‘I don’t know that the draught was poison …’
John Hunter
IT WAS BY NOW EARLY AFTERNOON, and the court had been sitting for over six hours.
It was the turn of the servants of Lawford Hall to give their testimony: servants which, according to both Donellan and to local newspapers after the event, had been subjected to immense pressure by the prosecuting team. In addition to Sarah Blundell’s supposed deathbed questioning by Mr Balguy, the Northampton Mercury of 30 April 1781 reported:
Since the Inquest was taken, several gentlemen in the neighbourhood of Lawford Hall have at different times sent for the witnesses against John Donellan to their respective houses and extorted many things from them which are intended to be adduced at the trial. They even went so far as to threaten them with imprisonment and other punishments and, calling their Clerks, have given them absolute orders to make out commitments if they did not say something against Mr Donellan.
If this is true, the effect on the household servants would have been extreme. Not only would testimony in Donellan’s favour undoubtedly mean that they would lose their jobs, but possibly also the jobs of any family members employed by Boughton tenant farmers in the area – a penalty that could be easily imposed by Lady Boughton. The extra threat of imprisonment would have been too much to bear. These were not literate, educated people; they would have had no real idea of the powers of lawyers, but they would certainly have known the power of the tight-knit aristocratic community which owned their servants as effectively as they owned their vast estates. Sarah Blundell’s example was very recent proof that, once out of favour, a woman could be thrown out of work and accommodation; and without the ‘good character’ of their past employers, any working person’s future was indeterminate, if not lost.
William Frost, the coachman, was the first to testify.
He confirmed that there had been an arrangement for Donellan and Anna Maria to ride to Newnham Wells together on the morning of 30 August. He also said that Donellan came out at seven o’clock, and then went back inside to see where Lady Boughton was. Returning, he said, ‘Lady Boughton is not ready yet; I will go to the Wells’, and rode away. Frost took Anna Maria’s horse back into the stable, and it was only ‘a considerable time’ later that she rushed downstairs and told him to fetch Powell, saying that her son was ‘dangerously ill’.
The prosecuting counsel, Digby, left the subject; which is unsurprising, as Frost – whatever pressure he might have been under – had just confirmed the time lapse as portrayed by Donellan. ‘A considerable time’ is not the ‘five minutes’ described by Anna Maria. Frost then confirmed that he was called into the parlour to confirm these times as ‘evidence’.
Frost was not cross-examined.
The next servant to be called was Samuel Frost.
(Incidentally, there is no record of whether William Frost and Samuel Frost were related, although it is possible that they were brothers, as they were both referred to as ‘young men’. Similarly, there is no statement of the relationship between Catharine and Francis Amos, the cook–maid and the gardener. However, it is likely that Catharine was Francis’s wife, as according to the Newbold parish register a Francis Amos married a Catharine Palmer in February 1781.
To the prosecution, Samuel Frost now testified that he delivered Theodosius’s medicine into his hands between five and six o’clock on the evening of 29 August, and that Theodosius took it upstairs. Under cross-examination, Frost said that Donellan joined Anna Maria and Theodosia at seven o’clock in the garden – which ties in with Anna Maria’s story. Donellan, however, claimed that he was with Anna Maria all afternoon until Dand and Matthews called at six o’clock. According to Donellan, he was walking to the mill by the time Frost said he saw him in the garden.
The next witness was Mary Lynne, who had been Donellan’s own servant.
Mary’s answers were strained and nervous:
Q: How long before Sir Theodosius died?
A: I was not there at his death; I had left the place then.
Q: When did you leave it?
A: I cannot justly tell when I did leave it.
Q: Was it a month or six weeks before Sir Theodosius’s death?
A: About a month, I believe.
Q: How long had you lived there before you left that place?
A: I cannot justly tell …
Q: Did you live there a twelvemonth, or half a year?
A: No.
Q: Might you have been there three or four months?
A: I might …
Q: Do you know anything about a still?
A: Yes.
Q: Mention what you know about it.
Mary now did something quite remarkable. A nervous country girl, standing in a court of law in a murder trial, subjected to any amount of pressure to reveal that Donellan distilled laurel, she said: ‘I will tell the truth, and nothing else. Mr Donellan distilled roses. I do not know that he distilled anything else.’
The prosecution tried to get her to say that the door to the room was always locked, but she denied this.
Q: Do you know anything of his using this still frequently?
