by Carol Baxter
Ironically, men of science had once been feared because of the threat their discoveries posed to entrenched religious views and cultural beliefs; however, the pendulum was beginning to swing the other way. Science itself was coming to be seen as society’s saviour, as the means for determining the truth about subjects as vast as the origins of the universe and as small as the goings-on beneath the human exterior, both physiological and psychological. Yet while scientific knowledge was growing exponentially, the technology of discovery still had its limitations. Thus, toxicological evidence-analysis wasn’t just a craft but an art. And therein lay one of its dangers. The craftsman might be skilled, but was he skilful enough to uncover the truth? It was of little benefit to society—and particularly to the executed—if a ‘murderer’ was later proven innocent because no ‘crime’ had been committed in the first place.
• • •
New South Wales Government Analyst William Hamlet knew that he had to be meticulous and methodical when conducting his investigations because the question of guilt or innocence might hinge on his evidence. The official transfer of the Collinses’ items had occurred at and after the inquest: from Dr Milford to Constable Jeffes, then to himself. Upon receipt he had noted the date and time—Tuesday, 10 July 1888 at eleven forty-five am—before carrying the items back to his laboratory.
Opening the locked tin case, he unsealed the glass jar and began extracting its contents: a human stomach and portions of liver, kidney, bowel and intestines. Liquid spilled from the stomach. He collected it and poured it back into the jar. It was essential that he test all the liquid in addition to the physical remains.
First, he examined the stomach. It was noticeably discoloured, showing signs of inflammation and extensive bruising. The pyloric aperture—the opening that allowed food to move from the stomach into the duodenum—revealed a severe stricture along with parallel bands of discolouration, as if some powerful irritant had passed through at the time of the stricture. Such striations and discolourations were well-known signs of arsenical poisoning.
He washed the stomach so as to gather any poison that might be clinging to it and added the washings to the liquid already in the jar. His preparations completed, he was ready to begin the chemical tests. The coroner had recommended that he begin with the arsenic test. From the sight of the remains, he agreed that arsenic was the most likely cause of death—if the man had indeed died from poisoning.
Instead of using the Reinsch test, he employed the widely accepted Marsh test. It was the brainchild of chemist James Marsh who in 1833 had recognised the need for a definitive arsenic test after a jury failed to convict a suspected and later self-confessed arsenic poisoner. Marsh knew that he had to find some way of isolating the pure element (‘As’, the thirty-third element on the periodic table) from human and animal tissue as well as from the food or drink that served as its vehicle of ingestion. He also needed to establish a method that would reveal the element’s presence by means of its reaction with other chemicals. It took three years. Chemists had already determined that arsenic and hydrogen combined to form the toxic gas ‘arsine’ (AsH3). This knowledge provided the foundation for his testing procedure. The resulting Marsh test could detect arsenic traces as small as two parts per million and would become the standard arsenic test for the next 140 years.
Hamlet poured some of the liquid from Collins’ remains into a glass container and added dashes of acid and zinc. If arsenic were present, arsine gas would soon bubble from the solution. Quickly, he attached a glass tube to the container. The tube had a fine nozzle at its other end, which he trained on a sheet of glass. In the gap between nozzle and glass, he lit an open flame to ignite any escaping arsine gas. When the gas ignited, any metallic arsenic that was present would coat the sheet of glass with a black film.
He needed to be careful, though. If the glass was too near the flame, it could explode into dangerous shards. Even worse was the threat posed by the arsine gas itself. It was so deadly that half-a-dozen chemists had already died from inhaling the gas while performing the Marsh test.
Indeed, arsenic was so deadly that it was called the ‘poison of poisons’. Less than one five-thousandth of an ounce (150 milligrams) could kill an adult. Moreover, not only was it poisonous to humans, it could kill any being with a central nervous system and many plants as well. And it didn’t have to be ingested to be deadly. Inhalation or skin contact could also cause poisoning. It could even be absorbed through the urethra, the vagina or the rectum. A French servant who had failed to kill his mistress with arsenic-laced soup succeeded when he added arsenic to her enema liquid. A German farmer bumped off his wives by inserting arsenic-coated fingers into their vaginas.
