Pimlico Mystery

The Pimlico Mystery is the name given to the circumstances surrounding the 1886 death of Thomas Edwin Bartlett, possibly at the hands of his wife, Adelaide Bartlett, in the Pimlico district of London. It describes the mystery as to how a fatal quantity of chloroform came to be in Mr Barlett's stomach, despite having not caused any damage to his throat or windpipe. Adelaide Bartlett was tried for her husband's murder, but was acquitted. Popular belief has it that Mrs Bartlett's acquittal was partly secured because the prosecution could not prove how Mrs Bartlett had committed the crime.

The heart of the Pimlico Mystery is the odd relationship between a wealthy grocer, Mr. Thomas Edwin Bartlett, his French-born wife Adelaide, and their spiritual counselor and friend the Reverend George Dyson. Dyson was a Wesleyan minister, and (if the story is true) was encouraged to openly romance Adelaide Bartlett by Edwin's permission. Edwin himself was suffering several unpleasant illnesses, including rotting teeth and tapeworms. He was supposedly something of a faddist, believing in animal magnetism as a key to health. But again his eccentricities are based on what we learned from Adelaide and Dyson, both of whom had reasons to lie.

Towards the end of 1885 Adelaide asked Dyson to get some chloroform that was prescribed by the doctor treating Edwin, Dr. Alfred Leach. Leach would later admit that he prescribed it reluctantly, but at the insistance of his patient. Under the laws of the day regarding purchasing large amounts of potential medical poisons, one had to sign books at chemist (pharmacy) shops as a record. But not if the amounts were small. Adelaide had Dyson buy four small bottles of chloroform instead of one large bottle, and had him buy them in several shops.Only later, after Edwin's death, did Dyson suddenly realize how suspicious his actions were.

On New Years Eve, December 31, 1885, Edwin Bartlett went to sleep alone, except for Adelaide, in their Pimlico flat. He was dead the next morning, his stomach filled with liquid chloroform. It is just possible that the stories of Edwin's possible suicide might have quieted everything down, except that his father was extremely suspicious and got the authorities to look into the death. This eventually led to the arrest of both Adelaide and Dyson. However, within a couple of days, charges were dropped against the Reverend, and he became a witness for the crown against Mrs. Bartlett.

Bartlett was extremely fortunate in her choice of barrister: Sir Edward Clarke. possibly the finest barrister of late Victorian England. He was able to show sufficient ambiguities against the deceased to make the suicide theory barely possible. His tactics with Dr. Leach, the elder Bartlett (who was revealed to have a mercenary, ulterior motive towards his son's estate), and Reverend Dyson were sufficient to gain his client an acquittal. It should be pointed out that the prosecution in this classic poisoning case was in the hands (as it is traditionally in Britain) of the current Attorney General, Clarke's great rival Sir Charles Russell, but that the latter was involved with Liberal Party policies and politics connected to Parnell's Home Rule campaign for Ireland. So Clarke did not have his rival at that rival's top legal game. So the "suicide" theory gained ground, although it was shown that on the last evening of his life, Edwin Bartlett told his maid to have a sumptuous dinner prepared for him on the next day - hardly the action of a man contemplating suicide.

The main forensic aid to Mrs. Bartlett is that liquid chloroform burns. It cannot pass through the throat without burning the sides of the throat and the larynx. Edwin did not have such burns on his body. This suggests that he was actually able (somehow) to gulp the chloroform down quickly. It bolstered the suicide theory a little too, for such rapid drinking suggested that the drinker rushed the poisoned drink down. It too may have helped influence the jury to acquit Mrs. Bartlett. The issue of how the poison got into Edwin's stomach without burning him internally in the throat led the famous surgeon, Sir James Paget, to make his famous quip about now that Mrs Bartlett was acquitted she ought to tell the public how she did it, "in the interest of science!".

After the trial Adelaide Bartlett and Reverend George Dyson vanished from public notice. The novelist Julian Symon, in his novelization of the story, "Sweet Adelaide", suggested that Mrs. Bartlett emigrated to the U.S., settled in Connecticut, and died there some time after 1933. If true it is ironic that she settled in the same state as her fellow Victorian poisoning defendant Florence Maybrick, who died there in 1941. As for Dyson, according to Richard Whittington-Egan in his study of William Roughead's life found that a woman in Maryland claimed Dyson changed his name, came to the U.S., and as a fortune hunter married and murdered a young bride for her estate.

The Bartlett case was dramatized on the BBC radio series "The Black Museum" in 1952 under the title of "Four Small Bottles".

References

* Bridges, Yseult, "Poison and Adelaide Bartlett"
* Lustgarten, Ernest, "Defender's Triumph" (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1951), "Victorian Trumpets: Edward Clarke defends Adelaide Bartlett", p. 8-80; the same essay appears in Lustgarten's "The Murder and the Trial" (New York, Charles Scribner's Son, 1958), p. 191-249.
* Notable British Trial Series, "The Trial of Adelaide Bartlett"
* Roughead, William, "The Rebel Earl and Other Studies", (Edinburgh: W. Green & So, Limited, 1926), "The Luck of Adelaide Bartlett: A Fireside Tale", p. 215-252.
* Stratmanm, Linda, "Chloroform: The Quest for Oblivion"