In his room a quantity of small pills were discovered, each containing from one-sixteenth to one-twenty-second of a grain of strychnine, also fifty-four other bottles of pills, seven of which contained strychnine, and a bottle containing one hundred and sixty-eight pills, each containing one-twenty-second of a grain of strychnine. These, it is supposed, he obtained as an agent for the Harvey Drug Co. of America. It was found he had purchased a quantity of empty gelatine capsules from a chemist in Parliament Street, which there is little doubt he had used to administer a number of the small pills in a poisonous dose. Thomas Neill, or Neill Cream, was tried for the wilful murder of Matilda Clover at the Central Criminal Court, before Mr. Justice Hawkins, on October 18, 1892, the trial lasting five days. It transpired that Cream, who had received some medical education and styled himself a "doctor," came to this country from America on October 1, 1891, and on arriving in London first stayed at Anderton's Hotel, in Fleet Street. Shortly afterwards he took apartments in Lambeth, and became engaged to a lady living at Berkhampstead. He was identified as having been seen in the company of Matilda Clover, and also by a policeman, as the man who left the house in Stamford Street on the night that Marsh and Shrivell were murdered. Dr. Stevenson, who made the analysis of the body of Matilda Clover on May 6, 1892, stated in his evidence that he found strychnine in the stomach, liver, and brain, and that quantitatively he obtained one-sixteenth of a grain of strychnine from two pounds of animal matter. He also examined the organs from the bodies of Alice Marsh and Emma Shrivell. He found 6·39 grains of strychnine in the stomach and its contents of Alice Marsh, and 1·6 grain of strychnine in the stomach and its contents, also 1·46 grain in the vomit, and ·2 grain in a small portion of the liver of Emma Shrivell. The jury, after deliberating for ten minutes, returned a verdict of guilty, and Thomas Neill, or Neill Cream, as he was otherwise known, was sentenced to death. He was executed on November 15, 1892. CHAPTER XXII THE HORSFORD CASE TOWARDS the close of the year 1897, a Mrs. Holmes, a widow, was living with her three children at Stoneley, near Kimbolton. She had a cousin named Walter Horsford, a well-to-do young farmer who occupied a farm at Spaldwick about twelve miles away, and who frequently came to Stoneley to visit her. A romantic attachment eventually sprang up between them, which resulted in a too intimate acquaintance. After a while Horsford's affection began to wane, and in the end he married another lady. Shortly afterwards Mrs. Holmes left Stoneley and took up her residence at St. Neots. About December of the same year she wrote a letter to Horsford, informing him of her condition, a piece of news which appears to have greatly upset him, as he was in fear the information might reach his wife.