Yet in its elemental form it wasn’t dangerous at all, which was fortunate since the shiny steel-grey substance was the twentieth most common element in the earth’s crust. It was also found in spring water and sea water, volcanic emissions and meteorites. It only became toxic when it formed compounds with other elements. One such compound was the original arsenic, the yellow-hued orpiment used as a pigment. The Greeks called it arsenikon, probably from the Persian word for ‘yellow’.
What Hamlet was attempting to find was the arsenic-oxygen compound As2O3. It was generated when ores like gold, copper, zinc, lead and tin were smelted. The elemental arsenic escaped from the hot ore in gaseous form and combined with oxygen in the atmosphere to produce the white crystals known as ‘arsenious acid’ or ‘arsenic’. So much of this deadly poison was produced in the smelting process that alarmed government inspectors had reported in the 1870s that the output of one month’s smelting in a single Cornish factory could produce enough arsenic to destroy every creature on the face of the earth.
Most of the arsenic output ended up in the world’s oceans. As for the rest, it tainted fruit and vegetables, wine, beer and cigarettes, confectionery, candles, cookware and cosmetics, fabrics and furnishings, ornaments, toys and, in some instances, the money used to purchase these goods. Even the air people breathed could contain arsenic as it was released from the coal that heated homes and fired factories. One writer lamented that, through arsenic’s deadly intrusion, homes had been transformed from places of health and happiness into sepulchres.
The amount of arsenic absorbed through these forms of toxic pollution was usually so small that it had little or no medical impact. Of course, sometimes the toxin was introduced intentionally rather than being absorbed unwittingly—not that it was Hamlet’s job to determine intention even if he could detect arsenic in the first place. That was up to the coroner.
As the liquid bubbled, Hamlet watched the glass sheet closely. There. He could see a black film appearing on the sheet of glass. The test was conclusive. Collins did indeed have arsenic in his body.
Hamlet calculated the amount then turned to the other remains. Stomach, kidneys, liver: all showed traces of arsenic. No arsenic crystals could be seen on the stomach coat itself, which was significant. It suggested that the arsenic had been ingested in a liquid solution.
He began testing the other items. The small brandy flask collected by Jeffes contained only brandy and water. The ointment proved to be regular zinc ointment, a simple remedy to dry up a wound or sore. The packet of powder was regular Grey Powder (mercury); he put that aside for later testing as he knew that medical preparations sometimes contained arsenic adulteration. The square medicine bottle contained bismuth, peppermint and traces of hydrocyanic acid (cyanide); he also put that aside for later testing. The bottle of hair dye was composed of nitrate of silver and water. The small nobbler glass was about half-full of a turbid liquid comprising milk and a thickening agent like starch or arrowroot—and something else, as he soon discovered.
Hamlet knew that he need not wait until the inquest’s resumption to report the results of his investigation. Two days after the inquest’s adjournment, he contacted the coroner.
Shiell sent a message to Inspector Hyem, advising that arsenic had been found in Collins’ remain
s and also in the small glass tumbler collected from the Collinses’ bedroom. Since Mrs Collins had repeatedly stated that she alone had given her husband his drinks and medicine, she was the obvious suspect in this apparent poisoning. ‘Arrest her,’ the coroner ordered.
Chapter 11
Suspicion is . . . always an enemy to happiness.
Hosea Ballou, Treasury of Thought
Louisa and her five children were eating their tea in the kitchen when Sherwood and Jeffes arrived at ten to six that evening. Louisa was red-faced and bright-eyed, her usual passivity replaced by the aura of excitement that alcohol seemed to stimulate.
Sherwood called her into the front room where they could talk out of earshot of the children. ‘I want you to accompany me to the police station,’ he said.
