‘The doctor is often to be more feared than the disease.’
French proverb
ACCORDING TO POWELL’S LATER TESTIMONY,1 he was taken by John Donellan straight to Theodosius’s room, where he reported vaguely that ‘some servant’ was present, though he could not say who.
He inspected the body but saw ‘no distortion’ and, more astonishingly, ‘nothing in particular’. He noted that Theodosius had been dead ‘near an hour’. When asked how the young man had died, Donellan replied, ‘In convulsions.’ Powell later said that John Donellan also tried to persuade him that Theodosius had caught cold the night before, but he could not recall his exact words.
At some unspecified time later that same morning, Powell saw Lady Boughton, who told him that Theodosius ‘was convulsed soon after he took the medicine’. But there is no mention at all by anyone else in the house, when under oath later, of Powell having been questioned about what he had put in the prescription or why Theodosius had reacted as he did. No hint of blame, confusion or anger from anyone who spoke to him that day, in the family or beyond.
It was after Powell’s visit that John Donellan sat down to write to Theodosius’s guardian, Sir William Wheler (Anna Maria had appointed him to this role some years earlier). Like Theo’s father, Wheler was a baronet; his Leamington Hastings estate lay about six miles from Lawford Hall across rolling, open country. Leamington Hastings had been described in 1629 as an extensive estate of ‘forty messuages’ (defined by law as dwelling houses with adjacent buildings and land), ‘forty gardens, two dovehouses, one thousand acres of land, two hundred acres of meadow and fifty acres of pasture’, and it had been added to since then.
Donellan wrote:
Dear Sir,
I am sorry to be the communicator of Sir Theodosius’s death to you, which happened this morning; he has been for some time past under the care of Mr Powell of Rugby, for a similar complaint to that which he had at Eton. Lady Boughton and my wife are inconsolable. They join me in best respects to Lady Wheler, yourself, and Mr & Mrs Sitwell.
I am, dear sir, with the greatest esteem, your most obedient servant, J.D.
Lawford Hall, August 30th, 1780.
At the time, Wheler and his wife were staying with their friends the Sitwells, who had been recently bereaved, at Leamington (now Royal Leamington Spa). No mention had been made of how Theodosius had died. No reply was received that day.
‘Some time afterwards’, according to Lady Boughton, Donellan, Theodosia and herself were in the downstairs parlour. Donellan raised the subject of the medicine bottles.
Anna Maria later testified that ‘Donellan in her presence had said to his wife that her mother [meaning herself] had been pleased to take notice of his washing the bottles out; and that he did not know what he should have done if he had not thought of saying he put the water into it to put his finger to it to taste’. Donellan’s words and actions – if Anna Maria’s version is accurate – smack of self-defence. Anna Maria testified later that she could not trust herself to reply; she turned away from him to the window. In the face of his mother-in-law’s rebuff, Donellan repeated what he had just said. Still getting no reply from her, he asked Theodosia to call a servant, who was asked to go and fetch William Frost.
Now came one of the major – but by no means only – divergences between Donellan’s account and Anna Maria’s later testimony. In her deposition to the coroner on 14 September, Anna Maria made no mention whatsoever of having seen Donellan in the house prior to his entering Theodosius’s bedroom at approximately half past seven. Donellan’s version was quite different.
According to Donellan’s later published Defence, he and Lady Boughton had made an arrangement the previous day that they would ride out together that morning to take the waters at Newnham Wells, a little way across the fields. Donellan had gone downstairs and was waiting in the yard with the horses when at some time between seven and seven fifteen he glimpsed Anna Maria through a window. He had called to her, asking if she was ready to leave; she had replied that she was about to change her clothes. When she did not appear after some minutes, Donellan had ridden out alone, returning at about ten minutes to eight.
Next, according to both Anna Maria’s trial testimony and Donellan’s Defence, William Frost was called into the parlour to verify this.
