her zeal had probably got the better of her memory.  In cross-examination Betty was asked whether she had any ill-will against her mistress.  “I always told her I wished her very well,” was the diplomatic reply.  “Did you,” continued the prisoner’s counsel, “ever say, ’Damn her for a black bitch!  I should be glad to see her go up the ladder and be hanged’”? but Betty indignantly denied the utterance of any such ungenteel expressions.

The account given by this witness of the admissions made by her mistress to Dr. Addington in her presence led to the recall of that gentleman, who, in his former evidence, had not referred to the matter.  The prisoner’s counsel invited Dr. Addington to say that Miss Blandy’s anxiety proceeded solely from concern for her father; the doctor excused himself from expressing any opinion, but, being indiscreetly pressed to do so, said that her agitation struck him as due entirely to fears for herself:  he saw no tokens of grief for her father.  On re-examination, it appeared that the doctor had attended professionally both Susan Gunnell and Ann Emmet; their symptoms, in his opinion, were those of arsenical poisoning.  Alice Emmet was next called to speak to her mother’s illness, the old charwoman herself being in no condition to come to Court.  Littleton, old Blandy’s clerk, gave his evidence with manifest regret, but had to admit that he frequently heard Miss Blandy curse her parent by the unfilial names of rogue, villain, and “toothless old dog.”  Harman, the footman, to whom Mary had offered the L500 bribe, and Mr. Fisher and Mr. and Mrs. Lane, who spoke to the incidents at the Angel Inn on the day of her attempted flight, were the other witnesses examined; the intercepted letter to Cranstoun was put in, and the Crown case closed.

According to the practice of the time, the prisoner’s counsel, while allowed to examine their own, and cross-examine the prosecutor’s witnesses, were not permitted to address the jury.  Mary Blandy therefore now rose to make the speech in her own defence.  Probably prepared for her beforehand, it merely enumerates the various injustices and misrepresentations of which she considered herself the victim.  She made little attempt to refute the damning evidence against her, and concluded by protesting her innocence of her father’s death; that she thought the powder “an inoffensive thing,” and gave it to procure his love.  In this she was well advised, for she was shrewd enough to see that upon the question of her knowledge of the quality and effect of the powder the verdict would turn.

[Illustration:  Miss Blandy (From a Mezzotint by T. Ryley after L. Wilson, in the Collection of Mr. A.M.  Broadley.)]