The Case of the Chocolate Cream Killer

by Jones, Kaye;

  Chapter Eight

  “A Delicate Thing to Allude to”

  On the afternoon of Tuesday 8 August, Christiana and her mother left Gloucester Place and travelled to Brighton Rail Station. Christiana was heading to her hometown of Margate and told her mother and friends that she wanted to look over a house and visit Louisa’s grave. Ann accompanied her daughter to the rail platform and then returned home, an act which filled her with some trepidation. It was not the journey which worried Ann but her daughter’s increasingly fractious and troubled state of mind. She had watched Christiana mentally deteriorate over the last year and knew that her feelings for Dr Beard were the cause of it, though she was powerless to help. For Ann, Christiana’s mind was a ‘delicate thing to allude to’ and she did not discuss it with Dr Beard or any other physician in Brighton. Ann likely feared that Christiana would face a similar fate to her late husband and son and be sent to an asylum, a place synonymous with misery and death in the Edmunds family.

  Ann wasn’t the only person to be concerned about the ongoing changes to Christiana’s state of mind. Alice Over, her former landlady, called at Gloucester Place frequently during this period and, on one occasion, asked Christiana why she seemed so unhappy. She said she felt uncomfortable and as if she were sometimes going mad. There is no evidence to suggest that those closest to Christiana had any knowledge of her poisoning spree but this is hardly surprising; she thrived on the secrets and deception, even though it caused her great anguish. Despite her cunning, one member of her household was starting to become very suspicious. She was the house servant Charlotte, who had observed something strange a few days before the trip to Margate. On the day in question, Christiana had delivered to Charlotte a tray covered in powders, each one in its packet, but partly undone and missing their labels. Christiana instructed her to take the powders away and left without saying anything further. After inspecting the contents of the tray, Charlotte kept one of the packets because she thought it was powdered myrrh, a traditional treatment for skin problems, sore throats and a wide range of other common ailments, but she threw the other powders on the fire. Perhaps after trying the ‘myrrh’, Charlotte suspected that the powder was not as innocent as first assumed and, sometime later, she handed the packet over to Inspector Gibbs.1

  In the meantime, Ann was alone at Gloucester Place and hoping that a trip to Margate might bring some much-needed relief to her daughter’s mind. If not, she vowed to leave Brighton for good, unless Dr Beard and his wife went first.2 Had Ann known the real reason for Christiana’s visit to Margate, she might have carried out her vow much sooner because it was not about looking at a house or seeing Louisa’s grave. It was, in fact, a necessary step in the final phase of her poisoning spree and it began at 19 Albert Terrace, a lodging house owned by a Mrs Bearlings and overlooking the sea only a few minutes away from Christiana’s childhood home in Hawley Square. On arrival, Christiana was greeted by Mrs Bearlings’ servant, Adelaide, who let her a room for the night at the cost of half a crown and then accompanied her upstairs with her luggage. Christiana said nothing about how long she might stay or why she had travelled to Margate alone and this immediately piqued Adelaide’s curiosity. It was unusual to have an unaccompanied lady stay in the house and even her luggage appeared odd to Adelaide: she carried only a small, black, leather bag and a square box wrapped in brown paper and tied up with string. Adelaide did not pry about her stay in Margate but, when she attended Christiana’s room the next day, she took her opportunity to learn more about this strange lady visitor. Adelaide knew she shouldn’t meddle with her guests’ possessions but the large, red box on the table was too intriguing to ignore. When she opened the box, she found two peaches inside and a second box, smaller in size. This box was filled with crystallised sweets and contained a smaller, third box which Adelaide found empty. Seeing nothing else of interest, Adelaide replaced the boxes and left the room before her guest reappeared. Later that evening, Christiana paid for a second night at Mrs Bearlings’ and left at 7:30 am on the following morning. She told Adelaide that she would take the 8 am train to Ramsgate but this was a lie: she went first to London before returning to Brighton in the evening. Ann did not collect Christiana from the station but she was met at the gate by the servant Charlotte, who noticed that Christiana had with her the black leather bag, while the box wrapped in brown paper had mysteriously disappeared.

