There Must Be Evil

by Bernard Taylor

  23

  Final Days

  Notwithstanding Mr Whitaker’s frustration and disappointment with regard to his claim to his not having been sufficiently reimbursed for his work, he nevertheless continued with his efforts on Elizabeth Berry’s behalf. Among those efforts were those in the preparation of the petition to save her life. And he soon had it complete. However, although he had told her that it was ‘extensively signed by gentlemen of position in the town’, he had not remarked on the general belief that it was unlikely to meet with any success. The petition in question is preserved in the Home Office file on the case. It is a large document, of parchment, with twenty-seven signatories pleading for clemency, prominent among them Dr John Kershaw.

  The fact is that while the petition was being signed by those ‘gentlemen of position’ it was stated in the papers that no steps had been taken by any members of the public with regard to getting up any similar petition. Views on Mrs Berry’s case had been canvassed, revealing a strong feeling that there should be no interfering in the capital sentence. There was no question in the minds of the public at large but that she fully deserved the punishment that the law had ordained. And if there had been some who for a time thought that this attractive little woman was incapable of the unspeakable cruelty of which she had been convicted, they would have had second thoughts on reading of the inquest into the death of her mother. Faced with the evidence of her guilt in that other cold and calculating murder, it would hardly be surprising if any lingering feelings of doubt and sympathy evaporated.

  Notwithstanding, Mr Whitaker sent the petition off to the Home Secretary on the 9 March and received an acknowledgement from Whitehall the very next day, saying that the application would be ‘fully considered’.

  There were no reasonable grounds presented on which Mrs Berry’s death sentence was likely to be commuted, and she must have been aware of this. Had she been found to have been insane at the time of the murder of her daughter then she would not have been given a death sentence, and it was possibly with this in mind that she made the oblique reference to insanity in her petition, and also touched on it far more directly when speaking to the wardress, Miss Clarke, in her cell: ‘As I have been lying here I have been thinking that perhaps after all I might be guilty. I had suffered so much with my head, I cannot account for many things that have happened.’

  Whatever questions might have been raised about her sanity, however, she nevertheless continued to protest her innocence, declaring to more than one of her visitors that if her daughter had been poisoned it had not been at her hands, but by the medicine administered by the doctors.

  And it was Dr Patterson, of course, who came in for her greatest opprobrium.

  Although she had once made it very clear that she had never given any creosote mixture to her sick child, she later changed her story. A memorandum from one of the prisoner’s wardresses on 4 March stated:

  After receiving a letter from Mr Robinson the prisoner said, Yes, if I had studied myself and not others, I should not be here now. It was to save Dr Patterson [that] I told a lie. When I was asked if I gave [my child] a dose of the creosote I said ‘No,’ but God knows I had.

  So she now blamed Dr Patterson for her daughter’s death. And she still had not finished with him, as was made clear during a meeting with another of her visitors.

  This visitor, whom Mrs Berry received in her cell, and quite unexpectedly, was one Joseph Emmett, of Hollinwood. Speaking to the Chronicle of his visit, he said he had known Mrs Berry as Lizzie Welch when, in her teens, she had worked near him at a local mill. He spoke of her there ‘as a very quiet person who did her best to isolate herself from the other workpeople employed near her’, adding, ‘She was at times gay and giddy, but at others just the reverse, and her temper, even in those younger days, could never be depended upon.’ He had met her again, he said, by chance, in 1884, when returning from Blackpool and meeting her and her daughter Edith on a train – both, he recalled, looking well and happy. Now, two and a half years later, reading about her in the newspapers, he had set off for Walton Gaol, hoping for a meeting. There, following a long wait after his arrival, he was given permission to see her, with the official conducting him giving him the interesting instruction: ‘Follow me, and don’t let’s have any nonsense with her; we’ve had quite sufficient.’

