The Damnation of John Donellan (34 page)

Aside from the usual grumblings of servant about master, one possible motive for murder presents itself. Sarah Blundell was about six months pregnant when Theodosius died. She had hidden the fact well; only when she went into labour did Anna Maria throw the girl out of the house. Was there someone else in the house – one of the servants – who knew very well that Theodosius had seduced Sarah, and was angry enough to revenge themselves on him? Leaving Sarah unquestioned at the time (other than on the
issue of the bottles) meant that a possible motive was overlooked.

Anna Maria made her views known – Sarah was a ‘bad girl'. Donellan himself had nothing to say in Sarah's favour. But perhaps they both missed the obvious: seduction by the master of the house was a regular hazard for female servants and Theodosius was no slouch at pestering women. Sarah's ‘sweetheart' was John Yateman, the footman – but was the child his?

Motive enough for revenge, one might think.

In his opening address to the court, the prosecuting counsel Howarth made enormous play of Donellan's financial motive. ‘The attaining of this considerable fortune,' he declaimed, ‘beyond a doubt induced the prisoner to plan and execute this abominable crime.' But if this were a motive for Donellan, it was also a motive for Theodosia.

She, too, had means, motive and opportunity. In fact, she had more opportunity than her husband, because she was standing with Theodosius on the stairway when Samuel Frost delivered the medicine into the boy's hands. Samuel said that Theodosius put it in his pocket, but Theodosia could have easily offered to take it upstairs for him. She did, therefore, see the bottle – something that her husband says he did not, except for on the morning of the death. As Theodosius's sister, she was closer to him than Donellan; Theodosius would have trusted her.

It is noticeable that Theodosia did not come to the bedroom that fateful morning when her mother called for help. Anna Maria had been running up and down the stairs calling for the servants. Why did Theodosia not come to see what was the matter? Did she already know? James Fitzjames Stephen referred to the possibility of Theodosia's involvement in his first published work on the subject in 1863. Twenty years later, in a second edition, the implication had been removed.

However, Theodosia had two young children, one of them only a baby. Handling a lethal substance might have posed a danger to her children. If she were the murderer, how had she ordered or distilled the dose?

Alternatively, could Theodosia and Donellan have colluded in the murder? Donellan's outburst in gaol indicated something of the sort (‘And who got it for her!'). Did Theodosia know of Donellan's intentions? Did she encourage them? Was it her idea – to protect the fortune and future of her children – or was she simply a bystander, guilty in as much that she did not warn her brother of what Donellan was planning?

After Donellan's committal to Warwick Gaol Theodosia left Lawford on his suggestion, or because she had, independently of his suspicions, fallen out with her mother. This all points to Theodosia supporting Donellan, but as a wife, or as an accomplice?

After Christmas 1780, Theodosia stayed away from Donellan completely. Was she by then more convinced of his guilt, or did she take advice from the Kings that she ought not to associate herself with him? Had she found out about Donellan's continuing relationship with Mrs H? Or was she swayed by the rumours so widely circulating in the area that Donellan was indeed guilty?

One thing seems certain. When Donellan was executed, Theodosia became very ill. She stayed away from her mother, who had really put the noose around Donellan's neck. A woman guilty of plotting in her brother's murder might have felt thankful to Anna Maria for her rank stupidity.

But Theodosia did not act as if she were relieved, or in any way more benevolently disposed towards her mother. She left Anna Maria pleading for companionship among distant branches of the family, and shut herself away in Northampton ‘altogether alone'.

Anna Maria Boughton was the witness on whom the whole case rested. It was her testimony that the medicine smelled of bitter almonds that precipitated the laurel-water experiments and the significance being attached to the fact that Donellan owned a still. It was also her testimony that Donellan threw the contents of the bottles ‘on the floor' which gave the coroner no option but to arrest him.

Anna Maria had motive, means and opportunity.

