The Damnation of John Donellan (35 page)

Both Donellan and Anna Maria said that Theodosius kept more than one bottle of medication on his chimney shelf, and we know that Powell had prescribed four ‘purges' in one week. Where were the bottles from those purges and quack medicines? Were they on the chimney shelf, perhaps empty or half empty? Had Theodosius mixed his doses, or added mercury to any of them? Where was the lethal mixture that Thomas Hewitt had brought to him within the last month? Was that, too, standing on the chimney shelf? Had Theodosius decanted it into one of Powell's bottles to prevent his mother from finding out what he had bought?

The prosecution team said in their brief that they had the bottle – but where had they found it?

Is it possible that Theodosius, finding himself ill once again with a blackening swelling in his groin, sickened by the mercury which he had regularly ingested, and frightened by Donellan's assertion that he was ruining his constitution, had taken a dose of his own prescription, either in a desperate attempt to cure himself or out of despair that he would never be cured? Did he buy the
arsenic mixture from Hewitt not for poisoning fish, but for another reason? He used a prescription from Bucknill to get it. That points to a medical reason. Why was Bucknill never questioned about this? What exactly was the relationship between Theodosius and Bucknill? These are all questions that were never asked or answered.

If suicide or an accidental dose by Theodosius himself were possibilities, these should have been raised by Donellan's defence team.

The actions of Sir William Wheler, Theodosius's guardian, are also worth considering.

It was only on 4 September that Wheler, the Reverend Newsam and Lord Denbigh showed any interest at all in what had happened, and that was due to rumour. Wheler, distracted by a friend who had suffered a bereavement, was busy elsewhere. Initially, he showed no interest in Theodosius's demise other than to offer routine condolences. And there is no evidence that Anna Maria had contacted either him, Denbigh or Newsam, even though they were the very men who were best placed to protect her if she had any suspicions about Donellan.

Once the rumours began to fly about poison, as Phillips later said, a ‘poisoner had to be found'. Wheler knew that it was his responsibility to act. If poison had been used, he must find a culprit, and John Donellan fitted the bill. After all, Donellan was a disgraced army officer, a man of ‘gaiety' who had seduced an 18-year-old girl; and he had been a reputed fortune hunter long before he had met Theodosia.

How far did the actual conduct of the trial go to prejudice Donellan's case?

It was quoted for many years afterwards as a dangerous precedent in the use of circumstantial evidence. Despite his experience, Buller was also criticised. Joseph Cradock said that ‘Judge Buller's charge at Warwick was imprudent'. He displayed ‘harshness and injustice', in the words of Childers.
⁴
Fifty years later, Buller's name had become ‘proverbial as the judge who condemned men before they were tried', according to one popular weekly. In
Biographica Juridica
of 1870, Edward Foss said: ‘Yet with all his industry,
sagacity and intelligence, Buller was not a popular judge. He was considered arrogant, hasty in his decisions; prejudiced, severe and even cruel in criminal trials.' The
Dublin University Magazine
of 1869 said that Buller had excused Anna Maria's contradictory evidence because ‘she was telling the truth according to the best of her ability … and made allowance for her position, her agitation' and added, ‘During the whole of this celebrated trial there was not a single fact established by evidence except the death.'

Donellan's defence team were hounded for incompetence after the trial. The jury, despite their protests to the contrary, could not fail to be influenced both by the powerful reputation of the Boughton family and by months of newspaper speculation before hand. Collusion was hinted at between the Justices of the Peace and Anna Maria; between Anna Maria and the Earl of Denbigh; between Buller and the Justices. Lastly, the jury did not take time to weigh each piece of evidence properly; they came to their decision in only nine minutes. There was no proper defence as we would recognise it – Donellan could not speak or answer evidence as presented in court. And, of course, there was no right of appeal.

