The Case of the Chocolate Cream Killer

by Jones, Kaye;

  The purpose of the examination was to determine if Christiana was ‘quick with child’, or in a stage of pregnancy whereby the movement of the foetus could be felt. This was the only justifiable reason for postponing an execution. When the matrons had examined Mary Ann Hunt in 1847, they had unanimously agreed that she was not quick with child but she did, in fact, give birth to a healthy baby while awaiting her execution in Newgate. She faced the gallows for the financially-motivated murder of an elderly woman called Mary Stowell but being pregnant had saved her life: her death sentence was later commuted to transportation. As Dr Ryley looked over Christiana, he quickly realised that she was not quick with child but had plead the belly in a desperate attempt to avoid the ‘dreadful doom of the gallows’. He asked her to retract her statement so that she might be spared the ‘distress of a more minute scrutiny’ but she persisted, forcing Ryley to examine her with a stethoscope.

  Ryley, of course, found no evidence that Christiana was quick with child. This was little more than a ruse to save her life and an attempt to evoke sympathy for her ill-treatment at the hands of Dr Beard, the only man she had ever been romantically linked with. When Dr Ryley informed her of the result of his examination, the full peril of Christiana’s situation dawned on her for the first time. Ryley would later write that ‘awful aspect of her despair was very terrible to behold’ and that the jury of matrons began to weep around her as she looked around the room in state of ‘terrible woe’. With a weary agony in her voice, Christiana asked ‘oh, how shall I sleep tonight?’ to which Ryley advised her to ask the prison surgeon for a sedative. As they left the private room and returned to court, here ended ‘one of the most solemn and pitiful scenes’ in which Ryley had ever been an actor.3

  Back in court, the jury of matrons returned its findings and the trial of Christiana Edmunds was formally concluded. She walked unaided from the bar and was escorted back to her cell in Newgate. Her cellmate, Eva Pierlo, was long gone, having served only three days for her charge of bigamy, and Christiana spent the rest of the day desperately persisting in her claim of pregnancy. When offered a second examination by the prison’s surgeon, Christiana said ‘it is of no use now’ and refused to consent.4 With the matter now dropped, she spent a final, lonely night in Newgate. The following morning, she departed London by train and headed to Lewes Prison, the place where her execution would soon take place. On the train, however, Christiana refused to accept that her destination was Lewes Prison. In her mind, she was going back to Brighton and this thought filled her with much contentment. When the train broke from the main line, indicating that her destination was Lewes, she became incredibly agitated and started to shout ‘Dr Beard! Dr Beard! He has been the cause of this!’ Christiana then opened the window and attempted to throw herself out of it. This sudden move prompted quick action from her escort who moved to bring her under his control. He warned Christiana that any similar action would result in her being restrained in handcuffs and this threat appeared to have some effect: Christiana calmed down but raved about Dr Beard for the remainder of the journey.5

  While Christiana awaited the order for her execution, the press hotly debated the verdict of her trial. At one extreme was Reynold’s, a popular Sunday newspaper, which called Christiana a ‘monster of wickedness’ and appeared very sceptical of her alleged insanity, as one writer commented: ‘the method she displayed in attaining her object and the cunning evinced after condemnation in raising the false plea of pregnancy is far more suggestive of extreme shrewdness than of mental imbecility’.6 Other newspapers shared a similar belief; that Christiana’s efforts to hide her poisoning spree showed a ‘consummate art, cunning and skill’ 7 and made her appear bad, not mad. In expressing such views, however, these writers made the assumption that being insane would suddenly lessen Christiana’s ability to solve problems and make decisions. Moreover, by universally condemning her as a cold-blooded killer, they also failed to consider her motivation for committing these crimes, as The Era pointed out. Writers of this weekly newspaper were extremely sympathetic towards Christiana, particularly in relation to her family’s medical history. In one article, The Era admitted that ‘a more awful tale of sorrow than the one wrung from the lips of her mother has never been heard and it makes one’s heart bleed to repeat it’.8 For the same reason, the Illustrated Police News declared that hanging Christiana would ‘bring disgrace upon British justice’.9

