William Bennison was a cross between Dr Pritchard of Glasgow and George Joseph Smith, an eliminator of unwanted wives and set fair to multiply into a mass murderer. He was also a bigamist, which goes with that type of criminality. In 1850, when he was caught, the Victorian mind was most interested in his vile hypocrisy. Today, we are more engaged by the hypocritical politician, but at that time the contrast between his domestic cruelty and his canting, ranting religious enthusiasm was thought to be edifying to contemplate.
The soil from which he sprang fully armed with a name fit, save for the double consonant, for the profession of his faith, was Irish. His background was poor, and he could not even write his own name. All the family, according to his sister, Mary Bennison, were baptised into the Church of England persuasion and perhaps she meant the United Church of England and Ireland. In his youth – and he was aged 32 in 1850 – he had eagerly embraced Primitive Methodism, the movement founded in 1805 by William Clowes of Burslem and Hugh Bourne of Stoke-on-Trent, and so named in 1812. They had been expelled from the Wesleyan Church for persisting in holding open-air revival meetings with singing and exhortations.
Bennison could not read the Gospels but he was fluent and rhetorical in prayer and able to inspire others, described as a great proselytiser, a shining light, and an assiduous visitor of the sick. There has been a misapprehension that he was a preacher, but he obviously could not be an ordained minister, nor a lay or ‘local preacher’ of whom standards were demanded. He attended the ‘class-meetings’ regularly and was regarded as a pillar of the chapel. There was no insanity in him. He was no religious monomaniac, a favourite cultural figure of the 19th century. His religious zeal did not rule the other compartments of his life, and he was not irrational. Certainly he showed the symptoms of lack of moral conscience in himself, cold egoism, lack of empathy with others (to the ultimate degree!) but that is another matter.
In person he was the embodiment of the preacher man, of forbidding hawkish aspect, able even so to thrill the ladies, and endowed with a persuasive Irish accent. On November 5 th, 1838, at Tavanagh, near Portadown, in Armagh, he married a girl named Mary Mullen. After little more than a year, he deserted her and left Ireland, settling in Paisley, where on December 5th, 1839, he bigamously took part in a marriage ceremony with a delicate girl named Jane Hamilton. There is no evidence that financial gain was a part of his motivation in changing from Mary to Jane. He was born to poverty and lived all his brief life in poor circumstances, except for being in receipt of a small windfall just before the end. He had no known occupation or income at all. Wearying of Jane after only a few weeks, he returned to Mary in Ireland and persuaded her to go back to Scotland with him. She went unwillingly, because he had beaten her. Poor young Mary was a Methodist, and when she sailed away with him, she was wearing a blue mantle. Once in Scotland, in Airdrie, she was never seen again by her family and it was later thought by people in responsible positions that he had soon murdered her.
Jane Hamilton had been advised by a friend, Margaret Ross, of Bathgate, not to marry William Bennison. She took him back after his unexplained absence in Ireland, having lived in the interim with her sister, Helen. The returned voyager was dressed ominously in mourning clothes, with a crêpe band on his hat. He said, ridiculously, that his sister had travelled with him, had suffered from seasickness on the passage, and had subsequently died at Airdrie. Under his arm was a bundle of what he said were his sister’s clothes, which he gave, by way of peace offering to Jane. The blue mantle was well received. Afterwards, it was inevitable that Jane should find out that his sister was still alive, and she taxed him with the monstrous lie. He joked, and passed it off, saying that she was ‘only a Sister in the Lord’.
The bigamous marriage survived for some ten years and a daughter was born in about 1843. From Paisley, they had moved to Edinburgh, where they occupied an apartment in Stead’s Place, off Leith Walk. In a modern phrase, they occupied separate rooms, because of Jane’s poor health. She had a cough, and ailed in the winter. Also a Methodist, it appears, she was gentle and pious and devoted to her child. Bennison was becoming tired of her and his fierce eye alighted on Margaret Robertson, his favourite convert, who began to share his pew in the Methodist chapel at Leith under the benign gaze of the Reverend Mr John Hay. Jane languished indoors while this was going on, and begged her husband to stay at home and ‘make family worship’, but he replied that he needed outdoor exercise and did not have enough time for family worship as well as attendance at prayer-meetings. Her sister, Helen, thought it better not to tell her that she had often seen William and Margaret Robertson out walking in the evenings. Helen was conscious that Jane was ‘low-spirited’ when alone, although she put up a brave front in company. For her constitutional weakness, she took only one medicine – cream of tartar, which she kept on an open shelf in the kitchen cupboard. This old remedy would have been no earthly use in the amelioration of her ‘bad chest’, being a mere purgative and diuretic. (The substance, incidentally, occurs in the later stages of the fermentation of grape-juice, found deposited on the sides of the cask, and is known as ‘argol’. Dissolved in hot water, the solution is filtered and the pure cream of tartar crystallised out. It is not the poison known as tartar emetic or tartarated antimony.)
