The interrogatory of Castaing by the presiding judge lasted all the afternoon of the first day of the trial and the morning of the second. The opening part of it dealt with the murder of Hippolyte Ballet, and elicited little or nothing that was fresh. Beyond the purchase of acetate of morphia previous to Hippolyte's death, which Castaing reluctantly admitted, there was no serious evidence against him, and before the end of the trial the prosecution abandoned that part of the charge.
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Questioned by the President as to the destruction of Hippolyte Ballet's will, Castaing admitted that he had seen a draft of a will executed by Hippolyte in favour of his sister, but he denied having told Auguste that Lebret had in his possession a copy which he was prepared to destroy for 100,000 francs. Asked to explain the assertion of Mlle. Percillie, Auguste's mistress, that statements to this effect had been made in her presence by both Auguste Ballet and himself, he said that it was not true; that he had never been to her house.
«What motive,» he was asked, «could Mlle. Percillie have for accusing you?» «She hated me,» was the reply, «because I had tried to separate Auguste from her.» Castaing denied that he had driven with Auguste to Lebret's office on October 8. Asked to explain his sudden possession of 100,000 francs at a moment when he was apparently without a penny, he repeated his statement that Auguste had given him the capital sum as an equivalent for an income of 4,000 francs which his brother had intended to leave him. «Why, when first asked if you had received anything from Auguste, did you say you had received nothing?» was the question.
«It was a thoughtless statement,» was the answer. «Why,» pursued the President,
«should you not have admitted at once a fact that went to prove your own good faith? If, however, this fact be true, it does not explain the mysterious way in which Auguste asked Prignon to raise for him 100,000 francs; and unless those 100,000 francs were given to you, it is impossible to account for them. It is important to your case that you should give the jury a satisfactory explanation on this point.» Castaing could only repeat his previous explanations.
The interrogatory was then directed to the death of Auguste Ballet. Castaing said that Auguste Ballet had left him all his fortune on account of a disagreement with his sister.
Asked why, after Auguste's death, he had at first denied all knowledge of the will made in his favour and deposited by him with Malassis, he could give no satisfactory reason.
Coming to the facts of the alleged poisoning of Auguste Ballet, the President asked Castaing why, shortly after the warm wine was brought up on the night of May 30, he went up to the room where one of the servants of the hotel was lying sick. Castaing replied that he was sent for by the wife of the hotel−keeper. This the woman denied; she said that she did not even know that he was a doctor. «According to the prosecution,» said the judge, «you left the room in order to avoid drinking your share of the wine.» Castaing said that he had drunk half a cupful of it. The judge reminded him that to one of the witnesses Castaing had said that he had drunk only a little.
A ridiculous statement made by Castaing to explain the purchase of morphia and antimony in Paris on May 31 was brought up against him. Shortly after his arrest Castaing had said that the cats and dogs about the hotel had made such a noise on the night of May 30
that they had disturbed the rest of Auguste, who, in the early morning, had asked Castaing to get some poison to kill them. He had accordingly gone all the way, about ten miles, to Paris at four in the morning to purchase antimony and morphia to kill cats and dogs. All the people of the hotel denied that there had been any such disturbance on the night in question.
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Castaing now said that he had bought the poisons at Auguste's request, partly to kill the noisy cats and dogs, and partly for the purpose of their making experiments on animals.
Asked why he had not given this second reason before, he said that as Auguste was not a medical man it would have been damaging to his reputation to divulge the fact of his wishing to make unauthorised experiments on animals. «Why go to Paris for the poison?»
asked the judge, «there was a chemist a few yards from the hotel. And when in Paris, why go to two chemists?» To all these questions Castaing's answers were such as to lead the President to express a doubt as to whether they were likely to convince the jury. Castaing was obliged to admit that he had allowed, if not ordered, the evacuations of the sick man to be thrown away. He stated that he had thrown away the morphia and antimony, which he had bought in Paris, in the closets of the hotel, because, owing to the concatenation of circumstances, he thought that he would be suspected of murder. In reply to a question from one of the jury, Castaing said that he had mixed the acetate of morphia and tartar emetic together before reaching Saint Cloud, but why he had done so he could not explain.