A: Yes, distilling roses …
One can only imagine Donellan’s feeling of gratitude to this girl, who went against a popular tide of bad feeling and rumour to defend her former employer.
Francis Amos was the final servant to take the stand.
What Donellan had to say about Francis Amos, the gardener, in his Defence is not flattering: ‘the poor fellow … a weak, silly, illiterate man’.
Q: I am asking you if you saw Mr Donellan on the evening after the death of Sir Theodosius Boughton, and whether you had any conversation with him?
A: At night I had.
Q: What did he say to you?
A: He said, ‘Now gardener, you shall live at your ease; and work at your ease; it shall not be as it was in Sir Theo’s days. I wanted before to be master, but I have got master now, and shall be master.’
Donellan’s Defence maintained that Amos simply asked Donellan who would be master now, and he was told that it would be Sir Edward Boughton.
Q: Do you know of Mr Donellan using a still for any purpose?
A: He brought a still for me to clean … it was full of lime …
Q: You, as a gardener, know whether he used to gather things for the purpose of distilling?
A: He might for what I know.
Q: Have you ever got any thing?
A: I have got lavender …
Q: Have you any laurel trees?
A: Yes.
At this point, defence counsel Newnham made what seems like a bizarre interjection. He asked, ‘And celery?’ to which Amos answered, ‘Yes.’
Celery was in wide use in the eighteenth century for culinary purposes, but it had originally been a medicinal herb. The New Herbal of 1551 describes smallage (the ancestor of modern celery) as ‘promoting epileptic fits’. But it was also used as a cure for impotence. So perhaps this is what Newnham meant by his interruption – that Theodosius, by resorting to using celery when he was ill, had produced his own epileptic fits. If so, it was a very obtuse enquiry, and one that Newnham did not pursue.
Amos was then asked about Donellan telling him to find pigeons: a curious old-wives’-tale remedy recommended dead pigeons at the feet of an invalid. Amos said that Donellan told him that Sir Theodosius was a ‘poor fellow with this damned nasty distemper, the pox’ and Amos then added that, when he came back with the birds, Lady Boughton and Theodosia were at the door ‘wringing their hands; they said, “It is too late now, he is dead.”’ He confirmed that this happened at a few minutes after eight.
This is perplexing stuff. Taking Anna Maria’s testimony and Donellan’s Defence together, it would appear that Donellan was in the room when Theodosius died; or, at least, neither account says that he left it. Yet the cook-maid testified that she left Theodosius’s room before he died, and about a quarter of an hour later Donellan passed her in the passageway saying that Theodosius had been out very late fishing. Francis Amos says that he came back to the house with the pigeons, but not that Donellan was with him. He met the two women, who told him that Theodosius was dead, but Donellan was not with them.
If we take Donellan’s evidence and that of William Frost, Donellan first saw Theodosius between 7.50 and 8 a.m. If we take the servants’ evidence, Donellan left the room and was in the passageway and garden; he then returned to the house and, according to his Defence, was with Theodosius when he died. His absence, to go downstairs, along the passageway and out into the garden, talking to two servants along the way, and to return then upstairs, could not have been less than five minutes. Allowing that he was in Theodosius’s room for five minutes first, and that the boy died within five minutes of his return, the death must have occurred at the earliest just after eight – but most probably around 8.10 a.m. Which was confirmed by Francis Amos.
What was Anna Maria doing while Donellan was gone? Her evidence says nothing at all about his absence. Why, in fact, did Donellan leave the room at all if Theodosius seemed on the brink of death? It seems reasonable to say that he would not do so; but both the gardener and Donellan and Catharine Amos agree that he was either in the garden, or on his way to the garden after he saw Theodosius was ill. It can only be presumed that there was an interval when it seemed that he was holding his own; struggling, but not obviously dying. Donellan left at this point, by his own account to try to find an age-old remedy; when he came back, Theodosius was very much worse – on the brink of death, in fact.
What had happened in the room during that time? Was Anna Maria with her son the entire time after Donellan had been called? Was she alone with Theodosius, and at what point did his condition so suddenly worsen?
Anna Maria’s testimony does not say that Donellan left the room. Why would she leave out this detail, knowing that the servants could verify it?
The only other person who could reliably say who was present, and what happened during Donellan’s absence, was Sarah Blundell. And Sarah Blundell was dead.