  On the afternoon of Friday, 10 August, a railway van delivered a parcel to 64 Grand Parade. It had come from Victoria Station in London with the postage prepaid and was addressed to Mrs Emily Beard. A servant took delivery of the package and took it to her mistress in the sitting room. The package was about a foot in length, neatly wrapped in brown paper and Emily wondered if it might be a gift from Dr Beard who was away in the North. She removed the paper, opened the box and found inside some cakes, preserved fruits and gingerbread nuts. Next to these, Emily saw a plum cake, about the size of a tea cup, with some paper wrapped around it on which the sender had written a message:

  ‘A few home-made cakes for the children; those done up are flavoured on purpose for yourself to enjoy. You will guess who this is from. I can’t mystify you, I fear. I hope this will arrive in time for you tonight while the eatables are still fresh.’

  Emily did not recognise the handwriting, nor the sender’s initials, G.M., but she thought the cakes would make a nice treat for herself and her children on Saturday and she re-wrapped the parcel and left it in the kitchen.

  Later that day, the railway van made a second visit to Grand Parade but this time to number 59, the home of Jacob Boys, a retired solicitor, and his family. Emily Helsey, the Boys’ parlour maid, took delivery of the parcel that was addressed to her mistress, Elizabeth Boys, and left it on the sideboard in the dining room. When Elizabeth returned home that evening, she opened the parcel and found two pieces of gingerbread, two macaroons, two cheesecakes and two currant cakes. Wrapped separately were two tartlets addressed to her directly, alongside the following handwritten note:

  ‘I send you some cakes for your two little girls. Those directed to yourself are my first efforts. I hope to see you soon. Your old friend – J.N.’

  Elizabeth did not recognise the initials nor did she like tartlets but, seeing no harm in the gift, she sent the box and its contents upstairs to her nursemaid with instructions to give them to her daughters, Emily and Gertrude, after lunch the next day

  Over the course of Friday, more parcels began to appear across Brighton. On North Street, William Curtis, the editor of the Brighton Gazette, received a round box of crystallised sweets. Isaac Garrett, the chemist on Queen’s Road, was sent two peaches and a half sovereign with a handwritten note that said: ‘The last of my debt and the first of my fruit from my garden.’ Across town, George Tatham, a surgeon and borough magistrate, had also received a box of cakes late on Friday evening. Finally, a box was delivered to Christiana at seventeen Gloucester Place, comprising of some strawberries, two peaches and a pair of gloves. None of the recipients could identify the sender nor the reason for the gifts but, by the next day, the case of the mysterious parcels had taken an unexpected turn, beginning first at 59 Grand Parade.

  It was 11 pm on Saturday night when a messenger came to the home of Nathaniel Blaker, a surgeon, and informed him of a medical emergency at the home of Elizabeth Boys. Blaker left his house on the Old Steine immediately and made his way to Grand Parade where he found two servants, Amelia Mills and Emily Helsey, suffering from ‘considerable collapse, pain and vomiting’.3 He directed his first attentions to Mill who said to Blaker that she felt ‘indescribably ill’ after eating a piece of a tartlet earlier that day. 4 It started with a burning in her throat and chest and, by the evening, the nausea, vomiting and trembling had set in. The other servant, Helsey, had experienced similar symptoms but was already beginning to show signs of improvement. Elizabeth Boys confirmed the girls’ story and explained to Blaker that the tartlet, and a number of other cakes, had been sent to the house
anonymously the day before. Blaker was surprised at the severity of the illness: he thought the fruit inside the tartlet had gone bad and reassured the servants that their symptoms would be short-lived.5 As there was nothing more he could do, Blaker left the house but promised to return the next day.

  Nathaniel Blaker had only taken a few steps along Grand Parade when another servant approached him and asked him to go to Dr Beard’s house at number 64. Blaker knew Dr Beard personally, having worked alongside him as a surgeon at the Sussex County Hospital, and headed directly to the house. On arrival, he found two servants, Emily Agate and Margaret Knight, suffering from the exact symptoms he had just observed at the home of Elizabeth Boys. When he spoke with Emily Beard, she related a tale almost identical to Elizabeth Boys: that the servants had become unwell after eating cakes and preserved fruits from an anonymous parcel delivered to the house the day before. Blaker’s suspicions now aroused, he examined some of the preserved fruit and found it was coated with a fine layer of white powder. Given the nature of the servants’ symptoms, he believed the powder to be a form of irritant poison, perhaps arsenic, but he would need to collect samples and perform an analysis before he could be certain. He gathered as much of the servant’s vomit as he could in a clay jar alongside the remaining preserved fruit. He then returned to the Boys’ house and collected the same, which he took home and locked in a cupboard for safekeeping.6

