‘I do not care to speak ill of any man behind his back; but I believe the gentleman was an attorney.’
Dr Johnson
30 MARCH 1781, the date of John Donellan’s trial at Warwick Assizes, was exactly seven months to the day after Theodosius Boughton had died. The accused was brought the few yards from the gaol into one of the two imposing courtrooms that still stand today: octagonal rooms that had been completed just thirteen years before, in 1758.1
One of Donellan’s friends from London, William Walsh, accompanied him into the court and proceeded to advise him on court procedure. Not that Donellan would have welcomed it. Walsh, who had begun life as a valet to Philip Stanhope, the illegitimate son of Lord Chesterfield, and finished it as a commissioner in the Custom House, was described by the publisher Henry Colburn in 1828 as ‘a ready-made joke’. However, Colburn went on to comment: ‘Walsh had been well acquainted with Donellan and attended him with great kindness from the gaol to the Court House.’ Once in the court, however, Walsh’s kindness wore thin; he pointed out the jurors, the lawyers and the crowds, and finished with the judge, adding jauntily, ‘The judge will put on a black cap and sentence you to be hanged.’ The story of Walsh’s cheerful tactlessness was to be told in his dining club for years afterwards.
Most criminal prosecutions at this time were by jury trial. Jurymen were just that – men; no women were allowed. Ownership of property was considered a good qualification for a juror, although members of the aristocracy were never chosen. Farmers, artisans and tradesmen were typical jurors, their register compiled annually by the county under the supervision of the Justices of the Peace. Not that owning property in itself automatically entitled a man to be a juror; in neighbouring Northamptonshire in the 1770s, only about ten people per thousand head of population were eligible to be jurors. Three-quarters of adult males were deemed too poor to qualify, whether they owned land or not.
Consequently, John Donellan would have faced a jury of local men who had made a considerable amount of money from their own land, tenant farms or businesses. As the Boughtons and their friends owned much of the local land on which the tenant farmers flourished, and as local tradesmen were to an extent dependent on aristocratic patronage, it is likely that most of the jurors either had the Boughtons and their contacts as landlords, or were at least anxious not to offend them (despite any protests to the contrary).2
It was also well known that the selection of jurors could be tampered with by neglecting to keep up a current list of freeholders; judges like Baptist Nunn in the 1720s regularly scrutinised and altered lists of jurors with the connivance of the under-sheriffs. The seven-month gap between Theodosius’s death and Donellan’s trial allowed ample time for the jurors selected to be approved by local JPs. The Justices of the Peace were also landed gentlemen; from 1732 JPs had to have an estate of £100 (£8,500) a year.
Standing in the dock, Donellan would also have been uncomfortably aware of the punitive nature of English law; despite the reforming politician William Eden arguing for fewer capital crimes in his Principles of Penal Punishment in 1771, no less than 240 offences carried the death penalty. This had been enforced by the Waltham Black Act of 1723, which had added fifty new capital offences; and in 1781 a man, woman or child could be hanged for offences ranging from murder and highway robbery to the seemingly absurd ‘being in the company of gypsies for more than a month’, writing a threatening letter, or, in the cases of children aged seven to fourteen, simply having ‘evidence of malice’.
Not all death sentences, however, were carried out – less than 30 per cent – yet being condemned to the pillory could be equally bad. Less than a week after Donellan’s trial, it was reported in the Morning Chronicle and London Advertiser that 20,000 people attacked two men put in the pillory for homosexual acts.3 It was only a year since branding had been abolished; it would be another ten before the execution of women by burning would be outlawed, and not until 1817 was the public flogging of women stopped. The court at Warwick did not flinch from imposing the severest penalties. In the 1780s, those hanged there included ‘Elizabeth Green, for stealing 2 guineas, aged 24’, ‘Sam Smith for house-breaking, aged 17’ and ‘Sam Packwood, for shop-lifting’.
Such was the state of English law at this time that the role of defence counsel was not clearly defined. In 1781, cross-examination of witnesses was not consistent practice, and defence counsel could not address the jury or give a summing-up. However, perhaps most damaging of all to a defendant’s case was that he or she was not allowed to speak in court. A defendant could only have a statement read out in court, a statement which had been prepared before the witnesses had been heard. So-called expert witnesses could also give opinions on the defendant’s guilt: a point that was to prove crucial for Donellan.
