ABSTRACT
British authorities had a lax attitude towards the sale and purchase of poisons, in marked contrast to France. It is true that the French authorities found it impracticable to regulate as closely the sale of poisonous substances used in commerce, such as copper arsenite (Scheele’s blue). This and other arsenical pigments were used, for example, in wallpaper printing and were responsible for the accidental or deliberate poisoning of many people, including, it is thought by some, Napoleon. But nevertheless, compare this regulatory regime with the report of an 1839 coroner’s inquest at Nottingham on the suicide of Ann Burdett, age 16:
William Yeomans, a grocer, druggist and beer-seller of Charles Street, deposed that he sold poisons as well as other articles, though he was really a pawnbroker by trade. His Wife sold the girl a pennyworth of arsenic, unlabelled, in a screw of paper to dress a bedstead.1 Mrs. Yeomans testified that she knew nothing of arsenic, she was not aware that the amount she sold Ann Burdett would kill a score of people;
“I cannot write at all, neither can I read but very little.” She rather thought that the arsenic pot was inscribed in Latin, but when it was produced before the Coroner, it appeared to be labelled “Arsenic” in some sticky substance. This was the second time that the pair had been before the court in similar circumstances, the previous time having led to the death of a baby over a mix-up involving laudanum. The Coroner reprimanded them in the strongest manner. After the reprimand, Yeomans abruptly asked for his arsenic pot to be returned, but the Coroner ordered it destroyed.2