  Blaker barely slept that Saturday night. The more he thought about the events on Grand Parade, the more he considered the possibility of deliberate poisoning. The servants he examined had displayed all of the classic symptoms of arsenic: a burning sensation in the mouth and throat, nausea, intense pain in the gut, followed by a violent purging of the stomach and bowels. It was, of course, possible that the servants had simultaneously experienced a bout of gastroenteritis, dysentery or, perhaps even, cholera, but this explanation did not account for the presence of white powder on the preserved fruit. As soon as the sun rose, Blaker took the samples to the Sussex County Hospital to have them analysed by a colleague called Walter Smith who worked as a chemist in the dispensary and was familiar with poisoning and its detection. He examined first a 1oz piece of cake and quickly discovered that it contained 580mg of arsenic:7 more than enough to kill two adults.8 His suspicions now confirmed, Blaker rushed to the police station and informed Inspector Gibbs of what had passed on Grand Parade the previous night and handed over all of the evidence he had collected. From there he returned to the Beard and Boys’ household to check on the servants and was relieved to find that all but one had recovered. Amelia Mills, nursemaid to the Boys, remained the worst affected but he felt confident that she would survive this attack and make a full recovery over the next few days.

  Back at the police station, Inspector Gibbs had another visitor in reference to the poisoned parcels. His name was Frederick Humphrey and he was a surgeon who had recently attended a lady in Gloucester Place. The address piqued Gibbs’ interest because of its association with Christiana Edmunds, the lady whose role in the poisoning investigations he was yet to determine. Humphrey confirmed that Christiana was the patient and he had come to seek assistance from the police because he believed she was the victim of deliberate poisoning. He explained that she had received some fruit on Thursday evening after returning from a visit to Margate. After she ate the fruit, she experienced a burning in her throat, some nausea and vomiting; symptoms which Humphrey attributed to arsenic poisoning. On hearing this news, Gibbs accompanied Humphrey directly Gibbs directly to 17 Gloucester Place. When he entered the house, he found Christiana lying on a couch, looking tired and very pale. She greeted him by saying ‘here I am again, Mr Gibbs, nearly poisoned!’ As Christiana described the arrival of the mysterious parcel, her mother handed a green box to the inspector that was addressed to Miss Christina [sic] Edmunds. As he examined the box, Christiana continued: ‘It came on Thursday evening, about 7.30 by post. It is evidently from someone in the town, for it bears the Brighton postmark and it is evident that it is no one acquainted with me or they would have known my address or how to spell my name properly.’ The box was now empty but Christiana informed him that it had contained some strawberries, two apricots and a new pair of gloves.

  ‘And what became of the contents?’ asked Inspector Gibbs.

  ‘Mrs Edmunds ate the strawberries. I ate one apricot, and that was all right but the next was very bitter and I spat it all out, and have been ill ever since.’

  Here, Ann spoke to confirm her daughter’s story. She told Gibbs that after spitting out the piece of apricot, Christiana went to take another bite but Ann compelled her to stop and reminded her of the ‘little boy Barker’ who had so tragically lost his life a few months earlier.9 Not long after, Christiana became unwell and Ann had called on Mr Humphrey to attend to her daughter. She had called on Dr Beard first but he refused to come, a fact Ann kept to herself. When Christiana casually asked about Emily Beard, Gibbs revealed no details but only mentioned that she, Elizabeth Boys and William Curtis had received boxes. Christiana’s parting words taunted Inspector Gibbs: ‘How very strange! I feel certain you’ll never find it out.’10

  The inspector’s suspicions towards Christiana had grown considerably over the last few weeks and her last words only made him more determined to prove her involvement, whatever it may be. He removed from the parcels the address labels and the notes inside and sent them to Frederick Netherclift, the handwriting expert. Gibbs had no other leads and the police came under intense scrutiny as the public panicked amid talk of widespread poisoning. The summer season was Brighton’s busiest time of year and the authorities were keen to solve the case before it impacted on the town’s tourist trade. The Chief Inspector of the Brighton Police, George White, took personal control of the case and launched a public appeal for information, beginning with this notice that he placed in the Brighton Gazette on 12 August:

  Borough of Brighton – Twenty Pounds Reward.