There is one other detail of Anna Maria’s testimony which does not tally. She said under oath that Theodosius was ‘very near dead’ when she was remonstrating with Donellan about his washing out of the bottles, and Sarah Blundell was clearing out the room. But there was hardly time, if Donellan left the room and Theodosius died soon after his return, to argue about bottles. It is far more likely that the conversation took place once Theodosius was dead, and the room was being cleared.
It does cast a much worse light on Donellan, however, and gives more sympathy to Anna Maria’s story, if Donellan was trying to conceal the evidence while Theodosius lay dying before him.
Francis Amos made one other statement which was not covered in his court testimony. In the prosecution brief, he said that ‘He saw Captain Donellan in the garden between 6 and 7 o’clock when he [Amos] called for Samuel Frost and Captain Donellan replied that he was coming.’
Was Donellan or was he not in the garden between 6 and 7 p.m. the previous evening? Anna Maria said no; Donellan said that he left the Hall at about ten past six, walked to the mill and was gone until nine o’clock.
Who was right? Amos and Donellan’s stories tally (between 6 and 6.10); Anna Maria’s does not.
One servant who was not called to give evidence was the footman John Yateman. In the prosecution brief, however, he gave a statement as follows:
In the afternoon preceeding Sir Theodosius’s death, from about 3 in the afternoon until near 7 o’clock, he was in and about the Park and grounds near the house and saw nothing of Captain Donellan. Early in the morning on which Sir Theodosius died he was at the river getting out the net which Sir Theodosius had left there the evening before and he happened to look towards the garden when he saw Captain Donellan leaning over a wall in a private place there next to the river where he had never seen him before, and that as soon as he perceived he was seen he immediately drew back and this witness saw no more of him.
This statement, which came under a section called ‘Evidence’, misses out one crucial element from an earlier one Yateman made to the prosecution team. In that, he said that he ‘saw Donellan swing his hand and throw something into the water’ at this time.
Why was there a difference in the statements? It seems that the footman had changed his mind in the later one. And it is curious why Yateman was never brought to the stand to reveal what seems to be good evidence of Donellan trying to conceal something small enough to throw – a bottle, perhaps?
Nothing more was heard of Yateman. It is possible that, after his sweetheart’s death, he moved away. Later that year, in November, a John Yateman married a Sarah Nixon in St Michael’s Church in Coventry. But it is not known if this is the same man.
Now came the testimony of two men who were not servants.
One was William Crofts, who said that at the coroner’s court he had seen John Donellan ‘catch [Lady Boughton] by the gown, and give her a twitch’ when she mentioned that Donellan had rinsed out the bottles.
Absolutely nothing else was asked of Crofts, nor was he cross-examined; but Donellan explains the incident in his Defence:
In the course of Lady Boughton’s evidence when she spoke of her daughter’s maid, she spoke ‘maid’ so low that Mr Donellan did not hear it, and thinking she said ‘her daughter’, he pulled her by the sleeve and told her she had made a mistake, where upon Lady Boughton recalled her words, and said she meant her daughter’s maid.
The next witness was John Derbyshire, the debtor from Warwick Gaol, who had got to know Donellan well during his imprisonment. Derbyshire testified that Donellan talked of Theodosius’s death hundreds of times; but one conversation in particular formed his evidence now.
A: We were both in one room together; he had a bed in the same room I had for a month or five weeks, I believe … we had a conversation about Sir Theodosius being poisoned; I asked Captain Donellan whether the body was poisoned or not. He said there was no doubt of it … he said, ‘It was done among themselves … himself, Lady Boughton, the footman, and the apothecary.’
Q: Who did he mean by ‘himself’?
A: Sir Theodosius Boughton … I said, ‘Sure, he could not do it himself’; he said, no, he did not think he did … the apothecary would lose a good patient … it was very unnatural to suppose Lady Boughton could do it. He then spoke of Lady Boughton, how covetous she was; he said she received an anonymous letter the day after Sir Theodosius’s death, charging her plump with poisoning Sir Theodosius; that she called him and read it to him, and she trembled; he said she desired he would not let his wife know of that letter; and asked him if he would give up his right to the personal estate, and some estates of about two hundred pounds a year belonging to the family.
