CAUSES CÉLÈBRES.
XXV.
THE ORDEAL OF BLOOD.[1]
[1820.]
IT is seldom that the history of crime re cords more singular and startling cir cumstances than were revealed in the trial of Medad McKay. In many respects he was a singular man, destined to pass through strange ordeals and trials. There were times when he seemed under the control of mys terious agencies, times when he felt a con sciousness that something not of earth was behind him, times when "coming events cast their shadows before," and he would be moved by impressions as gloomy as those embodied by Coleridge in his beautiful but weird verse. When McKay was charged with a horrible crime, he invoked a superstitious ordeal, full of horror, the result of which cast a dan gerous shadow upon him when tried for his life. And yet his fate was not always con trolled by dark and malignant spirits. In one awful hour of his life, an invisible hand seemed suddenly to reach forth and snatch him from the grave. The superstitious termed this intervention the work of his guardian spirit; the more enlightened attributed it to the ability, skill, and eloquence of the gifted lawyers by whom he was defended. Early in the year 1820 Medad McKay re moved from the county of Cayuga, in the State of New York, to Burns, in the county of Allegany. He had enjoyed many advan tages for attaining an education, which he did not neglect. Reading was his favorite pastime, and he loved to plunge into the dark and metaphysical subtleties which the Germans have daringly called forth. But he possessed a desire for knowledge more vague than useful.
At the time of his removal to Burns he was thirty-five years old. A wife, four chil dren, one or two hired men, and a servant con stituted his family. Unfortunately he lived unhappily with his wife. So deep and bitter was their quarrel that the neighbors fre quently interposed to prevent McKay from inflicting personal violence upon her. At length Mrs. McKay was attacked by a sud den and strange malady, which soon termi nated fatally. Many circumstances connected with her death caused the people in the neighborhood to believe that it resulted from poison ad ministered to her by McKay. So strong was this belief that soon after the funeral of the unfortunate woman, he was arrested, her body exhumed, the contents of her stomach subjected to a chemical analysis, and arsenic de tected. At the coroner's inquest, called to viewthebody and decide upon the cause of the woman's death, an event of thrilling interest occurred, which in the minds of many con firmed belief in the guilt of the accused and operated against him on his trial. McKay did not deny that his wife died from the ef fects of poison; but he insisted that he had no complicity whatever in the act of admin istering it to her. She had for years been at variance with one of her sisters who lived near, and McKay accused this woman of the murder of his wife. McKay had read of the " Death Touch, or the Ordeal of Blood," — a dark, Druidical superstition, so graphically described by Sir Walter Scott in his enchanting story, " The Fair Maid of Perth." This ordeal originated in the belief that if a person guilty of mur
- ↑ By the kind permission of S. S. Peloubet, Esq., publisher of a work entitled "Lawyer and Client," we have been enabled to use much of the material in that interesting volume relating to this celebrated case. — Ed.
