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The Green Bag.

and was treated and trusted like a son. with others where the defendant was accused Within a month of the death of his intended of poisoning an acknowledged wife; where wife he had seduced her sister; in another the motive and the circumstances were not month he had tired of her, and had become unlike those considered in the earlier article. engaged to another girl; and at the end of Sixty-five years ago John Earls, an unin four months he was guilty, of murder of the telligent boor in the mountains of Pennsyl woman he had wronged. Truly, as the Court vania, was convicted of the murder of his said in passing sentence, there were no cir wife. He had, it appears, become infatu cumstances to mitigate the atrocity of the ated with another woman. He succeeded in crime. Governor Andrew, whose objection administering to his wife, just after the birth to capital punishment was notorious, appears of a child, a large quantity of arsenic which to have had no scruples against it in this case. caused her death in a few hours. One enor When Hersey's seduction of Miss Tirrell mous dose he introduced into a pot of choco was likely to be discovered, poison occurred late; when his wife, in agony from the dose, to him as a means of escape from his diffi called for a drink, he slipped another lot of culties. He had read about the effect of the drug into a basin of peppermint tea, and poisons; claimed, in fact, to have made a when the wife rejected that as bitter, and his study of them. At that time it was believed mother prepared her another drink, he poi that a vegetable poison could not be detected soned that, too. He had bought the arsenic in the dead body of a person killed by it. He openly in a place where he was known. His went to a druggist, several miles distant, who actions at the time of his wife's death aroused did not know him, and bought strychnine "to suspicion, and he made damaging statements kill a dog." He gave Miss Tirrell a large afterwards. His crime was obvious, was in dose of this at night in a spoonful of jelly; fact scarcely denied, and his conviction, con and she died within an hour in frightful con fession and execution followed in due course. Dr. Edward William Pritchard, an English vulsions. In this case, as in the two first stated, the physician and surgeon, began to practice at murderer showed little grief at the death of Glasgow in 1859. At the end of 1864 his wife his victim, and he brought suspicion on him became ill, with frequent vomitings; she went self by his words and actions. The case as on a visit to her parents in Edinburgh, where presented at the trial was a clear one. The she gradually recovered. Returning in good defendant was convicted and was executed, health about Christmas time, she was again seized with the former symptoms and ra after confessing the crime. Two or three substantially similar cases pidly became worse. In February, 1865, her have lately occurred in the West. The most mother, Mrs. Taylor, came to nurse her. noted is the murder of Pearl Bryan by her She was a healthy woman of seventy. Two scducer.a medical student. She was poisoned weeks later she was taken violently ill one in Cincinnati by cocaine, a vegetable poison; evening, soon became insensible, and died in was carried across the river into Kentucky about three hours. She had in her pocket and decapitated. The purpose of the mutila a bottle of medicine which she had been using tion seems to have been the concealment of for headache; it had been pure when bought, but on examination was proved to contain the crime, but it resulted in immediate dis antimony and aconite. Dr. Pritchard filled covery. The body was identified by a manu out the death certificate, giving apoplexy as facturer's mark in the shoes, and the defend ant arrested. He, too, talked to his harm; the cause of death, and there was no imme he also wrote an incriminating letter. Guilt diate suspicion. After Mrs. Taylor's death. Mrs. Pritchard's symptoms continued; she was proved beyond question. It is interesting to compare these cases gradually grew weaker, and finally died on