Donellan knew that Derbyshire would testify against him. They had quarrelled in prison – Donellan claimed it was because he refused to lend Derbyshire money – and soon after Derbyshire had sent for Caldecott, the Boughtons’ solicitor, and told him the story. Donellan knew that it would sound bad that he had said he knew that Theodosius had been poisoned; all he could offer by way of explanation was that he had not poisoned Theodosius himself. Donellan’s incarceration had hardened him to the fact that poison was going to be the issue of the trial; but he still instructed his lawyers to find any other explanation they could.
The defence tried to blacken Derbyshire’s reputation, showing him to be a bankrupt and having been involved in a contentious case which had previously been tried by Buller. But Derbyshire was a placid, even-handed witness: he readily admitted to his mistakes and added that Donellan had changed his mind several times about the reasons for Theodosius’s death. As a result, he left an impression of frankness and honesty; but the dramatic speech about Anna Maria hung ominously in the air.
Sir William Wheler testified next. This was the man who, more than any other, held the key to the trial. He had been Theodosius’s guardian: as such, he should have been aware of the boy’s medical history, his character, his education and his difficulties at Eton. He knew Anna Maria Boughton well – a woman described as ‘all but a fool’, an heiress who was ‘not a very intellectual woman’. No doubt, when Edward – who was his close friend – had died Wheler had advised Anna Maria more than once. That was what he was there for, why he was Theodosius’s guardian – as a family friend and mature older man of wealth and title. His own daughter Lucy had married within a few months of Theodosia, and it is hard to believe that the subject of Theodosia’s new husband had not come up in conversation with her.
So this was a person who knew Lawford and the family better than any of the doctors, better than Powell, better than the servants. He knew their financial situation, having witnessed several legal documents for Anna Maria and Edward; he knew what drove them, what interested them, what worried them; he also knew their lands and estates, as much of them abutted his own. And it is hard to imagine that he had not visited Lawford at some time during the last three years to see how Lawford was progressing with Donellan acting as its master; as Theodosius’s guardian he would have been anxious to know that everything was being conducted responsibly. No record remains of his slightest disapproval or reservations at that time.
And yet this significant opportunity was lost. Wheler was asked to read out the letters that had passed between himself and Donellan between the death and the funeral, and to comment very briefly on Sir Edward Boughton’s sudden death. That was all. No answer as to whether Snow had acted on his authority when the order was given to bury Theodosius; no explanation of why he himself had not visited Lawford after the death or why he had been slow to respond to the news. The defence counsel did not ask him about the most telling fact of all – that he had trusted Donellan to organise Theodosius’s funeral, and that not one of his letters held any hint of accusation on his behalf towards Donellan, and nor had Anna Maria expressed any misgivings.
Yet at some point after the autopsy, Sir William Wheler had become convinced that Theodosius had been poisoned. His attendance at the experiments with laurel water that Rattray had so enthusiastically conducted three weeks before the trial had confirmed his opinion that laurel water had been the cause. From that moment on, Anna Maria had been helped to testify against her son-in-law: in the newspapers after Donellan’s trial it was mentioned that the Earl of Denbigh sat in court, nodding approval as Anna Maria turned to him before answering questions. Denbigh and Wheler were close associates.
But it was unthinkable, apparently, that anyone of either Denbigh’s or Wheler’s rank should be questioned as to their friendships, alliances, knowledge or motives.
Wheler left the stand, no doubt with Donellan’s eyes upon him. It was obvious now that, no matter how much Donellan had cared for Theodosia, no matter how well he had managed Lawford, no matter how many times he had saved Theodosius from disgracing himself in tavern brawls (which the next two witnesses, Miller and Loggie, independently verified), these counted for nothing now. There was a social abyss between Donellan and his accusers.
If Theodosius had been poisoned, then a perpetrator must be found; and those who wielded power in society – men like Wheler – had closed their ranks against him.
When Wheler stepped down, Donellan’s previous deposition to the coroner, written from Lawford Hall on 14 September – the day that Anna Maria so substantially changed her own testimony – was read out.
Then the Clerk of the Arraigns stood to deliver Donellan’s statement for his defence, the only statement of his submissible in court, and which he had had to prepare before the trial began:
My Lord and Gentlemen of the Jury,
Permit me in this unfortunate situation, to submit to your consideration a few particulars and observations relating to this horrid charge which has been brought against me.
