MADELEINE SMITH

Hardback. Madeleine Smith faced a charge of murdering her lover by arsenic poisoning, and for 9 days in the summer of 1857 her case was argued before the High Court of Justiciary in Edinburgh, while she sat silent and serene in the dock - for at that time a prisoner could not testify, and could not be cross-questioned. She sat in the shadow of the gallows, knowing that if she were to be found guilty she would be hanged in pubic before a screaming mob. But except for a brief moment when her letters to her lover were read out - those uninhibited love letters which so deeply shocked the court, and which may still be thought shocking in our permissive age - her composure never left her. At the end of 9 days, thanks largely to the brilliant advocacy of her defence counsel, the jury brought in the Scottish verdict of Not Proven, and Madeleine walked from the Court, her head held high and her composure still unruffled. Thereafter, throughout her long life - and she lived till she was 93 - she always protested her innocence. In this book the author has taken a new look at Madeleine Smith and at some of the myths that have surrounded her. He has studied her character in detail, has re-examined the evidence against her in the light of modern forensic medicine, has had her handwriting analysed by a leading graphologist, and has sought the views on the conduct of her trial from a leading High Court Judge, Mr. Justice Thesiger. In a modern Court Madeleine could have elected to enter the witness box and undergone cross-examination. Would this have won for her the verdict of Not Guilty, which she believed that she merited - or would it have hanged her? In reaching his conclusions about her guilt, the author expresses some controversial views that had not previously been aired. Illus., Principal Dates + Index. 226pp. 8vo. h/back. F. in F. dw.