‘When am I coming back again?’ she asked innocently, without enquiring why she was wanted at the police station.
Sherwood said nothing. What could he say?
She sank into a chair and covered her face with her hands. ‘I know,’ she said despairingly. ‘I am not coming back again.’
He couldn’t assure her otherwise. Trying to forestall an emotional disintegration, he told her it was time to depart. She would need to dress warmly. The clouds from earlier in the day had drifted away and without their protective barrier the night was chilly.
Silently, she pulled on her outdoor clothing. As she showed no signs of resisting, Sherwood told Jeffes to return home, that he would escort Mrs Collins to Sydney alone.
They trudged past Louisa’s favourite drinking hole, the Botany Bay Hotel, to the tram stop. They were heading to Darlinghurst police station, which sat on a triangular-shaped block at the intersection of Forbes and Bourke streets. As they walked the final short distance from the tram to the police station, Sherwood saw her stagger a few times; however, the chilly air seemed to have a sobering effect.
Reaching the station, he took her into the charging room to question her. He began by asking if she had given anything to Collins. With her defences lowered by alcohol’s mellowing influence, she might tell him everything he needed to know.
‘Yes,’ she replied, appearing ready and willing to discuss Collins’ death.
‘What did you give him?’
‘What the doctor ordered him.’
‘What was that?’
‘Medicine, brandy and egg, milk and eggs,’ she said, then added, ‘I gave him the milk out of a glass.’
‘What became of that glass?’
‘Constable Jeffes took it away.’
This, the policeman presumed, was the glass in which Hamlet had found the arsenic. He asked if she had given her husband anything else.
‘A man named Arthur Hamill prescribed some beer and egg for him and a vomiting powder,’ she said.
‘Who gave him the vomiting powder?’
‘I sent my boy Fred to Evan Thomas’ chemist shop at Waterloo for it, and Hamill gave it to Mick.’
Sherwood made a note to question Hamill, then asked, ‘Did anyone else attend your husband or give anything to him?’
‘Charles Sayers gave him a drink. Mrs Bartington gave him a drink off a quill. Also, Mrs Mudge and Mrs Hamill.’
He returned to the subject of the glass tumbler Constable Jeffes had taken away and asked about its contents.
‘It contained egg and milk which I mixed,’ she reported.
Sherwood decided that he had asked enough questions. She hadn’t confessed to poisoning Collins, yet she hadn’t suggested another likely culprit. The casual interviewer disappeared, replaced by the officious lawman. He said that he was charging her on suspicion of having caused the death of her husband Michael Peter Collins at Botany on or about 8 July.
She made no reply.
He filled in the necessary paperwork then took her to the female cell in the Darlinghurst lock-up.
• • •
Night-time’s broom swept up prostitutes and petty thieves, drunks and vagrants, and deposited them in the lock-up. The stench of unwashed poverty crowded in with them. For some, the lock-up had the familiarity of a second home, no less uncomfortable and a bit warmer than a bed on the streets. For Louisa, however, these companions-in-crime added a new level of horror to the day’s experiences.
Sherwood arrived the following morning to take her to the police court. The magistrate ordered that she be remanded to the women’s ward of neighbouring Darlinghurst Gaol until the inquest reconvened the following Tuesday.
Sydney’s only gaol lay next door to Darlinghurst Courthouse, where the city’s criminal trials were held. These buildings formed their own walled city, with prisoners travelling between the police station, the gaol and the courthouse through convict-hewn underground tunnels. If the inquest jury committed Louisa Collins to stand trial for murder, she would remain locked within these forbidding walls until the trial was concluded—and possibly forever. The unconsecrated soil within the gaol walls contained the skeletons of many an executed murderer.
Chapter 12
Murder most foul.