The medical evidence at the trial was favourable to the accused. Orfila, the famous chemist of that day, said that, though the symptoms in Auguste Ballet's case might be attributed to poisoning by acetate of morphia or some other vegetable poison, at the same time they could be equally well attributed to sudden illness of a natural kind. The liquids, taken from the stomach of Ballet, had yielded on analysis no trace of poison of any sort. The convulsive symptoms present in Ballet's case were un−
doubtedly a characteristic result of a severe dose of acetate of morphia.
[14] Castaing said
that he had mixed the acetate of morphia and tartar emetic together, but in any case no trace of either poison was found in Auguste's body, and his illness might, from all appearances, have been occasioned by natural causes. Some attempt was made by the prosecution to prove that the apoplexy to which Hippolyte Ballet had finally succumbed, might be attributed to a vegetable poison; one of the doctors expressed an opinion favourable to that conclusion «as a man but not as a physician.» But the evidence did not go further.
[14] It was asserted some years later by one medical authority in Palmer's case that it might have been morphia and not strychnine that had caused the tetanic symptoms which preceded Cook's death.
To the young priest−like doctor the ordeal of his trial was a severe one. It lasted eight days. It was only at midday on the sixth day that the evidence was concluded. Not only was Castaing compelled to submit to a long interrogatory by the President, but, after each witness had given his or her evidence, the prisoner was called on to refute or explain any points unfavourable to him. This he did briefly, with varying success; as the trial went on, with increasing embarrassment. A great deal of the evidence given against Castaing was hearsay, and would have been inadmissible in an English court of justice. Statements made by Auguste to other persons about Castaing were freely admitted. But more serious was the evidence of Mlle. Percillie, Auguste's mistress. She swore that on one occasion in her 91
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presence Castaing had reproached Auguste with ingratitude; he had complained that he had destroyed one copy of Hippolyte Ballet's will, and for Auguste's sake had procured the destruction of the other, and that yet, in spite of all this, Auguste hesitated to entrust him with 100,000 francs. Asked what he had to say to this statement Castaing denied its truth. He had, he said, only been in Mlle. Percillie's house once, and then not with Auguste Ballet.
Mlle. Percillie adhered to the truth of her evidence, and the President left it to the jury to decide between them.
A Mme. Durand, a patient of Castaing, gave some curious evidence as to a story told her by the young doctor. He said that a friend of his, suffering from lung disease, had been persuaded into making a will in his sister's favour. The sister had offered a bribe of 80,000
francs to her brother's lawyer to persuade him to make such a will, and paid one of his clerks 3,000 francs for drawing it up. Castaing, in his friend's interest, and in order to expose the fraud, invited the clerk to come and see him. His friend, hidden in an alcove in the room, overheard the conversation between Castaing and the clerk, and so learnt the details of his sister's intrigue. He at once destroyed the will and became reconciled with his brother, whom he had been about to disinherit. After his death the brother, out of gratitude, had given Castaing 100,000 francs.
President: Castaing, did you tell this story to Mme. Durand?
Castaing: I don't recollect.
Avocat−General: But Mme. Durand says that you did.
Castaing: I don't recollect.
President: You always say that you don't recollect; that is no answer. Have you, yes or no, made such a statement to Mme. Durand?
Castaing: I don't recollect; if I had said it, I should recollect it.
Another lady whom Castaing had attended free of charge swore, with a good deal of reluctance, that Castaing had told her a somewhat similar story as accounting for his possession of 100,000 francs.
Witnesses were called for the defence who spoke to the diligence and good conduct of Castaing as a medical student; and eighteen, whom he had treated free of expense, testified to his kindness and generosity. «All these witnesses,» said the President, «speak to your generosity; but, for that very reason, you must have made little profit out of your profession, and had little opportunity for saving anything,» to which Castaing replied: «These are not the only patients I attended; I have not called those who paid me for my services.» At the same time Castaing found it impossible to prove that he had ever made a substantial living 92
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by the exercise of his profession.