The events as shown in the opening chapters of this book were portrayed from Anna Maria Boughton’s point of view. Now her testimony, taken from the original trial transcript, will be compared with the version Donellan prepared for his lawyers and as he annotated it after the trial.
The contrasts both between Anna Maria’s and Donellan’s accounts, and between the case that Donellan had prepared and what little of that case was used, are remarkable.
If the odds were not already heavily stacked against him, the presiding judge, Sir Justice Buller, presented the final insurmountable obstacle to Donellan. Not only had Buller opined in Warwick the week before that he thought Donellan was guilty, but he had an aggressively punitive reputation.
Francis Buller had been only thirty-two when he had been appointed to the bench in 1778 – the youngest judge ever to sit in British courts: Donellan now faced a man of his own age who had risen rapidly to high office and who was at the height of his intellectual powers. Buller was to preside over many high-profile trials in his illustrious career. However, a year after Donellan’s trial he made a ruling that earned him a nickname for life which echoes down the centuries even now: Justice Thumb. In 1782, he ruled that it was permissible for a man to beat his wife providing that the stick used was no thicker than the man’s thumb. A Gillray cartoon of November 1782 shows Buller selling conveniently sized sticks and saying, ‘Here’s your nice family amusement for winter evenings’, while in the background a husband beats his wife with the words ‘Murder, hey? It is Law, you Bitch! It is not bigger than my thumb.’ Nor was Buller hesitant in handing out the death sentence: having himself had several sheep stolen from the flock on his Devonshire estates, he invariably hanged anyone found guilty of sheep stealing.
Buller was not physically imposing; an engraving by Francesco Bartolozzi shows a short man, with small hands of which the left fist is clenched. He looks to his left with a piercing, steady gaze – the same expression shown in the Gillray cartoon – and a rather weak, feminine mouth is offset by an aquiline nose and heavy, dominating eyebrows. Above a lavishly trimmed set of scarlet robes, a double chin is clearly visible.
Buller was born into a wealthy family in Crediton, Devon, in March 1746, and married the heiress to the nearby Churston estate, Susanna Yarde, in 1763, when he was only seventeen and his wife was twenty-three. Educated at Christ’s Hospital, he was admitted to the Inner Temple in the same year as his marriage: he would remain passionately attached to the law – and, to all outward show, to his wife – all his life. Although he had married into money, Buller’s own family was already well off. Downes House, where he was born, owned over 5,000 acres of land in Devon and Cornwall which by the mid-1800s was generating an income of over £14,000 (more than £800,000 today) per annum; added to this, documents in the Cornwall Record Office show that Buller owned further property in London.
Despite all his wealth and reputation, however, Buller was uncomfortable with his life. ‘He was unhappy,’ wrote the playwright Joseph Cradock.4 ‘He resorted too frequently to whist to divert himself from uneasy thoughts.’ In The Lives of Twelve Eminent Judges Townsend commented: ‘Buller’s life was disfigured by an appetency for political intrigue, and his somewhat unscrupulous use of borough influence for purposes of party … his many virtues were tarnished by an inordinate love of money and passion for high play.’ Buller himself readily admitted his addiction to gambling; he claimed that his idea of paradise was to spend all day in court and all night at the gaming tables. (His sedentary existence was to be his ultimate downfall; after years of poor health, in June 1800 he suffered a catastrophic heart attack while playing a game of piquet, fell from his chair and died instantaneously, aged fifty-four).
In a contemporaneous set of memoirs, Buller was described as having ‘great quickness of perception … although perhaps his perception is sometimes too quick’. ‘It has exposed him to the charge of impatience and petulance very indecorous in a judge … Buller seems to possess the greatest inflexibility of opinion.’5
But Cradock’s Memoirs revealed something even more disturbing and pertinent to the coming trial. In them he writes of a meeting he had with Buller just a week before: ‘One of the last times I ever met him was on the day of his coming to Leicester at the house of an eminent physician there.’ (There were not many ‘eminent’ physicians in the area, aside from those who were to testify later against Donellan.) ‘At the Assizes, on the Sunday, we all dined at Nework’s Leicester, and some gentlemen who were all to meet again next week at Warwick; the general conversation was Donellan, and his guilt was asserted by all.’