Donellan asked the coachman, ‘Will, don’t you remember that I set out of these iron gates this morning about seven o’clock?’
‘Yes, sir,’ Will replied.
‘You remember that, don’t you?’ Donellan persisted.
‘Yes, sir.’
‘And that was the first time of my going out. I have never been on the other side of the house this morning.’ Donellan was careful to drive the point home, repeating, ‘You remember that I set out there at seven o’clock this morning, and asked for a horse to go to the Wells?’
‘Then,’ Donellan replied, ‘you are my evidence.’
‘Yes, sir,’ Frost answered.
It was the first time that the word ‘evidence’ – to play such a major part in the months to come – was uttered.
Nothing else is recorded of the events or the emotions of that day or of the following one, 31 August, in Anna Maria’s testimony other than that she instructed that two women be sent for to lay Theodosius out.
It was the evening of the thirtieth, the day of Theo’s death, that Francis Amos, the gardener, said that John Donellan came into the garden. Seeing Amos, Donellan called to him, saying, ‘Now, gardener, you shall live at your ease, and work at your ease; it shall not be as it was in Sir Theodosius’s days. I wanted before to be master; but I have got master now, and shall be master.’
There were no witnesses to this remark, to which Amos testified in court; at no time did Donellan confirm it.
On Friday 1 September, Theodosius’s friend Fonnereau arrived and was allowed to view Theo’s body. Fonnereau himself remains a shadowy figure. It was said that he lived in Northamptonshire, and there was certainly a Claude William Fonnereau, born in 1761 to William and Anne Fonnereau in Clapton, Northamptonshire, who would have been nineteen in 1780 and so would have been a contemporary of Theodosius. His brother, Charles William, was only sixteen, but could have been a riding or sporting companion to Theo. It was later implied by the prosecuting counsel that Theodosius was interested in Fonnereau’s sister, and that the possibility of marriage had been mentioned, a marriage which would have certainly – if the couple had had children – taken the inheritance away for ever from Theodosia. Charles and Claude had two sisters, Harriet and Mary-Anne, but no other mention of Fonnereau’s family was ever made and Fonnereau’s connection to Theodosius ended after this visit. He was not seen again; he was not called to the trial; he did not give a deposition to the coroner.
On this Friday, however, no matter how silent Lawford Hall appeared to be, the countryside around it was not. The first of the persistent rumours began to spread. Sir William Wheler, still at Leamington, testified at the trial that ‘it was intimated to him … a suspicion of Sir Theodosius having been poisoned’.
Curiously, it was a full twenty-four hours before Sir William acted on this information. And, although a guardian to the dead boy, he did not go to Lawford Hall to see what was happening for himself or to comfort Anna Maria and Theodosia in their grief. Instead, on Saturday 2 September, he wrote his reply to Donellan’s first letter telling him of Theo’s death. It had taken Sir William three days to respond.
But most curious of all, considering that he had already been given a ‘suspicion’ of poison, was the text itself.
Lemington, September 2nd, 1780
Dear Sir,
I received the favour of your letter the day after my return to Mr Sitwell’s. The sudden and very untimely death of my poor unfortunate ward gives me great concern, and we condole with Lady Boughton, Mrs Donellan, and yourself, for his loss. I send a servant with this, to know how Lady Boughton and Mrs Donellan do after so sudden and great a shock. Please make our respects to them; at a proper time I shall make my respects to them and you in person.
I am, sir, your obedient and humble servant, Wm Wheler.
It was at best a holding letter, and one which was by now several days overdue; the sympathies were extended more to the ladies than to Donellan, as would have been proper. Perhaps Wheler’s attentions were divided between two grieving families, his friends the Sitwells and the Boughtons? It would not have been expected of him to descend without invitation or notice; nevertheless, his concern for Anna Maria in particular is distant, bearing in mind that she had lost her only son and had no husband to support her. Interestingly, although Sir William notes that the death was ‘sudden and very untimely’ he does not ask for the exact details.
