JUNE, 2020
NAME YOUR POISON
By: Liese Sherwood-Fabré
In 1815, the case
of Eliza Fenning
seized the British public‘s
attention and became
an obsession as
newspapers across the
nation took sides in
her case. The cook for
the Turner family was charged and tried
for attempted murder of five members of
her employer‘s household. Despite all the
family members recovering after ingesting
some presumed tainted dumplings,
Mrs. Fenning was found guilty and executed.
On one side, the press vilified her
because of her working-class status. The
other side used her case to point out the
problems with the current system, pointing
out many flaws in the prosecution‘s
case. Not long after her death, she was
immortalized on the stage and referenced
during other celebrated cases of poisoning.
(1)
The attention given to this type of
murder far exceeds the actual cases ever
making it to court. In 1849, of 20,000
suspicious deaths in all of England and
Wales, only eleven involved possible
murder by poison. Public fear, however,
fueled an increase in arrests and prosecution,
with the number of trials rising
from seven in 1829-1838; to 23 from
1839 to 1848; to 17, 1849-1858, before
dropping to seven the next decade. (2)
By far, the most common poison was
arsenic. This readily available chemical
was particularly feared because it was
almost tasteless and could be mixed in
food or drink. In addition to being sold
in pharmacies as a medicine, it was a
common ingredient in many household
products, including paint, dye, and even
soap. (3) In 1836, the highly sensitive
Marsh test, named for its discoverer, provided
the first reliable means for identifying
the presence of arsenic, even in the
stomach contents. (4)
While arsenic could be undetectable
to its victim, cyanide had a very distinct
taste and odor of bitter almonds and was
rarely be used for murder. (5) Ingestion
was either by accident or intentional. In
1837-1838, twenty-seven cases of cyanide
poisoning occurred in England. Of those,
almost all were suicides. (6)
Despite the public‘s concern and
fascination with murder by poisoning,
such cases were very rare in the 1800s.
Even Parliament‘s attempt in 1851 to
regulate arsenic sales by requiring pharmacists
to keep a ledger of sales and ordering
certain amounts of arsenic be colored
to prevent murder attempts had
little effect because so few poisonings
were homicides. (7) If taken to trial, such
murders were hard to prove because
other than arsenic, no tests existed to
indicate poison as the cause of death.
Thus, many homicides were probably
never identified as such because such
cases were beyond experts‘ ability at the
time.
Continued on Page 27
26