The scientific evidence at this trial was given in a very convincing
manner by a Dr. Addington, who had attended the poisoned man and had
examined the body and tested the white powder that had been sent by
Captain Cranstoun. He stated that this was arsenic, and that he had found
the same poison in Mr. Blandy's gruel.
When asked in cross-examination why he believed this to be white arsenic
he described the different tests he had applied to this powder and to a
sample of pure white arsenic that he had purchased, and showed how the
same results were obtained in each case, and concluded with the remark: "I
never saw any two things in nature more alike than the decoction made with
the powder found in Mr. Blandy's gruel and that made with white arsenic."
The judge in his summing up to the jury remarked that the case was one
which was to be made out by circumstances. A great part of the evidence
rested upon presumption, and if the jury regarded the presumption as a
violent one, that is to say, one where the circumstances spoke so strongly
that to suppose the contrary would be absurd, that amounted in law to
full proof.
The jury, after deliberating for five minutes, found the prisoner guilty.
She was executed on April 6th, and left a written confession in which she
stated that she had not been aware that the powder she had given to her
father was in any way noxious or poisonous.
Cranstoun was subsequently prosecuted and outlawed for his share in the
murder.
If the scientific evidence in this early trial was a model of what such
evidence should be, the same can hardly be said of that given at the trial
of Katharine Nairn and Patrick Ogilvie at the High Court of Edinburgh in
August, 1765, for the murder of Thomas Ogilvie, the husband of Katharine.
They had only been married in January of that year, and it was at about
the same time that Patrick Ogilvie, who was a lieutenant in the army, had
returned from abroad. Almost immediately he supplanted his brother in the
affections of his wife, and, a quarrel taking place between the two men,
Patrick was forbidden to come to the house. Shortly afterwards the husband
died, having shown symptoms of irritant poisoning.
According to the story of the prosecution, Katharine told a woman named
Clark, who lived in the house with them, that Patrick had undertaken to
procure poison for her, and that she was going to give it to her husband.
An unsigned letter to Patrick Ogilvie, alleged to be in the writing of
Katharine, with reference to the poison, was put in as evidence.
Testimony was also given by a surgeon of Brechin that Lieutenant Ogilvie
had obtained from him a small phial of laudanum which he said he required
for his own health, and also half an ounce of powdered arsenic for the
alleged purpose of killing some dogs that destroyed his game.
These he had sent to Katharine, who was believed to have put the arsenic
in her husband's tea.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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