by Jones, Kaye;
The most marked symptom is the utter insensibility shown by the prisoner [Christiana] to the position she is placed in and the danger she runs. Her whole mind is centred on her letters to Dr Beard, on his conduct in allowing his wife to read them after all that had passed between them, and on the horror she would feel, not at being tried for murder, but at these letters being read in her hearing in court. She further dwelt on her certain belief that Dr Beard desired the death of his wife even by poison; that, though too cautious to speak of it directly, he had hinted at it; and that if so she knew he would marry her. There was no emotion or anguish shown during my two searching examinations.
From these facts I conclude that, while the prisoner has in the abstract without question the knowledge of right and wrong, and knows that to poison is to commit murder, she is so devoid of all sense of moral responsibility that she cannot be regarded as conscious of right or wrong, or morally responsible, in the sense which other men are so. Her family history of insanity, epilepsy and idiocy points to the insane temperament and is consistent with the deduction that the prisoner is morally insane.10
The term ‘moral insanity’ was a familiar one in the later nineteenth century. It was defined as a ‘morbid perversion of the natural feelings’ and caused a person to behave irrationally and antisocially, often with a strong propensity to violence or mischief.11 For Dr Robertson, the cause of Christiana’s moral insanity was clear: she was a victim of hereditary madness, unable to escape the tragic medical history of her father, sister and brother. For Parry, this diagnosis and proof of a hereditary taint provided all the evidence he needed to present a plea of insanity to the court and, if accepted, save her from a guilty verdict.
While Parry worked on Christiana’s case, he had also been retained to defend Reverend John Selby Watson, the only other person on trial for murder in the January session of the Old Bailey. On 8 October 1871, Watson had beaten his wife to death with the butt of a pistol at their home in Stockwell and hidden her body in a closet. Three days later, he penned a suicide note in which he confessed to his wife’s murder and then unsuccessfully attempted to kill himself by taking prussic acid. The crime was every bit as complex and sensational as Christiana’s and, on 10 January 1872, Parry submitted an application to the court to postpone her trial until the fate of the reverend had been decided. In court, Watson pleaded insanity and Parry provided an eloquent defence. He claimed that Watson experienced a temporary loss of sanity after having a difficult marriage and losing his job as the headmaster of Stockwell Grammar School, a post he had held for twenty-five years. The jury accepted these facts as provocation and found him guilty, though they also recommended mercy. Unfortunately, the judge disagreed with their recommendation and sentenced the reverend to death on 13 January 1872.
As the country debated the Watson verdict, the press geared up for the trial of Christiana Edmunds; one, they expected, would ‘acquire a fascination and interest’ not felt since the case of William Palmer in 1856, the notorious Rugeley poisoner.12 On the morning of Monday, 15 January 1872, the wait was finally over and Christiana was taken from her cell in Newgate and led to the Old Bailey, the courthouse next door. Her trial took place in the Old Court, a room described by one writer as a ‘mean place’ in which ‘a surgeon would be ashamed to cut off a leg’. The room was about forty-feet square, with the Judge’s bench running along the north side and bearing the silver sword of justice in its centre. On the west were three windows to light the room under which lay the jury box below and, on the east, rows of benches for ‘privileged spectators’ and representatives of the press. Finally, on the south side, sat the prisoner’s dock; a box with glass panels on two sides and open in the front, with a gallery above for members of the public.
The court room was so packed that its spectators struggled to catch a glimpse of Christiana, the now-infamous Chocolate Cream Killer, as she was escorted to the dock by a ‘hard-faced’ female warder and a male gaoler. Her entrance provided the press with another opportunity to scrutinise her appearance and to try and rectify this ‘young, bright and not uncomely lady’ with the ‘horror of the crime charged against her’ and the ‘dread of the fate to which she stood exposed’.13 Readers of the Daily News were treated to a complete analysis of Christiana’s facial features by one of its writers, in a practice known as physiognomy. This highly popular pseudo-science judged a person’s character from their facial characteristics. Physiognomists believed that the face was a window in to the soul and revealed the true extent of a person’s sense of morality and integrity. That Christiana did not blush or tremble when placed in the dock not only heightened her allure to physiognomists but also made her character more difficult to gauge. The list of her crimes ‘blanched the faces’ of female spectators but Christiana, once again, remained calm and perfectly composed. This led the writer to suggest that Christiana might have once been a governess; a woman driven to patience and self-control after years of teaching under ‘precarious condition’. This might, thought the writer, have also accounted for her rather ‘careworn’ and ‘heard-featured’ appearance. While he admitted that she looked no older than her mid-thirties, Christiana was fast approaching her forty-fourth birthday.
