The stories that crop up from time to time, of persons who have been rendered unconscious by simply waving a chloroformed handkerchief before the face, usually emanate from the fertile brain of some imaginative journalist. As an internal poison chloroform has rarely been used, although there are many cases on record where persons have accustomed themselves to drinking chloroform, until they have been able to swallow it in very large quantities. The one recorded instance in which it was alleged to have been used for the criminal destruction of life was in the remarkable case known as the "Pimlico Mystery." The trial of Adelaide Bartlett for the wilful murder of her husband by administering chloroform to him, was held before Mr. Justice Wills at the Central Criminal Court on April 12, 1886, and lasted for six days. The case attracted considerable attention and interest throughout, which culminated in a dramatic scene at the close, and the acquittal of the accused woman. The strange relations which existed between Mrs. Bartlett and her husband, with whose murder she was charged, the yet more strange relations between her and the man who in the first instance was included in the accusation, together with the exceptional circumstances of his acquittal, and his immediate appearance in the witness box formed a case of peculiar dramatic interest. Thomas Edwin Bartlett was a grocer, having several shops in the suburbs of London, and at the time of his death was forty years of age. In 1875 he married a Frenchwoman, Adelaide Blanche de la Tremoille, who was a native of Orleans, and whom he met at the house of his brother, she being at that time about twenty years of age. After the marriage she went to a boarding-school at Stoke Newington, and lived with her husband only during the vacation. At a later period she went to a convent school in Belgium, where she remained for some eighteen months, after which she rejoined her husband, and settled down to live in London. During Christmas of 1881 she gave birth to a stillborn child, which so affected her that she came to the resolution that she would have no more children. Some four years later Bartlett and his wife made the acquaintance of George Dyson, a young Wesleyan minister, who soon became on terms of great social intimacy with them, visiting and dining with them frequently. The admiration for their friend seems to have been common to both husband and wife. In 1885 Edwin Bartlett made a will, leaving all he possessed to his wife, and making Mr. Dyson and his solicitors his executors. Shortly afterwards the couple removed to furnished apartments in Claverton Street, Pimlico, where they apparently lived on good terms, and were still frequently visited by their friend Mr. Dyson.