STRANGE POISONING CASE

Gisborne Standard and Cook County Gazette, Volume II, Issue 239, 25 December 1888, Page 3

STRANGE POISONING CASE

WHAT A BAD WOMAN WILL DO. Sydney, Dec. 11. After two juries had failed to secure a verdict on the charge of murdering her second hus and and her first, a conviction has at last been recorded against Louisa Collins for the murder by arsenical poisoning of her second husband, Michael Peter Collins, at Botany, July, 1887. The trial was concluded on Saturday afternoon, when the jury, after an absence of two hours, found the prisoner guilty. The Chief Justice, in passing sentence, said the verdict was the only one that could reasonably have been

arrived at- The murder was one of most peculiar atrocity, as day by day prisoner had watched the man whom above all others she ought to have loved and cherished die from poison she had given him without showing the least mercy. There was too much reason to suppose that Andrews (prisoner’s first husband) had met his death at fprisoner’s hands, and that she had watched his death in the same way. It would b 3 cruel for him (the Chief Justice) to hold out the least hope of reprieve to the prisoner. Mrs Collins, who throughout the several trials has displayed great callousness, heard the sentence of death in the same unmoved manner. Louisa Collins was in a lowly condition of life, her husband working in a fsllmongery establishment. When Andrews (her first husband) was dying she took steps to secure for herself the insurance on his life, and induced him to make a will in her favor, and within a week of his decease she bad become the paramour of Colling, and was attending public dances in his company. The crime was sheeted home to the woman and her two children by Andrews. Their evidence was that while Collins was ill two sorts of milk were used in the house, the ordinary milk and the other condensed or Swiss milk, The latter was kept for the sick man. the children not being allowed to touch it. Before Collins was dead the police, whose suspicions had been aroused, seized a tumbler of the condensed milk preparation from which he was drinking, the woman attempting to snatch it from them, and the fluid was found to be strongly charged with arsenic. The girl also gave evidence as to finding a half-emptied package of“ Rough on Rats,” which preparation contains 17 per cent, of arsenic, on the kitchen shelf, The wretched woman had stoutly protested to the police that there could be no poison becauseshehad attended toher husband and no one else had. This statement, which was a fact, also told against her theory that Collins committed suicide, The latter was not expressed by the counsel for the defence, foi the man was healthy and temperat-H, and not at all the being io kill himself by repeated small doses which subjected him to a lingering illness. The post mortem examination showed that Collins died from arsenical poison, and Andrews expired in the same manner and betraying the fume symptoms, and the doctor who attended him had little doubt that he was misled into giving a false certificate.