  Escorted to her cell, he said he was warmly received, but was amazed at the change in her, finding her ‘aged terribly’, and in her prison garb looking ‘the picture of misery’. As they spoke they recalled happier times, he said, but when their conversation turned to her present situation her composure faltered. She didn’t respond when he mentioned her mother, and when he spoke of her trial she complained that the judge had been against her. As for the crime of which she had been convicted, she told him that she had had no reason to poison her child, having had some £70 in the bank at the time.

  Rising after an hour to take his leave, he asked her if there was anything he could do for her. She replied that he might put some flowers on Edith’s grave.

  Mr Emmett was to give his story not only to the Chronicle, but also to the Oldham Evening Express, and to that paper he told a little more. Under the heading The Oldham Poisoning Case, and the sub-heading A Startling Assertion, it told of his visit to see the prisoner in the condemned cell and of his first sight of her: ‘Mrs Berry was arrayed in an uncomfortable-looking prison dress, several sizes too large,’ he said, ‘and her hair, instead of the usual curly appearance, was quite limp and straight.’ At one point in their conversation, he said, she spoke of the petition whereby Mr Whitaker was seeking to obtain a reprieve for her, at which he had ‘advised her not to build up her hopes too much on this account’. She said she did not do so. The Express article further reported:

  …Presently Mrs Berry turned the conversation to the trial at Liverpool Assizes, and proceeded to discuss the evidence, together with several incidents occurring there. She said she noticed the judge did not favour her from the beginning, though she seemed inclined to think that he should have done so. ‘But,’ said her visitor, ‘Mr Cottingham did his very best on your behalf,’ to which Mrs Berry did not answer. She severely criticised the evidence of Dr Patterson, and…early impressed upon him [Emmett] that she was quite innocent of the crime of which she had been found guilty. In explanation of this assertion she said, ‘If the dear child has been poisoned at all, the poison was given by me as medicine by Dr Patterson’s orders.’ She further told her visitor, whilst alluding to Dr Patterson, that that gentleman’s conduct and actions were not in the slightest such as to lead anyone to suppose that he thought the child seriously ill. ‘What do you think?’ she said to Mr Emmett, ‘On one of the nights when the child was ill, he asked me if I would go to the theatre with him.’

  Not content with criticizing Dr Patterson’s medical expertise, she was now calling into question his morals. This, of course, was a red rag to a bull, and the doctor immediately wrote to the paper’s editor:

  Sir, – The trial of Madame Berry has been no very easy matter for me. For a medical man to make a statement to the authorities that involved a charge of murder against a mother, and a woman whose character, as far as known here, was good up to that time, was a proceeding requiring prudence and caution. In this lengthened trial one thing always sustained me. It was this – with the nurses at the Workhouse I have always been on terms of friendship, but never on terms of familiarity with any of them. In my dealings with Madame Berry, whom I soon found to be untruthful and a person of low morals, I was especially guarded and cautious. I knew during the trial that, whether or not I had acted with prudence and judgement in a matter of great difficulty, no reflection could be cast on my personal relations with this woman, and no attempt or breath of suggestion was ever made of that sort.

  Since the trial at Liverpool, clergymen, solicitors and others have called at my house to congratulate me on my part of the transaction. They all spoke to me in the same strain as did Father Brindl
e when he said to me, “I have read the whole of this case, and have sympathised with you in your difficult position, but you have come out of it with honour and credit.” Strange to say, in the vanity of my heart I had come to almost the same conclusion till I read the paragraph which you allowed to appear in your issue of yesterday, and which caused me more annoyance than all the other incidents of this trial put together. It is as follows: “What do you think,” said the convict, “on one of the nights on which the child was ill Dr Patterson asked me to go to the theatre with him.”

  I suppose if any of us, still unrepentant, had in our ears the ring of the hammer in the erection of our scaffold, and felt the rope tightening round our neck, we should be driven to strange excuses and strange devices. I will, therefore, not speak with harshness of the convict. To those who know my habits I do not need to give the statement a contradiction. They know that I am not a frequenter of the theatre, and none of them has ever seen me with a woman of improper or even doubtful character, either in the theatre or in any place else. To those who do not know me I will show the falsity of the statement by its impossibility. The girl was ill on the nights of Saturday, Sunday, and Monday. On Saturday night I visited her at 10.30, rather too late, I think, to go to the theatre. On Sunday night, I believe, the theatre is not open. On Monday and Monday night the girl was dying, and, as I believed, from the deed of her mother, and I was not likely to ask the honour of taking to the theatre a woman whom I believed to be a murderess. Besides, other people were in the sickroom, Miss Anderson in the morning and Mrs Sanderson at night.