  Whereas some evil predisposed person has lately sent to different families in Brighton parcels of fruit, cakes and sweets, which have been found to contain poison. Notice is hereby given, that whoever will give such INFORMATION to the undersigned as shall lead to apprehension and conviction of the offender will be paid a reward of £20.

  By order of the Watch Committee,

  George White – Chief Constable.11

  The notice makes clear popular feeling to the perpetrator, an ‘evil predisposed person’, who continued to evade detection. That the Watch Committee were willing to pay such a high reward, the equivalent of £1,000 today, demonstrates the severity and urgency of the situation. The sensational nature of the crime enabled White’s words to spread quickly around the country and it was picked up first by The Times who printed the notice alongside details of the parcels and their contents. Within days of issuing the notice, Dr Beard came forward as a witness. He had been away in the North when the anonymous parcel was delivered to his home on 10 August but returned to Brighton as soon as Emily wrote to inform him of the events that weekend. This second attempt on Emily’s life convinced Dr Beard that Christiana was the perpetrator and he felt compelled to share this information with the police, for fear that she might strike a third time. At the police station, he had a private interview with Inspector Gibbs, in which he related the complete history of his relationship with Christiana Edmunds. It was not easy for Dr Beard to relate such personal details. While he stressed that his feelings for Christiana were purely platonic, he knew that any hint of extra-marital romance risked subjecting his entire family to scandal, especially if these details were ever made public. This fear, he explained to Inspector Gibbs, also accounted for his reason to not report to the police Christiana’s first attempt on Emily’s life back in September 1870. In addition, he had no evidence to support his claim, there were no credible witnesses to the event and Ann Edmunds had hinted at the possibility of legal action, should he take the matter any further. Believing there was little more he could do, Dr Be
ard put his wife on her guard and ceased all contact with the Edmunds family.

  For Inspector Gibbs, this fascinating narrative confirmed every one of his suspicions about Christiana and convinced him that she was the perpetrator of the poisoned parcel that was delivered to Emily Beard. Dr Beard’s testimony also provided a plausible motive: Christiana had attempted to murder Emily so she could see have Dr Beard for herself. But what of the other victims? To Gibbs’ knowledge, Christiana and Elizabeth Boys were not acquainted nor was she a friend to William Curtis, the editor of the Brighton Gazette. It made little sense that she would target strangers in such a personal manner but then again, this may have been a deliberate move to misdirect the police’s attention and ensure that the finger of suspicion did not point in her direction. This would also explain why she sent a parcel to herself and allegedly ate its contents. That she targeted high-profile families also suggests that Christiana wanted to finally bring her crimes to public notice and ensure that she received the attention she so desired. Gibbs did not yet know about the parcels received by the magistrate, George Tatham, and the chemist, Isaac Garrett, but interest in the case only heightened as these additional victims became known.

  Gibbs took Dr Beard’s information directly to Chief Inspector White who immediately issued a warrant for Christiana’s arrest. She was to be charged with the attempted murder of Emily Beard but the police needed more evidence from the other victims before they could bring additional charges against her. White accompanied Gibbs to Gloucester Place on 17 August to take Christiana into custody and she neither admitted nor denied her role in the crime: ‘Me poison Mrs Beard? Who can say that? I have been nearly poisoned myself!’12 From Gloucester Place, Christiana was taken to Lewes Prison where she spent the night in custody, ready to face the borough magistrates in the morning. Her arrest had brought the poisoning spree to an end but the police now faced the enormous task of gathering the necessary evidence to secure her committal to trial and, later, her conviction. Some witnesses had already come forward but Gibbs and his colleagues did not yet appreciate the complexity and extent of her crimes. The truth about Christiana Edmunds would dramatically reveal itself in the coming weeks and secure her reputation as Brighton’s infamous Chocolate Cream Killer.