The Cold File

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Cold Cases Case file

The Sauchiehall Street Chemist and the Not Proven Verdict: The Death of Pierre Emile L'Angelier and the Trial of Madeleine Smith, 1857

Pierre Emile L'Angelier died of acute arsenic poisoning at his Glasgow lodgings in the early hours of 23 March 1857. Madeleine Hamilton Smith, the 21-year-old daughter of a Glasgow architect, had bought arsenic at Sauchiehall Street chemists on 21 February, 6 March and 18 March 1857, and had written him roughly 250 letters over two years. On 9 July 1857 a jury at the High Court of Justiciary, Edinburgh, returned Not Guilty on one charge and Not Proven on the other two. The case has been argued over for one hundred and sixty-nine years.

Case type
Cold case
Status
Unexplained
Event date
March 23, 1857
Location
11 Franklin Place and 7 Blythswood Square, Glasgow; High Court of Justiciary, Edinburgh - Scotland (United Kingdom)
Evidence
  • Testimonial
  • Official record
  • Physical

The open question Did Madeleine Hamilton Smith poison her secret lover Pierre Emile L'Angelier with arsenic at Glasgow in February and March 1857, and if so, why did her trial at the High Court of Justiciary, Edinburgh return Not Proven rather than either Guilty or Not Guilty on 9 July 1857?

In the early hours of Monday 23 March 1857, Pierre Emile L’Angelier, a Jersey-born commercial clerk at the Glasgow warehousing firm of Huggins and Co., died at his lodgings at 11 Franklin Place, Glasgow. He had returned home from the road in the small hours of Sunday 22 March, taken violently ill. His landlady, Mrs Jenkins, found him in his room. Post-mortem examination by Dr Frederick Penny, Professor of Chemistry at the Andersonian Institution, and Andrew Douglas Maclagan, Edinburgh’s leading medical jurist, recovered a large quantity of arsenic from his stomach. A figure of around 88 grains is repeated in some later accounts; the contemporary press summary was that the body contained enough arsenic to kill forty men.

Glasgow Police and the Procurator Fiscal searched the lodgings. They recovered a bundle of around 250 letters written to L’Angelier over two years by Madeleine Hamilton Smith, the 21-year-old eldest daughter of the Glasgow architect James Smith, together with L’Angelier’s pocket diary. The chemists’ poisons registers showed that Smith had purchased arsenic at Sauchiehall Street chemists on 21 February, on 6 March and on 18 March 1857. Smith was taken into custody at the family townhouse at 7 Blythswood Square, Glasgow, on 31 March 1857.

The trial sat at the High Court of Justiciary, Edinburgh, from 30 June to 9 July 1857. On 9 July a jury of fifteen men returned three verdicts: Not Guilty on the first attempted-poisoning charge, Not Proven on the second, and Not Proven on the murder charge. Smith walked free. Did Madeleine Smith poison Pierre Emile L’Angelier, and if so, why did the jury return Not Proven rather than either Guilty or Not Guilty?

The principals

Madeleine Hamilton Smith was born on 29 March 1835 in Glasgow, the eldest of five children of James Smith, a Glasgow architect of the firm Smith and Crawford, and Elizabeth Smith, née Hamilton, daughter of the neo-classical architect David Hamilton. She was educated at a London finishing school from about 1851 to 1853. The family lived from 1855 at 7 Blythswood Square, Glasgow, the lower half of a house owned by her uncle David Hamilton, with a country house, Rowaleyn, at Rhu on the Gareloch. At the time of L’Angelier’s death she was 21.

Pierre Emile L’Angelier was born in 1823 at St Helier, Jersey, of a Channel Islands family in the nursery and seed trade. He worked in Edinburgh from the early 1840s, moved to Glasgow around 1851, and at the time of his death was employed as a packing clerk at the warehousemen Huggins and Co., 10 Bothwell Street, Glasgow, on a wage widely reported as around ten shillings a week. He lodged at 11 Franklin Place, Glasgow, with the landlady Mrs Jenkins. He was about 33 at his death.

The relationship and the Minnoch engagement

Smith and L’Angelier met in the spring of 1855 through a mutual acquaintance; she was 20, he was about 32. Despite the social and financial gulf between them they began a clandestine correspondence and met in secret over the next two years. Smith wrote around 250 letters to L’Angelier; he preserved them. The surviving body of those letters is now divided between the Mitchell Library, Glasgow (Special Collections) and the National Records of Scotland, Edinburgh. The letters made the relationship sexual and treated L’Angelier as Smith’s intended husband; she addressed him in some as her husband, and used the pet form “Mimi” of herself. At trial the Crown read 60 of around 198 surviving letters into the record. The frank physical content of some letters caused the Victorian press to refuse to print them verbatim, and this account follows the same discipline.

In late 1856 and early 1857 Smith’s family was arranging an engagement to William Harper Minnoch, a prosperous Glasgow merchant and family friend. Smith agreed; the engagement was settled by February 1857. She wrote to L’Angelier asking him to return her letters. He refused, and is reported in the trial record and the standing accounts to have threatened to send them to her father, James Smith.

