THE POISONING CONSPIRACY.

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LX, Issue 16892, 6 February 1917, Page 2

THE POISONING CONSPIRACY.

EXTRAORDINARY EVIDENCE

LONDON, February 4. At the poisoning conspiracy trial st Derby, the Attorney-General, for the prosecution, said the prisoners wi.re dangerous and desperate people, bitterly hostile to Britain, who sheltered fugitives from the army. One man was a chemist of considerable skill, who had specially studied poisons. The Government employed an agent who assumed the name of Gordon, and who ingratiated himself with MrsWheeldon. Another agent named Booth pretended to be a fugitive from the army and a member of the Indepcadev. (Industrial?) Workers of.the World. Mrs Wheeldon told them, poit-on could be dropped in articles to be used and then added: "When I hand +he poison to you, I wash my hands of it, avi will deny ever having given it." Mrs Wheeldon also said she had planned when Mr Lloyd George was staying at the hotel to drive nails dioped m poison into his boots, but his departure for France thwarted the scheme. She also intended "doing McKenna in" by driving a poisoned needle into his skull. Mason had agreed to provide a particularly rare poison for the purpose. Counsel stated that the poison was contained in fonr phials. Two were hydrochloride of strychnine, and cne was an American poison called curare, I'.&ed by natives for poisoning arrows. Booth and Gordon called on Mrs Wheeldon on January Ist, when f fce indulged in blasphemous lano-uage about Messrs Lloyd George and Ifenderson, and expressed the hope tl-at bctn would soon be dead. She said Mr .Lloyd George had been the means of millions of innocent lives being sacrificed, while Mr Henderson was a traitor to the people. Mr Asquith, she said, was the brains of his party, but he was "neither good enough for Heaven ror bad enough for Hell." Mrs Wheeldon, counsel continued, apparently intended to get Gordon to commit the actual crime. Her denunciations included tho King. Booth asked her how she intended to carry out the plot. She replied: "We bad plans, when the Suffragettes had spent .£3OO, to poison them." When the phials were received from Southampton, complete instructions for use accompanied them. The'hearing- was adjourned.