“I, known now as Elmer Ludgrove, and practising as a herbalist in Praed Street, am in reality Ernest Morlandson, late a Doctor of Medicine, found guilty in the year 1906 of murdering Lord Whatley by the administration of an overdose of morphia. This statement can be verified by an examination of my finger-prints, and by a comparison of certain marks upon my body with Dr. Morlandson’s record, in the possession of the prison authorities. “I was found guilty, by a jury of men incapable of appreciating my motives, of wilful murder. My defence is that put forward at the time of my trial, that I believe, and do still believe, that my action was one of mercy rather than crime. As to the motives imputed to me, I affirm that, until shortly before my trial, I had no knowledge that my name had any place in Lord Whatley’s will. “I have spent fourteen years in a convict prison, and have seen all that I loved and honoured languish and die, my beloved wife, my professional status, my good name. I have descended to the uttermost depths, I have drunk the cup of bitterness of its dregs. The iron has entered into my soul. I was condemned to death for an act of mercy; I have lived for an act of justice. “Justice has no quarrel with those who prosecuted me. They did their duty. Nor is her sword pointed against the judge who sentenced me, or the prison authorities who held me in durance. They too but did their duty. It is upon those who condemned me, who, ignorant and careless, disregarded justice as a thing of no account, that the sword of justice has been turned. I have been her swordbearer. “Prison has been to me a hard and bitter school, a grinding University of crime. Here I have learnt the thousand devices by which men deceive their neighbours, the change of appearance, of voice, of character; the discarding of one personality and the assumption of another. I left prison fully prepared to execute the design which I had formed during the long horror of seclusion. “As Dr. Morlandson, I lived in seclusion upon my release. My plans were made; I had leisure and means in which to carry them out. Dr. Morlandson must die, and another must take his place. I sold most of my former possessions, and carried to my retreat only the few things I still required. Among these was a skeleton, which I had acquired many years before. I built my laboratory, and filled it with highly combustible substances. And meanwhile I experimented with new and hitherto unheard-of drugs.