By Steven Russell
Thursday, 20 May, 2010
8:49 AM
IF some of us think we have it tough these days, it's nothing compared to the life of a poor rural family in the 1840s. Take the Shemings of Martlesham, near Woodbridge. Agricultural labourer Thomas is pushing 60 and times are tough, what with wife Mary and six children to support. One daughter, Caroline, is a particular worry – pregnant at 16 after a dalliance with a farmer. Somewhat feckless, she'd gone off to Lowestoft within a year or so, leaving her grandparents to care for little Elizabeth. In the May of 1844 she has another baby – John – and after three or four weeks turns up at her parents' home, expecting to be taken in. It's a horrible summer. Sickness is rife and both Caroline's children are ill: the baby with a cold and thrush. One evening he worsens, vomiting and with rolling eyes. Later, he's racked by pain. John dies at about 2am. The cause of death is recorded as convulsions. The next morning, a neighbour helping the family during these dreadful hours notes that grandmother Mary is highly reluctant to touch the tiny corpse.
The baby is buried at Waldringfield early in August, but village gossip reaches the ears of the authorities. The neighbour's husband recalls Mary Sheming buying a pennyworth of arsenic at John Hudson's general stores in Martlesham – to deal with a rat infestation, she said. That was two weeks before her grandson's death.
The grave is opened and the little coffin taken to the Red Lion Inn at Martlesham. The body is examined by a surgeon. An inquest hears Mr Moore's explanation about how he retrieved from the stomach a wine-glassful of a bloody liquid, at the bottom of which was nearly a teaspoonful of gritty powder. A battery of tests showed it was arsenic.
Grandmother Mary, protesting her innocence throughout, stands trial at the Shire Hall in Bury St Edmunds in December. Instead of winning public sympathy, she stirs up animosity by claiming one of her daughters is the culprit, suggesting 14-year-old Elizabeth took the leftover arsenic.
Mary's guilt is almost a foregone conclusion, with no new evidence presented at the Winter Assizes by the prosecution and nothing offered in defence. The execution is set for Saturday, January 11, 1845.
It's a rainy day, but by noon a crowd of between 5,000 and 6,000 people has gathered in St Helen's Street to watch the first woman hang in Ipswich Gaol since Elizabeth Woolterton 30 years earlier. Hangman William Calcraft has travelled from Newgate and takes the evening coach back to London – with his fee of 12 guineas – once Mary is dispatched.
The story is one of 10 tales from the 19th Century told in Sheila Hardy's new book Arsenic in the Dumplings: A Casebook of Historic Poisonings in Suffolk. Most of them are murders. One or two are possibly accidental. Some, to a critical modern eye, have question-marks hanging over them. "Was Mary Sheming guilty?" muses Sheila. "If so, then she was even more despicable in trying to place the blame on one of her children. If she wasn't, then the question remains: who did put the arsenic in the baby's food?"
She grins. "I feel I want to call out the 'cold cases' unit!"
Sheila, who lives in Ipswich, has now written 11 books – including a biography of Frances, Lady Nelson – and until recently was averaging one talk a month to local history groups. Her last tome was also about murder most foul – the killing of an elderly clergyman at Cretingham, near Framlingham, by his insane curate – and the commissioning editor asked for more in the crime line. As Suffolk hangings had already been covered, what about poisonings? "I said 'Oh, yes, that's fine', thinking there would be masses and masses of material." But it wasn't easily available. So, from the autumn of 2008, Sheila spent a vast amount of time in Suffolk's record offices, combing through ancient copies of the Ipswich Journal, the Suffolk Chronicle and the Bury & Norwich Post. "So it was a long slog . . ."
Long, but fruitful and interesting.
"I think the thing that came over more than anything else was that these were mainly agricultural workers, and they were usually very poor." One can imagine them being at the end of their tether as they tried to keep heads above water and their families fed, while perhaps having to live with a violent or cheating spouse.
Arsenic – a semi-metallic element found naturally in the environment – was readily available and reaching for it must have been tempting.
Sheila explains: "Arsenic in small doses was not lethal; the medical profession used it as a treatment for syphilis and gout, for example, while a restorative tonic containing arsenic was often prescribed for young ladies who were losing weight and lacking energy."
Powdered arsenic "was the recognised way to exterminate the rats and mice which regularly infected homes as well as barns and other outbuildings where food was stored.
"Small amounts could be bought in the local shop, where the customers were known to the shopkeeper. It was also widely used in animal husbandry in preparations such as sheep dip to kill off insect infestations on a sheep's fleece . . . That arsenic appears to be the poison favoured for premeditated murder in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was due solely to its general availability, especially in rural areas."
