EXTRAORDINARY CASES OF POISONING IN SWEDEN.

Evening Post, Issue 212, 12 October 1865, Page 3

EXTRAORDINARY CASES OF POISONING IN SWEDEN.

A Stockholm correspondent gives an outline of a strange case which is being tried in one of the Swedish courts :— -The accused is M. Lindback, the pastor of Silbodal, in the province of Wermland. MLysen, a retired merchant, lived for some time with the pastor as a boarder. M. Lysen died suddenly some time ago, and suspicions having arisen as to the cause of death, his body was exhumed, and arsenic ¦was found in the stomach. M. Lyaen's death had taken place so far hack as the 17th of Decmber last, and on its being ascertained whtvt had been its cause, it was remembered that the death of a person of the name of Farskog, had occurred under similar circumstances, on the 30th November; and that a widow, Carin Hukin 74 years of age, had also suddenly died on the 19th of October with the same symptoms. In all the three cases death had followed soon after these persons had partaken of the communion, which had been administered to them by the pastor, Lindback, who was accordingly arrested. Daniel Anderson the son of the widow Carin Hukin, who had long been in bad health and confined to bed, had also suffered great pain, and been seized with violent vomitings soon alter he had received the communion from pastor Lindback, though he had recovered from these attacks. This led to further investigations, when arsenic was found to be the cause of death in all the instances that have been adducedInquiries were made as to the reasons which there may have been for this wholesale destruction of life, and though, none could be assigned for the murdef of Nils Patterson and the old woman Hukin, except that of a monomania by which the pastor was endeavouring to rid his parish of some of its indigent poor, it was otherwise as to M. Lysen, for as soon as he was buried the pastor produced an agreement, though it was not signed, by which the heirs of M. Lysen were intended to be bound to pay to the pastor, on the death of his lodger, the sum of 10,000 rix thalers, as bein* due for board while he had been an inmate of the parsonage. It would, however, appear that these have not been the first occasions on which M. Lindbadc has had recourse to such means for the purpose of getting quit of those who stood in his way ; for it now appears that about 30 years ago, when he was a curate at Dalslund, he was betrothed to the daughter of a rich farmer, and having then succeeded in obaining from the father of his betrothed, before payment, a receipt for the price of some land which he had bought from him, the farmer a few days afterwards died from poison, and his daughter, who had thus been robbed of her inheritance, was shortly after turned out of doors. It is said that Lindback attempted to commit suicide by opening a vein, but he was discovered in time, so that his design was frustrated. He was committed to prison at Carlstadt. When put upon his trial, he at once declared his readiness to plead guilty to the charge brought against him of having given poison in the sacramental wine to Nils Patterson, the widow Hukin, and D. Anderson the last of whom, however, had not fallen a victim to his attempt. He could assign no other reason for having done so but a desire to obtain from his parish the riddance of the burden which the maintenance of those indigent people had entailed upon it ; but while he also confessed that he had poisoned the retired merchant M a Lysen, who lodged in his house he admitted that in that instance the hopes of gain, by a succession to the estate of his victim, had been the motive which had induced him to commit the crime. In that case he admitted that the poison had been given on three consecutive evenings in milk, and had consisted of arsenic, whioh he bad extracted from a preparation that had been made for the destruction of rats. There are several dther suspected cases of poisoning, in which the prisener is suspected of having been engaged, extending over the lengthy period of thirty or forty years. M. Lindback was subsequently tried, and sentenced to death. Befoie being taken into court he was deprived of his ecclesiastical vestments, and after sentence

was pronounced the prisoner in the firs instance addressed the judge, and then the governor of the province, concluding with a most affecting speech to the crowd that had assembled, in which he admitted that in his youth he had yielded lo temptations which had led him to the sad and miserable condition in which he was then placed, and I strongly urged them to take warning by his fate, and asserted that though now deprived > of all hope of much longer existence on earth, , be still looked with confidence to Heaven for ; pardoning mercy. After this address he { bowed profoundly, and left the bar in charge lof the guards, with the same dignity and 1 calmness with which he had been accustomed to descend from the pulpit in the parish on , which he has brought so much misery.— Home News.