If she was as ‘covetous' as Donellan claimed, then money was a motivating factor. Within the year Theodosius would come into
his fortune, and he had shown no sign at all of being responsible. Was she afraid that the family would be forced into penury by him, and did Donellan's opinion confirm this? She was embarrassed by her son under testimony: he had venereal disease; he had disgraced himself at Eton; and he had brawled in local inns. She seemed to have little control over him, yet this was the young man who would have total control over
her
in eleven months' time. Local newspapers reported that she was present at the open-air autopsy at Newbold, but that she showed no emotion.

Anna Maria, above any other person, had the means and opportunity to poison her son. It was she who gave him the medicine, encouraging him to drink it even though, halfway through, he objected. She sniffed the bottle, testified that it smelled disturbingly like bitter almonds, but still she stood over Theodosius until he drank it all.

What sort of woman could be so cold-hearted as to kill her own son? Was Anna Maria such a woman? Was there evidence that she lacked feelings? John Donellan claimed that Anna Maria had told him that she had once poisoned her husband's pack of dogs. We only have Donellan's word for this, and presumably he brought this up to show that Anna Maria was far from a weak, helpless woman incapable of a vicious act. But did Anna Maria really poison the dogs as revenge because Edward flaunted his mistress and seduced the maids? It is pure hearsay. And even if Anna Maria
were
capable of poisoning a pack of hounds, how did she get the poison? Was she used to handling it, and was it freely available at the house? Or was this all simply an outrageous lie from John Donellan? And is it in any way reasonable to conclude that such an act would make her capable of poisoning her own son?

Throughout this story Anna Maria seems curiously detached from reality. But this is not to be wondered at after the death of her only son: perhaps grief obliterated most of the events of the morning and she found it hard to piece them together properly? Francis Amos is quoted in the prosecution brief as saying that ‘on the morning her son died she seemed very much affected and cried a good deal' – something that Donellan never refers to.

What is less comprehensible is, if she was unsure of what exactly happened, why she was so willing to stand up in court and condemn her daughter's husband. ‘One of the strangest circumstances attendant upon a death so alarming was the subsequent conduct of Lady Boughton,' observes James Stephen.

Anna Maria showed absolutely no sign of distrusting Donellan before Theodosius was buried, except for her testimony that she had objected to his washing out the bottles. But it is as if she attached no real significance to this act until the coroner's court met; she did not write to Wheler and tell him what Donellan had done, or complain that it worried her. She let Donellan organise everything, just as she had done before Theodosius died. From 1778 to 1780, far from mistrusting Donellan or thinking him a bad influence on her son, Anna Maria let him take charge of the household, and she had sent Theodosius to live with Donellan and Theodosia soon after they were married.

Why would Anna Maria let Donellan handle events after the death if the issue of his washing the bottles preyed heavily on her mind? It took her over a week to find any fault with her son-in-law. In the intense atmosphere of the house, did she simply feel alone and frightened?

Over a week later, she testified that she had feared that she too would fall foul of ‘unfair dealings' and gave instructions that, if she died, her body was to be examined immediately. Did she keep silent therefore because she was afraid that Donellan might murder her, too? In the prosecution brief, it is said that Anna Maria became suspicious of Donellan after he washed the bottles out (‘at this proceeding her Ladyship began to suspect that he had contrived to put poison into the bottle out of which she had given the draught'). Why not send immediately for Wheler or a doctor like William Kerr, whom Theodosius knew? If she had done so straight away, what could Donellan have done? With Wheler and Kerr or any reputable surgeon in the house, he could not do anything. Did she think he would attack her after they had gone?

‘Captain Donellan's temper was very violent,' Anna Maria told
her prosecution team in the brief, ‘and was of a very assuming disposition in the family concerns, and having no friend there she could consult she was afraid to mention her suspicions to anyone or send for the faculty to open her son's body.'

But even if she were crippled by fright and grief on the day, in the week before the funeral Anna Maria had ample opportunity to visit Wheler, even to ask for some kind of sanctuary with him at Leamington Hastings. It is inconceivable that he would have refused her; the autopsy would have been done there and then, the coroner's court convened, and Donellan arrested all the sooner.

