Chapter 17

The preparations of arsenic are, of all the poisonous substances in the mineral kingdom, the most fatal; and are those, the properties of which the physician ought to be best acquainted with.

Mathieu Orfila, A Treatise on Poisons

When the inquest resumed the following day, the coroner returned to the subject of the money trail. He called Alfred Newman, the assistant custodian of wills in the prothonotary’s department of the Supreme Court, who reported that he had brought along a copy of Andrews’ will.

The coroner asked to see it. After scanning the contents, he announced to the courtroom, ‘It is evident that the will was not prepared by Andrews. The only part in the handwriting of the deceased is the signature.’

Louisa didn’t miss the implication. She called out, ‘A man in the insurance office filled the will up.’

Recognising that this man would need to be found if the subject was to be pursued any further, the coroner dismissed Newman and called Constable Jeffes to testify.

The coroner asked Jeffes if he’d had much contact with the family in the months leading up to Andrews’ death. Jeffes reported that he had seen Andrews nearly every day. He was also aware that Andrews had ejected Collins from the house because Mrs Andrews had come to the police station in the aftermath to tell him that her husband was fighting with the boarders.

Jeffes knew that Andrews wasn’t the type of man to turn on his boarders, particularly as he needed their payments to supplement his own income. And while he liked his beer, he wasn’t one to drink to excess.

‘Can you call at my house?’ Mrs Andrews had then begged.

The constable agreed to do so but didn’t get the opportunity until that evening. When he reached the Andrews house, all seemed quiet. He knocked but no one answered, so he checked the neighbours’ houses and found James Law at home. He explained why he was there.

‘You arrived too late,’ Law told him. ‘Collins has been put out.’

Like everyone else, James and his wife, Mary, had noticed the goings-on at the Andrews house. They were curious to know why Andrews had turfed Collins out—although it wasn’t hard to guess the reason.

When Mary talked to Louisa a few days after Jeffes’ visit, she decided to ask the question. Louisa’s answer was surprisingly frank: ‘He was jealous of me and Mick.’

The Laws knew that the cause of Andrews’ jealousy hadn’t vanished when he was booted from the house. Collins had taken lodgings at the Stephens house on the opposite side of Pople’s Paddock only fifty yards away and had continued to sneak over to Louisa’s when her husband was at work. One day Andrews came home early and found Collins there. He was beside himself with rage. ‘You have brought trouble on me and my family,’ he screamed, so loudly that Mary could hear him as she walked past. ‘I don’t want to see you in the house again. Go away!’

• • •

Jeffes told the court that he knew nothing about Andrews’ illness or death although he had seen Mrs Andrews not long afterwards and had realised that she wasn’t prostrate with grief. Far from it.

A report of loud noise from an empty house in Pople’s Terrace had brought him to the neighbourhood at eight o’clock one evening, two weeks after Andrews’ death. Looking into a cottage a few doors from the Andrews house, he saw some of the locals dancing and singing, Collins among them. Mrs Andrews was also there.

‘Why the merrymaking?’ Jeffes asked someone standing nearby.

‘It’s to commemorate the wedding of Mr Collins and Mrs Andrews,’ the person answered. Yet no one seemed to know anyone who had attended the ceremony or when or where it had taken place.

James Law said that he was the organiser, having decided that an empty house was too good an opportunity to waste. When word of the Collins’ nuptials spread, he had realised that it was the perfect excuse for a party—not that the happy couple would be spared from contributing to the evening’s costs. During the festivities, he had made a point of asking Collins if he would put up some money for the spree since he was now wedded. Collins obtained half a crown from Louisa and gave it to the host. Law then asked Louisa for a dance.

Collins replied possessively, ‘My old woman does not dance.’

• • •

Those in the courtroom who had listened closely at the previous inquest remembered that Louisa had said they were married in April 1887, two months after Andrews’ death. So why did her own family and neighbours think they were married two months earlier? It was a curious discrepancy.

As the courtroom attendees pondered the significance of these testimonies, the coroner recalled Dr Martin and asked his opinion about Charles Andrews’ cause of death. Martin said that he had changed his mind since signing the death certificate. In view of Andrews’ symptoms and the fact that arsenic had been found in his remains, he now thought that death was probably caused by an irritant poison. He explained, ‘Gastritis is one of the results of arsenical poisoning, and even if no arsenic had been found in his remains, I would still have the same opinion as to the cause of his death, from the symptoms and from the well-known fact that no arsenic may be found in the bodies of those who have died from poisoning by that drug.’

To some in the courtroom, it seemed an odd argument. Why hadn’t he thought of arsenic poisoning during Andrews’ illness when eighteen months later he was prepared to testify that, even if traces of arsenic had not been found in Andrews’ body, he would still think it the likely cause of death?

Then Dr Martin added, ‘During my attendance on Charles Andrews, it struck me that his wife Louisa Andrews had her eye on a second husband. From her manner, she seemed to be indifferent to Andrews’ fate.’

• • •

Coroner Shiell turned to the jury. ‘You must exclude from your thoughts the child John Collins,’ he said as he began his summation. ‘He clearly died from natural causes. There was no suspicion in the first instance, but it was necessary in exhuming the body of Andrews to do the same with the child to set any doubt at rest. At the same time, I had very little doubt when I ordered the exhumation that the child died from natural causes. The chemical analysis demonstrated the fact that not a trace of poison was found in the body.’