By all? One wonders at the identity of the ‘gentlemen’. Were some of them court officers? Was the ‘eminent physician’ any of those who had refused to examine Theodosius’s body? Buller would not have sat down to dinner with tradesmen, but with men of property, his equals. Is it possible that the Earl of Denbigh shared the same table, or some of Anna Maria’s richer tenant farmers?
It would be reasonable to assume that around the table sat the local Justices of the Peace: no JP would miss the opportunity to meet the famous Justice Buller. They would undoubtedly be the same men who had schooled Anna Maria Boughton in her evidence just days before. Her private tuition by the JPs was to become a scandal after the trial, but for now it was a secret only for the few. Cradock picks up on this. ‘The only doubt seemed to be,’ he says, ‘that as Lady Boughton, the mother, was all but a fool, her evidence, which was necessary, might not be effective.’ This would have been a terrible anxiety for the prosecution, whose case rested almost entirely on Anna Maria’s testimony. A later commentary, Celebrated Trials Connected with the Aristocracy by the barrister Peter Burke, written in 1849, confirms, if not the stupidity, then at least the dullness of the leading witness. ‘Lady Boughton was not a very intellectual woman,’ it notes kindly, so she had to be helped to give evidence in a coherent manner. Or, alternatively, in a way that would not incriminate her. Cradock adds, ‘I am sorry to say it, that Judge Buller’s charge was imprudent, for it prejudged Donellan.’
It would have been a very unusual juryman indeed who would have been able to approach the trial now with anything like objectivity.
Proceedings began early, at seven thirty in the morning.
The indictment was read out: ‘poisoning by arsenic … two grams of arsenic … that he did put, infuse in and mix together with water into and in a certain glass phial bottle of the value of one penny … did put and in the place and stead of a certain medicine lately prescribed …’ it droned on, at last coming to the point. ‘… Sir Theodosius Boughton did take, drink and swallow down into his body … and did die.’6
John Donellan was asked how he pleaded.
‘Not guilty,’ he replied.
An interesting legal point occurs here. Over and over again Donellan was accused of substituting laurel water for Theodosius’s medicine. Indeed, great pains were taken to show that he might have distilled the laurel water himself, with the gardener testifying that laurel grew in the garden of Lawford Hall. But laurel water is not arsenic; it is prussic acid.
After Donellan’s plea of not guilty, the jury was sworn in.
The indictment was opened by one of the counsel for the Crown, Mr Digby, who then passed the main drama over to his colleague, Mr Howarth.
Howarth spoke for over an hour.
Beginning with a description of how vile and underhand the use of poison was, he rapidly moved into a description of Theodosius, ‘possessed of a good constitution, affected by no indisposition that could endanger his life’. Donellan’s motive was clear: the Boughton fortune had ‘induced the prisoner to plan and execute the abominable crime’. And he had to be quick, because Theodosius was planning, in the week of his death, to go and stay with his friend Fonnereau ‘til he came of age’, that is, for eleven months.
Powell’s treatment of Theodosius for ‘slight’ venereal disease was described. Howarth stated correctly that the medicine was brought to Lawford Hall on the evening of 29 August, and that Theodosius went fishing at five o’clock. This leaves open the issue of who had access to, or took delivery of, that medicine. Howarth reported that ‘most of the menservants’ were out with their master, while ‘Lady Boughton and Mrs Donellan were out walking for some hours in the garden’. Howarth then went on to say that in order to explain his ‘absence’ all evening, Donellan claimed he had been fishing with Theodosius.