Wheler did nothing more that day. It was on the Sunday, 3 September, that he was really stirred into action.
The local vicar, the Reverend Piers Newsam – the same priest who had been seen speaking to John Donellan on the Saturday before Theodosius’s death – arrived at Sir William’s house with a letter (which was not available at the trial) from the Earl of Denbigh. Lord Denbigh, alias Basil Feilding, lived in the mansion of Newnham Paddox at Monks Kirby, equidistant between Lawford Hall and Wheler’s own residence.
The arrival of such a letter from a superior being, one who was used to being both heard and obeyed, would have acted as a sharp warning. The Denbighs were aristocracy of a different calibre to the Boughtons: Basil Feilding was an earl whose title dated back three centuries. Earls could literally lord it over baronets. The Denbighs were also superior to the Boughtons in property, and their home – Newnham Paddox – was huge. (It was demolished in 1950, the then countess condemning it as a ‘365-room monstrosity’). Days of destruction were far away, however: in 1780 Newnham, then a superlative Palladian mansion, dominated the countryside.
And when the Denbighs spoke, the countryside listened.
To Sir William’s consternation, the earl had picked up on the rumour of poison, a rumour that he himself had not yet acted upon. (There is no actual written or recorded evidence of the rumour or ‘report’ – other than what Wheler says in his letters and what he and others refer to at the trial.) In a flurry of sudden activity, Wheler sent for the apothecary, Powell. And then he wrote to Donellan.
Wheler’s letter bears all the hallmarks of a man who has been, metaphorically at least, shaken by the scruff of his neck; he suddenly remembered that he was supposed to be looking after Theodosius. But again, it is quite remarkable that Sir William did not write on the day that the Reverend Newsam visited him. With Theodosius’s body deteriorating quickly in the heat, and every hour precious if an autopsy was to be carried out with any accuracy, Sir William took another day to put pen to paper. His next letter to Donellan is dated 4 September:
Since I wrote to you last, I have been applied to, as the guardian of Sir Theodosius Boughton, to inquire into the cause of his sudden death; and the report says that he was better the morning of his death than he had been for many weeks, and that he was taken ill in less than half an hour, and died in two hours after he had swallowed the physic. There is great reason to believe that the physic was improper … I find I am very much blamed for not making some enquiry into the affair …
Next he went on to explain why he had called Powell:
… his character is at stake; I dare say it will be a great satisfaction to him to have the body opened … it will appear from the stomach whether there is anything corrosive in it.
From here, the letter takes on a note of near panic:
As a friend to you, I must say … it is reported all over the country that he was killed either by medicine or by poison. The country will never be convinced to the contrary unless the body is opened, and we shall all be very much blamed …
The body was still at Lawford Hall, about to be sealed in a lead coffin.
Wheler then told Donellan that he had asked that ‘Dr Wilmer of Coventry or Mr Snow of Southam, in the presence of Dr Rattray or any other Physician that you and the family think proper’ should perform an autopsy.
He added:
Mr Powell is now with me, and from his account it does not appear that his medicine could be the cause of death; he has not given him any mercury since June … Mr Powell says it will be a great satisfaction to him to have the body opened, and for the above reasons, I sincerely wish it. I will only add that this affair makes me very unhappy … I beg of you to lay this affair before Lady Boughton … to point out to her the real necessity of complying with my request, and to say that it is expected by the country.
I am … your sincere friend and obliged humble servant, Wm Wheler.
One thing is very clear from this letter. Wheler’s tone is not accusatory; there is no hint that he might hold Donellan responsible. The sense is that between the two of them, they must now contain a rapidly spreading lie. Wheler is ‘very unhappy’ but a very long way from crying ‘Murder!’ The letter is an attempt to make the family see and hear what he had been seeing and hearing outside Lawford Hall. The opening of the body was to quell rumour, a rumour that contended that Theo was ‘killed either by medicine or by poison’; but the tone is all about containment of a rumour, not investigating a crime. And even if a crime were uppermost in Wheler’s mind he did not at this stage suspect Donellan of having a part in it – or he would hardly have warned him, asked for his help or referred to him as a ‘friend’.
