POISONED SWEETS.

Dominion, Volume 1, Issue 52, 25 November 1907, Page 5

POISONED SWEETS.

ECHO, OF A TRIAL. ■ . • ;By the death" of Christiana Edmunds, , which has lately' occurred in BrbadmoorCriminal Lunatic ■ Asylum, Eugland, as-the result of seuilo decay, at the age of seventyoight, nn extraordinary crime of almost forty years back is recalled. ■■-■.■ ■It was reported in : the newspapers of tho period at great length, alongside, tho Tichtiorne; trial,.. was , known .as "'the Brigbt-oii Poisoning Case," and attracted, tho. attention of the whole country in the year' 1572 because of its singular circumstances. Almost • everybody associated with the trial, which took place at; tho Old 'Bailoy, has : predeceased the criminal —Baron Martin, tho judge;. Sergeant Sa'llnu'tine, ono of tho prosecuting' counsel; Sergeant Parry, one of tho counsel who defended;'the dis-tinguished'medical'men-who'gave evidence! in support' of tho prisoner's insanity, and Sir William Gull, who was' instrumental, after 'sentence hndbcon passed, in saving the condoinned woman , from the gallows. ' ■ .' 'Christiana Kdniunds, a ladylike woman of easy circunistaiines, lived with her mother at Gloucester-place, Brighton. ' Sho formed acquaintance, as a patient, with : a local medical man and ;his wife, subsequently visited thom, .and in time suoli affection resulted towards tho • doctor that a dramatic episode occurred. Sho gave a cliocolato cream to the-'doctor's wife, which produced illness' suspected , -to have been the result-of-poison. Tlio doctor thereupon terminated his , friendship with her. The presumption was that out of jealousy and to facilitate her own attachment she had attempted to poison the doctor's wife.

This incident occurred in September 1870. Eight months later she began V systematic arid cunning scheme of distributing poisoned cliocolato'.breams to avert. from . herself. suspicion of the earlier offence.and cast it'upon another person. At n large confectionery shop in Great West-street.she purchased, by,sending there a respectable hoy she had met'in tho street, ii bag of chocolate creams. These sho doctored with strychnine, and returned them to the ehop to .'be'exchanged, for a different kind. The poisoned chocolate so received back wore sold—of course, unsuspectingly— to a, Brighton family, and caused tho immediate death of Sidney. Albert Barker, aged, four. ARTFUL SCHEMER. At the inquest Christiana Edmunds volunteered her evidence, and told a very artful and untrue story of having been ill horself as tho result of eating sweets bought' at tho Great West-street shop. The verdict of the coroner's jury was Accidental Death, exonerating the confectioner, a man of.the highest probity. . .■>..■'' For nearly a year aftewards Christiana Edmunds distributed little bags of poisoned chocolates about Brighton, leaving them always in bags obtained at the Great. Weststreet confectioner's, in shops where she was well known, and giving them in broad daylight to children in the streets. ' Six or Bovon children were made dangerously ill, but survived to .give evidence against her at her trial. . • . , She was arrested in August 1871 and tried for the murder of tho boy Barker, and sentenced to death. But it was shown Jjhat hor father—well known as tho architect of Trinity Church and' many other public buildings in Margate—had died in a lunatic asylum;'that her brother' died in the primeof life as an epileptic idiot in Earlswood Asylum; that both her grandparents and other relatives wero insano, and tho Home Secretary, Mr. Bruce, on a report from Sir Win. Gull, stayed the execution, and ultimately sent her to Broadmoor, whero sho has lived for thirty-five years.