One of the medical witnesses called for the defence, M. Chaussier, had volunteered the remark that the absence of any trace of poison in the portions of Auguste Ballet's body submitted to analysis, constituted an absence of the corpus delicti. To this the President replied that that was a question of criminal law, and no concern of his. But in his speech for the prosecution the Avocat−General dealt with the point raised at some length – a point which, if it had held good as a principle of English law, would have secured the acquittal of so wicked a poisoner as Palmer. He quoted from the famous French lawyer d'Aguesseau:
«The corpus delicti is no other thing than the delictum itself; but the proofs of the delictum are infinitely variable according to the nature of things; they may be general or special, principal or accessory, direct or indirect; in a word, they form that general effect (ensemble) which goes to determine the conviction of an honest man.» If such a contention as M.
Chaussier's were correct, said the Avocat−General, then it would be impossible in a case of poisoning to convict a prisoner after his victim's death, or, if his victim survived, to convict him of the attempt to poison. He reminded the jury of that paragraph in the Code of Criminal Procedure which instructed them as to their duties: «The Law does not ask you to give the reasons that have convinced you; it lays down no rules by which you are to decide as to the fullness or sufficiency of proof . . . it only asks you one question: `Have you an inward conviction?'» «If,» he said, «the actual traces of poison are a material proof of murder by poison, then a new paragraph must be added to the Criminal Code – `Since, however, vegetable poisons leave no trace, poisoning by such means may be committed with impunity.'» To poisoners he would say in future: «Bunglers that you are, don't use arsenic or any mineral poison; they leave traces; you will be found out. Use vegetable poisons; poison your fathers, poison your mothers, poison all your families, and their inheritance will be yours – fear nothing; you will go unpunished! You have committed murder by poisoning, it is true; but the corpus delicti will not be there because it can't be there!» This was a case, he urged, of circumstantial evidence. «We have,» he said, «gone through a large number of facts. Of these there is not one that does not go directly to the proof of poisoning, and that can only be explained on the supposition of poisoning; whereas, if the theory of the defence be admitted, all these facts, from the first to the last, become meaningless and absurd. They can only be refuted by arguments or explanations that are childish and ridiculous.»
Castaing was defended by two advocates – Roussel, a schoolfellow of his, and the famous Berryer, reckoned by some the greatest French orator since Mirabeau. Both advocates were allowed to address the jury. Roussel insisted on the importance of the corpus delicti. «The delictum,» he said, «is the effect, the guilty man merely the cause; it is useless to deal with the cause if the effect is uncertain,» and he cited a case in which a woman had been sent for trial, charged with murdering her husband; the moral proof of her guilt seemed conclusive, when suddenly her husband appeared in court alive and well. The advocate made a good deal of the fact that the remains of the draught prescribed by Dr. Pigache, a spoonful of which Castaing had given to Auguste Ballet, had been analysed and showed no trace of poison. Against this the prosecution set the evidence of the chemist at Saint Cloud, 93
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who had made up the prescription. He said that the same day he had made up a second prescription similar to that of Dr. Pigache, but not made out for Auguste Ballet, which contained, in addition to the other ingredients, acetate of morphia. The original of this prescription he had given to a friend of Castaing, who had come to his shop and asked him for it a few days after Ballet's death. It would seem therefore that there had been two bottles of medicine, one of which containing morphia had disappeared.
M. Roussel combatted the suggestion that the family of Castaing were in a state of indigence. He showed that his father had an income of 10,000 francs, while his two brothers were holding good positions, one as an officer in the army, the other as a government official. The mistress of Castaing he represented as enjoying an income of 5,000 francs. He protested against the quantity of hearsay evidence that had been admitted into the case. «In England,» he said, «when a witness is called, he is asked `What have you seen?' If he can only testify to mere talk, and hearsay, he is not heard.» He quoted the concluding paragraph of the will of Auguste Ballet as showing his friendly feeling towards Castaing: «It is only after careful reflection that I have made this final disposition of my property, in order to mark the sincere friendship which I have never for one moment ceased to feel for MM.