The three illnesses, February and March 1857

The Crown indictment turned on three episodes of acute illness in L’Angelier, each following contact with Smith.

The first was around 19 to 20 February 1857. L’Angelier collapsed in his bedroom at Franklin Place, weak and unable to call for help, and required Mrs Jenkins’s assistance. His diary, entered in evidence, recorded for 19 February: “Saw Mimi a few moments was very ill during the night.” The second was around 22 to 23 February 1857: a more violent episode, in which by his own account he was “nearly dead last night,” with darkness around the eyes and a dark red spot on the cheek. He kept to his bed for several days.

The third and fatal episode was the early morning of 23 March 1857. L’Angelier returned to 11 Franklin Place in the small hours of Sunday 22 March, taken violently ill on the road. He was found by Mrs Jenkins and died in his lodgings in the early morning of 23 March. He was buried at Ramshorn Cemetery, Ingram Street, Glasgow, and was subsequently exhumed for further forensic examination. The post-mortem by Penny and the toxicological evidence given at trial by Penny and Maclagan recovered a large quantity of arsenic from the stomach; the contemporary press summary was “enough arsenic to kill forty men.” A specific figure of around 88 grains appears in some later accounts and is to be confirmed against the Hodge 1857 transcript.

The arsenic purchases and the arrest

The Glasgow chemists’ poisons registers and witness testimony placed three purchases of arsenic by Smith in the five weeks before L’Angelier’s death.

On 21 February 1857 Smith bought sixpennyworth of arsenic, about an ounce, coloured with soot in conformity with the 1851 Arsenic Act, from Murdoch Brothers, chemists, Sauchiehall Street, Glasgow. She signed the poisons register as “M. H. Smith” and gave her purpose as killing rats at her father’s house. On 6 March 1857 a second purchase was recorded; the assignment to a particular chemist on Sauchiehall Street is generally given as Currie’s. On 18 March 1857 she bought a further sixpennyworth of arsenic, coloured with indigo, from Currie’s, Sauchiehall Street, the assistant George Haliburton recording the sale; she again stated rats as the purpose.

Smith’s declaration to the sheriff explained the 18 March purchase as cosmetic, claiming she had used the arsenic dissolved in a basin to wash her face and hands. A separate enquiry by Smith via the household page William Murray to Dean’s laboratory for prussic acid, made some weeks before L’Angelier’s death, was refused. Smith was taken into custody on 31 March 1857 at 7 Blythswood Square and committed for trial.

The trial, 30 June to 9 July 1857

The trial opened on 30 June 1857 at the High Court of Justiciary, Edinburgh, the supreme criminal court of Scotland, the venue chosen in part to avoid Glasgow public feeling. It ran nine sitting days, closing on 9 July. The presiding judge was the Lord Justice-Clerk, John Hope (1794-1858). The Crown was led by the Lord Advocate, James Moncreiff, later Lord Moncreiff of Tullibole. The defence was led by the Dean of Faculty, John Inglis, later Lord President of the Court of Session as Lord Glencorse.

Smith faced three charges: two of administering arsenic with intent to murder on the February occasions, and a third of murder by arsenic on or about 22 to 23 March 1857. Under Scottish law as it then stood she could not testify in her own defence; that disability was removed only by the Criminal Evidence Act 1898.

The Crown’s evidence comprised the post-mortem and chemical findings of Penny and Maclagan; the testimony of Mrs Jenkins; the testimony of L’Angelier’s Huggins colleagues, to whom he had spoken of his “secret engagement to Mimi” and shown her letters; the chemists’ assistants and registers; members of the Smith household; and the body of Smith’s letters, of which the Crown read 60 of around 198 surviving items into the record. The Crown could not prove Smith and L’Angelier had been together on the night of the fatal episode. That opportunity gap became the case’s central weakness.

Inglis’s closing speech for the defence on 8 and 9 July is regarded as one of the great Scottish advocacy performances of the nineteenth century. The defence advanced two principal lines: that the evidence was wholly circumstantial and did not place Smith with L’Angelier at the time of the fatal dose, and that L’Angelier might himself have been an arsenic user, the defence pointing to his vanity about his appearance and to claims of an earlier suicide attempt, which are reported in some accounts and to be confirmed against Roughead 1927.

Lord Hope charged the jury on 9 July. Scottish criminal juries were, and remain, fifteen men in number. The jury retired for about half an hour and returned three verdicts: on Charge 1, the 19 to 20 February count, Not Guilty; on Charge 2, the 22 to 23 February count, Not Proven; on Charge 3, the murder charge, Not Proven. The overall jury split is most commonly reported as 13 in favour of Not Proven and 2 in favour of Guilty across the case. The per-charge breakdown is not preserved in the sources accessed for this account. Smith left the court free and was driven from Edinburgh to avoid the crowds.

