Dick advised her to put the stuff into the holes and craps of the walls, and she did that on the following Monday, inserting it into the crevices in the loft above the bothie. (Servants slept in the bothie, and a hen and chicks were kept in the loft.) Margaret Warden had been with her in the kitchen when she got a plate to mix it with meal. No other servant knew about it. Denside was infested with rats. If you went into the byre, they moved away in front of you like a drove of cattle. The servants complained that they disturbed their sleep.

  Mrs Mary Elder or Smith was committed for trial on December 28th, 1826, before the High Court of Justiciary at Edinburgh. Those two leading lights of the Scottish bar, Francis Jeffrey and Henry Cockburn, were retained for the defence by the munificence of the stunned and outraged husband. On the day, however, the Lord Advocate moved for a postponement. He had learnt only the day before that the defence was that Margaret Warden had committed suicide and he understood that 48 witnesses were to be adduced in support of that contention. He needed time to examine those persons, by Scottish procedure.

  The trial finally got off the ground on February 5 th, 1827, but there was a jinx on it, because at 5.30pm, during the Crown evidence, one of the jurymen, Mr Thomas, blockmaker of Leith, fell into a fearsome epileptic fit, following the unearthly cry which sometimes presages a convulsion. It so happened that the expert witness thus interrupted in full flow was the famous Professor Christison, and he leapt like a mountain goat from the witness box to help the stricken, threshing man – all mov
ement and disorder where formality and restraint should have prevailed. It was a most unusual scene. Other medical men present in court came forward to help, and Thomas was carried insensible into an adjoining room.

  After an hour, he was still not fit to return, and Professor Christison gave formal evidence that although he was considerably recovered, a relapse might be expected and his memory was affected. The Lord Advocate was fast on his feet to submit that the jury should be discharged and a date set for a new trial. The hidden agenda was that the Crown was grasping at the chance of more time for preparation, having been put under pressure by the process called ‘running criminal letters’ which forced the prosecution to proceed within a limited period. Counsel for Mrs Smith would have none of it, and the Court met on February 12th for seven hours of argument, all the Lords of Justiciary attending. It was an important debate, the first occasion on which the legality of resuming a trial interrupted by the illness of a member of the jury had been determined. Mrs Smith was, as it were, half tried.

  Eventually, on February 19th, a full new jury of 15 was empanelled and the case proceeded. When the Crown proposed that Mrs Smith’s two damaging statements should be read out, her counsel objected to them, on the ground that she was subject to an ‘hysterical affection’ – a wandering and weakness of the mind – and that she was especially afflicted in that way before her first precognition. (This does not mean that her sanity was at issue.) The reading was deferred, and Jean Norrie was called. She ‘remembered of Warden saying in the field one day when she was holing a pickle potatoes that she didna ken what to do and she wad surely do some ill to hersel’ ‘. Jean did not believe that Margaret would do it, because she was ‘a rash creature of her words’. She herself had been at Denside since Martinmas, 1825, and milked the cows in the byre, but had never seen a rat there. Her mistress did once tell her that she kept some King’s yellow (orpiment i.e. sulphuret of arsenic) to poison the flies.