Considering Dr Martin’s recent statement, some found Shiell’s conclusion to be strangely contradictory. Despite the fact that the child had died in the aftermath of a vomiting condition, the absence of arsenic post-death was being accepted in this instance as evidence of its absence pre-death.

‘In the case of the deceased Charles Andrews, it was different,’ the coroner continued. He reminded the jury that it was Collins’ death and the discovery of nearly three grains of arsenic in his body that had led to the opening of the current inquest. ‘That Charles Andrews died from arsenical poisoning very few could doubt,’ he stated firmly. ‘The symptoms were those of arsenical poisoning. The fact that a small trace of arsenic only was found in his remains affords no evidence whatever that he did not die from arsenical poisoning.’

He directed the jury’s attention to Louisa’s actions, mentioning her relationship with the boarder, the fact that Andrews had fallen ill and died soon after evicting Collins, and that a wedding feast had followed a short time later. ‘Was there no suspicion in all that?’ he asked incredulously. ‘You must consider whether the woman had transferred her affections to Collins and was interested in getting her first husband out of the way.’

Having made it clear to the jury that lust was a clear motive for murder, he turned his focus to greed. He repeated the evidence showing that Mrs Collins had known she was the sole beneficiary under Andrews’ will.

This brought him to the jury’s role. The jurors were being asked to determine if Andrews’ death was caused by arsenical poisoning. If they believed it was not, their verdict should be ‘death by natural causes’; if so, they had to ask themselves by whom it was administered. If they thought Louisa was responsible, they should return a verdict of murder against her; if not, they should exonerate her. He concluded pointedly, ‘The symptoms in this case were those of arsenical poisoning, and from the fact that arsenic has been found in the remains, how could you arrive at any conclusion other than that arsenic was the cause of his death?’

Again, with such a strong direction from the coroner, the jury’s verdict was speedy and unsurprising. The foreman announced that the child died from natural causes whereas Andrews died from arsenical poisoning, the poison having been administered by his wife.

Louisa’s countenance remained unmoved as she listened to the jury’s verdict. A short time later, as the police officers ushered her from the courtroom, her expression changed—but not to shock or fear, as would be expected. Instead, a secretive smile tugged at her lips.

What sort of woman would remain so strangely unconcerned when committed to stand trial for murder—indeed, not just one murder, but two—particularly when the mandated punishment was to be hanged by the neck until she was dead?

• • •

The discovery of a ‘Louisa Collins’ in society inevitably served as the catalyst for a discussion—or diatribe—about the nature of women. ‘When she is good, she is very, very good, but when she is bad, she is horrid,’ Longfellow had lamented, reflecting society’s dichotomous attitude towards women. Indeed, the notion of the ‘good/bad’ woman lay at the heart of the Victorian perception of women, a perception that could have serious ramifications for Louisa when she faced a jury of twelve men charged with deciding her fate.

‘We know that woman, when she yields to crime, is stayed by no consideration,’ Premier Parkes declared in parliament that year—and Parkes was more progressive than most on the subject of women. ‘The worst of crimes in the worst of times have been perpetrated by women. In that fearful period when France ran riot in blood, those who were most guilty in the very ferocious delight in blood were women—young women and tender girls. The creatures who hoisted the heads of their fellow creatures on pikes were women. At all times, and under all circumstances, when woman once forgets the character of her sex, there is no barrier to the lengths she will go to in crime.’

The shrill voice of moral panic resounded from the press, pulpit and political podium whenever the ‘woman question’ raised its determined head. At a time when many members of the community were demanding gender equality in terms of education and the vote, misbehaving women like Louisa became the proof of whatever anti-emancipation point the conservatives wanted to make. They declared that, if women were granted political, social and financial independence, the marriage bond would be destroyed, the family would disintegrate, the wrong sort of people would be bred and the effect on society would be disastrous.

As so often happens, the attacks soon turned from the political to the personal, aimed at the suffragists themselves. Bitter, ugly, man-hating spinsters was the derisive cry, for all that the ranks of these ‘spinsters’ included married women and, indeed, men. They were the visible proof of what happens to women who venture outside the home and demand a role in society’s affairs. Did our women really want to become like them: unfeminine, unmarried, unfulfilled . . . unbalanced?

The feminine dichotomy—good or bad—was in fact a triptych: good, bad or mad. It was easier for the gainsayers to pigeonhole women like the suffragists as mentally unbalanced because, in doing so, they denied them any control over their actions and, thereby, any validity in their arguments. The same pigeonholing occurred when women like Louisa breached any of the other female norms, including the criminal laws. In society’s view, men could do ‘bad’ things without being ‘bad’, but women could not. When a woman broke the law, society asked if she was a ‘good’ woman forced into criminality—for example, a mother who stole food to feed her children or a wife coerced by her husband into committing a crime. Or, conversely, was her ‘badness’ caused by ‘madness’, making her incapable of controlling her wicked impulses? It was a question the community would continue to ask about Louisa, particularly those who had seen her unruffled countenance when two inquest juries had committed her to stand trial for murder.

‘When she is good, she is very, very good, but when she is bad . . .’

Could a jury of twelve men reach a verdict based on evidence alone or would their political and social views about women and their moral judgements about Louisa’s behaviour and manner influence their decision?