Mary Robertson, who lived at McNeill’s Place, Leith Walk, with her mother and sister, the Margaret Robertson who shared the Bennison pew, was to say that when the good man visited their house, ‘the conversation was always of religion’. Margaret was a serious girl, she said, incapable of wrong, and when they walked together in the evenings, they were simply going home from meetings. Bennison, however, was not content with their relationship as it stood, and he began to make preparations. Six weeks before Jane Bennison died, he went to a chemist’s shop, owned by William Macdonald, and was served by the wife, Jane Macdonald. He was well known to both of them. He told her that he wanted to buy some arsenic for rats. She asked him to wait until her husband came in, but he said that there was no use waiting; he was in a hurry because his wife was too nervous to go for the coals, being so frightened of the myriads of rats which infested the cellar. Respectful of the good man and aware of his poverty, Mrs Macdonald obliged him, and gave good value for his twopence – between half and three-quarters of an ounce.
Twopence appears by repetition of account to have been the sum regularly proffered in Victorian times for ‘arsenic for rats’ but it is interesting that the quantity or the quality (i.e. the extent of the adulteration by other substances) supplied should have varied according to the chemist’s knowledge of the purchaser.
In anticipation, Bennison joined two funeral societies and paid to the agent, Andrew Carr, in all, the sum of 1s. 5d. He also joined a benefit society, the terms of which were that he would get £3 in respect of the loss of his wife, and that the members were each to give him one shilling to provide a coffin, in the event of such a sad necessity. Jane now had one week to live, and he told her sister, who was surprised, that Jane was ‘breaking up’.
On Friday evening, April 12 th, in that frugal household, Jane ate a little porridge for supper and was taken with violent pain and sickness. Bennison lay low right through Saturday and then on the Sunday sprang into activity. Off to sister Helen to tell her to come at once if she wanted to see Jane alive; the doctor said she would slip away in a few hours. As he spoke, he seemed upset, and asked for a glass of spirits. Dr Gillespie had indeed had a look at the sick woman but had not made the reported comment, nor had he been called in as a matter of urgency: he had happened to be passing along Stead’s Place, and Bennison had asked him to come in and see his wife. He found the patient very weak, gave directions for treatment, and told the husband to send word to the dispensary if she became worse. He heard no more.
Out to the chemist Bennison scurried, to William Macdonald of course, where he was known and trusted. All night, he said, his poor Jane had been ill. The chemist dispensed two powders, containing cinnamon, ginger and cayenne pepper, all of which were used indeed (on checking) in gastric ailments, but all of course powerless against the stronger agent which the same shop had provided.
Helen sat with her clearly dying sister and gave her some wine and milk with water, and gruel, but naturally she could keep nothing down. Bennison wandered in and out and Helen thought his manner very cool. He asked for ‘the dead-clothes’ to be looked out and enquired about the correct form of funeral letters. He never spoke to his wife. There were other witnesses of the frightful scene. A neighbour, Mrs Porteous, of Stead’s Place, was greatly surprised when Bennison appeared at her door and said that his wife was very ill and that ‘he doubted her very much in that bout’. Jane had been in her usual health when she had seen her just the other day. She offered to fetch a doctor but he said that he had a low opinion of doctors and knew better what medicine to give her. She went round, and found Jane vomiting into a tub. She did not like Bennison’s manner; it was strange and not right. She asked him to send for a doctor, as this was obviously not Jane’s usual chest trouble, but he refused. When he tried to give his wife a drink, he did not look her in the eye, but stood at the crown of her head and reached forward to her mouth – a most unnatural action.
