Samuel Whalley was indicted at York Spring Assizes in 1821, for maliciously administering arsenic to Martha King, who was pregnant by him. The woman King swore, that the prisoner, after twice trying, but in vain, to prevail on her to take drugs for the purpose of procuring abortion, sent her a present of tarts, of which she ate one and a half,—that in half an hour she was seized with symptoms of poisoning with some irritant poison,—and that she continued ill for a long time after. Mr. Thackrah found arsenic in the tarts that remained untouched, and likewise in some matter that was vomited in his presence after the administration of an emetic, as well as in other vomited matters which were preserved for him between his first and second visits. Her appearance, however, did not correspond with the complaint she made of her sufferings, her pulse and tongue were natural, and on careful investigation the following inconsistencies were farther detected. 1. She said she felt a coppery taste in the act of eating the tarts, a taste which arsenic certainly does not possess. 2. From the quantity of arsenic in the tarts which remained she could not have taken above ten grains, while even after repeated attacks of vomiting, the alleged matter subsequently preserved contained nearly fifteen grains. 3. The matter first vomited contained only one grain, while the matter alleged to have been vomited subsequently contained fifteen grains. 4. The time at which these fifteen grains were alleged to have been vomited was not till between two and three hours after the symptoms began; in which case the symptoms would before that time have been in all probability violent. The prisoner was acquitted, and the prosecutor and another woman who corroborated her deposition afterwards confessed that they had entered into a conspiracy to impute the crime to him, because he had deserted her on finding she was too intimate with other men.