Once the rumour of poison spread, no one seemed to have the strength to refute it. Servants ignorant of medicine or perhaps even of Theodosius's true state of health had let the gossip spread through Warwickshire, and possibly even started it; once rumour took its virulent hold, even those most intimately concerned – Anna Maria and Donellan among them – were powerless to say that the boy might have died of a natural cause like epilepsy. The description of the bloated corpse, smelling suspiciously acrid, the tongue protruding as if trying to expel a revolting taste, was out there in the public imagination. It was too late to obscure it. Titillation, scandal and fear were inexhaustible – and so much more interesting than any boringly rational explanation. By the time the case came to trial the impression of poison was reinforced by the images of dogs and horses writhing in agony, and these were then inextricably linked with Theodosius apparently doing the same. Even if Anna Maria had seen her son suffer epileptic fits before, that explanation was a mere candle in the wind, ready to be snuffed out
by cries of ‘murder'. Worse still, she was now the woman holding a bottle whose contents were held to have been toxic. In panic, and under pressure from Wheler and Denbigh (‘we shall all be very much blamed'), did Anna Maria realise that a ‘poisoner' must be found, even if Theodosius had died naturally? Donellan protested that it was not poison at first, but in the face of a tidal wave of public opinion he struggled to explain how poison could have reached Theodosius. Anna Maria and Donellan were therefore forced into a position whereby they literally had to fight to the death, each blaming the other. The legal teams merely stood by like ineffectual seconds, skirting round the issue, with no one willing to pursue the possibility that no poison existed at all.

The
American Jurist and Law Magazine
of 1841 put it very succinctly: ‘Donellan's conviction,' it said, ‘was judicial homicide.'

There are vast differences between the way the case was investigated in 1780 and how it would be investigated today. Today, paramedics would report an unexplained death; and the police would be called to all sudden deaths. An attempt would be made to revive the patient by the ambulance team, and notes would be made of anything suspicious or possibly contributory. The house would be closed off, and nothing in the room would be touched; no one would enter or leave without investigation and permission; and the witnesses to the death would be separated. A thorough search of the room, house, outhouses, stables, drains and rubbish containers would be made. While guarding against unwarranted assumptions, each witness would be a potential suspect.

The body would be properly investigated – first at the scene and later by a Home Office pathologist, especially in such a high-profile case. The corpse would also be preserved in a way that Theodosius was not (an icehouse was never mentioned in relation to Lawford, but it is possible that the Hall did have one).

Crucially, an open mind would be kept today on a motive for murder. Modern toxicology would verify the existence of poison if it had been used; forensic tests by the police and the pathologist would trace the actions of both victim and witnesses. While
offering every sympathy to a distressed relative, it would not be unquestioningly assumed that a mother could not murder her son, or – for that matter – that a murder could not be carried out by a sister, a local doctor, a household servant, a guardian, a distant relative who stood to gain financially, or a brother-in-law.

Inanimate objects would also have their story to tell. The clothing of the witnesses would be examined and tested; hand swabs would be taken; even the flooring would be taken up to test for the prussic acid that Anna Maria had first claimed had been thrown from the medicine bottles.

And, as far as this particular case goes, the medical history would be crucial.

Theodosius Boughton had for some time been prescribed mercury, a recognised ‘cure' for syphilis. It was given because it was believed that the disease left the body in the increased urine flow and salivation of the sufferer, and applications of mercury to rashes and sores seemed to make them disappear. The side-effects, however, were as well known as the ‘cures'.

Inmates of the Bicêtre asylum in Paris, subjected to lotions of mercury, suffered mouth and throat sores, nausea, vomiting and ulcerations of the digestive tract. Mirror-makers commonly suffered tremors, slurred speech and loss of sleep. Many doctors and apothecaries recognised mercurial disease but were loath to give up the money gained from mercury prescriptions.

What was not appreciated at the time was that syphilis, although appearing to respond to the treatment, actually went into its secondary stages and invaded bones, organs, blood vessels, the spinal cord and the brain. Significantly, damage to the aorta was linked to syphilis in 1847; but would a five-year history of syphilis and mercury poisoning have weakened the blood vessels in Theodosius Boughton? And would those blood vessels already be carrying a genetic weakness passed to Theodosius from his father and grandfather?

