297:, though these several cases have received no regular criminal inquiry. Seven murders known, if not judicially proved, do not after all, perhaps, complete Catherine Wilson's evil career. And if any thing were wanted to add to the magnitude of these crimes it would be found, not only in the artful and devilish facility with which she slid herself into the confidence of the widow and the unprotected – not only in the slow, gradual way in which she first sucked out the substance of her victims before she administered, with fiendish coolness, the successive cups of death under the sacred character of friend and nurse – but in the atrocious malignity by which she sought to destroy the character and reputation of the poor creatures, and to fix the ignominy of suicide on the objects of her own robbery and murder.
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victim were watched with so much deliberation by the murderer,' but also because the same high judicial authority, having access to the depositions in another case, pronounced, in words of unexampled gravity and significance, 'that he had no more doubt but that Mrs
Atkinson was also murdered by Catherine Wilson than if he had seen the crime committed with his own eyes.' Nor did these two murders comprise the catalogue of her crimes. That she, who poisoned her paramour Mawer, again poisoned a second lover, one Dixon, robbed and poisoned Mrs Jackson, attempted the life of a third paramour named Taylor, and administered sulphuric acid to a woman in whose house she was a lodger, only in the present year – of all this there seems to be no
221:, "pointed out that the theory of the defence was an untenable one, as, had the bottle contained the poison when the prisoner received it, it would have become red-hot or would have burst, before she arrived at the invalid's bedside. However, there is no accounting for juries and, at the end of the Judge's
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In 1862 Wilson worked as a live-in nurse, nursing a Mrs Sarah
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We speak without hesitation of her crimes as plural, because, adopting the language of Mr. Justice Byles with reference to the death of Mrs Soames, we not only 'never heard of a case in which it was more clearly proved that murder had been committed, and where the excruciating pain and agony of the
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She was as foul in life as bloody in hand, and she seems not to have spared the poison draught even to the partners of her adultery and sensuality. Hers was an undeviating career of the foulest personal vices and the most cold-blooded and systematic murders, as well as deliberate and treacherous
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When Wilson left the dock, she was immediately rearrested, as the police had continued their investigations into Wilson and had exhumed the bodies of some former patients. She was charged with the murder of seven former patients, but tried on just one, Mrs Maria Soames, who died in 1856. Wilson
249:, the defence being that the poison could not be reliably detected after so long. In summing up, the judge said to the jury: "Gentlemen, if such a state of things as this were allowed to exist no living person could sit down to a meal in safety". Wilson was found guilty and sentenced to
439:"Execution at the Old Bailey." Times 21 October 1862: 5. The Times Digital Archive. Web. 20 November 2012:“...not a single effort was made in her behalf in any quarter whatever...to arrest or divert the course of justice...not a finger was raised to deprecate a just retribution."
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After the trial, Byles asked
Williams to come to his chambers, where he told him: "I sent for you to tell you that you did that case remarkably well, but it was no good; the facts were too strong. I prosecuted Rush for the murder of Mr Jermy, I defended
241:, again defended by Montagu Williams. During the trial, it was alleged that seven people with whom Wilson had lived as a nurse had died after rewriting their Wills to leave her some money, but this evidence was not admitted. Almost all had suffered from
265:, and I defended several other notable criminals when I was on the Norfolk Circuit, but if it will be of any satisfaction to you, I may tell you that in my opinion you have to-day defended the greatest criminal that ever lived."
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Life, Trial, Sentence, and
Execution of Catherine Wilson, for the Murder of Mrs Soames
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