A Unique Case. against him every sign that was doubt ful. The counsel for the prosecution opened his case to the jury in a manner that indi cated very little expectation of a conviction. He began by imploring them to divest their minds of all that they had heard be fore they came into the box; he entreated them to attend to the evidence, and judge from that alone. He stated that, in the course of his experience, which was very great, he had never met with a case involved in deeper mystery than that upon which he was then addressing them. The prisoner at the bar was a man moving in a respec table station in society, and maintaining a fair character. He was, to all appearance, in the possession of considerable property, and was above the ordinary temptations to commit so foul a crime. With respect to the property of the deceased, it was strongly suspected that he had either been robbed of or in some inexplicable manner made away with, gold and jewels to a very large amount; yet, in candor, he was bound to admit that no portion of it, however trifling, could be traced to the prisoner. As to any motive of malice or revenge, none could by possibility be assigned; for the prisoner and the deceased were, as far as could be ascertained, total strangers to each other. — Still there were most extraordinary circum stances connected with his death, pregnant with suspicion at least, and imperiously de manding explanation; and it was justice, no less to the accused than to the public, that the case should undergo judicial in vestigation. The deceased Henry Thom son was a jeweller, residing in London, wealthy, and in considerable business; and, as was the custom of his time, in the habit of personally conducting his principal trans actions with the foreign merchants with whom he traded. He had travelled much in the course of his business in Germany and Holland; and it was to meet at Hull a trader of the latter nation, of whom he was
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to make a large purchase, that he had left London a month before his death.— It would be proved by the landlord of the inn where he had resided, that he and his cor respondent had been there; and a wealthy jeweller of the town, well acquainted with both parties, had seen Mr. Thomson after the departure of the Dutchman; and could speak positively to there being then, in his possession jewels of large value, and gold, and certain bills of exchange, the parties to which he could describe. This was on the morning of Thomson's departure from Hull, on his return to London, and was on the day but one preceding that on which he ar rived at the house of the prisoner. What had become of him in the interval could not be ascertained; nor was the prisoner's house situated in the road which he ought to have taken. No reliance, however, could be placed on that circumstance; for it was not at all uncommon for persons who travelled with property about them, to leave the di rect road even for a considerable distance, in order to secure themselves as effectually as possible from the robbers by whom the remote parts of the country were greatly in fested. He had not been seen from the time of his leaving Hull till he reached the village next adjoining Smith's house, and through which he passed without even a momentary halt. He was seen to alight at Smith's gate, and the next morning was dis covered dead in his bed. He now came to the most extraordinary part of the case. It would be proved, beyond the possibility of a doubt that the deceased died by poison — poison of a most subtle nature, most active in its operation, and possessing the wonder ful and dreadful quality of leaving no ex ternal mark or token by which its presence could be detected. The ingredients of which it was composed were of so sedative a nature, that, instead of the body on which it had been used exhibiting any contortions, or marks of suffering, it left upon the fea tures nothing but the calm and placid quiet
