CHLOROFORM AND CRIME

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XXVI, Issue 100, 8 April 1936, Page 9

CHLOROFORM AND CRIME

Anaesthetics Rarely Used ACTION TOO SLOW A burglar who tried to chloroform into unconsciousness a woman who heard him attempting to open a sale at Perth is now probably a wiser man. His victim struggled and screamed when the chloruform-soaked rag was pressed to her lace. The popular idea of “one whiff and all goes blank’’ when anaesthetic is applied to nose and mouth is a fallacy. Chloroform is one of the more slowly acting anaesthetics, liven when a patient in inhaling deeply (apd so helping out its action) induction of consciousness usually takes several minutes. A wiser burglar might have used one of the more rapid anaesthetics, such as ethyl chloride, ethylene, or the very latest vinethene, which brings on unconsciousness in a few secondsif he could procure it. It is a strange fact that anaesthetics have rarely been used in crime. But now and again a criminallyinclined doctor or a dentist has, so to apeak, "exuperimented’’ with anaesthetics as a means of murder, or rather as an accessory. Dr. Thomas Young, an American dentist, got rid of hi a wife with somnoform; Dr. Alice Wynkoppe chloroformed her daughter-in-law and shot her while unconscious. This was a recent case. l'’or many years the death of an English grocer, Bartlett, in 1885, had remained unique in criminal annals as a suspected chloroform murder, the fluid having been not only inhaled, blit swallowed. His wife stood trial for murder, but was acquitted, her defence being that her husband “took chloroform’’ to send him to sleep, and accidentally swallowed some. Under New South Wales law chloroform cannot be obtained except by doctors, dentists, chemists, or veterinary surgeons, though a dilution with spirit is occasionally sold by chemists as a clothes’ cleaner or to apply to an aching tooth. It could, of course, be obtained by robbery, which is probably how the Perth burglar obtained his supply.