Although many false, malevolent, and cruel reports have been circulated in the public prints and throughout the country ever since my confinement, tending to prejudice the minds of the people injurious to my honour and dangerous to my life, I still have confidence that your justice and humanity cannot be misled by them …
Donellan went on to outline the history of his marriage, and his good relationships with the family, Theodosius in particular. He drew the attention of the court to ‘several occasions’ when he protected Theodosius against injury. He then addressed the subject of the missed autopsy.
These gentlemen arrived about nine o’clock at night when I produced to them Sir William’s letter and desired they would pursue his instructions … [they] returned and … informed the family that the [body] was so putrid it was not only dangerous to approach it but impossible at that time to discover the cause of Sir Theodosius’s death.
He stressed that Rattray had undertaken to inform Sir William of what had or had not transpired, but had not done so. He also described how Bucknill arrived unannounced and that ‘he had understood that I wished to have the body of Sir Theodosius opened and I informed him that it was my wish’, but that he explained that he could not go against the decision of Rattray and Wilmer without Sir William’s permission. He then said that ‘I should nevertheless think myself obliged to him to undertake the matter if he should wait upon Sir William Wheler and obtain his consent to do it.’
Until this statement, Donellan’s claim that he had asked Bucknill to approach Wheler had never come to light.
Donellan then went on to describe the day of the funeral and the fact that Bucknill and Snow had missed each other, but that Snow had come to the house and ‘recommended’ the burial.
The body was therefore buried that evening, but not by my directions or desire … This, gentlemen, was the undisguised part I took; but such is my misfortune … but the most trifling actions and expressions have been handled to my prejudice; my private letters have been broken open, and many unjustifiable steps have been taken to prejudice the world and imbitter [sic] my defence.
However, depending upon the conscience of my judge, and the unprejudiced impartiality of the jury, I trust my honour will be protected by their verdict.
Donellan did not explain the issue of the bottle-washing, which Judge Buller was later to pronounce was ‘above all’ the greatest circumstance which ‘left [his] guilt without the smallest doubt’.
The variance of his evidence with Anna Maria’s is only hinted at in the final paragraph. Was he thinking of his mother-in-law when he talked of ‘unjustifiable steps’?
Perhaps a hint was too subtle for the jury.
All Donellan’s hopes now rested on a final witness.
Listening all day in court, having travelled from London the day before, the surgeon and anatomist John Hunter was dressed in his usual crumpled suit of clothes. Fifty-three years old, he was famous for his short temper and unkempt appearance; but there was no doubting the luminosity of his reputation.
The list of John Hunter’s accomplishments was truly impressive. Having begun studying anatomy in the 1740s and established his own school of anatomy in 1764, he was elected Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons in 1767 and had served as an army surgeon in France and Portugal. A specialist in venereal disease for at least fifteen years, he had been resident surgeon at St George’s Hospital in London for thirteen years and Surgeon General to George III for five. He counted the painter Joshua Reynolds and the naturalist Joseph Banks among his friends.
Hunter’s anatomical expertise was second to none: during his 33-year career he had conducted thousands of dissections, and had a vast museum of specimens which were to be bequeathed to the nation after his death. The museum was condemned in a print of 1782 called ‘The Resurrection’ which shows nine dissected corpses trying to find their respective heads, legs and stomachs – and was also a sideswipe at Hunter as a ‘resurrectionist’, a man who was not above body-snatching.
Hunter’s London home was the original inspiration for the story of Jekyll and Hyde, its frontage as Number 28 Leicester Square being highly respectable, the scene of literary and musical gatherings organised by his wife (although the giraffe in the hallway would have been a mite distracting). The rear – 13 Castle Street – was quite a contrast; it was the entrance to the mortuary and dissecting rooms, guarded by a drawbridge. Corpses from hospitals, street brawls, prisons and executions trundled through there daily, the grisly cartloads a source of terror to local children.
Hunter’s Earls Court country house was no less extraordinary. A strange collection of animals grazed the lawns; a crocodile’s jawbone hung over the door; and he kept wild cats, including a lion and two leopards, in cages in the grounds. A cart drawn by three Asian buffaloes regularly transported Hunter to London. Hunter was a passionate observer of life in all its forms, with an affection for ‘monsters’ – a two-headed calf and a bottled set of premature human quintuplets among them.
But in addition to his peculiar passions, Hunter was intelligent and precise, and he did not jump to conclusions or seek popular glory. Unfortunately, it was the scientific accuracy for which he was renowned which was now to prove such a disappointment for Donellan.