John Porteous was also there and Bennison told him that he had tried to contact four doctors, but they were all engaged. Euphemia Ingram, a niece of clever Mrs Porteous, also saw Mrs Bennison vomiting in the tub. She saw some discarded porridge and potatoes and offered to give them to the Bennisons’ pig, but of course he did not want his valuable commodity to be poisoned and answered hastily that it would be a waste of ‘good meat’, and that he would give the food to ‘Sandy’s dog’. Agnes Turnbull, hearing of Mrs Bennison’s illness, went to see her on Sunday, after chapel, and, appalled, she too, offered to run for a doctor, but Bennison said it was no use, ‘She was going home; she was going to glory’.
During the night of the Sunday, Jane cried out, begging for a doctor but, in her hearing, Bennison said that there was no use incurring further expense; the doctor had done everything possible, and she could not put off many hours. Besides, he said, the doctor was coming again in the morning. No doctor came. There had been only the one consultation. The minister had been to the house. He said that he had received a note from Bennison asking for the congregation to pray for his wife. (Since he could not write we must presume that one of the neighbours helped him.) The Reverend John Hay found Mrs Bennison very ill but noticed nothing untoward.
After a severe struggle, Jane Bennison died on Monday, April 15th, at midday, comforted by her sister, and friends. Bennison was out at the time. Elizabeth Grindlay, a neighbour who was present at the death, met Bennison at the door when he came back and told him. ‘Thank God! She has gone to glory. She has gone home’, he intoned. He told the sister that he had met the doctor at the door and told him that he need not go up, as it was all over. The funeral, he declared, was to take place on Wednesday: there was no use (his favourite, pragmatic phrase) wasting time. This is exactly the tone of George Joseph Smith’s elegiac words on his wives – ‘When they’re dead, they’re dead’.
Sandy’s dog died. It belonged, in fact, to Alexander Milne who lived on the same floor in the building as the Bennisons. The good man had come to him, bearing a bowl of cold potatoes for his dog, thinking of him even when his wife so ill. That was on the Sunday. The dog finished the bowl at 2.00pm and it began to moan at 7.30pm. He found it lifeless the next morning. It may have been that Bennison was of the numerous tribe of dog-haters, or he may have had it in for Sandy’s dog in particular, but the motivation is more likely to have been sheer cunning. Surrounded by anxious neighbours, and under observation, he knew that throwing away good food would have been construed as strange behaviour.
Now, at last, Bennison was able to import Margaret Robertson into his humble abode, and he watched with secret rejoicing as she made tea with Jane’s crocks on the very day of the death. She was to visit him daily from then on and the neighbours saw that he showed no signs of grief for his loss. This was careless of him, but he was in a stage of high elation. The minister was surprised when he asked for the early funeral on the Wednesday, thinking it too soon and against propriety, but Bennison won the day with a characteristic axiom – it did not do for poor people to keep a corpse long in the house. Margaret delivered the funeral invitations by hand. Bennison collected from the various societies, and told a William Fairgrieve that he stood to gain £11 all told. He also collected from Mrs Ramsay the pair of black trousers which he had asked her to mend for him when, he said, his wife was lying poorly, and if there were a change, he would need to make himself decent. This time, he made the ill-judged remark that he had seen many a deathbed, but never a pleasanter one than his wife’s. As it happened, Mrs Ramsay had noticed him going about with Miss Robertson for a couple of months before Jane died. He told William Fairgrieve that when she was taken ill, his wife begged him to marry again, because he would be poorly treated in lodgings.
The friends and neighbours and sister Helen were stunned by the shock of the sudden death and Bennison’s nonchalance. Elizabeth Wilkie, who lived below the Bennisons, on the area floor, was exhausted because the noise of poor Jane’s retching had kept her awake all night. Bennison was invited to spend his first night without Jane at the Robertsons’. Helen felt that there was definitely something wrong, and on the Wednesday morning bravely confronted Bennison and told him that she wanted a post-mortem. He refused saying that his feelings could never stand the strain, and Jane had died happy, what more could Helen want? Not convinced, she stood her ground, and he said that he would fetch Dr Gillespie to satisfy her, but after an absence of half an hour, he returned alone, claiming that the doctor had gone to the country. The funeral took place on the Wednesday as planned and Jane Bennison was buried in Rosebank Cemetery, Pilrig Street. A copy of her burial record is shown as an appendix to the Scots Black Kalendar,(first published in Perth in 1938): Jane Bennison’s age is given as 40, and the disease stated is consumption.