Howarth described Theodosius’s death in detail: how the medicine was on the chimney shelf and not under lock and key; how Theodosius complained to his mother that the draught was ‘nauseous’; how Anna Maria smelled it herself, thinking it smelled like bitter almonds, and then gave Theodosius the cup again. Almost as soon as the medicine was finished, Theodosius ‘appeared to be in a very considerable degree of agony; his stomach heaved violently; his eyes seemed much affected’. Lady Boughton ‘takes no further notice of him at that time’; she left the room and returned again in ten minutes to find her son ‘in the very agonies of death’. He died half an hour later.
As Anna Maria testified that she went into Theodosius’s room at 7 a.m., that puts Theodosius’s death at approximately 7.50 a.m. – according to Howarth.
Howarth now took the opportunity to say that poison was to blame. Theodosius was ‘a young man, having a good constitution, labouring under no disorder’ and he fell ill immediately after taking the draught. ‘No man,’ Howarth declared, ‘hearing these circumstances related, can for a moment doubt that poison produced these effects,’ going on to say that learned men would demonstrate that the poison ‘certainly was laurel water’. However, a few sentences later he corrected himself. It was no longer a certainty but ‘a strong probability that the poison used was a distillation of laurel water’.
‘I shall show,’ he continued, ‘that the prisoner at the bar was skilled at distillation; he was possessed of a still; he worked this still … I shall show that the prisoner was frequently in private locked up in his own room using a still.’
Next Howarth outlined Donellan’s behaviour on the morning of Theodosius’s death. He entered the room, he said, and demanded at once to see the medicine bottle. ‘The prisoner took the bottle down; he immediately poured water into the bottle, he shook it, he rinsed it; he then threw the contents of it into a basin of dirty water.’ (This was not the version that Anna Maria had given in her second deposition to the coroner, the deposition that had forced Donellan’s arrest.) Lady Boughton had objected, Howarth continued, saying, ‘For God’s sake, don’t touch the bottle!’ This phrase was not in either of Anna Maria’s depositions nor in her testimony in court.
Donellan, according to Howarth, took no notice. ‘The prisoner,’ Howarth continued, ‘fearing lest by accident he might have taken up the wrong bottle, reaches down another from the shelf, pours water also into the second bottle, rinses it well, throws the contents of that also into the basin of dirty water.’ Worse yet, Donellan instructed the maid Sarah Blundell, ‘whilst the young man was lying in the agonies of death’, to take away the bottles. Lady Boughton objected, and Donellan ‘was warm upon the subject; he insisted upon it; he pressed the woman to take them down.’
In neither of her depositions nor her testimony at the trial did Anna Maria say that Donellan was ‘warm upon the subject’, or indeed that he had insisted with any amount of firmness. Howarth portrayed a man whose temper was raised; Donellan’s account flatly denied this; Anna Maria’s does not stress it. Here, however, Howarth was presumably referring to his own prosecution brief, which noted that ‘Donellan was angry with the maid that she did not make more haste’.
Howarth then moved on to Donellan’s attitude once the apothecary Powell arrived. Already described as impatient, bullying and surly, Donellan apparently tried to impress on Powell that Theodosius had taken cold when he went fishing the night before, ‘and that cold occasioned his death’. Powell was then ‘suffered to depart’ without being given the opportunity to explain the effects of the medicine or to inspect the bottles. He left the house ‘without having the bottle shown him’. This, Howarth declared emphatically, ‘is a circumstance which ought alone to decide the fate of the prisoner’. In fact, Powell did not testify that he was ‘suffered’ to leave. He left of his own accord, and he had simply not asked to see the medicine bottle.
Donellan was then described going about Lawford Hall trying to persuade the servants that Theodosius had not been poisoned. The boy caught cold, he was supposed to have said; he had wet his feet while fishing; he had died of a venereal disorder. And as soon as Donellan had finished doing that, he had written to Sir William Wheler to tell him that the boy had died, in words ‘calculated to impress with the idea that the death was a natural one, and the result of a long illness’. Sir William’s remarkable inactivity is skimmed over; but it was stated that it was not until Monday that he communicated ‘suspicions of poison’ and asked for named doctors to inspect the body. Great play was then made by Howarth that Donellan did not show the doctors the letter in which Wheler had mentioned poison. ‘Doctor Rattray and Mr Wilmer had no idea at all of the occasion of their being sent for.’ In fact, when they asked Donellan why they had been sent for he replied, ‘For the satisfaction of all.’
