POISON TRIAL DRAMA.

Star (Christchurch), Volume LXIV, Issue 851, 26 August 1933, Page 22 (Supplement)

POISON TRIAL DRAMA.

SEDDON BROUGHT TO BOOK

BATTLE OF WITS BY EMINENT COUNSEL IN OLD BAILEY—PRISONER’S LIFE HUNG ON STRAND OF WOMANS HAIR—DEFENCE THEORY REFUTED—MURDER FOR TWENTY-EIGHT SHILLINGS A WEEK—VISIT TO CHEMIST FOR ARSENICAL FLY-PAPERS ACCUSED FACES RELENTLESS CROSS-EXAMINATION—INHUMAN COOLNESS DISGUSTS JURY.

Marshall Hall, defending Frederick Henry Seddon at the Old Bailey, in March, 1912, had argued that the victim, Eliza Barrow, died of chronic, not acute, arsenical poisoning. He almost achieved his point in a duel with Sir William Willcox, the poison expert—but Sir William borrowed a strand of hair from a woman patient, and after an experiment he was able to refute Marshall Hall’s theory. With Seddon in the dock was his wife. On the fifth day Seddon went into the witness-box, and in the afternoon the Attorney-General, now Lord Reading, cross-examined him, wrote the late Edward Mavjoribanks in his book ‘'Marshall Hall’s Murder Trials.” The first two questions put to Seddon by the Attorney-General could not have been more skilful, and dramatic in their effect, spoken as they were in a cool, courteous tone. "Miss Barrow.” he asked, “lived with you from July 26, 1910. till the morning of September 14, 1911?” ‘"Yes,” replied Seddon. ‘"Did you like her?” —"Did I like her?” echoed the T>ri s o nf n\ ‘‘Yes, that is the question.” Seddon now hesitated, for the only time in the whole of his ordeal, obviously unprepared for this searching question. The question put him in a dilemma; if lie said “Yes” he would be patently a hypocrite; the dreadful meanness of his conduct after her death, culminating in the pauper’s funeral which be gave her, ■would tell even more heavily against him than otherwise. It he said "Xo,” lie would'be strongly prejudiced at the outset. After some hesitation he gave the best aufiwer possible under the circumstances. ‘‘She was not a woman that you could be in love with.” he said, “but I deeply sympathised with her.” "During the time that she was living with you at your house did you advise her on dier financial affairs?”—“Certainly I advised her.” Dead Woman’s Fortune. Then the Attorney-General went through the details of Miss Barrow’s little fdrtune, and made Seddon admit them. "She came you, then, with India Three aud a Half per Cent stock bringing in £ 1 a week, the leasehold propertv bringing in £l2O a year, and over £2OO in the savings bank; that is right?”—“ Yes.” " She remained in your house from that date, July 26. 1910, till September 14, 1911, when you examined all that there was to ” '* On September 14, 1911, when she died, was all the property that was found of lierg a sum of £lO in gold, and furniture, jewellery, and other belongings to the value ol £l6 14/6?” —“According to the inventory taken by Mr. Gregory, a reputed auctioneer and appraiser, it was £lO odd.” lor the rest of the sixth day, and for the greater part of the seventh day, Seddon stood in the box under the patient, relentless, but increasingly intense light of the Attorney-General’s inquiries, all the more deadly because of the unfailing courtesy of that beautiful voice. Parry and Retort. Seddon bad a very quick and agile mind; iftt first his clever parries and retorts were >eiy effective. He had an explanation and a reason for everything. But gradually his Very cleverness and his inhuman coolness began to disgust the jury. Only towards the end did Seddon break out and lose his composure. When he was asked about the counting of the gold on the day of Miss Harrow s death he showed Ids first sign of anger. The prosecution are suggesting that I fl-L the dead woman’s gold. J hat I should bring it down from the top ox the house to the bottom, into the office 2ti the presence of my assistants, and count it up—is it feasible? ... I am not a degenerate. That would make it out that JL was a greedy, inhuman monster. . . . due suggestion is scandalous.” Seddon did himself more good bv this angry outburst than by all his cool cleverness, but he ruined its effect by adding with a sarcastic smile, "I would have all day to count the money.” He again became indignant when Mr. A ttorney came to the statement made by him on hie arrest, when he was alleged to have said, “Are you going to arrest wife, too." * He said the explanation this was that the officer had first said, J'our wife at the station,” I hat, he said, “I swear before Cfod, are the words that took place, and I have been waiting the opportunity to get into this box for to relate the true words that were spoken on this occasion.” "All the statements,” commented the Attorney-General quietly, “that you are making are statements-before God.” Little by little the Attorney-General (then oir Rufus Isaacs) gained ground, and for all his cleverness the soul of Seddon •was laid bare before the Court, if soul it could be called; for its god was gold, gnd his mean, calculating character, which obviously eared for nothing but Seddon and his worldly possessions, aroused the contempt and loathing of almost every-, body in Court. Here was a man who would do anything for gain. "Sever/* said an onlooker, “have I seen a soul stripped so uaked as that.” Mrs. Seddon in the Box. Mrs. Seddon went into the box and was faced by the same ordeal. It was she who had taken Miss Barrow’s banknotes to be cashed, and had endorsed them with a false name and address. She explained that she had never cashed notes before, and that 6he did not like to give her Hid you think it quite an ordinary thing to write your name at the back, or rather to write a false name at the back, when you were asked for vour name?” "Xo, it never struck me. . . I never thought there was any harm in it whatSlic was a harassed woman who had ouce been pretty; now she was aged beyond her 34 years by being Seddon s drudge for so long. She was obviously deeply moved and broken by the tragedv of her position. Even in her examination she broke down when she was asked about Miss Barrow’s death scene. She was, nevertheless, able to describe it in detail till she reached the stage where her husband had “lifted up her eyelid and said—” At this point she began to sob helplessly. “I cannot say it. . . I don’t like to say it.” _ "Xever mind,” said her counsel, “say It low.” "He said.” she whispered, “ ‘Good God, Bhe’s dead.* ** “Did You Smile?” She was one of those people who have s nervous habit of smiling. She was asked about the last dreadful night, when Miss Barrow had called out, “I’m dying,” and »he had taken no steps to fetch a doctor. “Did you tell your husband about it when he came in?” “Yes, I did,*’ answered Mrs. Seddon, with one of her nervous smiles. “Did you smile at it?” asked the Attor-tey-General sternly. “Well. I have a usual way of smiling It almost everything, I think. I cannot help it. It is my way. Xo matter how lerious anything was, I think I would (mile. I cannot help it.” When she crept back to the dock, poor miserable, forlorn woman, she had created tn impression on the jury—which foresha dewed an acquittal—as a woman who had been used and broken by the cruel, cold, mean man—her husband—ancl who counted tor nothing in his life but as a tool aud a Household drudge.