When the shameful funeral was over, Helen, with the support of Jane’s friend, Mrs Moffat, went to lay information with the procurator fiscal. On the Thursday, Bennison oiled his way back to the chemist, William Macdonald and asked for a ‘line’ to prove the two powders which he had previously bought, explaining that his neighbours were raising suspicions about his wife’s death. The chemist said that it was not necessary. Then, said Bennison carefully, ‘What about THAT I got from you? Will they harm me about it?’ The chemist asked what he meant, and he said ‘THAT thing, the arsenic.’ He had simply given it to his wife to use, and had never seen it again.
As, he went on, no-one else knew about the purchase of the poison, he would deem it a great favour if the chemist did not mention it. Further, he wheedled, since it was actually Mrs Macdonald who gave him the arsenic, he could truthfully say that he did not provide it. Unimpressed by this casuistry, Macdonald suggested shortly that Bennison should tell the authorities himself. He did question him as to the course of the illness, and observed that it was ‘singular’ but he was not suspicious always thinking that this was a Christian and a man of undoubted piety. ‘Could they bring me up for it if arsenic were found in the body?’ Bennison asked. The chemist thought they could. ‘Ah well’, said Bennison, ‘God has carried me through many difficulties and will do so now, I am sure.’
The exhumation took place very soon, on the Friday. Helen identified the body and she heard Bennison say that ‘he would not for ten pounds’ have had it raised. At some time, she went to Bennison and asked him where the rat poison was kept, and he said that it had been used; he had handed it over to Jane and then gone out to a meeting. The Macdonalds must have talked, because before then, Helen had never heard of rats in the house, or of poison being used. Nor had the neighbours, now that the truth was out, nor Mrs Porteous, nor sleepless Elizabeth Wilkie, whose coal cellar was situated immediately below Bennison’s and who had never seen a whisker in twelve years’ residence, even though she kept fowls in the area (next to Bennison’s store-pig [sic], presumably).
Sheriff officer George Ferguson was present at the exhumation, observing the suspect, William Bennison, as he identified the body as his ‘dear Jane’. Later that day, he proceeded to Stead’s Place where he found Bennison cowering in the illusory sanctuary of his own bed. He arrested him and removed him into custody, together with a small tub and a pot. In the press in the kitchen he found some powders, which were probably the chemist’s harmless remedies, untouched. In the cellar, however, he found in the ‘dross’ a piece of paper which did contain particles of arsenic. There was no sign of rat infestation.
The post-mortem showed no symptoms in any of the organs of recent acute disease, although the deceased had formerly suffered from ‘inflammation of the lungs’ and had been subject to asthma. Upon chemical analysis, sufficient arsenic (the quantity not stated) to cause death was traced in a gritty substance taken from the stomach, in the tissue of the stomach, and in the liver. The iron porridge pot seemed to have been carefully cleaned and there was no arsenic detected in it. Minute traces, however, were found in the tub. The piece of whitey-brown paper had been used for wrapping up arsenic. The doctors, on the same occasion, examined the body of Sandy’s dog, but found no evidence of arsenic. They did comment that dogs vomit with greater facility than human beings and are more efficient at eliminating poison. Another dead dog, belonging to a Mr Waldie, was also tested for arsenic, with negative results.
