19. A Seemingly Slam Dunk Victorian Case That Wasn’t
French-born Adelaide Bartlett moved to England in 1875, aged twenty, and met and married Edwin Bartlett, a wealthy grocer. Edwin was sickly. Among other things, he had decayed teeth, rotten gums, and breath so foul that the couple had to sleep separately. In early 1885, Edwin met and befriended the Reverend George Dyson. He became the couple’s spiritual advisor and religious tutor, and was made executor of Edwin’s will. On the reverend’s advice, Edwin modified his will to remove a condition that required Adelaide to stay single in order to inherit, and left everything to her even if she remarried. In the summer of 1885, Adelaide and Reverend Dyson were caught in the act by a maid. A few months later, on December 31st, 1885, Edwin died. An autopsy revealed that his stomach was full of liquid chloroform.
Adelaide and Dyson were charged with murder when it emerged that she had recently asked him to her chloroform. Charges were dropped against the reverend, however, in a bid to use him as a witness against Adelaide. It looked like an airtight case, but enough doubts were raised that Edwin might have committed suicide. After a sensational trial, the jury returned a not guilty verdict – although delivered with a caveat: “We think grave suspicion is attached to the prisoner“. Adelaide was set free. Contemporary physicians struggled to find an explanation for how chloroform could have gotten into Edwin’s stomach without scarring his throat. It led a famous surgeon to quip: “Now that she has been acquitted for murder and cannot be tried again, she should tell us in the interest of science how she did it!“
