ARSENIC IN CRIME

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 801, 23 October 1929, Page 16

ARSENIC IN CRIME

AID TO BEAUTY AND POISON FAMOUS MURDERS Arsenic, which has received renewed notoriety through the recent Croydon murder mystery in England, has been copiously sprinkled through the pages of criminology during the last hundred years. But it has its ordinary everyday uses, although these were restricted 70 years ago, when an alarmed Parliament stopped the free sale of the poison, says a London exchange. Parliament was not moved to action without good reason, for in one year arsenic figured in nearly 200 murders, suicides, and accidents. In those days it came easily to the hand of the poisoner and the intending suicide, while it entered into the composition of so many articles, such as glass, wallpaper and flypapers, that it claimed victims of its own. Scientific research, however, has produced substitutes, and tiny particles of poison wafted from wallpapers no longer float about bedrooms.

Early in the present century the cry “Arsenic in beer” was raised, following some deaths in Northern England. Close investigation detected the presence of poison in beer, due to the employment of impure sulphuric acid in preparing the “inverted” sugar used in brewing. Abroad, arsenic is used to brighten the coats of cattle and horses, and in Austria and the adjoining countries a peasant, inured to the poison, will swallow as many as six grains, enough to kill three people. In these cases it acts as a stimulant. Arsenic-eating is not unknown in England, and in the famous Maybrick case it was suggested that the victim had acquired the habit. Rage for Cosmetics

Half a century ago there was a rage for cosmetics, and the fees of the few beauty specialists then in business being prohibitive, young women made use of the well-known properties of arsenic as a sure means of removing face blemishes. They used flypapers to obtain the necessary solution of arsenic. In the Maybrick case it was urged for the prosecution that Mrs. Maybrick had been seen placing flypapers in a dish. - This, it was explained, was in accordance with the craze for cosmetics. The ballad maker did not miss this opportunity, and at markets and fairs the following topical verse was sung: “Oh, my young friends do take care, And of flypapers beware, If you want to take tlie pimples off your face. Try something- else instead. Or in trouble you’ll be led, Like the lady in the Maybrick case.” Arsenical soap became a popular commodity until Sir Thomas Stevenson, the Home Office poison expert, submitted a tablet to analysis. He found that it contained one-ten-milliontli part of a grain, which was represented by a small speck of vapour in a glass phial. Arsenical soap passed away under the various Acts of Parliament to protect the public against deception. Two women, Catherin Flannigan and Mary Higgins, were hanged at Liverpool in ISS4 for poisoning Mrs. Higgins’ husband by arsenic obtained by soaking flypapers. The Maybrick case came five years ■ later. Nearly all the figures in the poison drama have passed away exj cept Florence Elizabeth Maybrick, now I living in America, who was convicted ! of poisoning her husband, but w-as reprieved by the Home Secretary bej cause of a doubt as to the adminis- | tration of the poison. ! She served 15. years in prison and was released in 1904.

The next arsenic sensation w-as the Seddon case in 1911, while eight years ago Harold Greenwood, a Kidwelly (Carmarthenshire) solicitor, who died last year, was acquitted on a charge of poisoning his wife with arsenic. Arsenic w-as used by Major Armstrong, a West-country solicitor aid justices’ clerk, to poison his wife in 1922. Armstrong died on tbe scaffold.