The Not Proven verdict

The Not Proven verdict is a feature of Scottish criminal procedure alongside Guilty and Not Guilty. In modern doctrine, both Not Guilty and Not Proven are acquittals, and both attach the protection against double jeopardy. The verdict has long been understood, informally, to signal that the jury was not satisfied of innocence but was not satisfied of guilt beyond reasonable doubt. The Smith case is one of the most cited Not Proven verdicts in Scottish legal history and is regularly invoked in modern reform debates, including the Scottish Parliament’s debates of 2023.

Aftermath, 1857 to 1928

Smith left Scotland within months of the verdict. The engagement to William Minnoch was broken off. On 4 July 1861 she married George Young Wardle, an artist who later became the general manager of William Morris’s firm Morris and Co., a role he held from around 1870 to 1889. The couple had two children, given in the standing accounts as Mary, known as “Kitten,” in 1863, and Thomas in 1864.

The Wardles lived in London and associated with the Morris circle. Madeleine, known as “Lena Wardle,” became treasurer of the Bloomsbury branch of the Socialist League. The marriage broke down and the Wardles separated around 1889. Smith subsequently emigrated to the United States. Around 1916, then in her seventies, she married William A. Sheehy in New York; he died in 1926. She died on 12 April 1928, in New York; Wikipedia and the Scotsman locate her home in the Bronx, while some accounts give Mount Vernon, New York. She was buried at Mount Hope Cemetery, Hastings-on-Hudson, New York, on 19 April 1928, aged 93.

The period press of 1857 framed Smith variously as a femme fatale, a cool Victorian beauty, and a monster. That framing is documented period reception. It is not the framing here.

The evidence

What the record establishes firmly is an acute arsenic death, three documented arsenic purchases by Smith in the weeks preceding it, a documented secret correspondence and engagement, and a three-verdict acquittal under Scottish law.

  • Testimonial: Mrs Jenkins on L’Angelier’s three illnesses and arrival home on 22 March; Huggins colleagues on L’Angelier’s account of his engagement to “Mimi”; chemists’ assistants including George Haliburton at Currie’s; Smith’s brother John and the household page William Murray; Penny and Maclagan on the toxicology.
  • Official record: the Hodge 1857 verbatim trial transcript; National Records of Scotland High Court of Justiciary case papers, Procurator Fiscal records and Smith’s declaration to the sheriff; the Glasgow chemists’ poisons registers entered as productions; the jury’s three verdicts of 9 July 1857.
  • Physical: the labelled arsenic bottle (NRS inventory no. 213) and forensic vessels from the post-mortem; an item described in the NRS catalogue as a “chocolate or cocoa cake” said to have been used to convey the poison; 7 Blythswood Square, Glasgow; 11 Franklin Place, Glasgow; Ramshorn Cemetery, Glasgow; Mount Hope Cemetery, Hastings-on-Hudson.

Hypotheses and open questions

Each hypothesis below is offered as a hypothesis, not a finding. Smith was acquitted under Scottish law on 9 July 1857.

Hypothesis A: Smith administered arsenic to L’Angelier on three occasions to silence him and free herself for the Minnoch engagement. For: documented motive, three documented arsenic purchases in the windows immediately preceding the three illnesses, and the temporal coincidence between purchases and illnesses. Against: no direct witness, and the Crown could not prove she met L’Angelier on the night of the fatal dose.

Hypothesis B: L’Angelier ingested the arsenic himself. This was the principal defence reading at trial. For: arsenic was in contested Victorian cosmetic and tonic use; L’Angelier was reported vain; some accounts say he had previously attempted suicide, which is flagged for verification against Roughead 1927; and his morale had been undermined by the Minnoch engagement. Against: the dose recovered at post-mortem was far above any plausible cosmetic dose, no note was found, and no documented history of arsenic use by L’Angelier is in evidence.

Hypothesis C: L’Angelier was poisoned, but not by Smith. For: a third party with motive is conceivable in principle. Against: there is no documentary support, and this hypothesis is purely speculative.

Hypothesis D: L’Angelier’s three illnesses were not all arsenic, and the fatal dose was an accident. For: he had documented spells of ill health before February 1857. Against: the dose at death was large, and the temporal coincidence with Smith’s purchases is hard to set aside.

Hypothesis E: Smith was guilty, but the Crown failed to prove guilt beyond reasonable doubt. This is the reading most commonly adopted by the scholarly tradition: Roughead 1927, Hartman 1977, and Campbell 2007 in qualified form. It is the reading the Not Proven verdict, in its informal modern meaning, is taken to express.

Hypothesis F: Smith was innocent, and L’Angelier was self-poisoned or independently poisoned. This is the minority modern reading, broadly tracking the Inglis defence of 1857.

What remains unknown

Whether Madeleine Smith administered arsenic to Pierre Emile L’Angelier. The precise time, place, and means of the fatal dose; no witness saw it administered. Whether the fatal arsenic was self-administered, accidental, or murder. The full content of L’Angelier’s correspondence to Smith; only a small number of his letters to her survive, and she is presumed to have destroyed most. The per-charge breakdown of the jury vote; Scottish jury practice in 1857 recorded only the majority verdict.

Sources

Primary.

Secondary.

Madeleine Smith was acquitted under Scottish law on 9 July 1857. The Cold File does not assert in its own voice that she committed the murder.