Oh Damn The Chloroform!

Rose Storkey

Description

London, 1886The case of Adelaide Bartlett, tried for the poisoning of her husband Edwin, created a sensation at the time and remains compelling.'In the annals of true crime ... one of the strangest stories I ever encountered ... It has many of the elements of a great film play. Packed with drama, it was a puzzling mystery and a most unusual love story.'Alfred Hitchcock, 1953At the centre of the Pimlico Mystery that shocked Victorian society lie enigmatic Adelaide, Edwin's death from liquid chloroform, and her illicit relationship with a clergyman - or even a menage a trois?Hitchcock didn't know the half of it; Adelaide's family holds truths far stranger than most fiction.Here, for the first time, their complex secrets are pieced together to reveal extraordinary events in Victorian social history. The lives of Adelaide's outrageous father, beloved mother and relatives astonish: no stereotypes apply. With a twenty-first century feminist 'take' on their global travels and efforts to leave traumas behind by changing identity and starting afresh, Rose Storkey finds that more tragedies ensued in war, prisons and affairs of the heart ...Through uncovering the truths in official documents and newspaper reports about their heritage, diversity, and struggles, Adelaide's kin are brought to life and to rest together.And some of you will bring good news of the family and their ancestors ...

Sujets

• True crime

Informations

• Publié par: Distributed by eBookpartnership
• Date de parution: 25 mai 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781839524776
• Langue: English

Extrait

First published 2022
Copyright © Rose Storkey 2022
The right of Rose Storkey to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the written permission of the copyright holder.
Published under licence by Brown Dog Books and
The Self-Publishing Partnership Ltd, 10b Greenway Farm, Bath Rd, Wick, nr. Bath BS30 5RL
www.selfpublishingpartnership.co.uk

ISBN printed book: 978-1-83952-476-9
ISBN e-book: 978-1-83952-477-6
Cover design by Luke Storkey
Internal design by Andrew Easton
Printed and bound in the UK
This book is printed on FSC certified paper