When it came to physical beauty, the Daily News portrayed Christiana as ‘plain’ with a rather dark complexion and a prominent forehead. But there was something about her lower features which truly fascinated:
The profile is irregular, but not unpleasing; the upper lip is long and convex; mouth slightly projecting; chin straight, long, and cruel; the lower jaw heavy, massive, and animal in its development. The lips are loose – almost pendulous – the lower one being fullest and projecting, and the mouth is exceptionally large. From the configuration of the lips the mouth might be thought weak, but at a glance the chin removes any such impression and Christiana Edmunds has a way of compressing the lips occasionally, when the left side of the mouth twists up with a sardonic, defiant determination, in which there is something of a weird comeliness.14
Christiana may not have been the most attractive criminal to grace the dock of the Old Bailey but she remained ladylike and elegant in her style and demeanour. She was dressed in a black velvet mantle, with a small fur tippet around her neck, black gloves and her hair smoothly braided into a chignon. After the clerk of the court read the indictment, Christiana pleaded ‘not guilty’ in a low but firm voice, prompting the proceedings to commence with the prosecution’s opening statement.
The man leading the case against Christiana was William Ballantine, serjeant-at-law and great rival of Christiana’s barrister, Serjeant Parry. Ballantine related the entire facts of the case to the court, beginning in September 1870 and ending in Christiana’s arrest in August 1871. As at the hearing, the court then heard from a number of witnesses, including the family of Sidney Barker, Isaac Garrett, Caroline Stone, David Black, John Maynard and the boys who bought chocolate creams on Christiana’s behalf. Throughout their evidence, Christiana remained calm and controlled as she wrote copious notes and followed each stage of the prosecution’s case. It was only when Dr Beard was called to give evidence that her demeanour changed: ‘her bosom heaved convulsively and her face flashed scarlet’, wrote the Daily News. It took a few moments for Christiana to regain her composure and for her face go return to its state of ‘leaden pallor’.15 Her barrister had objected to the testimony of Dr Beard, believing that evidence from September 1870 was so remote that it bore no relevance to Christiana’s charges. While the judge, Baron Martin, agreed with Parry, that much of his evidence was not relevant, he allowed the prosecution to question Dr Beard and to discuss the nature of his relationship with Christiana. Unfortunately, objections were raised before the public got a chance to hear any of the details:
Serjeant Ballantine: Among your patients was the prisoner at the bar?
Dr Beard: She was.
Ballantine: Did she visit at your house?
Beard: Certainly.
Ballantine: And in consequ
ence of something that occurred, did you make any sensation against her?
Serjeant Parry: I object to this question, in this place, because it does not refer to the particular case we are trying.
Parry was, perhaps, trying to protect Christiana’s sexual reputation by objecting to this question and, fortunately, it was upheld by the judge. When Ballantine withdrew the question, the case for the prosecution was brought to an end and the proceedings adjourned until the next day.16
When the trial resumed the next day, on the morning of Wednesday, 16 January, it was the turn of the defence to make its case to the court. In his opening statement, Serjeant Parry admitted the difficulties he had encountered in preparing his defence:
In my experience at the bar – which is now not a short experience – I never remember any case similar to this. In my reading of the criminal annals, both of this country and others, I never remember of a case similar to this, and I frankly own – I am not ashamed of it – that I feel completely at a loss in my own mind how to place this case by way of argument before you.
