Daily inter mountain. [volume], February 04, 1899, Page 15, Image 15

About Daily inter mountain. [volume] (Butte, Mont.) 1881-1901

Image provided by: Montana Historical Society; Helena, MT

                
DEATH INTHE MAIL
THE FAMOUS GRAVES CASE OF EIGHT YEARS AGO, AND THE RECENT
BOTKIN AND ADAMS POISONINGS.
Ylistorians who have written of life in
the middle ages have been pleased to
treat of poisoning as one of the lost arts.
They refer to Lucretla Borgia, the Spara,
Mme, de Brinvilliers, and Blanca Capello
as if they had carried their formulas as
secrets to their graves and had left no
hints behind toguide would-be imitators in
the preparation of the Aqua TofCana or
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MRS. BOTKIN, THE SAN FRANCOSCO POISONER.
the Manna of St. Nicholas de Bari, the
distillations with which they so success
fully summoned deatli to relieve them of
such persons as were objectionable tu 1
them.
The stories of the subtle use of such
preparations by the Borgias; or of
Mme. de Brinvilliers' experiments upon
the patients in the hospitals are typical
of the age when women poisoned as they
smiled, but they do not prove timt the
present day criminal is any less deft in
the handling of these mysterious destroy -
ers of life.
The secret poisoners of the fifteenth
century were skillful without a dou t
and when they surrounded their work
with a certain air of mystery that was
made possible by the conditions of tho
times, but tbe poisoners of the nine
teenth century administer their drugs
even mote cleverly. And the fact that we
have no Voisins and Filastis to make a
business of poisoning people by the whole
sale for hire is due to our modern methods
of detection of crime which make such a
trade impossible.
Nevertheless we have as artistic pois
oners today and they have found in the
moil one of tho most adroit methods of
administering death to the unfortunate
victim of their arts.
The poisoning of Mrs. Kate J. Adams,
a few days ago, in New Yoi'k was a strill
ing illustration of the power of poisons
and with its predecessor—the Botkin
case of California—furnishes ample evi
dence' on which to lease the assertion that
the secret poisoner is not. alone a fifteenth
century institution.
The poisoning of Mrs. Adams and the
killing ot Mrs. Dunning and Mrs. Deane,
the crime for which Mrs. Cordelia A. Bot
kin is now serving a fife sentence in Cali
fornia. were strangely analogous. Tn
each instance the po'soner sent the death
dealing drug under the guise of a friend
ly gift and in each instance the poisoner
concealed identity by making use of the
United States mail.
The box of poisoned chocolates with
which Mrs. Botkin proposed to take the
life of the wife of the man she loved was
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THE MOST FAMOUS POISONERS OF HISTORY.
mailed in San Francisco and the arsenic
did its deadly work in Dover, Del.
Tn the Adams case the package of
bromo seltzer in the silver bottle holder
was dropped into the mail box at an out
of-the-way sub-station in- New York and
a few days later Mrs. Adams was dead,
killed by the cyanide of mercury that had
been so skillfully mixed with the liarm
lc-ss remedy. In each case the murderer
was actuated by malignant pas-ion but
was eh vi r enough to realize that the
post office provided the safest method of
reaching the victim with the most rea
sonable certainty of success. So the dead
ly drugs were despatched upon their fatal
mission and the success of these attempts
to kill at a distance has given the press
of the entire continent a topic of discus
sion for weeks past.
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ANOTHER OF MRS. BOTKIN'S VICTIMS.
Successful as they were in making the
government furnish the facilities for their
crime neither Mrs. Botkin nor the mur
derer of Mrs. Adams can claim any or
iginality in the dispatching of death
through the mail.
Nearly eight years ago a Providence,
R. I., physician made use of this same
method of accomplishing a murder and
so successful was he that it was only
with the greatest difficulty that the
crime was traced to him. The murders
that have attracted so much attention
during the past few weeks and the killing
of Mrs. Josephine A. Barnaby by Dr. T.
IThacher Graves were so similar that it is
strange that they have not recalled the
famous old case to public notice. Eight
years ago the mysterious poisoning was
the chief topic of interest and the pht'as
"Death in the mail," was on every tonguh.
Mrs. Barnaby was the widow of a prom
inent and wealthy Rhode Island clothier,
J. B. Barnaby. Dr. Graves was not only
her physician hut her confidential busi
ness adviser. When Mr. Barnaby died
and the wife received her portion of the
estate she placed the money in the hands
of Dr. Graves for investment and shortly
afterwards, upon his advice went to the
west, hoping that the bracing air of Colo
rado would help her to regain her shat
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MRS. ADAMS, THE VICTI
M OF AN UNKNOWN POISONER.
tored health. With her, as a companion,
was Mrs Edward S. Worrell of Chester,
Pa.
Some time after Mrs. Barnaby's ar
rival in Denver she received a pack
age in the mail. It was a bottle con
taining liquor, a large oddly shaped
bottle and on the label was written
"With best wishes. Accept this fine old
whisky from your friends in the woods."
There was nothing about tho package to
attract suspicion for Mrs. Barnaby' had
friends in the Adirondacks of whom she
always spoke as her "friends in the
woods" and she never imagined that tho
gifts had not come from them.