In loving memory of my sister, Gill (Gillian Rosmé Roberts, née Cantle) and my parents, Nel (Clarice Nellie Cantle, née Gully) and Ivor John Cantle
For Luke, Gemma, Harry and Leo
‘It appears to me impossible that I should cease to exist, or that this active, restless spirit, equally alive to joy and sorrow, should be only organised dust.’
Mary Wollstonecraft, Letters Written During a Short Residence in Sweden, Norway and Denmark (London: J Johnson, 1796). A personal travel narrative by Mary Wollstonecraft (1759–97). Mary, the highly influential British feminist, advocate of women’s rights, philosopher and author, wrote those words after her second attempt to end her life.
CONTENTS
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
PREFACE: SCATTERED LIVES AND ‘ORGANISED DUST’
PROLOGUE
PART ONE: BLOODLINES
1 Enter Adolphus
2 Being ‘Henry Desbury’
3 ‘Desdemona to the Moor’ – Maria Margaret Bearcock
4 Chamberlains, Newalls – and Young Henry William Desbury
5 Henry William Desbury: Older, not Wiser
6 Rodolphus Hampton d’Escury (known as Rodolphe)
7 ‘Deep Sorrows and Afflictions’
8 ‘Something Extraordinary’
9 Women, a Will and a Baby
10 Walter Henry Prout de Thouars d’Escury and the Murder of Sarah
11 Helen d’Escury and Modestus Felix de Thouars d’Escury
PART TWO: CLARA AND ADOLPHE’S CHILDREN
12 Henry Edouard de Thouars
13 Adelaide de la Tremoille de Thouars d’Escury
14 Frederick George de Thouars
15 Clara de la Tremouille
PART THREE: THE HUSBAND, THOMAS EDWIN BARTLETT (EDWIN)
16 Home and Away
17 Bed and Bored
18 What Adelaide Did
PART FOUR: ADELAIDE AND EDWIN ENDURE
19 Illness and Loss
20 Dyson Fills the Vacuum
PART FIVE: PIMLICO
21 The Accommodating Mrs Doggett
22 The Desperate Times, December 1885
23 The Poison
PART SIX: DEATH AND DENIAL
24 Enter the Registrar of Births, Marriages and Deaths
25 The Post-mortem and the Fall-out
26 Trying to Get to the Bottom of it All
27 ‘To Disprove the Strange Statements Promulgated’
PART SEVEN: THE OLD BAILEY, LONDON
28 Two then One
29 Prosecution, Defence, Judge and Jury
30 Bearing Witness
31 Finishing Off
PART EIGHT: ‘UNREBUKED TO FREEDOM’
32 Correspondence and Opinions
33 Doctor Alfred Leach
34 Adieu, to You and You and You
PART NINE: TIME FOR GEORGE DE THOUARS
35 A Stick-up and a Lock-up
36 Straight Out of Pentridge
PART TEN: GOODBYE GEORGE DYSON
37 ‘Misconducted Himself’
PART ELEVEN: BEING ‘JOHN BERNARD WALKER’
38 A Scientific American
WRAPPING UP
ILLUSTRATIONS and PHOTOGRAPHS
FAMILY TREE
WIDER FAMILY DETAILS AND RELATIONSHIPS
ENDNOTES
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
BIBLIOGRAPHY
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
1. Adelaide Bartlett looks up… sad, a little lost. 1886. Credit smallprint: Adelaide Bartlett © Getty Images/Hulton Archive
2. Adelaide Bartlett ‘wistful, of course not knowing that her past will live on.’ 1886 .
3. Thomas Edwin Bartlett (always known as Edwin). This drawing (from a photograph) featured in many newspapers in 1886 .
4. George Dyson
5. Dr Alfred Leach (Edwin’s doctor). This drawing featured in many newspapers in 1886 .
6. ‘George de Thouars’ 1870s cartes. NB image reversed here, to show how author considers George looked - if photo negative was ‘flipped’ before printing. (Original photo, courtesy of Victoria Police Museum, can be seen online.)
7. ‘George Gustave de Thouars’ photo from his prison record (courtesy of PROV)
8. No.18033, ‘DE THEUARS George Gustave’ (Handwritten record, including photo, courtesy of Public Record Office Victoria (PROV), Australia)
9. The Pimlico Poisoning Case: illustration of key alleged incidents .
PREFACE
SCATTERED LIVES AND ‘ORGANISED DUST’
Adelaide de la Tremoille de Thouars d’Escury became simply ‘Mrs Adelaide Bartlett’ but there was nothing straightforward about her life. Nor about her husband Edwin’s demise; his end came at 85 Claverton Street, Pimlico, London, a very short walk from the swirl and stench of the River Thames.
The drip, drip, drip of revelations about the couple caused sensations, literally, among women and men. Many queued to gain entry to the Inquest concerning Edwin’s death or subsequently to his widow’s trial for murder. Many were left out in the street, craning their necks excitedly, hoping to spot witnesses or – best of all – get a glimpse of Adelaide. Sensational stories transfixed a soaring number of Victorian newspaper readers in 1886 as they pored over the shocking details. The more that people were fed about the couple and about Edwin’s death, the less any sense could be made of the jarring contrasts between his mundanity and Adelaide’s mystique. And what to make of their close friend, the Reverend George Dyson?
All was not what it seemed, yet how to fathom the truth – sometimes boring – and what was false – often endlessly fascinating? The tragedy, relationships and red herrings have intrigued true/fact crime sleuths ever since.
The Pimlico Mystery/Pimlico Poisoning Case: same unwholesome ingredients, different labels. Hard-working Edwin Bartlett’s descent into illness and depression; enigmatic Adelaide’s trial. Sex or the lack of it; a foreigner, a grocer, a reverend; a love triangle, poison, lies and secrets; a sudden, surely painful death; a young, bewitchingly attractive widow.
By some process Adelaide was chosen to marry Edwin or she chose him; whichever, in the end all lives come down to dust. Biographical stories about the dead are, bluntly, ‘organised dust’.
Why did I want to write about Adelaide and the ‘scattered lives’ of her extended family? My late father, Ivor Cantle, was an amateur criminologist from the 1950s until his death in 1980; my sister Gillian and I grew up with murder in the blood – or rather, on the dining table. Books and bulging files; newly-delivered birth, marriage and death certificates; photographs of long-dead suspects and victims; Victorian and Edwardian memorabilia.
Our long-suffering mother, Nel, appeared to bear it all with a mixture of good grace and occasional interest, only asking that the dining table be cleared for meals. A low point came when, on a family day trip, Ivor knocked at the door of a long-dead man’s relative. Gill and I grumbled away about our embarrassing father as we waited in the back of the car. He returned with a shocking story of a death-bed confession.
I still wonder why and when Ivor became interested in researching alleged murders, particularly cases which involved poisons. He may have heard about the ‘Napoleon killed by poison’ theories when in the British Army on the island of Saint Helena in the Second World War.
Adelaide Bartlett’s life and trial was one of my father’s favourite ‘cases’. Goodness knows how my mother really felt about it all, but with her usual kindness she gave Kate Clarke the ‘Adelaide’ file after Ivor’s death. Kate, in her book The Pimlico Murder: The Strange Case of Adelaide Bartlett (Souvenir Press Ltd, 1990) acknowledged Ivor’s ‘Adelaide’ endeavours.
I admire how much he achieved as a researcher pre-internet, coping with the disappointment when not receiving a reply, or getting a negative response, after months of waiting for letters. My father researched cases with great care, spending much of his spare time pondering motives and methods; crafting correspondence to elicit facts from people near and far; sending off suspects’ handwriting for analysis. In the twenty-first century I can choose from billions of hard facts and soft hunches, many available with just a click.
Top of Ivor’s case list sat the one involving Constance Kent from Road/ Rode, a village not many miles from our home. Research concerning Constance and her family led him around the world, figuratively not literally.
My searches, in the virtual world, for Adelaide and the family took me around the globe and back through the nineteenth century, driven on initially by a question which has always hung around the case.
WHO WAS ADELAIDE’S FATHER?
Studying Adelaide’s eyebrows, her curly hair, and comparing them with Lord Alfred Paget’s was something my father and I did. Ivor’s research into Adelaide and her family led him to believe Lord Alfred Paget (member of the British aristocracy, and Chief Equerry, Clerk Marshal to Queen Victoria) to be Adelaide’s birth father. I and others followed that line and have only recently found it to be incorrect: Lord Paget has no part in the story of Adelaide.
We sleuths thought that Adolphe, the man who married Adelaide’s mother, was cuckolded by her, but no – he tricked others. This book tells the strange stories of her birth father and of her extended family, this is about much more than ‘just’ Adelaide and Edwin’s lives. I explore bloodlines and blood lines in the extended family and in the headline-making lives of others caught up in the Pimlico Mystery. I track a surprising range of births, marriages and deaths, alleged criminals and guilty ones, all around the world and through the nineteenth century, You will meet Adelaide’s nineteenth-century siblings and half-siblings: offspring from the same father yet with contrasting lives. These people sc