Hunter was forthright in his dismissal of Rattray’s conclusions:
Q: Can any certain inference, upon physical principles, be drawn from those symptoms described or from the appearances, externally or internally of the body, to enable you, in your judgement, to decide that the death was occasioned by poison?
A: The whole appearances upon the dissection explain nothing but putrefaction.
Q: Are those symptoms you have heard described such, in your judgement, as are the results of putrefaction in dead subjects?
A: Entirely.
Q: Are the symptoms that appeared after the medicine was given such as necessarily conclude that the person had taken poison?
A: Certainly not.
Q: If an apoplexy had come on, would not the symptoms have been nearly or somewhat similar?
A: Very much the same.
So far, so good. Defence counsel Newnham now asked if Hunter had ever known of a ‘young subject’ dying of apoplexy. Hunter answered that he had, though ‘not frequent’.
The questioning now moved to the subject of experiments. Hunter had been known to say that he himself had drunk laurel water and was still alive to tell the tale; unfortunately, however, he was not asked about that now. Instead, Newnham tried to discredit the conclusions drawn by Rattray.
Q: Is any certain analogy to be drawn from the effects of any given poison upon an animal of the brute creation, to that it may have upon a human subject?
A: As far as my experience goes … they are very near the same; opium will poison a dog similar to a man; arsenic will have very near the same effect upon a dog as it would have, I take it for granted, upon a man … I believe their operations will be nearly similar.
Q: Are there not many things that will kill animals almost instantaneously that will have no detrimental or noxious effects upon a human subject?
A: A great deal depends upon the mode of experiment; no man is fit to make one but those who have made many and paid considerable attention to all the circumstances that relate to experiments.
This was more like it.
A little brandy will kill a cat; I have made the experiment, and killed several cats, but it is a false experiment. In all those cases where it kills a cat, it kills the cat by getting into her lungs, not her stomach … Now in those experiments that are made by forcing an animal to drink, there are two operations going on; one is refusing of the liquor by an animal – its kicking or the working of its throat to refuse it; the other is, a forcing of liquor upon the animal; and there are very few operations of that kind but some of the liquor gets into the lungs; I have known it from experience.
Next Newnham moved on to the specific failings of the autopsy by Samuel Bucknill.
Q: If you had been called upon to dissect a body supposed to have died from poison should you, or not, have thought it necessary to have pursued your search through the guts?
A: Certainly … that is the tract of the poison, and I certainly should have followed that tract through.
Newnham now considered Theodosius’s symptoms.
Q: You have heard of the froth issuing from Sir Theodosius’s mouth a minute or two before he died; is that peculiar to a man dying of poison, or is it not common in many other complaints?
A: I fancy it is a general effect of people dying in what you may call health in an apoplexy or epilepsy, in all sudden deaths …
Q: Have you ever had an opportunity of seeing such subjects?
A: Hundreds of times.
Q: Should you consider yourself bound, by such appearances, to impute the death to poison?
A: No, certainly not; I should rather suspect an apoplexy, and I wish, in this case, the head had been opened to remove all doubts.
Q: If the head had been opened, do you apprehend all doubts would have been removed?
A: It would have been still farther removed; because, although the body was putrid, so that no one could tell whether it was a recent inflammation, yet an apoplexy arises from an extravasation of blood in the brain, which would have laid in a coagulum. I apprehend, though the body was putrid, that would have been much more visible than the effect any poison could have had upon the stomach or the intestines.
Q: Then, in your judgement upon the appearances the gentlemen have described, no inference can be drawn from thence that Sir Theodosius Boughton died from poison?
A: Certainly not; it does not give the least suspicion.
Newnham concluded his examination here; Hunter’s answers were just what he had hoped for. The country’s leading authority had suggested that apoplexy could have been to blame for Theodosius’s death, and that poison was by no means suggested by Theodosius’s symptoms. He had also underlined the point that putridity had obscured what useful information might have been gleaned from the corpse, and emphasised the failings of the surgeons by not examining the brain.
Mr Howarth, he of the florid phrase, took up the cross-examination. Hunter’s answers seemed bemused at first, then calmly insistent.
Q: Having heard the account today, that Sir Theodosius Boughton, apparently in good health, had swallowed a draught which had produced the symptoms described, I ask you whether any reasonable man can entertain a doubt but that draught, whatever it was, produced those appearances?