Shown into a room to see the corpse, the doctors ‘declined doing any such thing’ (i.e. opening the body) because it was in such a state of putrefaction. There would be ‘danger to themselves if they attempted to open it’. They left the house without Donellan asking them about the cause of death, and once again Howarth makes a great show of the men being ‘suffered to depart’. There is no suggestion that the doctors had failed in the duty that had been asked of them. Howarth himself, however, had already said that the doctors had seen a letter from Sir William expressing ‘his satisfaction that the family were disposed to have the body opened’. So there was no doubt of what they were expected to do, and no doubt that a failure to open the body was their own decision, not Donellan’s.
Howarth grew a little heated about the doctors and the letters. He claimed that Donellan only showed the second letter to Sir William, the one in which he said of the doctors that ‘they fully satisfied us’. ‘Good God!’ Howarth declaimed. ‘In what does this satisfaction consist? In my apprehension, were there no other fact in this case but that single letter, it speaks as strongly as a thousand witnesses testifying to the actual commission of the crime.’ In other words, this one letter was more convincing than a thousand witnesses claiming to have seen Donellan put poison into a bottle and make Theodosius drink the contents.
A reminder of this letter’s contents:
Dear Sir,
Give me leave to express the heartfelt satisfaction … observing your advice in all respects. I sent for Dr Rattray and Dr Wilmer; they brought another gentleman with them; Mr Powell gave them the meeting, and upon receipt of your last letter, I gave it to them to peruse and act as it directed.
In the letter that Donellan refers to here Sir William had said that he wished to have the body opened and that it would be ‘very improper’ to have himself or any other person present while it was being inspected. Poison was not mentioned. Donellan goes on:
The four gentlemen proceeded accordingly and I am happy to inform you that they fully satisfied us; and I would wish that you hear from them the state they found the body in, as it will be an additional satisfaction for me that you should hear this account from themselves. Sir Theodosius made a very free use of an ointment and other things to repel a large boil which he had in his groin. So he used to do at Eaton, and Mr Jones told me often. I repeatedly advised him to consult Dr Rattray or Mr Carr; but as you know Sir Theodosius, you will not wonder at his going his own way, which he would not be put out of. I cannot help thinking but that Mr Powell acted to the best of his judgement for Sir Theodosius in this and the last case, which was but a short time finished before the latter appeared. 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.
She and my wife join in best respects,
John Donellan.
The defence counsel, Mr Newnham, asked that this letter be read to the court. He must have been convinced that there was nothing in it that could harm his client.
Howarth maintained that the letter was designed to mislead Sir William and make him believe that an autopsy had been carried out, despite the fact that Donellan had asked Rattray and Wilmer to give their findings directly to Sir William. By the time that this letter had reached its addressee, though, it would have been reasonable to assume that the doctors had told Sir William that this had not been done, and that this was entirely their own decision.
By now, the jurors would have been cross-eyed trying to work out who wrote what and when. They certainly were not given the impression that Wheler was curiously slow to act in the first place, or in any way to blame for not turning up at Lawford Hall himself to see what was going on. Nor was any blame for not establishing the cause of death attached to the doctors who could not bear to touch the body, or even turn down the shroud so that they could see below the neck, despite knowing that their instructions were to carry out an autopsy. The accusation from Howarth, instead, was crystal clear: Donellan had managed events so that no one but himself had the full story.
Howarth then explained the to-ings and fro-ings of Dr Bucknill and the events of the day of the funeral, although he did not say that Bucknill and Snow missed each other, or that it was Snow who gave the order for the body to be buried and that Bucknill decided to visit a dying patient instead of waiting at the Hall.
Howarth laboured on for some time about the fact that Donellan made ‘a specious show’ of offering to defer the funeral. Why? he demanded. So that Rattray and Wilmer, ‘who could give no information upon the subject’, could come back. He did not mention that Donellan sent servants to find Rattray and Wilmer, or that Sir William himself, who should have made the final decision, had chosen not to attend the funeral.