It is also interesting that Wheler had been contacted by Lord Denbigh rather than Anna Maria. If her suspicions had genuinely fallen on her son-in-law, it is reasonable to suppose that she would have asked Wheler for help herself, or told him of her suspicions – after which Wheler would naturally have bypassed Donellan. But she remained silent.
One other element is also disturbing.
If Donellan himself believed that Theo had been poisoned, why didn’t he himself act? Why didn’t he tell Wheler how Theo had died in his first letter? Did he believe, instead, that the death had been natural? And what exactly was going on at Lawford Hall as the rumours spread about the countryside?
Donellan did not waste a moment in reply. He responded to Sir William the same day, telling him that the whole family ‘Most cheerfully’ wished for the body to be opened. That afternoon Wheler answered: two surgeons and Mr Powell should open the body as soon as possible. He continued, ‘I hope that you understand it is not to satisfy my curiosity, but the public’, adding, for the third time, his usual anxious proviso: ‘to prevent the world from blaming any of us’.
It was getting dark that evening when the physician and the surgeon nominated by Sir William, plus another unidentified man, arrived at the house; they later testified that Powell, the apothecary, was already there.
David Rattray is listed in the Universal British Directory for Coventry in 1791 as a ‘Doctor of Medicine’. According to the E. H. Cornelius Library of the Royal College of Surgeons, Rattray was forty-one years old at the time of this case and practising in Coventry, having obtained his degree from Edinburgh. In the Coventry Directory, Bradford Wilmer is listed as a ‘Surgeon’. Having trained at St Bartholomew’s Hospital in London, Wilmer went on to practise in Coventry for forty years. He had been – interestingly as regards the subsequent trial – a pupil of Sir John Hunter, the renowned anatomist. He had also become famous locally for reporting the curious case of Mary Clunes of Coventry: Mary, an alcoholic, had been found in her bedroom completely consumed by fire, ‘leaving only the legs and all the other bones covered in a whitish ash’ but with very little damage to the rest of the room.
But in 1780 neither a surgeon nor a doctor of medicine – no matter how lurid or famous their cases – were as we would recognise them today. The practice of medicine was largely uncontrolled by any official body – it was not until the Medical Act of 1858 that a register of qualified practitioners was published nationally and, even of those named then, only 4 per cent had a medical degree from an English university.
Surgeons such as Wilmer were licensed only to perform surgery, and then only in the presence of a physician like Rattray, who was only qualified to diagnose internal problems and was therefore there to act as his assistant. The whole profession was an overlapping medley of barber surgeons, surgeons, doctors, ‘men-midwives’, unqualified and untrained midwives, apothecaries and druggists, many of these jobs having sprung up in the previous century when medicine had been routinely combined with other employment – innkeeping and distilling among them. The profession of medicine was rising, but in 1780 it stood somewhere on the boundaries between experiment, folklore and scientific discovery. Donellan was opening the door to a profession – but not to professionals as we would recognise them.
In evidence later, cranking up the mystery a notch, Rattray said that he had received an anonymous note asking him to go to Lawford and ‘open the body of Sir Theodosius Boughton’; it asked that he take Mr Wilmer with him.
The three men were met by Donellan – ‘in the passage with a candle in his hand’ – in the hallway of the house, where they noticed that Powell, the apothecary, was standing by the great table reading a letter. Turning to Powell, Donellan took the letter and saw that it was addressed to him. Apologising, Powell said that he had opened it by mistake (according to Donellan’s later written Defence).
All five men went into the parlour while, upstairs, the lead coffin was being unsoldered. They were offered supper and, while they were eating it, Rattray read the letter that had been taken from Powell. It was from Sir William, saying that he himself would not come to see the autopsy because he ‘conceived no person was proper to be there but the surgeon and physician sent for’. (There is no record of Wheler coming to Lawford until the funeral; a curiously detached response but one that would make sense if he had confidence that his instructions were being carried out by Donellan.)
