Blandy, Mary, 1720-1752 -- Trials, litigation, etc.; Trials (Murder) -- Great Britain; Trials (Poisoning) -- Great Britain
and then looked hard at the prisoner, who appeared in great confusion,
and seemed all in a tremble. Her master said further that it was white
arsenic that was put into their wine. This witness then tells you that
she sat up with the prisoner the night her father died till three
o'clock, but the prisoner went to bed about one; that they had no
discourse at all of her father. But the prisoner asked her if she
would go away with her, and offered, if she would go to the Bell or
the Lion and hire a post-chaise, she would give her fifteen guineas at
getting into the chaise and ten guineas more when they got to London;
that, on the witness refusing to comply with this request, the
prisoner burst into laughter and said she was only joking. She tells
you further that she heard the prisoner tell Dr. Addington that she
had given the powder to her father before, and then it was in tea;
that she was afraid of a discovery, so flung it away, and filled the
cup up again, which Susan Gunnell drank, and was ill for a week after.
She says that upon Monday, the 5th of August, the prisoner came into
the wash-house and said that she had been in the pantry eating oatmeal
out of her father's gruel, which she little regarded then. But the
same day, in the afternoon, she saw the prisoner in the pantry, take a
teaspoon, and stir the water gruel, which was in a pan, and then
rubbed it between her fingers; that on the Tuesday evening the
prisoner came into the kitchen to her and said, "Betty, if one thing
should happen, will you go into Scotland with me?" To which she said,
"Madam, I do not know." "What," says the prisoner, "you are unwilling
to leave your friends?" To which the witness replied that, if she
should go there and not like it, it would be expensive travelling. She
says that on Monday morning, the 12th of August, she went on a message
from the prisoner to beg of her father that she might speak one word
with him, which, being granted, the prisoner went up; and that she
afterwards met the prisoner coming out of her father's room, when she
clasped the witness round the neck, burst out a-crying, and said to
her, "Susan and you are the two honestest servants in the world; you
deserve to be imaged in gold for your honesty; half my fortune will
not make you amends for your honesty to my father." She tells you that
her master had been out of order about twelve months before this time,
and that it was at the time when Susan Gunnell was ill by drinking the
tea that the prisoner cautioned her about Susan's drinking her
father's water gruel.
Dr. Addington having been appealed to by the last witness, in the
course of her evidence, is again called up, and confirms all that this
witness has said, except he does not remember the circumstance of
Susan Gunnell's being ill with the tea.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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