A: I don’t know well what answer to make to that question.
Q: Having heard the account given of the health of this young gentleman, on that morning, previous to taking the draught, and the symptoms that were produced immediately upon taking the draught, I ask your opinion, as a man of judgement, whether you don’t think that draught was the occasion of his death?
A: With regard to his being in health, that explains nothing; we see the healthiest people dying suddenly … as to the circumstance of the draught, I own they are suspicious.
At this point Justice Buller, evidently deeply irritated by Hunter’s dismissal of the other medical witnesses, weighed in:
COURT: You are to give your opinions upon the symptoms only, not upon other evidence given.
Q: I ask whether, in your opinion, that draught did not occasion his death?
A: I can only say that it is a circumstance in favour of that opinion.
COURT: That the draught was the occasion of his death?
A: Not because the symptoms afterwards are those of a man dying who was before in perfect health; a man dying of apoplexy or epilepsy, the symptoms would give one of those general ideas.
COURT: It is the general idea you are asked about now … whether you are of the opinion that the draught was the occasion of his death?
A: If I knew the draught was poison, I should say most probably … but when I don’t know the draught was poison … I cannot answer positively to it.
Q: Then you decline giving any opinion upon the subject.
COURT: You recollect the circumstance that was mentioned of a violent heaving in the stomach?
A: All that is the effect of the voluntary action being lost, and nothing going on but the involuntary.
Q: Then you decline giving any opinion on the subject?
A: I don’t form any opinion myself; I cannot form an opinion …
But the prosecution was not to be deflected: Howarth needed this renowned expert’s opinion, and he was determined to get it.
Q: If you are at all acquainted with the effects and operations of distilled laurel water, whether the having swallowed a draught of that would not have produced the symptoms described?
A: I should suppose it would; I can only say this, of the experiments I have conducted with laurel water, it has not been near so quick … never produced so quick an effect as described by those gentlemen.
Q: But you admit that laurel water would have produced symptoms such as have been described?
A: I can conceive it might.
But this was hardly the point. It had not been proved that the mixture was laurel water – the case was brought on one woman’s sense of smell alone – so to put that supposition now was to ask the witness to imagine a set of circumstances with the counsel’s intention of then drawing a fact from a supposition.
The defence counsel Newnham now interjected in an attempt to bring Hunter’s evidence back on track: he gave Hunter the chance to infer a fact from a supposition, too.
Q: Would not an apoplexy or an epilepsy, if it had seized Sir Theodosius Boughton at this time, though he had taken no physic at all, have produced similar symptoms too?
A: Certainly.
Newnham also tried to show that there was a significant parallel between Theodosius’s health and his father’s:
Q: Where a father has died of an apoplexy, is that not understood, in some measure, to be constitutional?
A: Whatever is constitutional in a father, the father has the power of giving that to the children …
Howarth returned to the questioning here:
Q: Do you call apoplexy constitutional?
A: I conceive apoplexy as much constitutional as any disease whatsoever.
Q: Is apoplexy likely to attack a thin young man who had been taking a course of cooling medicines before?
A: Not so likely, surely; but I have in my account of dissections two young women dying of apoplexies.
Q: … it was very unlikely to happen?
A: I do not know the nature of medicines so well as to know that it would hinder an apoplexy from taking place.
Buller appeared to lose his temper at this point.
Here was a witness who, in contrast to former medical ‘experts’, was (quite rightly) unwilling to commit himself without knowing the patient or the medicines that the patient had been prescribed. But his unwillingness to be swayed, his lack of a commitment, was not what Buller wanted to hear.
COURT: Give me your opinion in the best manner you can, one way or the other, whether, upon the whole of the symptoms described, the death proceeded from that medicine, or from any other cause.
Hunter was not a man to be bullied, however. He could not give an opinion because he did not have the evidence. He could only say what, in his experience, happened if a person drank laurel water (and it is to be noted that Hunter’s opinion was that it would not have the immediate effect described) or if a person had apoplexy. He had testified that a young person could have a stroke and that strokes could run in families. But without a proper autopsy – and he was forthright in his opinion that the autopsy had not been thorough – he could not say if a stroke had occurred.
A: I do not mean to equivocate; but when I tell the sentiments of my own mind, what I feel at the time, I can give nothing decisive.
His answer was perfectly correct, but it was an answer that Buller would use to condemn Donellan.