A forensic pathologist working today, Dr Allen Anscombe, has reviewed the case. He points out that a syphilitic aneurysm would
be rare, and that the deaths of Theodosius's father and grandfather do not necessarily suggest a familial predisposition to strokes. In his opinion, the early death of this young man would merit an investigation of at least four possible causes: a history of epilepsy in the family; underlying heart disease; a stroke (which would be unusual in a person of this age and in reasonable health); and drugs.

Dr Anscombe considers that the two pints of ‘extravasated blood' found in the chest cavity were misleading for the simple reason that they were unlikely to have actually been blood. A body in a decomposed state contains considerable quantities of fluid; the chest cavity becomes like a watertight container for a while, and the fluid inside it is tinged with a reddish colour. It does not indicate that a major blood vessel has burst. All it indicates is putrefaction.

Hunter was perfectly correct, in Dr Anscombe's opinion, to refuse to be drawn on the cause of death. After ten days' decomposition in hot weather even a modern pathologist, without toxicological examination, would be hard pressed to find a cause. Hunter gave a firm and well-informed response, and was right not to be led into speculation.

Looking at Anna Maria's conflicting testimony, the length of time that Theodosius took to die –
if
prussic acid in the form of laurel water had been administered – would depend upon the dilution of the mixture. A teaspoon of neat prussic acid would cause death within a few minutes; but it is not known how much was (supposedly) given. Dr Anscombe considers it is possible that Theodosius appeared to be sleeping after ten minutes; possible, too, that he was still alive and struggling up to an hour later, if the mixture was diluted.

With the administering of poison not proven, Dr Anscombe next considered the possibility of epilepsy. In this he agrees with Hunter: epilepsy was indicated. After forcing himself to keep an unpleasant-tasting medicine down, Theodosius might have suffered a fit after which he was unconscious or drowsy; and when Anna Maria returned, a second fit might have been in progress.

The effects of severe epileptic fits are, even today, notoriously
difficult to determine on the human body: most sufferers do not die, but those that do may experience some sort of asphyxia with attendant paralysis of the muscles; and the electrical storm in the brain may cause the heart to stop beating. During the fits the victim will foam at the mouth, and suffer both rigidity and convulsions. A simple search of the internet today shows examples of fits where the sufferer is rigid, hands clenched, eyes fixed, foaming at the mouth, stomach heaving: all the symptoms described in Theodosius. After a fit, a sufferer will usually sleep; second fits are perfectly possible, and can last thirty minutes, an hour or more; the victim can descend into
status epilepticus
, a life-threatening condition needing immediate medical treatment, where the mortality rate is over 20 per cent.

During a fit, it is not possible for the sufferer to speak (although an occasional muffled word may be heard) – and this corresponds with Theodosius's state. He said nothing, even when Donellan called to him. A poisoned man, even while in agony, retains the ability to speak, but an epileptic does not. If Theodosius had been poisoned, one might have expected him to cry out to his mother, ask her what she had given him and respond to the maids or Donellan. But if he were in a deeply traumatic fit, he would not.

The answer of modern forensic pathology, therefore, is that the only reasonable answer of the surgeons in 1780 was ‘cause of death unknown'. Epilepsy, however, was a possibility.

Hunter, derided as he was by Justice Buller as a man ‘of no opinion', was absolutely right.

Poisoning is thankfully very rare today. Modern toxicology has seen to that – it is no longer a ‘secret weapon'. It was rare, too, in the time of Theodosius Boughton: it was seen as a particularly ‘un-English' crime, more common on continental Europe.

But was John Donellan guilty of poisoning?

What was the opinion of the legal world after the event?

Guilty, said James Fitzjames Stephen in 1883, despite the enraged examination of the conviction by his own grandfather. ‘Few cases have given rise to more discussion,' he mused, ‘but to
my mind [there was] so strong a probability of his guilt that I think the jury were right.'

Possibly guilty, reported the
Monthly Review
of 1781, but: ‘It was not proved to a jury.'