Howarth continued by describing the ‘wonderful alarm in the minds of all the people’ that Theodosius had been buried, the ‘gentlemen’ who had called in the coroner, and the open-air dissection of Theodosius.
Finally, he turned to describing the coroner’s court itself, in which Donellan had been seen tugging on Lady Boughton’s sleeve to prevent her saying something. He claimed that, when Lady Boughton and Donellan returned to Lawford Hall, he chided her ‘for meddling in it’ and told her to answer just the questions put to her. Most significantly, though, he changed his story. Theodosius had no longer died of cold or a disease; he had been poisoned. And in prison Donellan had confided to Derbyshire that this was the case, and that Powell, or the servants, or Anna Maria herself were to blame.
Howarth became quite inflamed in his closing sentences. ‘For the purpose of removing suspicion from himself, he now dares to lay a charge where suspicion has never fallen!’ he exclaimed with high drama. The transcript does not relate whether he chose to point to Anna Maria at this juncture, or if indeed she was sitting in court, but the outrage is clear. A mother was being accused of killing her own son; an aristocratic woman, a lonely and respected widow whose only son represented the sole chance her branch of the family had of retaining the baronetcy. It would have sent a ripple of horror around the court. With a flourish Howarth concluded: ‘Justice demands the punishment of the murderer; it remains only for your verdict to determine the guilt, and to consign the criminal to his fate.’
Of course, that was not precisely accurate.
It was not the jury’s verdict that would determine guilt. The jury was certainly capable of consigning Donellan to his fate, but the determination of guilt lay in the veracity – or not – of the evidence that was to come.
The first witness to be called was Thomas Powell, the apothecary. It was Powell, more than anyone else, who had the means and opportunity to carry out the crime of poisoning; yet never a hint of suspicion was cast on him other than Sir William Wheler’s oblique reference in his letter of 4 September to John Donellan, in which he stresses that Powell needs to ‘clear his name’.
Powell was questioned by Mr Wheeler.
After establishing Powell’s identity and residence and the date of Theodosius’s death, Wheeler moved on to the victim’s health.
Q: In what state of health was he when you first attended him?
A: He had got a venereal complaint upon him.
Q: To what degree?
A: Not very high; rather slight. A fresh complaint … I gave him a cooling physic for about three weeks … and an embrocation to wash himself with.
Q: Did you then cease to give him physic?
A: Yes … for about a fortnight. [I repeated] the medicines because he had a swelling in his groin.
Q: How long before you sent Sir Theodosius this last draught?
A: On Tuesday afternoon, the same day I sent the last draught, I saw him … he told that [these draughts] he took on the Saturday last made him sick.
Q: In what state of health did he then appear?
A: In great spirits and good health.
Powell was then asked to produce a phial of the same mixture that he sent to Theodosius. He did so, and described it: rhubarb and jalop, spirits of lavender, nutmeg water and simple syrup. He also produced another mixture, exactly the same, but with laurel water substituted for the syrup. (These had been brought to help Anna Maria when she gave her evidence later.)
He was then asked to describe the events of 30 August.
Q: Was you then sent for to Lawford Hall?
A: I was.
Q: At what time?
A: About eight or nine o’clock … [William Frost] said that Sir Theodosius was very ill, and that he was sent by Lady Boughton to fetch me; I went immediately … I met Captain Donellan in the courtyard; he went along with me into the room … some servant was there, I cannot tell which …
Q: In what situation did you find Sir Theodosius Boughton?
A: I saw no distortion.
Q: What did you see?
A: Nothing particular.
Q: Was he alive or dead?
A: He had been dead near an hour.
This puts the death at shortly after eight o’clock. But it raises another question. Powell lived in Rugby, about four miles away. Anna Maria said that she rushed downstairs and sent for Powell at about 7.20 a.m. Powell testified that he set out as soon as the servant arrived from Lawford Hall. Even taking the lowest speed of a cantering horse (about 10 m.p.h.), the servant would have arrived at Powell’s by 7.50 a.m. at the latest. And even allowing Powell ten minutes to get ready, and to take a slower pace back, the latest time for his arrival would have been about 8.40 a.m.