William Shakespeare, Hamlet
The reports of Louisa’s arrest stoked the flames of what had been only a middling fire. Sydney’s leading newspapers sent their own pressmen to attend the second day of the inquest. The authorities, expecting a sizeable crowd, had moved the inquest to the larger coroner’s courtroom in the grandly renamed Chancery Square in Macquarie Street—once the less auspicious Hyde Park Barracks, home of Sydney’s convicts.
Constable Jeffes was the first to testify. He described his encounters with the Collinses and his search of their bedroom. He listed the items he had taken away, including the small glass tumbler of milk. ‘When I got hold of that tumbler,’ he told the jury, ‘Mrs Collins rose from her seat, got hold of my right arm—the tumbler was in my right hand—and said, “That is nothing.” ’
He had everyone’s attention. This was the first evidence of odd behaviour from Louisa. Did the tumbler contain something she didn’t want the police to know about?
Jeffes reported that she had reacted similarly when he picked up a packet of white powder from the dressing table. He described her attempts to leave the house in the hours after Collins’ death, and he sombrely repeated her remarks that she didn’t want to continue living.
Heads swivelled towards Louisa. Everyone knew that suicide was a mortal sin in the eyes of the church, that God chose when to give life and when to take it away. The law thought similarly, perceiving an act of self-murder—felo de se—as little different to murder itself. As suicide was therefore a crime, an unsuccessful attempt at killing oneself could be punished by confinement in a prison or madhouse rather than expressions of sympathy and support.
Jeffes continued, ‘Her son Arthur Andrews said to her: “What are you talking about? What’s going to become of the children?” She said, “I don’t care about them”—or words to that effect.’
When the coroner asked Louisa if she had any questions to ask the witness, she knew that she had to defend herself against these character-destroying charges. She didn’t want the jurors to think she was a bad mother, one who would choose death over caring for her own children. Worse, if they thought she was a bad mother, they’d be more likely to believe she was a bad wife, the type who might be inclined to poison her husband. She challenged Jeffes about his recollections.
‘You did say you were tired of your life,’ the constable retorted. ‘Twice!’
She lapsed into silence again.
The coroner called the government analyst, the witness everyone was eager to hear. No doubt his testimony would explain why Louisa Collins had been arrested.
Hamlet reported that he’d found nearly two and three-quarter grains of arsenic in Collins’ stomach contents and one-sixth of a grain in the liver portion.1 He then picked up the small glass tumbler that sat among the exhibits, the tumbler that Jeffes said Mrs Collins had tried to stop him taking. ‘This, upon analysis,’ he told the court, ‘was found to contain the tenth part of a
grain of arsenic.’ He added that the bottle of urine yielded a faint trace of arsenic while the bottle containing vomited matter handed him by the constable contained two-thirds of a grain of arsenic.
As it happened, the latter two were the samples that Dr Marshall had tested for arsenic traces without success.
Hamlet’s testimony was a bald and unemotional recitation of the facts as he believed them to be. He made no allusions to the testimonies of others. He offered no speculations as to how or when the arsenic might have entered Collins’ body or who might have administered it. He didn’t even specify what constituted a fatal dose. That was not his responsibility. It was up to the doctors to determine when a substance turned from tonic to toxin.
The coroner recalled Dr Marshall and asked the critical question: how much constituted a lethal dose?
‘From two to three grains of arsenic is a fatal dose for an adult.’
It wasn’t hard for the jurors to make the calculation: there was enough poison in Collins’ stomach contents alone to have killed him.
Just to make sure that the jury didn’t miss this crucial point, the coroner declared: ‘We have now demonstrated that Collins died from arsenical poisoning. The question now is: by whom was it administered?’
The question was largely rhetorical. When Sherwood took the stand and testified that Coroner Shiell’s was the voice of authority ordering Louisa’s arrest, it was clear that the coroner had answered the administration question to his own satisfaction. Still, the inquest continued. Sherwood reported that Louisa had told him multiple times before Collins’ death that she alone was responsible for giving Collins his drink and medicines. Yet later, while being interviewed at Darlinghurst police station, she had mentioned that others had also given Collins drinks.