The trial of William Bennison for murder and bigamy began on July 25th 1850, at the High Court of Justiciary, Edinburgh. It was noticed that the accused looked ‘haggard and careworn’ but there was still enough power in his gaze for Mrs Porteous to falter in her evidence, whereupon the judge reprimanded him for the attempt to intimidate. He had emitted several loathsome declarations, and these were read in court at the close of the evidence for the prosecution, which had been strong and detailed. His statement was that on the Saturday he had set forth in quest of medical aid for his wife’s sudden illness but could not find a doctor. He wanted to try again in the afternoon, but his wife would not let him. He had told her to be careful with the rat poison. He denied his first true marriage, but later admitted the marriage to Mary Mullen. He had not actually deserted her: it was her suggestion that he should try Scotland since he could not get work in Ireland. Six months later, he heard that she was dead, and he believed himself to be a widower when he married Jane Hamilton. He was most surprised, when visiting his parents in Ireland, to learn that Mary was, in fact, still alive. He lived with her for two nights and they then left Belfast for Glasgow. The passage was very stormy and she suffered much. They went by coach to Airdrie, where she was taken ill and died in three days. Two doctors attended her. Because of the unfortunate mistake over the two marriages, he put no name on the coffin and was the only mourner at the funeral. What else could he do then but return to his dear Jane with the white lie about the death of his sister? Afterwards he did confess the circumstances of his first marriage to her and she begged him never to tell her sister, Helen.
The star witness for the defence was Margaret Robertson, who was defending her own reputation as much as Bennison’s life. She stated that she had a leaning to Methodism long before March, when she met Mr Bennison. None of her family was a Methodist, and they disapproved of her going to meetings. She knew that he was a married man and she never regarded him as a sweetheart. ‘I declare upon my oath that there was no courtship between us.’ He visited her home to offer up a prayer for her mother, who was poorly. She herself, she admitted, had thought that he ‘came too much about her’ but she lacked the courage to tell him so. Her own mother spoke to her about it when Mrs Bennison was alive.
One witness was there to attest to rats in Stead’s Place. Alexander Murray, who lived 19 yards from the Bennisons’ home, gave evidence to the effect that his premises were overrun with rats. He had caught eleven in his coal-bunker and had seen one a few days ago. A valiant attempt was made to refute the charge of bigamy; James Gibson, an Irish barrister, had stated for the Crown that a marriage celebrated by a dissenting clergyman between two dissenters, without proclamation of banns, would, in 1838, have been a good and valid marriage as the law stood. The defence tried to show that the first marriage was invalid, because Bennison was a baptised member of the Church of England, but the judge indicated to the jury that the prisoner had failed to prove that fact.
After 20 minutes’ deliberation, the jury returned verdicts of guilty of murder and bigamy. Bennison reacted with his usual pragmatism, remarking to the officer beside him in a matter-of-fact way, as if he were a mere observer, ‘It is of both the charges’. The Lord Justice-Clerk before formally pronouncing the death sentence, deliberately cast off the obligation to say something of improving import, because of the peculiar nature of the case. He addressed the prisoner: ‘When we find that you had professions of sanctity in your mouth even at the time that your unhappy wife was dying before your eyes as the result of poison administered to her by you, I feel it were vain to hope that anything I could say would have any effect upon your mind.’
William Bennison, very composed, then fully ratified that elegant and measured summation of his mentality as his strong Irish tones rang out in the shocked courtroom: ‘I do not blame the Court or the jury for their verdict but I say that I can here solemnly declare before God that I am innocent. I do solemnly before God pray earnestly for those that came up yesterday against me. I do solemnly forgive them this day.’
The Reverend Mr Hay, feeling the awkwardness of his wrong opinion of the man, was, however a match for Bennison and wrought upon him unremittingly until a confession was obtained, and sent to the Home Office. It was leaked to the Courant for all to savour:
His child having previously gone to bed, and Bennison having on the score of illness excused himself from eating anything that night, his wife was the only one that partook of the porridge, and to that her death is to be ascribed. He states that the girl Robertson had not the most remote idea that he had any interest in her except that of a religious kind [which would appear to be a confession of the nature of his interest in her] and that he never spoke to her unless in respect to her spiritual welfare.
The Courant hoped that there might be a confession of murder of the first wife – arsenic was strongly suspected – but Bennison drew back from that. No later writer seems to have searched for a record of that coffin without a name lost in a graveyard in Airdrie. On August 16th, William Bennison was publicly despatched by hoary old Murdoch of Glasgow, and a minor Oscar Wilde described the occasion in a street-ballad:
They led him out all clad in black –
Black coat and vest so white –
A mocking smile was on his lips,
He wore a nosegay bright.
‘Holy Willie’ they called him, with perhaps a touch of Shakespearean bawdy, and on the edge of death he ‘joined in the devotions with apparent fervour and at intervals uttered a deep response, his face wearing almost an habitual smile’. He left the world after a severe struggle.