The problem was that Parry could not refute the evidence submitted by the prosecution: that Christiana had purchased poison from Isaac Garrett and used it to adulterate chocolate creams that she bought from John Maynard which caused widespread illness across the town and the tragic death of Sidney Barker. Nor could he deny the results of the handwriting analysis which proved that Christiana had forged letters to carry out her poisoning spree and had written the notes inside the poisoned parcels. Above all, Parry struggled to understand why Christiana had killed Sidney Barker, since she did not know the boy and could therefore not have harboured towards him any feelings of ‘malice, hatred or dislike’. Accident or not, the evidence against Christiana as the perpetrator of this murder was overwhelming. Parry instead suggested to the court that Christiana was insane at the time she committed her crimes and he had investigated her family history in an attempt to prove his theory:
Insanity, you know, is an hereditary disease. It sometimes stops at one generation, and revives at another; it sometimes goes directly down from generation to generation. That her father and several of her relatives were insane you won’t have a doubt after the evidence I will lay before you.
First to take the stand was Christiana’s mother, Ann Edmunds, who related the tragic tale of William’s death in the asylum from general paralysis of the insane. This testimony was so filled with sadness that Christiana began to sob and cry bitterly. This was the first time she had displayed any emotion in court and it continued as her mother told the story of her brother, Arthur, and her sister, Louisa. To verify Ann’s story, Serjeant Parry called witnesses from Southall Park and Peckham House, who provided medical certificates relating to William Edmunds’ confinement and death. He also called the proprietor of the Royal Earlswood to prove that Arthur died there in 1866 from epilepsy.
With her family history established, it was time to turn to its effects on her state of mind and Parry spoke first with Thomas Henry Cole, the chaplain at Lewes Prison. Cole had spoken frequently with Christiana from her arrival at Lewes in August 1871 until Christmas, when she was removed to Newgate. His testimony provided the first proof of her insanity:
I noticed a peculiar motion in her eyes and also in their formation the first time I saw her, and there was a vacant appearance in her face. Her conversation was perfectly coherent, but it struck me as very extraordinary, considering the position in which she was placed. I expected to find great excitement and dejection in a person charged with such an offence, instead of which I found she exhibited extraordinary levity, and when I conversed with her about her crime she burst into a life. I reasoned with her, but she seemed incapable of reasoning upon any grave matter. I frequently found her in tears and she would suddenly burst into laughter. I do not think she at all realised the position in which she was placed … I am of the opinion, from all I observed of her, that the prisoner is of unsound mind.
George and Alice Over, Christiana’s former landlords, were the next witnesses to take the stand. They confirmed that a great change had come over Christiana after forming a friendship with Dr Beard. But Serjeant Parry would need more than the word of her friends to convince the jury that Christiana was insane and he proceeded to call, one by one, the medical men who had interviewed her in Newgate. They all agreed that Christiana was of unsound mind and severely lacking in any moral understanding but, on cross-examination, Doctor Charles Lockhart Robertson, the physician appointed by the Court of Chancery, demonstrated a potential flaw in the insanity argument:
Serjeant Ballantine: Had she any moral sense?
Dr Charles Lockhart Robertson: To a certain degree she had.
Baron Martin: Do you mean that if she administered poison to another with intent to kill him she would not know she was doing wrong?
Robertson: I believe she would know that she was doing wrong if she committed an act.17
By admitting that Christiana knew the difference between the right and wrong, Dr Robertson had provided proof that she was not legally insane. Under the McNaughtan Rules, a defendant could successfully plead insanity only if she did not know the difference between right and wrong. After Dr Robertson, Dr Henry Maudsley expressed his belief in Christiana’s moral insanity: ‘I discovered an extreme deficiency of moral feeling with regard to the charge … The prisoner exhibited extreme levity and laughed at the idea of her being executed for what she had done’.