  I do not ask you for an apology for the publicity of this gross untruth. That, I suppose, would be too much to expect. But I do ask you to publish this statement, for I believe that even this convict, to whose lips truth is a stranger, would not have made this statement had she known it would have appeared in print.

  Yours, &c.,

  T. Patterson.

  Beneath Dr Patterson’s letter comes from the editor: ‘We regret that our reporter, in his anxiety to supply graphic and accurate information, should have mentioned Dr Patterson’s name.’

  It was not only to Mr Emmett that Elizabeth Berry traduced Dr Patterson.

  Earlier in this book (p. 54) I quoted from a letter from Mrs Berry to Dr Kershaw. A very long letter, it was written on 10 March from her cell, in an attempt, as she put it, to give ‘a truer account’ of the circumstances surrounding Edith’s fatal illness. Dr Kershaw, in a last bid to save her, sent it at once to the Home Office, where a clerk made a copy, after which the original was returned to the doctor, at his request.

  The copy of the letter has several textual errors of grammar, punctuation and omission, and there is no way of knowing whether such errors were made by Mrs Berry or by the clerk who was given the task of copying the letter out. Whatever the fact, I have added some punctuation here and there and the occasional missing word and upper-case letter where I judged it helpful for clarity.

  The letter is a most interesting document. In it, as seen previously, she wrote of her first days at the workhouse, and of her early conflicts with Dr Patterson. And one thing that is clear from the letter’s content is that she blamed Dr Patterson for everything, including her downfall. In her letter she is, of course, always in the right, always the victim, always presenting herself as the most caring and considerate of mothers, with her sick daughter’s wellbeing always to the fore.

  Of the events surrounding Edith’s falling sick, she writes:

  …All went well until Jan 1st. On Friday 31 Dec I had a confinement case. My patient was very ill when she came, she having been in pain all night Thursday at the Town Hall. I delivered her at 10 a.m. but she sank and died at 4.50. I sent for Dr Patterson at 3 p.m. but he did not come until 6.30. Of course the patient was dead.

  On Jan 1st I came down about 8 a.m., had breakfast, went into the surgery, wrote out my reports for Governor’s office, took the reports into the kitchen and left them on the table for Ben to take up to the office. [I] went through the wards. On coming to my bedroom I looked in to see if the children were up, saw them leave the room…I went on through the wards, came down, went into the sitting room. The children were sat at the table. Edith put her hand on her breast and said, I do feel sick, and vomited. I stayed with her for some time, called Alice Allcroft to bring some water and powders, I having the child on my lap. When I saw her vomit blood [I] sent Alice Allcroft to the lodge for ice which I gave her to suck. When Dr Patterson came [I] told him how she had begun to be ill and showed him vomit which I said I thought came from lungs. He said it might be from lungs but would not say. He went into surgery and mixed a bottle which he said contained iron and bark. While we were in the surgery he said, I should think your child has never been a very strong child. I said, No. He answered, No, she is altogether too fair and too fragile. I felt very sad when he said this. Then he said, Now do not be afraid, children are soon down and soon up again.

  We left the surgery and went through the wards, then returned to the surgery [and] dispensed for House and Hospital. He left the building and I returned to my child and gave her a dose of the medicine and she lay very still for a little time but as soon as she moved she was sick and vomited the medicine, which was black. I removed her to my bedroom and when [I] found she was no better again sent for Dr that evening. He came and said, Do not give her any more of [the] iron mixture and I will mix something else for her as I go downstairs. I did not go down, thinking he would leave it in the surgery or send it up but he did not do so. On Sunday morning he asked me to go the surgery with him. While we were in the surgery he said, Now if we can give the stomach perfect rest for three or four days we shall have some hope.

