On the following morning, at 8am, Marion recalled that Mrs Seddon entered and said something about 30s. Apparently, ‘she was in her night dress and looked rather unsteady – as she went out of the room she staggered when she got to the door’. Marion then went downstairs and made some tea, taking it up to Mrs Seddon. However, her aunt waved her away. She then decided to call Dr Robert Mackintosh. It was now about 8.20am and in another twenty-five minutes, he arrived. He recalled, ‘I found them in bed together – he was in a comatose state, suffering from collapse, and I diagnosed he was suffering from belladonna [extracted from the deadly nightshade plant] poisoning.’ His wife was in a similar condition.

Mackintosh attended them for two hours, administering antidotes and using a stomach pump. After he had used every method he could think of, and after two hours, Mrs Seddon seemed to be improving, but the same could not be said of her husband, who was visibly weaker. He had the pair sent to hospital and called the police. He also looked about the room and recalled, ‘I saw this bottle on the table on the left hand side of the bed, empty, it was quite dry inside – I also saw a tumbler, there, which was dry – they both smell of belladonna liniment – I estimated that the poison had been taken about two hours before I went there – I judged her husband had taken the larger dose’.

The two poison victims were then sent to the Royal Hospital at Richmond. Dr William Davidson was house surgeon on their arrival, so he dealt with them. They arrived that afternoon and Davidson stated:

The deceased was in a deeply comatose state, his face pale, and his breathing was very shallow – he was unconscious and remained so for some hours, when he became delirious and started vomiting – those are symptoms of belladonna poisoning – he remained in that state until 6.30 pm the next day, when he died.

A postmortem held on the following day confirmed the doctor’s diagnosis. By 14 September, Marion was recovering and the doctor asked her what had happened. She said that at 6.30 am that morning, she had taken the bottle of liniment and had divided it into two unequal parts. They had then both drunk it and had taken an ounce of belladonna between them.

There was an inquest on 21 September, when Marion had recovered sufficiently to be present. She was examined, but not cross-examined and made the following statement:

I have only to say that my husband has been in a miserable depressed condition for a long time; for the last two years our circumstances have been getting desperate, and we decided that as there was no means of earning a living, we had better leave the world together. On this morning in particular I had been laying wake and worrying; then I jumped out of bed and I said, ‘I can stand this wear and tear no longer; I’ll end it.’ I took the bottle and the glass and poured out the biggest part of the poison. I said, ‘I am going to take this; it will end it once and for ever.’ He just said, ‘You won’t.’ I said, ‘I will,’ and I drank it off. Then I said, ‘I have left enough for you; will you have it?’ I said, ‘It means this or the workhouse.’ He said, ‘Yes give it to me.’ I poured it out and he snatched it out of my hand. I put the bottle back and got into bed.

She then went upstairs and told Mrs Barrett what they had just done, and that there was 30s in the house which she should use to get them buried cheaply and quietly. She also told her to take Miss Harms home safely, then, feeling a pain in her chest, left the bedroom and returned to her husband, and recalled:

My husband was lying just where I had left him, on the edge of the bedstead. He opened his eyes and looked, so I just said, ‘I have just been and wakened Lizzie and told her what we have done.’ He said, ‘Come and get into bed then.’ They were the last words he spoke. I remember nothing more … I took the biggest portion, as I thought it would take more to kill me.

Another piece of evidence which was brought forward was a letter that her late husband had written to her, and had put in his pocket. It read:

My last request and Desire is that you should dispose of all our effects and live on the results as long as it lasts and then follow me as your case is now hopeless. Above all pray Don’t be ruled by your Demon Mother. Instead of which you by order of your mother are giving all your own goods away and are saving your neither so that she may bring her Beauty out and plank on you and claim all as hers and make you her Slave. This is all arranged. What a Blind Fool you must be not to see through it and won’t listen to anyone else. To my Wife.

The ‘Demon Mother’ was Sarah Barrett, born in Essex in 1822 and whom the Seddons had lived with when in Clarence Street, Staines. Clearly Seddon believed she had a malign influence over his wife.

The verdict of the jury was that Seddon had died from exhaustion following the effects of belladonna and aconite, taking his own life whilst in a state of temporary insanity due to money troubles. DS Golden Barrell then arrested her for the murder of her husband by aiding him in taking poison. She was taken to the police station to have the charge read to her, to which she did not reply. Seven days later she appeared before the Mortlake magistrates’ court and was committed for trial, spending the next few weeks in Holloway.

The case came before the Old Bailey on 16 October and the charge was one of murder (to assist another with suicide was treated as a capital offence). After all the evidence and witnesses had been brought before the jury, the inevitable verdict was given – guilty. However, the foreman of the jury said, ‘We wish her to be strongly recommended to mercy; we are unanimous on that point.’ And indeed, that was what happened. Marion Seddon was not hanged. Mrs Seddon had told the court, ‘I did not kill my husband.’

So ended a most dismal and tragic case, where two people decided that the only way out of their money problems was to commit suicide. However, a reprieve was granted and the death sentence was commuted to one of imprisonment.