Castaing, Briant and Leuchere, in order to recognise the faithful loyalty of my servants, and deprive M. and Mme. Martignon, my brother−in−law and sister, of all rights to which they might be legally entitled on my death, fully persuaded in soul and conscience that, in doing so, I am giving to each their just and proper due.» «Is this,» asked M. Roussel, «a document wrested by surprise from a weak man, extorted by trickery? Is he not acting in the full exercise of his faculties? He forgets no one, and justifies his conduct.»
When M. Roussel came to the incident of the noisy cats and dogs at Saint Cloud, he was as ingenious as the circumstances permitted: "A serious charge engrosses public attention; men's minds are concentrated on the large, broad aspects of the case; they are in a state of unnatural excitement. They see only the greatness, the solemnity of the accusation, and then, suddenly, in the midst of all that is of such tragic and surpassing interest, comes this trivial fact about cats and dogs.
It makes an unfavourable impression, because it is dramatically out of keeping with the tragedy of the story. But we are not here to construct a drama. No, gentlemen, look at it merely as a trivial incident of ordinary, everyday life, and you will see it in its proper light.«
M. Roussel concluded by saying that Castaing's most eloquent advocate, if he could have been present, would have been Auguste Ballet. »If Providence had permitted him to enter this court, he would cry out to you, `Save my friend's life! His heart is undefiled! He is innocent!'"
M. Roussel concluded his speech at ten o'clock on Sunday night, November 16. The next morning Berryer addressed the jury. His speech in defence of Castaing is not considered one of his most successful efforts. He gave personal testimony as to the taste of acetate of morphia. He said that with the help of his own chemist he had put a quarter of a 94
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grain of the acetate into a large spoonful of milk, and had found it so insupportably bitter to the taste that he could not keep it in his mouth. If, he contended, Ballet had been poisoned by tartar emetic, then twelve grains given in milk would have given it an insipid taste, and vomiting immediately after would have got rid of the poison. Later investigations have shown that, in cases of antimonial poisoning, vomiting does not necessarily get rid of all the poison, and the convulsions in which Auguste Ballet died are symptomatic of poisoning either by morphia or antimony. In conclusion, Berryer quoted the words addressed by one of the Kings of France to his judges: «When God has not vouchsafed clear proof of a crime, it is a sign that He does not wish that man should determine it, but leaves its judgment to a higher tribunal.»
The Avocat−General, in reply, made a telling answer to M. Roussel's attempt to minimise the importance of the cats and dogs: «He has spoken of the drama of life, and of its ordinary everyday incidents. If there is drama in this case, it is of Castaing's making. As to the ordinary incidents of everyday life, a man buys poison, brings it to the bedside of his sick friend, saying it is for experiments on cats and dogs, the friend dies, the other, his sole heir, after foretelling his death, takes possession of his keys, and proceeds to gather up the spoils – are these ordinary incidents of every−day life?»
It was nine o'clock at night when the jury retired to consider their verdict. They returned into court after two hours' deliberation. They found the prisoner «Not Guilty» of the murder of Hippolyte Ballet, «Guilty» of destroying his will, and «Guilty» by seven votes to five of the murder of Auguste Ballet. Asked if he had anything to say before judgment was given, Castaing, in a very loud voice, said "No; but I shall know how to die, though I am the victim of ill−fortune, of fatal circum−
stance. I shall go to meet my two friends. I am accused of having treacherously murdered them. There is a Providence above us! If there is such a thing as an immortal soul, I shall see Hippolyte and Auguste Ballet again. This is no empty declamation; I don't ask for human pity« (raising his hands to heaven), »I look to God's mercy, and shall go joyfully to the scaffold. My conscience is clear. It will not reproach me even when I feel« (putting his hands to his neck). »Alas! It is easier to feel what I am feeling than to express what I dare not express.« (In a feeble voice): »You have desired my death; you have it!« The judges retired to consider the sentence. The candles were guttering, the light of the lamps was beginning to fade; the aspect of the court grim and terrible. M. Roussel broke down and burst into tears. Castaing leant over to his old schoolfellow: »Courage, Roussel,« he said;
»you have always believed me innocent, and I am innocent. Embrace for me my father, my mother, my brothers, my child.« He turned to a group of young advocates standing near:
»And you, young people, who have listened to my trial, attend also my execution; I shall be as firm then as I am now. All I ask is to die soon. I should be ashamed to plead for mercy."