  She goes on to write of Dr Patterson making the medicine of the creosote and bicarbonate of soda, criticizing his actions and his way of making the mixture:

  …I was not surprised at the manner in which Dr Patterson made the mixture because I have never seen him use a minim measure. I gave her a dose, a desert spoonful. After taking it I gave her an orange with sugar, this was about 2 p.m. on the Sunday. After I went upstairs after tea I gave her another dose and again gave her orange and sugar. After this the vomiting began worse and I let her vomit in towels. I sent for him at 6.30, [and then] sent again to see if he had come. I was almost distracted to see her and could not stop the vomiting. When Dr Patterson did come I said, Dr Patterson, save my child if possible for she is all I have. He appeared struck at the symptoms and said, Did you give her the medicine I mixed today? and I said, Yes, I gave it her twice. I said, Will you bring someone else? He said, Yes, now you keep calm while I come back with Dr Robertson.

  Before he left the room I gave him three towels which were filled with vomit and I said, Will you take these and examine them for I cannot understand this vomit. When he returned with Dr Robertson I told them how much worse she had been that evening. As they were leaving the room I said to Dr Patterson, Shall I pay this gentleman his fee now? thinking he was a physician. He said, Oh no, not now. He went towards the window sill where the medicine bottles were and [said], Which is the bottle I mixed today? and taking up the one he had mixed that day, put it in his pocket. Dr Robertson had left the room when he done this…During Sunday night I remained up with her until 1 a.m. when I was called away to attend a confinement case, and was absent from the room until 3.30 a.m. At that time my patient was confined and when I [had] seen her safe I returned to my child. When Dr Patterson paid his visit on Monday morning I asked him what was Dr Robertson’s opinion of my child and he said he and Dr Robertson could not agree upon the matter. When he paid a second visit in the evening I told him I had given her champagne. He said you ought not to have done so.

  Her letter ending, she blames Patterson to the last:

  …I acted entirely under his direction as to the treatment. Had he been as anxious about her life as I was he would have paid greater attention to her. Dr, I put full trust in him and poison never dawned upon [me] not even when I was told t
hat during my absence on Jan 6 a second post-mortem had been held. Dr Patterson has acted as a traitor to me in every sense of the word. He made my life very unhappy during the greater part of my time at the Workhouse. Often and often have I felt terrified when I have heard his steps approach the place. The vile books he has brought me and his manner to me – in a word had I consented to be his mistress I should not be where I am today. I have proof of this.

  I am Sir,

  Yours sincerely,

  Elizabeth Berry

  In a scenario rich with invention Mrs Berry sets out to destroy Dr Patterson’s reputation, both professionally and socially, and in doing so attempts to boost her claim of total innocence in the matter of her daughter’s death. In an ‘incident’ that she had never reported before, she has him mixing a medicine for her child and then later, after the child has taken the medicine and is found to be close to death, surreptitiously removing the bottle of medicine from the scene: ‘…[he] put it in his pocket. Dr Robertson had left the room when he done this…’ In all, according to Mrs Berry, she was in her extreme situation solely as a result of his incompetence, his dishonesty and his lust for her as a woman.

  By presenting to Dr Kershaw her ‘truer account’ of the circumstances surrounding Edith’s terrible death, she hoped, of course, that he would use her letter in a bid to have her sentence commuted. And, whether he believed her or not, it appears that he did what he could, and forwarded her letter to the Home Office. What he wrote to the Home Secretary in support of Mrs Berry’s ‘truer account’, we do not know, as his letter has not been preserved.

  Whatever the Home Secretary’s response to Dr Kershaw’s approach, Mrs Berry’s situation was not influenced in any way. As noted, her letter was copied, and immediately returned to the doctor. The Home Secretary was of course very familiar with the case, and he would have been likely to have concurred with Dr Patterson when writing that he was dealing with a woman, a convicted murderess ‘to whose lips truth is a stranger’.