Maudsley’s testimony brought the case for the defence to a close. There had been a lot of talk of moral insanity and Serjeant Parry worried that the jury might not consider this evidence of legal insanity. In his summing up, he clarified the relationship between the two concepts: ‘when a prisoner who had committed a great crime exhibited immediately before and immediately after it, and exhibited a hoity-toityness totally unbecoming her position, it was an indication of deficiency of morals, an indication that the mind was, to a certain extent, diseased’. Serjeant Parry also used this opportunity to remind the jury that Christiana’s family was ‘saturated with insanity’. But, in his closing remarks, the prosecution attacked the insanity defence with several valid points. First of all, Serjeant Ballantine attacked the notion of hereditary insanity by stating that it was a favourite defence among ‘witnesses of this class’ and that it was very much ‘like saying that because a man’s grandfather and grandmother had died of consumption his own lungs must be diseased and liable to give way upon the slightest pressure’. Furthermore, Dr Robertson’s assertion that Christiana knew the difference between right and wrong had ‘completely disposed’ of the defence of insanity. If she knew that poisoning was wrong, said Ballantine, then she was guilty of the crime and had to be sentenced accordingly.18
In his address to the jury, the judge, Baron Martin, urged them to consider the following two questions: firstly, did Christiana give the poisoned creams to the boy, Adam May, to return to Maynard’s for the purposes of selling on to others? If the answer is yes, the jury must deliver a guilty verdict. Secondly, did they believe that Christiana was in a state of mind as to be responsible for her actions? On this point the judge reminded the jury of Christiana’s ingenious methods of carrying out her spree; from giving poisoned chocolates to random children in the street, to giving evidence against Maynard at the coroner’s inquest and forging letters to destroy all trace of her transactions at Isaac Garrett’s establishment. If they believed she was of sound mind, they must return a guilty verdict but if they found her to be insane, they could return a verdict of not guilty on the grounds of insanity.19 The judge then dismissed the jury, leaving them with the monumental task of deciding the fate of Christiana Edmunds.
Chapter Eleven
“A Grievous Tale to Tell”
It took a little over one hour for the jury to agree on a verdict in the case of Christiana Edmunds. She appeared calm and unmoved as the foreman of the jury pronounced her guilty of the murder of Sidney Barker. Serjeant Parry’s defence had failed an
d the room was now engulfed in a ‘death-like stillness’, as the realisation set in. Suddenly the silence was broken by the Clerk of Arraigns who asked Christiana if she knew of any reason why the death sentence should not be passed. With a sudden flush upon her pale cheeks, Christiana demanded that she be tried on the other charges, those relating to the poisoned parcels, so that her whole connection with the Beards might be revealed to the court. It was, she believed, ‘owing to the treatment I have received from Dr Beard that I have been brought into this trouble’.1 The judge, Baron Martin, listened attentively to Christiana and, while not disinclined to believe her, pointed out that no such evidence could affect the outcome of the trial. He then donned the black cap and sentenced Christiana to death.
This should have brought the proceedings to an end but Christiana had one final comment to make. When asked by the clerk if there was any reason why her execution might be stayed, Christiana declared that she was pregnant. This unexpected statement was made ‘without any appearance of emotion and shame’ and was the first time that a woman had ‘plead the belly’ since the case of Mary Ann Hunt in 1847. Whilst there was no real possibility of Christiana being pregnant (she had spent the last five months in police custody, after all), the court had to take her claim seriously. To do this, the court followed the customary practice of selecting a panel of matrons. There was no particular requirement or skill needed to act as a matron: the court simply selected twelve women from the public gallery who were then placed into the jury box and sworn in. The forewoman of the jury, again selected at random, then asked the court for the assistance of a surgeon. Fortunately, there were plenty of surgeons present in court that day but the first one to be suggested refused to assist. He was Nathaniel Paine Blaker, the man who had attended the Beard and Boys households after the delivery of the poisoned parcels, and who wished to have no further part in the Edmunds affair.2 A sheriff then suggested James Beresford Ryley, a surgeon from the Woolwich division of the Metropolitan Police, who duly volunteered his service. From the Old Court, Christiana, Ryley and the matrons were escorted to a private room to begin the examination.