The judges returned. Castaing was condemned to death, and ordered to pay 100,000 francs damages to the family of Auguste Ballet.
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Castaing was not ashamed to appeal to the Court of Cassation for a revision of his trial, but on December 4 his appeal was rejected. Two days later he was executed. He had attempted suicide by means of poison, which one of his friends had brought to him in prison, concealed inside a watch. His courage failed him at the last, and he met his death in a state of collapse.
It is not often, happily, that a young man of gentle birth and good education is a double murderer at twenty−six. And such a soft, humble, insinuating young man too! – good to his mother, good to his mistress, fond of his children, kind to his patients.
Yet this gentle creature can deliberately poison his two friends.
Was ever such a contradictory fellow?
Story 5 − Professor Webster
The best report of Webster's trial is that edited by Bemis. The following tracts in the British Museum have been consulted by the writer: «Appendix to the Webster Trial,»
Boston, 1850: «Thoughts on the Conviction of Webster»; «The Boston Tragedy,» by W. E.
Bigelow.
It is not often that the gaunt spectre of murder invades the cloistered calm of academic life. Yet such a strange and unwonted tragedy befell Harvard University in the year 1849, when John W. Webster, Professor of Chemistry, took the life of Dr. George Parkman, a distinguished citizen of Boston. The scene of the crime, the old Medical School, now a Dental Hospital, is still standing, or was when the present writer visited Boston in 1907. It is a large and rather dreary red−brick, three−storied building, situated in the lower part of the city, flanked on its west side by the mud flats leading down to the Charles River. The first floor consists of two large rooms, separated from each other by the main entrance hall, which is approached by a flight of steps leading up from the street level. Of these two rooms, the left, as you face the building, is fitted up as a lecture− room. In the year 1849 it was the lecture−room of Professor Webster. Behind the lecture−room is a laboratory, known as the upper laboratory, communicating by a private staircase with the lower laboratory, which occupies the left wing of the ground floor. A small passage, entered by a door on the left−hand side of the front of the building, separated this lower laboratory from the dissecting−room, an out−house built on to the west wall of the college, but now demolished.
From this description it will be seen that any person, provided with the necessary keys, could enter the college by the side−door near the dissecting room on the ground floor, and pass up through the lower and upper laboratory into Professor Webster's lecture−room without entering any other part of the building. The Professor of Chemistry, by locking the doors of his lecture−rooms and the lower laboratory, could, if he wished, make himself perfectly secure against intrusion, and come and go by the side−door without attracting much attention. These rooms are little altered at the present time from their arrangement in 96
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1849. The lecture−room and laboratory are used for the same purposes to− day; the lower laboratory, a dismal chamber, now disused and somewhat rearranged, is still recognisable as the scene of the Professor's chemical experiments.
On the second floor of the hospital is a museum, once anatomical, now dental. One of the principal objects of interest in this museum is a plaster cast of the jaws of Dr. George Parkman, made by a well−known dentist of Boston, Dr. Keep, in the year 1846. In that year the new medical college was formally opened. Dr. Parkman, a wealthy and public−spirited citizen of Boston, had given the piece of land, on which the college had been erected. He had been invited to be present at the opening ceremony. In anticipation of being asked to make a speech on this occasion Dr. Parkman, whose teeth were few and far between, had himself fitted by Dr. Keep with a complete set of false teeth. Oliver Wendell Holmes, then Professor of Anatomy at Harvard, who was present at the opening of the college, noticed how very nice and white the doctor's teeth appeared to be. It was the discovery of the remains of these same admirable teeth three years later in the furnace in Professor Webster's lower laboratory that led to the conviction of Dr. Parkman's murderer. By a strange coincidence the doctor met his death in the very college which his generosity had helped to build. Though to−day the state of the college has declined from the medical to the dental, his memory still lives within its walls by the cast of his jaws preserved in the dental museum as a relic of a case, in which the art of dentistry did signal service to the cause of justice.