It was April and a few days later a
cold rain set in. On the nineteenth the
battle was opened and twenty-four hours
later Mrs. Worrell was at the point of
'death and Mrs. Barnaby dead. The police,
investigations showed that the whisky
contained a large quantity of arsenite of
sodium.
Then followed the long search for the
criminal The poisoner had covered his
tracks well ond Dr. Graves was one of the
most urgent in demanding that no effort
he spared to apprehend the guilty person.
Gradually, howe ver, suspicion centered
upon him, in spile of the fact that he was
a prominent physician with a large prac
tice the police were unable to discover
any other person who could have wished
for her death.
When Mrs. Burnaby's will was read It
was found that she had left him a large
sum of money and as irregularities in Iho
management of her estate were unearthed
the authorities were satisfied that their
suspicions were correct. Up to this time,
however, there had been no positive facts
ONE OF MRS BOTKIN'S VICTIMS.
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THE SIL.VER STANDARD IN WHICH THE BROMO SELTZER WAS SENT
AS ▲ CHRISTMAS GIFT.
on which to base this opinion and Dr.
Graves might never have been arrested if
Charles E. Lincoln, a reporter of the Bos
ton Herald, had not discovered that when
a young man the physician had been the
maker of a patent medicine.
He immediately instituted a search for
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THE CANDY IN WHICH MRS BOT KIN CONCEALED THE POISON.
a bottle of the remedy. As it had no*
been on the market for years this was no
simple task; but when at last the medi
cine had been found, and It was seen that
the bottle in which it was contained cor
responded with the strangely shaped bot
tle in which the poisoned whisky had been
sent to Denver, it w r as not difficult to se
cure sufficient evidence to cause arrest.
Like most criminals Dr. Graves had ne
glected the details of his work and the
things that had seemed but trivialities
proved his undoing. He was taken to
Colorado where he was tried, convicted
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THE BROMO SELTZER BOTTLE
WHICH CONTAINED THE FA
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and sentenced to be hanged but he at
last escaped the death penalty on the
scaffold by killing himself with the poison
that he knew so well how to use. It is
supposed that the drug was taken to him
by some one who was permitted to visit
him in his cell.
I So ended the first great murder mys
tery in which the crime had been commit
J ted with the assistance of the postal ser
vice and neither the Botkin case nor the
, New York poisoning have caused as
I much excitement as that which resulted
from the discovery of the fact that the
transmission of death through the mail
was a comparatively easy matter.
SOUNDS THAT ARE FELT.
Tho deepest note that can be heard
by the human ear is produced by an organ
pipe 32 feet lung. When the air-ripples
are in quite regular proportion of 8. 16 and
?2 per second the results are perfect mu
sical notes.
Tile thirty-two foot pipe produces 16
vibrations per second. When the Dead
March in "Saul," is played on a huge Ca
thedral organ this note from the thirty
two-foot-pipe is distinctly heard, shaking
the building, it would seem, to its very
foundations. Were the pipe one inch long
er the sound could not be heard.
The thunder of Niagara, which is noth
ing but an organ pipe 167 feet high, pro
duce? a note such as would issue from a
wooden pipe of 160 feet. This, of course,
cannot be heard. But you can feel the
beat of the note upon your ear drum. I*
is at the rate of eight vibrations per sec
ond. Even this was surpassed by the
sound made when the volcano of Krato
koa blew up. Delicate meteorological in
struments in the great observatories all
over the world registered a sound in
which the vibrations were only four per
second So far as is known to mortal ear
at any distance, could be heard this
sound.
MEND YOUR BIRD'S LEGS.
Your chickens and other birds fre
quently- break the bones of their legs,
and, if properly attended to, these frac
tures can be easily cured with very little
trouble. As soon as the injury is no
ticed the fracture must be carefully
cleaned and washed with warm water,
and then wrapped with a bit of antiseptio
cotton. Splints are then prepared for the
fractured limb, preferably of split elder
wood, the pith of which is taken out.
These splints are fastened to the cotton
with a drop of glue, and held tightly in.
place by being wound with linen thread.
The bandage and dressing are left un
disturbed for from three to four weeks;
th n the leg is soaked in tepid water
until the bandage comes off easily. The
fracture will have completely healed in
that time. Canaries and other pet birds
can be similarly treated in case of a
fracture of a leg, only the elder splints
are substituted by pieces of cardboard,
and the bandage is left but two weeks
on the little winged patients.
RUINED BY A BATTLE.
Sweden was ruined by a single battle.
It was the battle of Pultowa. in 1709. In
this battle Peter the Great of Russia de
feated Charles XII of Sweden. Sweden,
under the Great Gustavus. had risen to
the position of a first-class European
power, while Russia was just emerging
out of obscurity. Charles XII, by his
marvelous victories, seemed on the way
to make Sweden one of the greatest of
the powers. The crushing blow that was
dealt at Pultowa ruined Sweden.
At the battle of Jena, in 1806, Napoleon
crushed the kingdom of Prussia.
The battles of Sadowa and Sedan prao«
tically crushed France and Austria.