  The idea that executing a woman constituted a crime in itself was another sentiment which emerged among some newspapers of the national press. The gentleman’s evening newspaper, the Pall Mall Gazette, was the first to voice this idea10 and, in doing so, echoed a wider social concern about leading women to the gallows. In fact, over the course of the nineteenth century, there was a considerable decline in the prosecution of women for serious crimes, a larger decline in their conviction and a still larger decline in length of their prison sentences. The number of women executed dropped significantly too:11 from 1861 to 1899, for example, only 28 of the 119 women sentenced to death were hanged for their crimes.12 The only figure which rose for women in this period was the number who, like Christiana, plead insanity. Women were twice as likely as men to be acquitted on the grounds of insanity for similar crimes, a figure which increased from seven per cent of acquittals at the beginning of the Victorian period to seventeen per cent by the 1890s.13 It was the redefinition of women from bad to mad that accounted for such changes in their legal treatment. Society found it easier to view female criminals as insane because it complemented Victorian gender ideology which characterised women as sensitive and delicate creatures, prone to bouts of hysteria and weak-mindedness.

  Sympathy for Christiana’s case extended beyond the national press too. In her home town of Margate, a number of clergymen, magistrates and people of influence drafted a petition to Queen Victoria for a royal pardon on 22 January. A similar petition was also created by the people of the city of Manchester, who cited ‘various reasons’ and the ‘special circumstances of the case’ as evidence of the need for royal clemency. Even the people of Brighton, who had once been horrified by Christiana and her crimes, re-evaluated their position. Led by Charles Lamb, the man who had unsuccessfully defended Christiana at her hearing, the petition for a commutation of the death sentence was signed by ex-Mayor of Brighton, a number of magistrates and ‘many other gentlemen’ of the town. Surprisingly, the petition was also signed by two of Christiana’s victims: Elizabeth Boys and Isaac Garrett. 14

  Public petitions to Queen Victoria were accompanied by action from the medical men who had interviewed Christiana in Newgate. On January 19, William Wood, the physician from St Luke’s Hospital, wrote a letter to the Pall Mall Gazette in which he reiterated his beliefs in her insanity:

  I don’t think any person in court who witnessed the almost childlike curiosity with which she walked forward to the front of the dock to hear the decision of the jury, and the absolute indifference with which in that awful moment she heard the dreaded sentence … could doubt that her mind was incapable of estimating the difference between right and wrong as other persons do.15

  Wood and his colleagues sent a certificate confirming Christiana’s diagnosis of insanity to the Home Secretary, Henry Austin Bruce, in the hope of securing a reprieve. Around the same time, Bruce received a letter from Baron Martin, the judge who had condemned Christiana to death, in which he expressed his concerns about her impending execution. This was a significant about-turn for the man who had criticised her defence in court, claiming that an insanity plea was routinely abused by ‘people of means’ in an attempt to evade the gallows.16 Perhaps the judge had developed a view similar to that of the eminent toxicologist, Alfred Swaine Taylor, who provided a logical and almost-scientific view of her case:

  In some trials there has been a tendency to rely upon hereditary predisposition as almost the sole proof of insanity in the criminal. In the case of Christiana Edmunds, convicted of the crime of poisoning on an extensive scale, no
evidence of intellectual insanity or of homicidal impulse could be found. There was a motive, an endeavour to fix the crime upon others, great skill in its perpetration, concealment with a full knowledge of the consequences of the act and an endeavour to avoid the punishment by a false plea of pregnancy. In short, the conduct of the woman throughout was that of a sane criminal. The jury found her guilty; but in consequence of proof being furnished that many members of her family had suffered under insanity in some form, it was supposed that there might be some latent degree of insanity in her case, not discoverable by the ordinary methods of examination.17