In his lifetime Dr. Parkman was a well−known figure in the streets of Boston. His peculiar personal appearance and eccentric habits combined to make him something of a character. As he walked through the streets he presented a remarkable appearance. He was exceptionally tall, longer in the body than the legs; his lower jaw protruded some half an inch beyond the upper; he carried his body bent forward from the small of his back. He seemed to be always in a hurry; so impetuous was he that, if his horse did not travel fast enough to please him, he would get off its back, and, leaving the steed in the middle of the street, hasten on his way on foot. A just and generous man, he was extremely punctilious in matters of business, and uncom−
promising in his resentment of any form of falsehood or deceit. It was the force of his resentment in such a case that cost him his life.
The doctor was unfailingly punctual in taking his meals. Dr. Kingsley, during the fourteen years he had acted as his agent, had always been able to make sure of finding him at home at his dinner hour, half−past two o'clock. But on Friday, November 23, 1849, to his surprise and that of his family, Dr. Parkman did not come home to dinner; and their anxiety was increased when the day passed, and there was still no sign of the doctor's return.
Inquiries were made. From these it appeared that Dr. Parkman had been last seen alive between one and two o'clock on the Friday afternoon. About half−past one he had visited a grocer's shop in Bridge Street, made some purchases, and left behind him a paper bag containing a lettuce, which, he said, he would call for on his way home. Shortly before two 97
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o'clock he was seen by a workman, at a distance of forty or fifty feet from the Medical College, going in that direction. From that moment all certain trace of him was lost. His family knew that he had made an appointment for half−past one that day, but where and with whom they did not know. As a matter of fact, Professor John W. Webster had appointed that hour to receive Dr. Parkman in his lecture−room in the Medical College.
John W. Webster was at this time Professor of Chemistry and Mineralogy in Harvard University, a Doctor of Medicine and a Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the London Geological Society and the St. Petersburg Mineralogical Society. He was the author of several works on geology and chemistry, a man now close on sixty years of age. His countenance was genial, his manner mild and unassuming; he was clean shaven, wore spectacles, and looked younger than his years.
Professor Webster was popular with a large circle of friends. To those who liked him he was a man of pleasing and attractive manners, artistic in his tastes – he was especially fond of music – not a very profound or remarkable chemist, but a pleasant social companion. His temper was hasty and irritable. Spoilt in his boyhood as an only child, he was self−willed and self− indulgent. His wife and daughters were better liked than he. By unfriendly criticics{sic} the Professor was thought to be selfish, fonder of the good things of the table and a good cigar than was consistent with his duty to his family or the smallness of his income. His father, a successful apothecary at Boston, had died in 1833, leaving John, his only son, a fortune of some L10,000. In rather less than ten years Webster had run through the whole of his inheritance. He had built himself a costly mansion in Cambridge, spent a large sum of money in collecting minerals, and delighted to exercise lavish hospitality. By living consistently beyond his means he found himself at length entirely dependent on his professional earnings. These were small. His salary as Professor was fixed at L240 a year;[15] the rest of his income he derived from the sale of tickets for his lectures at the Medical College. That income was insufficient to meet his wants.
[15] I have given these sums of money in their English equivalents in order to give the reader an idea of the smallness of the sum which brought about the tragedy.
As early as 1842 he had borrowed L80 from his friend Dr. Parkman. It was to Parkman's good offices that he owed his appointment as a Professor at Harvard; they had entered the University as under−graduates in the same year. Up to 1847 Webster had repaid Parkman twenty pounds of his debt; but, in that year he found it necessary to raise a further loan of L490, which was subscribed by a few friends, among them Parkman himself. As a security for the repayment of this loan, the professor executed a mortgage on his valuable collection of minerals in favour of Parkman. In the April of 1848 the Professor's financial difficulties became so serious that he was threatened with an execution in his house. In this predicament he went to a Mr. Shaw, Dr. Parkman's brother−in−law, and begged a loan of L240, offering him as security a bill of sale on the collection of minerals, which he had already mortgaged to Parkman. Shaw accepted the security, an