Pimlico Mystery

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The Pimlico Mystery is the name given to the circumstances surrounding the 1886 death of Thomas Edwin Bartlett, possibly at the hands of his wife, Adelaide Blanche Bartlett, in the Pimlico district of London. It describes the mystery as to how a fatal quantity of chloroform came to be in Mr Barlett's stomach, despite having not caused any damage to his throat or windpipe. Adelaide Bartlett was tried for her husband's murder, but was acquitted. By the jury's own testimony in court Mrs Bartlett's acquittal was partly secured because the prosecution could not prove how Mrs Bartlett had committed the crime.^[1]

Contents 1 Background 2 Trial 3 Postscript 4 References 5 External links 6 References

[edit] Background

The heart of the Pimlico Mystery is the odd relationship between a wealthy grocer, Mr. Thomas Edwin Bartlett (1845–1886), his younger French-born wife Adelaide Blanche de la Tremoille (born 1855), and the Reverend George Dyson, Adelaide's tutor and the couple's spiritual counselor and friend. Dyson was a Wesleyan minister, and (if the story Adelaide and Dyson told is true) was encouraged to openly romance Adelaide Bartlett by Edwin's permission, Edwin himself was suffering several unpleasant illnesses (including rotting teeth and tapeworms). Edwin was supposedly something of a faddist, believing in animal magnetism as a key to health; but again, his reported eccentricities are partly based on what was learnt from Adelaide and Dyson, both of whom may have had reasons to lie. Adelaide's father was rumoured to be a wealthy and possibly even titled member of Queen Victoria's entourage, which had indeed visited France in 1855,^[1] possibly Adolphe Collot de la Tremouille, Comte de Thouars d'Escury.^[2] Adelaide was born illegitimately in Orléans in 1855.

Edwin and Adelaide were married in 1875. Accordind to Adelaide it was intended to be a platonic marriage, but in 1881 she had stillborn baby by Edwin; Edwin had refused her (female) nurse's advice to call a (male) doctor during a difficult labour because he didn't want another man "to interfere with her".^[1] Early in 1885 they met Dyson as the local Weslyan minister and he became a frequent visitor. Edwin made Dyson executor of his will, in which he left his entire estate to Adelaide, on condition that she didn't remarry.

Towards the end of 1885 Adelaide asked Dyson to get some chloroform that was prescribed by the doctor treating Edwin, Dr. Alfred Leach. Leach would later admit that he prescribed it reluctantly, but at the insistence of his patient. Under the laws of the day regarding purchasing large amounts of potential medical poisons, one had to sign a book at chemist's pharmacy as a record - but not if the amounts purchased were small. Adelaide had Dyson buy four small bottles of chloroform instead of one large bottle, and had him buy them in several shops. Only after Edwin's death did Dyson claim to suddenly realize how suspicious his actions were.

On New Year's Eve, December 31, 1885, Edwin Bartlett returned from a visit to the dentist and went to sleep alongside Adelaide in their Pimlico flat. Just before 4am the next morning Adelaide asked their maid to fetch Dr Leach, fearing Edwin was dead, before rousing the landlady. Edwin's stomach was filled with liquid chloroform. It is just possible that the stories of Edwin's alleged suicide may have been believed and his death considered free of foul play, except that his father, who'd always detested Adelaide, became extremely suspicious and convinced authorities to look into the death. This eventually led to the arrests of both Adelaide and Dyson. However, within a couple of days, charges were dropped against the Reverend, and he became a witness for the Crown against Mrs. Bartlett.

[edit] Trial

The trial attracted huge media coverage at the time, both in the UK and abroad.

Adelaide Bartlett was extremely fortunate in her choice of barrister: Sir Edward Clarke, possibly the finest barrister of late Victorian England. His taking on the case was rumoured to be due to Adelaide's mysterious father's intervention.^[1] He was able to show sufficient ambiguities against the deceased to make the suicide theory barely possible. His tactics with Dr. Leach, the elder Bartlett (who was revealed to have a mercenary, ulterior motive towards his son's estate), and Reverend Dyson were sufficient to gain his client an acquittal. It should be pointed out that the prosecution in this classic poisoning case was in the hands (as it is traditionally in Britain) of the current Attorney General, Clarke's great rival Sir Charles Russell, but that the latter was involved with Liberal Party policies and politics connected to Parnell's Home Rule campaign for Ireland; therefore, Clarke did not have his rival at that rival's top legal game. The "suicide" theory gained ground, despite evidence given that on the last evening of his life, Edwin Bartlett told his maid to have a sumptuous dinner prepared for him on the next day - hardly the action of a man contemplating suicide.

The main forensic aid to Mrs. Bartlett is that liquid chloroform burns. It cannot pass down to the stomach without burning the sides of the throat and the larynx. Edwin did not have such burns on his body; this suggests that he was actually able (somehow) to gulp the chloroform down quickly. It bolstered the suicide theory a little, for such rapid drinking suggested that the drinker rushed the poisoned drink down. When the jury returned to court after considering its verdict the foreman said: "although we think grave suspicion is attached to the prisoner, we do not think there is sufficient evidence to show how or by whom the chloroforn was administered." The foreman then confirmed that the verdict was not guilty, which was greeted with "rapturous applause", public opinion having moved in Adelaide's favour during the course of the trial.^[2]

The issue of how the poison got into Edwin's stomach without burning him internally in the throat led the famous surgeon, Sir James Paget, to make his famous 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!"

”

[edit] Postscript

After the trial both Adelaide Bartlett and Reverend George Dyson vanished from public notice. The novelist Julian Symons, in his novelization of the story, Sweet Adelaide, suggested that Mrs. Bartlett emigrated to the U.S., settled in Connecticut, and died there some time after 1933, although others regard her post-trial life as mysterious. As for Dyson, Richard Whittington-Egan's study of William Roughead's life found that a woman in Maryland claimed Dyson changed his name, came to the U.S., and as a fortune hunter married and murdered a young bride for her estate.

The Bartlett case was dramatized on the BBC radio series The Black Museum in 1952 under the title of "Four Small Bottles." and in a four-part TV series, A Question of Guilt, in 1980.^[3]

[edit] References

• Bridges, Yseult, Poison and Adelaide Bartlett
• Lustgarten, Ernest, Defender's Triumph (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1951), Victorian Trumpets: Edward Clarke defends Adelaide Bartlett, p. 8-80; the same essay appears in Lustgarten's The Murder and the Trial (New York, Charles Scribner's Son, 1958), p. 191-249.
• Notable British Trial Series, The Trial of Adelaide Bartlett
• Roughead, William, The Rebel Earl and Other Studies, (Edinburgh: W. Green & So, Limited, 1926), The Luck of Adelaide Bartlett: A Fireside Tale, p. 215-252.
• Stratmanm, Linda, Chloroform: The Quest for Oblivion

[edit] External links

• What ever happened to Adelaide Bartlett?
• Victorian Poisoners
• Adelaide Bartlett and the Pimlico mystery, Michael Farrell, British Medical Journal Volume 309 24–31 December 1994

[edit] References