  Whatever the reason for his change of heart, the judge’s recommendation was the first stage in the Victorian appeals process and his word prompted a re-investigation of the verdict. The Home Secretary then appointed two physicians to decide if Christiana really was insane. The first man appointed was Sir William Gull, an Essex-born physician, who had graduated MB from London University with honours in physiology, comparative anatomy and surgery. He received his MD in 1848 and had a thriving private practice alongside numerous official appointments, including consulting physician at Guy’s Hospital. He came to public attention in 1871 when he attended the Prince of Wales during a severe illness with typhoid fever and he was knighted in the same month as Christiana stood trial at the Old Bailey. As well-respected and knowledgeable as Gull was, he had very little experience in mental health, having worked only briefly on a lunatic ward at Guy’s in 1843, and the public naturally expressed some concerns over his appointment by the Home Secretary.

  It was hoped, however, that the other man appointed to interview Christiana might make up for any of Gull’s shortcomings. His name was Dr William Orange and he was the medical superintendent of Broadmoor, the state asylum for the criminally insane. Orange was born in Torquay in 1833 and was the son of an independent preacher. He had trained to be a doctor at St Thomas’ Hospital in London and, after qualifying, had travelled the Continent extensively while in charge of a patient. On his return to England, he took the post of assistant medical officer at the Surrey County Lunatic Asylum, leaving to go to Broadmoor in 1863, the year it opened. Orange and Gull visited Christiana in Lewes Prison on 23 January 1872, believing that ‘personal communication’ would be the most satisfactory method of determining her state of mind. There are no surviving minutes of their conversation but Gull drew up a letter to the Home Secretary in which he recorded his and Dr Orange’s thoughts about Christiana. In the letter, Gull states that they talked first with Christiana about her childhood, a period they called ‘tranquil, easy and indifferent’, before moving to discuss her adult life. She told them about her father’s death in the asylum, her brother being ‘idiotic and epileptic’ and Louisa’s repeated bouts of hysteria. She also talked of her arrival in Brighton and subsequent meeting with the Beards. From her account, they concluded that Christiana had suffered from ‘mental perversion’ and ‘defective memory’ for the last three years, a date which roughly corresponds with Christiana falling in love with Dr Beard and the beginning of her plot to kill his wife.

  On the subject of her crimes, Orange and Gull harboured no doubts about Christiana’s guilt and their examination pointed to her ‘weak and disordered intellect’ and ‘confused and perverted feelings’ as the cause of her criminality. At no point did Christiana deny any of the charges against her; she admitted to the purchasing and distribution of poison but she seemed incapable, wrote Gull, of realising that she had committed murder. She, in fact, tried to justify her conduct but Gull provided no examples of her argument, stating only that her reasoning was ‘insane’. After this long conversation, they concluded that Christiana was of ‘unsound mind’ and they required no further evidence to prove it. Gull’s final statement, that Christiana ‘ought to be treated accordingly’, hinted at a reprieve from the death penalty but she would have to wait for a final decision from the Home Secretary before her fate was made clear.

  Two days later, on 25 January 1872, the news Christiana had been waiting for was finally announced: Home Secretary Bruce had accepted the results of Orange and Gull’s interview and declared Christiana insane. Her death sentence would not be carried out and she would instead be sent to Broadmoor Asylum. Christiana’s response to this decision was not recorded but she likely felt much relief at escaping the gallows. For many of the national newspapers, however, the decision constituted a gross ‘miscarriage of justice’ that flew in the face of trial by jury, a British institution.18 As Reynold’s argued, the jury had found Christiana guilty, despite claims of insanity from several esteemed psychiatrists. It was therefore felt that Home Secretary Bruce’s decision impeded the law from running its natural course.19 This left many people feeling that Christiana had been reprieved as a result of her privileged background and social status, not because she was truly insane at the time she poisoned. The Spectator was the first to air this sentiment, claiming that Christiana would have faced the gallows had she been a ‘poor woman’ instead of a ‘lady of refinement’.20 Some newspapers took this one step further by arguing that a stay in Broadmoor was an easy punishment: ‘And the guilty woman [Christiana] was exempted from all penalty but that of living sane among the mad … in theory only equal to life in a nun’s cell’. The problem with such a punishment, the writer argued, was that it gave people of means the impression that they could get away with murder.21

