- emetic and then giving her sulphuric acid in syrup, under the pretence
of curing her.[1] At the Aberdeen autumn circuit in 1830 a woman Humphrey was convicted of murdering her husband by pouring the same acid down his throat while he lay asleep with his mouth open.[2] On the whole, considering the powerful taste and excessively acrid properties of these poisons, it is probable that they will seldom be resorted to for the purpose of making away with another person, who is an adult, and in a state of consciousness. Of late, however, there have been several instances in our country of murder committed on infants in this barbarous manner. A woman Malcolm was executed here in 1808 for murdering her own child, an infant of eighteen months, by pouring sulphuric acid down its throat;[3] another woman Clark was tried for the same crime at Exeter in 1822; a man was executed lately at Manchester for murdering in the same way his son, a child four years and a half old;[4] and the particulars of an interesting trial will be presently noticed, that of Overfield, who was executed at Shrewsbury in 1824, for poisoning his child in the like manner.[5]
In a medico-legal point of view, the mineral acids are interesting on another account. Of late a new crime has arisen in Britain, the disfiguring of the countenance by squirting oil of vitriol on it. It originated in Glasgow, during the quarrels in 1820, between masters and workmen regarding the rate of wages,[6] and became at last so frequent, that the Lord Advocate, in applying for an act of Parliament to extend the English Stabbing and Maiming act to Scotland, added a clause which renders the offence now alluded to capital. In 1828 a woman Macmillan was tried here and condemned under that act.[7] The crime afterwards became common in England. Three cases were noticed in the newspapers as having occurred in London, in November, 1828; and two others near Manchester in the spring of 1829. It is now much less frequent.
The mineral acids are also very interesting on scientific grounds. They afford the purest examples of true corrosive poisons, their poisonous effects depending entirely on the organic injury they occasion in the textures to which they are applied. It is of use to set out, in investigating the effects of poisons, by determining the phenomena presented under such circumstances. When made aware of the rapidity with which other irritating poisons prove fatal, and the slight signs they commonly leave of their operation, one cannot fail to be struck with discovering what the animal frame will sometimes endure from these the most violent of all irritants, and nevertheless recover.
In laying down the mode of determining by chemical evidence a
- ↑ Bulletins ties Sciences Médicales, Janvier, 1830.
- ↑ Edinburgh Medical and Surgical Journal, xxxv. 298.
- ↑ Burnett on Criminal Law, 544. Note.
- ↑ Edinburgh Med. and Surg. Journal, xxxvi. 102.
- ↑ Ibidem, xxii. 222.
- ↑ Report of the Committee of the House of Commons on the Combination Laws, June, 1825, pp. 323-328. Evidence of Mr. Campbell and Mr. Robinson.
- ↑ Cases and Observations in Medical Jurisprudence, Case iii. Edin. Med. and Surg. Journal, xxxi. 229.
