United States or Bangladesh ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
And Mr. Cranstoun did accordingly in the April following send her a fresh supply; under the pretence of a present of Scotch pebbles, he enclosed a paper of white arsenic. This she frequently administered in his tea; and we shall prove to you that in June, having put some of it into a dish of tea, Mr. Blandy disliking the taste, left half in the cup.
Mary Blandy was arrested, and hanged on April 6 in the next year, after a trial which caused immense excitement. The defence was that Miss Blandy was ignorant of the nature of the powder, and thought it a means of persuading her father to her point of view. In this belief the father, who knew he was being tampered with, also shared. Cranstoun avoided the law, but died in the same year.
KING'S COUNSEL Did you and the rest of the family observe that Mr. Blandy's looks were as well the last six months as before? Miss Blandy has said to me, "Don't you think my father looks faint?" Sometimes I have said, "He is," sometimes not. I never observed any alteration at all. PRISONER'S COUNSEL Do you, Dr.
What answer did she make? She said, "I have put no powder into tea. I have put powder into water gruel, and if you are injured I am entirely innocent, for it was given me with another intent." What said Mr. Blandy to this?
She used to be backwards and forwards with him in the room. Did you give any intimation to Miss Blandy after the powder was tried? I did not, but went up to acquaint her uncle. He was so affected he could not come down to apprise Mr. Blandy of it. When did she first know that you knew of it? I never knew she knew of it till the Monday.
Blandy, of Kingston, a relation of ours, came to visit us, stayed with me to breakfast, and then went to church with Mr. Littleton, my father's clerk. I went, after they had gone to my father, and found him seemingly inclined to sleep; so let him, retired into the parlour, and wrote to Mr. Cranstoun, as I did almost every post.
Being thus, in a pecuniary sense, once more afloat, the ladies, taking grateful leave of Cranstoun, went home to Henley. We hear nothing further of their doings until some six months after their return, when on Thursday, 28th September 1749, Mrs. Blandy became seriously ill. Mr. Norton, the Henley apothecary who attended the family, was sent for, and her brother, the Rev.
Cross-examined Did you ever see any behaviour of Miss Blandy otherwise than that of an affectionate daughter? I never did. She was always dutiful to her father, as far as I saw, when her father was present. To whom did you first mention that this powder was put into the paper? To the best of my remembrance, I never made mention of it to anybody till Mr.
You will oblige me, if you keep a copy of the letter; but the real letter I would have back, and the real papers, as being my own handwriting, and may be of service to me, to my character after my death, and to my family. There is no occasion of hinting to the judicious reader that in this letter it is plain that Miss Blandy twice solemnly declares her innocence.
Blandy's, which had been made at his house the Sunday seven-night before his death by himself; that she set it in the common pantry, where all the family used to go, and observed nobody to be busy there afterwards; but on Monday the prisoner told her she had been stirring her papa's water gruel and eating the oatmeal out of the bottom; that she gave him a half-pint mug of it that Monday night before he went to bed; that she saw the prisoner take the teaspoon that was in the mug, stir it about, and then put her fingers to the spoon, and rub them together, and then he drank some part of it; that on Tuesday morning she did not see him when first he came downstairs, and the first time she saw him was between nine and ten o'clock, when Miss Blandy and he were together; that he then said he was not well, and going to lie down; that on Tuesday evening Robert Harman bid her warm her master some water gruel, for he was in haste for supper; that she warmed him some of the same, which Miss Blandy carried into the parlour, and she believes he ate of it, for there was about half left in the morning; that she met him that night, after the water gruel, as he was going up to bed; as soon as he got into the room he called for a basin to reach, and seemed to be very sick by reaching several times; the next morning about six o'clock she carries him up his physic, when he told her he had had a pretty good night, and was better; but he had vomited in the night, as she judges by the basin, which she had left clean, and was then about half-full; that on Wednesday the prisoner came into the kitchen and said to her that as her master had taken physic he might want water gruel, therefore she might give him the same again, and not leave her work to make fresh, as she was busy ironing; to which she answered that it was stale, if there was enough of it; that it would not take much time, and she would make fresh, and accordingly did so; that she had the evening before taken up the pan, and disliked the taste, and thought it stale, but was now willing to taste it again; that she put the pan to her mouth and drank some of it, and then observed some whiteness at the bottom, and told Betty Binfield that she never saw any oatmeal settlement so white before, whereupon Betty Binfield looked at it, and said "Oatmeal this!
Word Of The Day