No one had seen Lamson take a capsule out of the box, but he was seen to fill one with sugar and give it to the boy, saying, “Here, Percy, you are a swell pill-taker.”  Within five minutes after that the doctor excused himself for going so soon, saying if he did not he would lose his train.

Not long after his departure—­that is, between eight and nine—­the boy was taken ill and put into bed with all the violent symptoms which are invariably produced by that most deadly of vegetable poisons, aconitine, and he died at twenty minutes past eleven the same night.

Aconitine was found in the stomach; aconitine had been purchased by the doctor before the boy’s death, and being well and having been well, the brother-in-law gave him the last thing he swallowed before the dreadful symptoms of the poison betrayed its presence.  At that time no chemical test could be applied to aconitine, any more than it could to strychnine in the time of Palmer.  But its symptoms were, in the one case as well as in the other, unmistakable, and such as no other cause of illness would produce.

Two pills were found in the boy’s play-box, one of which was said to contain aconitine.

Such was the simple case which occupied six days to try.  The jury were not long in coming to a conclusion, and returned into court with a verdict of “Guilty.”

My awful duty was soon concluded.  I told the prisoner the law compelled me to pass upon him the sentence of death; but gave him, both by voice and manner, to understand that in this world there could be no hope for such a criminal.  I said, as I thought it right to say, that it was no part of my duty to admonish him as to how he was to meet the dread doom that awaited him, but nevertheless I entreated him to seek for pardon of his great sin from the Almighty.  It was my opinion, and I believe that of the counsel for the defence, that, although so much stress was laid upon the capsule and the administration of the poison by that means, it was not so administered, but that the capsule was an artifice, designed to hoodwink the doctors and Treasury solicitors.

To have poisoned the boy in such a manner would have been a clumsy device for so keen and artful a criminal as Lamson; and I knew it was conveyed in another manner.  It should be stated that in Lamson’s pocket-book were found memoranda as to the symptoms and effect of aconitine, and as to there being no test for its discovery.  Lamson therefore had made the poisoning of this boy a careful and particular study.  He was not such a clumsy operator as to administer it in the way suggested.  The openness of that proceeding was to blind the eyes of detectives and lawyers alike; the aconitine was conveyed to the lad’s stomach by means of a raisin in the piece of Dundee cake which Lamson cut with his penknife and handed to him.  He knew, of course, the part of the cake where it was.