Arts of the Poisoner.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1424, 15 June 1899, Page 15

Arts of the Poisoner.

HISTORIC CASES OUTDONE BY MODERN INSTANCES. Historians who have written of life in the middle ages have been pleased to .treat poisoning as one of the lost aits. They refer to Lucretia Borgia, the Spara, Mine, de Brinvilliers, and Bianca Cap elk? a 3 if they had carried their formulas as secrets to their graves and had left no hints behind to guide would-be imitators in the preparation of the Aqua Toffana or the Manna of St. Nicholas de Bari, the distillations with which they so successfully summoned death to relieve them of such, persons as were objectionable to them. The stories of the subtle use of sucn preparations by the Borgias ; or of Mine, de Brinvilliers’ experiments upon the patients in the hospitals are typical of the age when women poisoned when they smiled, bub they do not prove that the present day criminal is any less deft in the handlizig of these mysterious destroyers of life

The secret poisoners of the fifteenth century were skilful without a doubt and they surrounded their work with a certain air of mystery that was made possible by the conditions of the times, but one poisoners of the nineteenth century administer their drugs even more cleverly. And the fact that we have no Voisins and Filastis to make a business of poisoning people by the wholesale'for hire is due to our modern methods of detection of crime which make such a trade impossible. Nevertheless we have just as artistic poisoners to-day and they nave found in the mail one of the most adroit methods of administering death to the unfortunate victim of their arts

The poisoning of Mrs Kate J. Adams a few days ago in New York was a striking ilustration of the power of poisons and with its predecessor-—the Botkin case of California — furnishes ample evidence on which to ba.se the assertion that the secret poisoner is not' alone a fifteenth century institution, o • . The poisoning of Mrs Adams and the Filing of Mrs Dunning and Mrs Deane the crime for which Mrs Cordelia A. Botkin is now serving a life sentence in California, were strangely analogous. In instance the poisoner sent the death-deal-ing drug under the guise of a friendly gift and in each instance the poisoner concealed identity bf making use of the edited States mail

The box of poisoned chocolates with which Mrs Botkin proposed to take the life of the wife of the man she loved was mailed in San Francisco and the arsenic did its deadily work in Dover, Del. In the Adams case the package of broino seltzer’in the silver bottle-holder was dropped into the mail box at an out-of-the-way substation in New York and a few days later Mrs Adams was dead, killed by the cyanide of mercury that had been so skilfully mixed with the harmless remedy. In each case the murderer was actuated by malignant passion but was clever enough to realise that the post office provided the safest mode of reaching the victim with the most reasonable certainty of success. So the deadly drugs were dispatched upon their fatal mission and .the success of these attempts to kill at a distance has given the press of the entire continent a topic of discussion for weeks •past. A RHODE ISLAND CASE. Successful as they were in making the Government furnish the facilities for their crime neither Mrs Botkin nor the murderer of Mrs Adams can claim any originality in the despatches of death through the mail Nearly eight years ago a Providence, R. 1., physician made use of this same method of accomplishing a murder and so successful was he that it was only with the greatest difficulty that the crime was traced back to hint. The murders that have attracted so much attention during the past few weeks and the killing of Mrs Josephine A Barnaby by Dr T. Thacker ' Graves wore so similar that it is strange that they have not recalled the famous old case to public notice. *gnt years ago the mysterious poisoning was the chief topic of interest and the phrase “Death in the mail’ was on every tongue. Mrs Barnaby was the widow of a prominent and wealthy Rhode Island clothier, J. B. Barnaby. Dr Graves was not only her physician but her confidential business adviser. When Mr Barnaby died and the wife received her portion of the estate she placed the money in the hands of Dr Graves for investment and shortly afterwards, upon his advise went to the West, hoping that the bracing air of Colorado would help her to regain her shattered health. With her, as companion, was Mrs Edith S. Worrell, of Chester, Pa. Some time after Mrs Barnaby’s arrival in. Denver she received a package in the mail. It was a bottle containing liquor, a large oddly shaped bottle and on the label was written “With best wishes. Accept this fine old Whiskey from your friends in the woods.” There was nothing about the package to attract suspicion for Mrs Barnaby had friends in the Adirondacks of whom she always spoke as her “friends in the vvoods” and she never imagined that the gift had not- come from them. It was April and a few days later a cold rain set in. On the 19th the bottle was opened and twenty-four hours later Mrs Worrell was at the point of death and Mrs Barnaby was dead. The police investigations showed that the whiskey contaui-

ed a large quantity of arsenite of sodium. Then followed the long search for the criminal. The prisoner had covered his tracks well, and Dr Graves was one of the most urgent in demanding that no effort be spared to apprehend the guilty person. Gradually, however, suspicion centered upon him. In spite of the fact that he was a prominent physician with a large practice the police were unable to discover any other person who could have wished for her death .

DISCOVERED BY A REPORTER. When Mrs Barnaby’,s will was read it was found that she had left him a large sum of money and as irregularities in the management of her estate were unearthed the authorities were satisfied that their suspicions were correct. Up to this time however, there had been no positive facts on which to base this opinion and Dr Graves might never have been arrested if Charles E. Lincoln, a reporte ron the “Boston Herald,” had not discovered that when a young man the physician had been the maker of a patent medicine. He immediately instituted a.search for a bottle of the remedy. As it- had not been on the market for years tins was no simple task, but when at last the medicine had been found, and it was seen that the bottle in which it was contained corresponded with the strangely shaped bottle in which the poisoned wluskey^hod been sent to Denver, it was not difficult to secure sufficient evidence to cause arrest. Like the most criminals, Dr Graves had neglected the details of his work, and the things that- had Seemed but trivialities proved his undoing. He was taken to Colorado, where he was tried, convicted and sentenced to be hanged, but he at last escaped the dea~* penalty on the scaffold by killing himself with the poisoii that he knew so well how to use. It is supposed that the drug was taken ,to him by someone who was permitted to visit him in his cell.

So ended the first great murder mystery in which the crime had been committed with the assistance of the postal service, and neither the Botkin case nor the New York poisoning have caused as much excitement as that which resulted from the discovery of the fact that the transmission of death through the mail was a comparatively easy matter.—“ Detroit Press.”