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poisoning and poisonous Lydia Gwilt, who hides her powers behind the ladylike garb of ‘a thick black veil, a black bonnet, and a black silk dress’. Christiana’s assiduous note-taking is also much reported: she is evidently an educated woman and one for whom writing counts. The fact that Charles Beard held on to her letters for so long before destroying some and handing others over to the police may also suggest that these letters carried some kind of resonance for him – as they patently did for her. It is interesting to note that unstoppable writing seems to play a crucial part in many of these excessive and dangerous love stories – from Christiana’s to our own contemporary ‘stalkers’.
    The proceedings begin with Mr Stuckey for the prosecution stating that he has a great mass of evidence to lay before the court and he will then ask for a further remand.
    Mr Lamb objects, saying the court must confine itself strictly to the charge: the alleged attempt to poison Mrs Beard by means of arsenic. The chief magistrate agrees, but adds that attempts to obtain strychnine may also be relevant to the charge.
    Witnesses appear: the Beards’ cook testifies that the cake that came in a parcel from London had made her very sick; Mrs Cole, a greengrocer’s wife, states she saw Christiana with Adam May, the eleven-year-old who then identifies Christiana as the woman who asked him to take a message to Garrett’s the chemist. Having read it, Mr Garrett gaive him a book which he took to Christiana. She paid him fourpence-halfpenny. Mrs Cole is called again, despite Defence Attorney Lamb’s objection that the prosecutor is on a fishing expedition. The magistrate reminds him that this is a preliminary hearing and that any evidence obtained might have an important bearing on the ultimate case. So Mrs Cole returns to the stand and states that about a week before the inquest on Sidney Barker, the prisoner came into her shop, bought a few things, and at the same time left behind a paper bag from Maynard’s which contained chocolate creams large and small and three lemon bullseyes. The sweets were fine, but when her daughter bit into the chocolate cream, it tasted foul and she spat it out. When Mrs Cole came across Christiana at the inquest, she denied doing any such thing.
    A ten-year-old testifies that he had taken chocolate creams, given to him by Mrs Cole and left by Christiana, to his mother, who ate a small piece and felt as if her eyes were coming out of her head. She was shaken by convulsions, felt a great heaviness in her limbs, couldn’t move and was ill for some four days. Another eleven-year-old states that the lady in the dock had sent him to Mr Garrett’s on Queen’s Road with a note, telling him that if he was asked where he had come from, he was to say Messrs Glaisyer and Co. He was given a packet, like a letter, and met the lady again on North Street. She gave him sixpence.
    The evidence against Christiana was piling up and it seemed to implicate her in a far more ambitious poisoning spree than that directed at the wife of the man she was infatuated with. As the day unfolds, Isaac Garrett the chemist testifies that he knew the prisoner. She had made occasional visits to his shop over some four years, always paying in ready money, always mentioning a train she had tocatch. At the start of the current year, she had begun to come more frequently; then on 28 March, after buying some toilet articles, she had asked if he could supply her with a small quantity of strychnine in order to kill some cats. She and her husband had been much annoyed by them of late and wanted to get rid of them.
    Garrett refused. She coaxed him, said there were no children in the house and she would take care that it only passed through her own and her husband’s hands. Garrett told her he could only supply it if there were a witness, and that witness well known to herself. She said the only