Twenty minutes – and in all probability more – are missing. In reality, taking an average speed between a cantering and a galloping horse (and the servant was a young man who would have pressed the horse hard, having been told there was an emergency), more like forty-five minutes or an hour are missing.
There is only one conclusion.
Anna Maria did not send for Powell at 7.20 a.m.
Q: Did Mr Donellan ask you any question?
A: He asked me no question.
Q: Did you say anything to him?
A: I asked him how he died; Captain Donellan told me in convulsions.
Q: Did you see anything of the bottles you had sent?
A: I saw nothing of them; they were never mentioned.
Q: Do you remember having any other conversation with Mr Donellan about Sir Theodosius?
A: His general intent was to make me believe that Sir Theodosius Boughton had taken cold.
Aside from Powell being allowed to speculate on Donellan’s ‘intent’, which he could not have known for sure, it is what has been left out of the questioning that is so striking. Why did Powell not ask to see the bottle? Would he not have wanted to check that Theodosius had drunk from the bottle that he had sent, rather than another one? Didn’t his reputation rest on this bottle? Would he not have wanted to reassure himself that Theodosius had not drunk from some other source? Some time later, one of the doctors would testify that the supposed poison, laurel water, had an acrid smell. Why did Powell not notice such a smell so soon after the death? If he did notice the smell, why did he not remark on it to Donellan or Anna Maria?
Powell was then cross-examined by Donellan’s lawyer, Newnham. But instead of asking Powell any of the above questions, he simply requested the exact measurements of the ingredients. During his brief replies Powell began to say that he saw Lady Boughton soon after he saw Donellan, and that she confirmed that her son ‘was convulsed soon after he took the medicine’. At this point, after a cross-examination of less than five minutes, Newnham sat down, and Powell left the stand.
Powell was not asked about why Theodosius would have been sick after taking his prescription of the previous Saturday; he was not asked his opinion of the ‘swelling in the groin’ and whether that tallied with ‘a slight complaint’. Nor was he asked if the embrocation he prescribed contained mercury, and how often Powell had prescribed mercury, or what Theodosius’s history of venereal disease was. Indeed, he was not asked any question that might establish a long-running illness: how many times Theodosius had been infected, for instance; or what Lady Boughton had said to him about Theodosius’s health when she first consulted him. Nothing at all, in fact, to establish that this was not a young man ‘in great spirits and good health’.
A shocking omission on the part of the defence, but it was understandable that the prosecution would not ask. Because the prosecution brief itself revealed just how sick Theodosius had really been, and how much medication Powell had given him.
Under the heading ‘Evidence’ in the prosecution brief, Powell had told the prosecution team that in June he had prescribed Theodosius ‘three mercurial bolus’ (pills) for a new venereal infection, along with ‘electuaries’ (laxatives) and doses of ‘cooling physic’. These appeared to have cured Theodosius by the beginning of August. A fortnight afterwards, the boy discovered a swelling in his groin, and for this Powell prescribed potassium bitartrate, another electuary, rhubarb and jalop and an embrocation of ‘strong Gulard wash’. Powell also told the team that Theodosius had admitted to using mercurial ointment.
Therefore, in the eight weeks before his death, Theodosius had been given three mercury pills (a bolus was usually a fairly large size), a great deal of laxative and a Gulard wash. Gulard was a very expensive treatment made from an aromatic wood; less toxic than mercury, it was used to treat skin inflammations. But taken in excess, Gulard could cause seizures and heart failure. In addition, Theodosius had used a mercurial ointment of his own. The prosecution team also had a letter from Theodosius to Powell dated 29 August, the day before he died. The letter was never produced in court, and Donellan’s team did not know of its existence. In it, Theodosius complained that the swelling in his groin had not gone down: ‘The swelling is nearly the same as it was before,’ he complains. ‘I have used the greatest part of the embrocation. If it is possible for me to have any more you will please send it … I have taken the electuary according to your order every night and morning.’
This is not a patient in recovery or good health.
A swelling in the lymph nodes of the groin is a sign of the secondary stage of syphilis, and no amount of laxative would cure it.