Donellan was, meanwhile, searching in his waistcoat pocket for another letter, but instead pulled out an empty envelope. Afterwards, he insisted that he was looking for some more correspondence from Sir William which proved that he had the guardian’s full confidence.
Rattray grew impatient. It was late; he ‘wished to get over such little matters as these’.
Obeying Wheler’s instructions that only the doctors should examine Theodosius’s body, Donellan stayed at the foot of the stairs while they went up to perform the grisly task of viewing the corpse.
It did not take long.
Wilmer went into the room first; but he came back out again quickly. He had only looked at Theo’s face, and ‘expressed surprise that the body was so putrid; it would serve no purpose to open it’. But the other two wanted to form their own opinions, so the three men returned to the laying-out room together, only for Rattray to agree: ‘the body seemed to us to be in such a very disagreeable state that we did not like to enter into the investigation of it, not knowing that any particular purpose was to be answered by it, except the satisfaction of the family.’
An amazing admission to modern ears: a doctor employed to carry out an autopsy says that a body is so revolting that he does not want to examine it. However, in 1780 it was believed that the odours alone from a corpse could be fatally infectious. More interesting is Rattray saying that he did not know that the purpose of the autopsy was to dispel the rumour of poisoning. Donellan had said nothing about that; nor had Sir William’s letter, but it is odd that neither Wilmer nor Rattray nor their anonymous friend had heard the rumours. Wilmer later said that he would have certainly opened the body, ‘disagreeable state’ or not, if poison had been mentioned.
They went back downstairs to speak to Donellan, who quite correctly did not ask for their conclusions – those were for Sir William to hear first – and asked them instead, ‘Shall you see Sir William Wheler?’
The two medical men disagreed later on what their reply was. Rattray insisted that he told Donellan that he had to go to somewhere called Brookswell the next day and so would not be going home that night; Wilmer flatly contradicted this, testifying that Rattray said he would see Sir William and ‘give him an account of the business’. At any rate, Donellan was satisfied that one or both of the doctors would tell Wheler their conclusions, which he took to be that nothing could be proven by opening the body because it was too far decayed.
At the front door of the Hall, according to Donellan’s Defence, Wilmer and Powell were given five guineas each for their trouble, and Rattray two guineas, as he had been perceived to be acting merely as an assistant. According to Donellan, Anna Maria appeared to bid the men goodbye, but she refused to pay them, saying that she carried no money with her. Donellan obliged instead.
The next morning, Donellan wrote again to Sir William:
Dear Sir,
I sent for Dr Rattray and Dr Wilmer; they brought another gentleman with them; … upon receipt of your last letter, I gave it to them to peruse and act as directed … I wish you would hear from them the state they found the body in, as it will be an additional satisfaction to me that you should hear the account from themselves.
The ‘other gentleman’ may have been Wheler’s apothecary, Bernard Snow, but this was never specifically confirmed. Donellan then, for the first time, described what he thought was the cause of death:
Sir Theodosius made a very free use of ointment and other things to repel a large boil which he had in his groin. So he used to do at Eaton … I repeatedly advised [him] to consult Dr Rattray … but … you will not wonder at his going his own way, which he would not be put out of … Lady Boughton expressed her wishes to Sir Theodosius that he would take proper advice for his complaint; but he treated hers as he did mine.
John Donellan.
If this letter betrays a growing defensiveness on Donellan’s part, and the first complaint at Theo’s own difficult character, the day was not over yet. Donellan had another cause for distraction: the servants announced that yet another surgeon was at the door.
This was someone that neither Wheler nor Donellan had asked for: Mr Samuel Bucknill, a local surgeon who had turned up of his own accord.