  While it is true that Christiana was the first woman to have her death sentence commuted to incarceration in Broadmoor, this decision was not the result of any special treatment. In reality, her case highlighted the problematic definition of legal insanity and the often-difficult relationship between medicine and the law. That Christiana was not insane in the legal sense of the word could not be contested: she knew that it was wrong to purchase poison under a false name and then disseminate it around Brighton. The problem was that she possessed no understanding of the moral consequences of her actions, a fact confirmed by numerous physicians but one without legal basis or precedent. Coupled with her family’s history of insanity, the authorities began to feel very uneasy about the strength of her conviction. The Daily News considered Christiana’s reprieve a necessary move in the face of ‘haphazard’ and ‘unsatisfactory’ methods of diagnosing insanity22 when, in reality, it was the first time that the authorities – both medical and legal – had dealt with such a scenario.

  But whatever the public thought about Christiana and her mind, they could not undo the Home Secretary’s decision. In Brighton, the news of her respite was met with indignation from the town’s mayor, James Cordy Burrows. The town had paid a substantial amount to prosecute Christiana: for the six-monthly period ending in December 1871, Brighton had spent over £998 on criminal prosecutions, a figure which included her hearing but not the cost of her trial at the Old Bailey or her examination in Newgate by Sir Gull and Dr Orange. To make matters worse, the Home Secretary now demanded that Brighton meet the weekly cost of Christiana’s care in Broadmoor, a fee which amounted to fourteen shillings per week. This was an unusual decision, considering that Christiana’s family were in a position to pay the cost themselves and had made this clear to the Home Secretary. The man who had stepped up financially was Christiana’s brother-in-law, Sydney Cornish Harrington, whose sister, Georgiana, had married William Edmunds before he emigrated to South Africa in 1854. By the time of Christiana’s trial, Sydney was a retired army captain, living in relative luxury with his family in Datchworth in Hertfordshire. Despite their familial connection, Harrington had never met Christiana before she shot to fame and notoriety as the Chocolate Cream Killer but he contributed to the cost of her defence and met with her in Lewes Prison and, later, in Newgate. These meetings had prompted Sydney to write to the Home Secretary to ask that Christiana’s death sentence be commuted. His letter provides a rare glimpse into Christiana’s state of mind at the end of 1871 and his observations led him to the conclusion that she was the most insane person he had ever met. Harrington was struck first by Ch
ristiana’s appearance: her pupils were dilated, her eyes had an unnatural glare and she had a ‘semblance of looking to space, however interested she might be in the conversation’. Harrington commented on the ‘utter impossibility of confining her to any particular subject of conversation’. Every sentence she spoke mentioned Dr Beard and she repeated over and over how she was going to Brighton to see him. In between these chants, she claimed to be a victim of conspiracy and told Harrington that ‘the Police have sent a woman to break me and she has been following me all night’. This was followed by further chants of ‘I am going to see Dr Beard! I am going to Brighton!’ At the end of the meeting, Harrington asked the governor if he might shake Christiana’s hand. The governor consented and Harrington asked: ‘Chrissie, won’t you shake hands with me?’ She replied ‘oh yes’ but had barely touched his hand when she began to chant about Dr Beard and Brighton all over again.

  In his letter, Harrington confirmed the family’s history of madness, beginning with the death of William Edmunds in Peckham House in 1847. He also provides an interesting anecdote about the younger William Edmunds who he claimed had threatened suicide if he could not have Georgiana’s hand in marriage. This dramatic threat so terrified both families that permission was immediately granted and William married Georgiana a few weeks later. Whether his threat was genuine or not, this convinced Harrington of the family’s taint of insanity and had contributed to his belief that Christiana needed care and cure, not a death sentence.23