![]() ![]() Were innocent men and women now going to the gallows? In so doing though he was to cause as many problems as he solved. So when a chemist named James Marsh was called as an expert witness in the case of the murder at Plumstead, he decided that he had to create a reliable test for arsenic poisoning, or the murders would continue and killers would be left to walk free. Even diagnosing arsenic poisoning was a hit-and-miss affair. ![]() The surgeon John Butler had set about collecting the evidence that he hoped would bring the culprit to justice but, in the 1830s, forensic science was still in its infancy. For a few pence and with few questions asked, it was possible to buy enough poison to kill off an entire family, hence arsenic's popular name - The Inheritor's Powder. ![]() In the nineteenth century, criminal poisoning with arsenic was frighteningly easy. The Bodles had been the victims of a terrible poisoning. Three days later, after lingering in agony, the wealthy grandfather George Bodle died in his bed at his farmhouse in Plumstead. That evening, the local surgeon John Butler received an urgent summons - the family and their servants had all collapsed with a serious illness. On the morning of Saturday 2nd of November 1833, the Bodle household sat down to their morning breakfast, sharing a pot of coffee. ![]()
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