‘I have heard that Dr Rattray and Mr Wilmer have been here,’ Bucknill explained. ‘I heard that they declined opening it on account of the putrid state it was in. If it is of any satisfaction to the family,’ he went on, with some evident enthusiasm, ‘I will at all events take out the stomach.’
Here was someone with no introductory letter, no invitation from the family; someone confident enough to knock on the door of Lawford and bulldoze his way through to Theo’s corpse, dissecting instrument in hand. But Donellan had no knowledge of how well qualified Bucknill was to perform an autopsy; more importantly, he did not have Wheler’s permission to use him. He prevaricated. ‘It would not be fair,’ he said, ‘after Dr Rattray and Dr Wilmer had declined it, and they so eminent in their profession. It is impossible.’
Bucknill’s reaction to Donellan’s rejection of his services was to leave as abruptly as he had arrived; it is certain, given what happened the following day, that he went the six miles straight across the fields to Sir William Wheler.
Wednesday 6 September was the day scheduled for Theodosius’s funeral. The latest fashion was for burial at night, but Theodosius’s cortège was organised for three o’clock in the afternoon. It is likely that Donellan was responsible for the arrangements, as women were not usually welcome at such events – they were thought to be too emotional.
Donellan, by his own testimony, thought that he had fulfilled all that was required of him: he had allowed Wheler’s nominated physicians to see the body and had given them the opportunity for a dissection. He had also confirmed, or so he thought, that Rattray would visit Sir William and tell him what they had found. Apart from that, he had no other instructions, so he went ahead and arranged bearers and stewards, and the coffin was re-soldered. The weather had not changed; it was still very hot.
Despite having taken charge of arrangements at Lawford Hall since Theodosius’s death, Donellan’s position was uneasy. His mother-in-law was of no help; she had left everything to him to sort out. She had even refused to pay Rattray’s and Wilmer’s fees and, by her own admission at the trial, had not written to Theo’s guardian. Nor had she asked Powell about the medicine; instead, she had questioned Donellan about his washing out the medicine bottles. Donellan’s position was further undermined at the house when the servants were told by him – or so it transpired at the trial – to wash out a still that he had kept in his rooms for distilling rose and lavender water (a still that the prosecution would later contend had been used to distil lethal laurel water).
And then another letter arrived.
Lemington, September 6th, 1780.
Dear Sir,
From the letter I received from you yesterday morning, I concluded that the body of the last Sir Theodosius Boughton had been opened … but find that they found the body in so putrid a state that they thought it not safe to open it … I likewise find that a young man of Rugby, Mr Bucknill, did attend and offer to open the body, but it was not done …
One can almost hear Wheler fuming with frustration. He added that he had not heard from either Rattray or Wilmer and that it had been Bucknill who had told him the story. As if despairing of Rattray and Wilmer, Wheler went on to tell Donellan to let Bucknill dissect the body, with a Mr Snow. He then jumped to the conclusion that Donellan or the Boughtons must have been afraid of the dissection being carried out in the house:
If there is any danger in opening the body, it is to themselves and not to the family. The body may be taken into the open air. Mr Bucknill is or was very desirous of opening the body.
I am, with respects …
William Wheler.
His postscript had an even more frustrated urgency:
If Snow is from home, I do not see any impropriety in Bucknill doing it, if he is willing.
Bucknill had obviously made an impression.
Donellan replied at once, in a letter dated ‘a quarter before one o’clock, Wednesday’. The house was full of mourners, and the drive with carriages and horses. He referred ‘you, or anyone that pleases’ to his previous letter, saying that he had let Wheler’s doctors see the body alone and he asked that they let Wheler know what they had decided. He agreed that Bucknill had been at Lawford Hall, but that Sir William had not introduced him for, if he had, Donellan would have let him see the corpse. The letter was hurried, fraught:
The time fixed for burial is three o’clock today, if you please order to be postponed until the state of the body is made known to you … please let me know … if we do not hear from you we conclude you have seen some of them [the physicians] …
Not a word of reply was sent to Donellan by Sir William, even though a rider would have been able to reach him, and bring back a response, before three o’clock.