Alternatively, Anna Maria could have confided in her local priest, the Reverend Newsam, who was a regular visitor to the house and had been a close friend of her husband's; he would not have betrayed her confidence, and he was a messenger and friend to Lord Denbigh.

It is also very odd that, if Anna Maria thought Theodosius's death was suspicious in some way, she called for the undertakers within the hour, and not for a doctor to give his opinion.

And why did she not take Powell, especially, to task? She told the court that she had said ‘it was an unaccountable thing for the doctor to send such a medicine', but she did not ask anyone to go to Powell and question him further. How could she have been satisfied with Powell turning up at nine in the morning, simply to look at Theodosius and pronounce him dead? If she herself had felt too distressed to talk to Powell, then she could have asked William Wheler or the Reverend Newsam to visit him.

Although at Lawford Anna Maria kept meticulous accounts, and later members of the family wrote that she was perfectly sensible,
²
much was made of Anna Maria's lack of intelligence, and this too could explain her confused testimony. She was regarded as ‘all but a fool', even by her own legal team, and she had had to be primed for court by the local JPs – but schooling a witness is not unusual even today. Nervous, distressed, overwhelmed, confused: all this can be understood.

But what is hard to excuse is condemning a man to death as a result. If Anna Maria could not remember, or was not sure of what
happened, then it was wrong to testify as if she
were
sure. And it was wrong of her team to encourage her to do so.

What is even more disturbing is that Donellan's own defence team were apparently happy to collude in protecting Anna Maria. They could have, and should have, queried the blatantly awry timings on the morning of the murder. Did Theodosius die within fifteen minutes of being given the medicine, or more than an hour later? Did she leave him for five minutes, or fifty? Did she leave him writhing in pain, or was he just drowsy, ‘going to sleep'? Was ‘going to sleep' an effect of taking a draught of prussic acid? None of these questions was asked in court.

Powell's whole part in this affair is extraordinary. The apothecary was not questioned at all by Anna Maria or Theodosia or Donellan; his explanations were accepted totally by Wheler. We have no evidence that the other doctors ever expressed any concerns or doubts about him.

Powell was described as an elderly, old-fashioned man by the boys at Rugby School. He certainly had the means and opportunity to have murdered Theodosius, but no discernible motive. As Donellan had told John Derbyshire, to kill Theodosius would have been to rob him of a patient. Unless, of course, he were carrying out the wishes of one of the other members of the family. But it seems far more likely that Powell simply made a mistake. Apothecaries had actually been banned from keeping laurel water for some years; but did Powell still have supplies? Had he inadvertently used laurel water instead of some other innocuous substance?

Powell went to Sir William Wheler before the funeral to explain himself. He was also at Lawford Hall on the night of 4 September, opening a letter from Wheler addressed to Donellan. Perhaps he had reason to be anxious; perhaps he was not really sure that his medicine had been as safe as he was to testify. Was Theodosius's death actually the result of a terrible misjudgement on Powell's part?

Powell was not the only apothecary involved in the case. Bernard Snow, Sir William Wheler's apothecary, apparently gave permission for the funeral to go ahead, and yet was never called to
testify at the trial. Why was this? Why would a mere apothecary's word be taken over that of the surgeon, Bucknill, unless both men were in fact acting on the orders of Wheler? Was Snow's absence from the trial due to pressure from Sir William not to testify in Donellan's defence for fear of implicating Sir William himself in the decision to bury Theodosius without an autopsy?

Another possible explanation, given by Donellan in Warwick Gaol, was that Theodosius committed suicide. Donellan dismissed this as absurd almost at once when talking to Derbyshire, but is it possible that Theodosius poisoned himself by accident?

It was common knowledge that Theodosius was careless, irritable and untrustworthy; Donellan also claimed that the boy had told him that he regularly dosed himself up with all sorts of quack medicines. We also have the evidence at the coroner's court that Theodosius had bought two poisons in the weeks before his death:
Cocculus indicus
berries from Bucknill, and arsenic in order to poison rats. Anna Maria testified that Theodosius kept the arsenic in his bedroom.