Quite unobtrusively the truth, for all her loyalty throughout the trial, slipped out. " He never used to take any notice when I said anything to him; he always had other things to think of ... I did not tell my husband everything 1 did; he never told me everything.” When Sir William Willcox had been recalled towards the end of the eighth day, and gave the result of his experiment, the atmosphere in court had turned strongly against Seddon. The one great scientific attack on the evidence; against him had been defeated. * There was only one link in the chain of circumstances which was still open to a real doubt, and it was a very material

The weak link in the chain was one of identification. Thorley, the chemist who ultimately had identified Maggie Seddon as the girl who had bought a packet of arsenic fly-papers on August 20, did not come till late upon the scene*. Maggie Seddon was a friend of his daughter’s, and bad called several times to see her at the side door of the shop. He .had seen her on one of these private visits, but did not know her name, and it was only after he had seen Maggie Seddon’s photograph in the newspapers in connection, with the case that he was asked to come down to the police station to identify, among 20 women and girls, the girl who had bought the arsenic papers from him on,, August 26. He at once identified Maggie Seddon, but she and another among the 20 were the only girls with their hair down. Marshall. Hall was confident throughout that Thorley was an honest but a mistaken witness, and this weakness in the

identification of Maggie was a real point for the defence. The matter was made worse by the fact that the police had cross-examined poor little Maggie Seddon before she gave evidence in any court, and had asked her difficult questions which she had answered inaccurately. Fly-papers. She was asked, when the police knew perfectly well that she had done so on.! December 0, whether she went to a chemist's “to purchase fly-papers.” She answered “ Xo,” but her explanation for this was that she misunderstood the ques- j tion, and thought that the police were asking .whether she had ever gone and actually purchased fly-papers. At all events, the girl's slip was used to discredit her evidence at the trial by the 1 Attorney-General, aud Marshall Hall was j able to comment on the un-English and j inquisitorial method by which the police , had approached the daughter of the prisoner at the very outset, not iu the j interests of truth, but to discredit what- j ever she might say on behalf of. her father, j Eight days of this trial had punished \ Marshall cruelly; fie had felt the responsibility of two human lives on his shoulders, one of whom, the woman, he was sure was innocent; for this paramount reason he kept an iron grip on liis self-control, and, knowing his own weakness, studiously avoided any kind of friction with the Bench. When - Marshall Hall rose to address the jury on the ninth day he looked tired and haggard, and years older than at the beginning of the trial. The strain had been, so great that he expressed the hope that this' would be the last capital case of his career. “Gentlemen,” he began, “nobody can attempt to deny that this is one of the most interesting cases that probably has ever been tried in this building or in the building of which it is the successor.” Murder for 28/ a Week. At great length, and with exhaustive detail, he repeated his arguments us to the scientific evidence, and referred with contempt to Sir William Willcox’s "further experiments,” made simply because his primary evidence was “self-destruc-tive.” He went carefully into Miss Barrow’s financial resources, Seddon’s agreement to give her an annuity, and proved that Seddon only benefited by her death to the extent of £ 1 8/ a week. "People.” he said, “do not commit murders for one pound ten shillings a week.” He maintained that if the prisoners were guilty they had shown a refinement of cruelty that was incredible. He asked the jury to think, if the Seddons were guilty, of their cold-blooded patience in sitting near her to watch her die, tortured by an agonising poison, even administering palliatives to prolong her agony in order tr> simulate a natural death. One would search the annals of Italian poisoners in vain to find a parallel. During this passage Mrs. Seddon broke down completely, put her face in her hands, and sobbed hysterically. Marshall Hall put forward finally as the theory of the defence “that in some way or other some portion of the arsenic, not 1 sufficient to cause her death but sufficient ■ in the state in which she was to aggravate the symptoms from which she was suffer- , ing—some portion, by some means or other, got into this unfortunate woman’s j stomach, and so into her body.” Then came his peroration. [There were sensational scenes in the ! climax of this great trial, when, after ; listening to the eloquent addresses of the famous counsel, the judge sobbed while passing sentence. The narrative will be l concluded next week.l j