But a greater question remains.
As Theodosius’s guardian, why wasn’t Sir William Wheler at the house to attend the funeral? Had he been there, the authority to carry out the autopsy and to delay the funeral would have been his, and Donellan would have been relieved of this onerous – and soon to be damning – burden.
At two o’clock, with the lead coffin already brought downstairs and standing in the hall, Bucknill arrived back at Lawford.
Neither Rattray nor Wilmer came back, despite Donellan sending a servant out looking for them with a letter asking them to do so. There is no record in the trial transcript or in Donellan’s Defence to suggest that Donellan ever received a reply; but the Scots Magazine of 1781 (edited by James Boswell) quotes a letter sent from the doctor, Wilmer, on 6 September in which he politely excuses himself from responding immediately, pleading an urgent ‘midwifery case’, but saying that he would go and see William Wheler if he got back from Coventry in time.
Rattray had only returned to his own home that morning after his visit away, and testified later that he had received a letter from Donellan begging him to go and tell Sir William the circumstances of the night of 4 September.
Oddly, Rattray did not reply to his messages, but at some time on the same day he did meet up with Sir William, at the ‘Black Dog tavern’. In court later, he did not say when, nor did he say what kind of conversation they had. But neither he nor Wilmer went back to Lawford that day. Why Wheler did not absolutely insist on the doctors returning to the Hall to do their job is a puzzle.
Bucknill, of course, was a different matter. He turned up three-quarters of an hour after Donellan had sent his servant off to look for the other two doctors, saying that he had received a message from Sir William to come to Lawford and meet Mr Snow there so that Snow could open the body.
Donellan was standing in the hall.
According to later testimony, Bucknill asked, ‘Has Snow arrived?’
‘No,’ replied Donellan. He must have hesitated or seemed confused, for the doctor’s reply was impatient. ‘Pray sir,’ Bucknill insisted, ‘have you received any message or letter from Sir William Wheler?’
‘I have.’
‘I have to meet Mr Snow here, and we are to get Sir Theodosius’s body into the garden, or any convenient place we think proper, and we are to open it.’
Donellan made no move to comply. ‘I have written to Sir William,’ he said. ‘And to Doctors Rattray and Wilmer. I am waiting for Sir William’s orders.’
Something was awry here. Donellan had received Sir William’s orders in his postscript: ‘If Snow is from home, I do not see any impropriety in Bucknill doing it …’
Bucknill was beside himself with impatience. He had a very ill patient two miles away; the funeral was not for another hour; Donellan would not give permission for the autopsy to go ahead until Snow arrived, and Snow was not there. He decided to go to his patient, saying that he would be gone at most an hour and a half.
But he was ‘not ten yards’ out of the door when a messenger arrived with the news that his patient appeared to be on the verge of death. Riding on with all haste, he was nevertheless overtaken within a mile by a servant who had galloped at breakneck pace from Lawford. Mr Snow had arrived at the house, he was told. They had missed each other by about three minutes. Bucknill now had to choose between the dying and the dead. He chose his living patient, rode on, and sent the servant back saying that he would return within the hour.
It was almost exactly three o’clock when Bucknill arrived back at Lawford Hall.
He was met again by John Donellan. ‘Is Mr Snow here?’ Bucknill asked.
‘He is gone,’ Donellan replied.
Bucknill, by his own testimony, was speechless.
‘He has given us orders what to do,’ Donellan said. ‘I am sorry that you should have given yourself all this unnecessary trouble.’
Samuel Bucknill took his horse in utter disgust and ‘rode away as fast as I could’.
Theodosius Boughton was not taken from his coffin that day. There was no dissection. The pallbearers hoisted the heavy lead coffin on to the carriage, and the procession to Newbold church began in the sweltering heat.
He was buried as arranged.