For those who poisoned their victims before the authorities noticed a link and began asking questions, it was essentially a perfect crime. The symptoms produced by arsenic – such as diarrhoea, vomiting, stomach cramps, sweating, thirst and problems with swallowing – mirrored a common summer threat known as "English cholera".
Raw sewage and household rubbish was traditionally thrown onto a midden heap, Sheila explains, and seepage could leak into ditches that fed streams from which drinking water was taken. Doctors would invariably cite English cholera as a cause of death. Burial took place relatively quickly, so a victim was usually in his grave before someone in the village started saying "Ah . . . but . . ." By the time a corpse was exhumed for examination, decomposition was well under way.
It's no surprise most perpetrators appear to have been female. (In the book, only three culprits are men.) With food preparation generally the job of women, there was ample opportunity to lace dumplings or home-made bread with a few deadly grains. In the first half of the 19th Century, points out Sheila, there was a noticeable rise in the number of husbands dying in suspicious circumstances.
Not that the author's convinced about the guilt of everyone – and she suspects some women were unfairly treated because of their gender and the popularity of poisoning as a way of dispatching husbands in the first quarter of the 1800s. Perhaps all these cases of females bumping off men in such a painful and sneaky manner hardened the attitudes of a male-dominated judiciary and establishment, so that women accused later were to an extent pre-judged. "This probably accounts for the way women who were brought to trial in Suffolk were given a very rough time. A lot ended up being hanged, whereas the men tended not to be.
"There was actually a trial where a judge said something like 'There are far too many cases of women disposing of their husbands . . .'"
Sheila wonders, for instance, about that case: of Stonham Aspal woman Mary Cage, who was found guilty of poisoning husband James. He apparently had a volatile temperament and spent time in prison for assaulting his wife after she fled to the Ipswich area with another man. Mary later returned to Stonham Aspal, however, to look after her family, including an unmarried and pregnant teenage daughter.
James became increasingly sick during the spring of 1851, the pain so bad that he gouged strips of flesh from his intensely painful stomach while scratching it and tore flesh from his itching gums. The farm labourer died about a fortnight after falling ill.
His coffin was about to begin its procession to the church for the funeral when the rector arrived to say the ceremony could not take place. The Rev Charles Shorting had become suspicious after hearing rumours that Mary had bought arsenic in Debenham. A post-mortem examination took place and an inquest was held at the Ten Bells Inn. A jury at Ipswich took 22 minutes to pronounce Mary guilty of murdering her husband with poison. She was hanged.
Sheila points out that many wretches would admit to guilt while praying in the days before their execution, believing repentance would earn a place in heaven. Yet Mary, who always insisted she didn't kill James, consistently declined to take this step. Was she innocent?
"I can't know how many were really miscarriages of justice, of course. It's like all these stories: you never know if someone actually did it or if it was accidental."
It would be a long time before police, doctors and scientists would enjoy the armoury of investigative techniques we're familiar with today, though in the 19th Century there were the early signs of developing forensic medicine. A Bury St Edmunds doctor called Mr Image "made a name for himself as an expert witness in suspected murder cases of the period. He became the authority; the specialised witness, if you like. He examined all the bits of bodies that were sent to him".
Sheila's book will be the subject of a literary lunch at the Debenham Arts Festival next month (www.debenhamartsfestival.co.uk). All that talk of poisoned dumplings should put folk off their food . . .
Apparently not, reckons the writer. There were musings about finding another subject, "but Lesley Grant-Adamson, who does the organising, came back and said 'Every time I've mentioned it, people have said 'Yes! Let's have it!'"
On a similar note, husband Michael – who has ferried Sheila around since macular degeneration stopped her driving and has taken photographs for the book – is thanked on the acknowledgements page for continuing to eat her cooking: "even stew with dumplings!"
Those eye problems have also helped convince Sheila to cut back on the historical talks. She's just done a couple in a week in the Stowmarket area "and driving down the A14 at 10pm was not fun. We're both of us pushing it now!" She's now limiting herself to the Greater Ipswich area. "I worked out the other day that I'd been doing it for 31 years. Really, it's time to start cutting back before people say 'Well, you know, she's getting past it now . . . !'"
• Arsenic in the Dumplings is published by The History Press at £8.99. (www.thehistorypress.co.uk)
• Sheila is now working on a biography of Eliza Acton, born in 1799 and the forerunner of cookery writers, who spent her early years in Ipswich. She would be very happy to hear from anyone with information about Eliza and can be contacted on 01473 691255 or by email: shehardy@ntlworld.com
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