DID CRACK POISONING MYSTERY?
ID Queen of Crime writing Agatha Christie solve one of Britain’s most notorious unsolved murders?
The year is 1876. Queen Victoria is on the throne, Britain is the world’s economic superpower and Alexander Graham Bell patents the telephone.
The place is Balham, a quiet locality to the south west of central London, bounded by swathes of open countryside.
Travelling west, you reach a white, castellated building.
The Priory is home to a newlywed couple, ambitious lawyer Mr Charles Bravo and his wealthy wife Florence, in addition to a dozen servants. This picture of upper middle-class sensibility would have escaped history’s gaze were it not for dramatic events that transpired during the spring and summer.
On the night of April 18, Charles collapsed in agony. He had somehow ingested a rare poison, and despite the attendance of no less than six doctors, it exacted a horrific toll on his young body. Three days later, he was dead.
His wife’s contention that her husband had committed suicide was supported by the testimony of Mrs Cox, her lady’s companion, who told the doctors that before his collapse Charles had declared to her: “I have taken poison, don’t tell Florence.”
However, the lawyer’s friends and family insisted that the hard-nosed, high-spirited man would never have taken his own life.
The subsequent coroner’s inquest returned an open verdict – the jury did not accept the suicide theory but failed to agree on what had happened. However, one fact did emerge: Charles Bravo had ingested a massive dose of antimony, an unusual poison, as toxic as arsenic.
Administered in tiny doses, it was sometimes used to poison a victim over a long period. However, even small amounts trigger violent vomiting, the poison expelled before it is absorbed by the body.
Agathie Christie’s theory on a famous unsolved murder case is included in new book, Poisoned at the Priory. Its author, investigates
There was not a single known initial inquest was quashed and a case of murder, or suicide, by such a new one ordered. large dose. So how had the young If the first inquest was a farce, the barrister been poisoned with second was a circus. Over three antimony? weeks during the hot summer, large
It was another two weeks before crowds descended on Balham, the details of the mysterious poisoning nation hooked by the strange death reached the press. In particular, it and its salacious back story. To the was reported that Mrs Cox had calloused eye of Victorian morals, waited nearly five hours before her affair with a man twice her age telling doctors of Charles appeared to provoke more outrage ‘alleged confession. The than the fact she might have inquest was exposed as a murdered her husband. Yet, like an farce, with key witnesses Agatha Christie thriller, there were not called and important other suspects: Mrs Cox, who questions left feared Charles was about to sack unanswered. Unlike her from her well-paid position at everyone else in the The Priory; Dr Gully, the former household, Florence and paramour, perhaps wanting to Mrs Cox had not given rekindle his relationship with written statements. Florence; and at least one Pressure built, and in disaffected servant sacked by early June the two women Charles only months before. A finally provided their coachman who regularly used statements, in which Mrs antimony to treat horse parasites. Cox dropped a bombshell. All were grilled at the new She claimed that Charles had in inquest. It was established that fact told her: “I have taken poison antimony was most likely in for Dr Gully, don’t tell Florence.” Charles’ drinking water in his
Dr Gully was an eminent doctor bedroom, yet the new jury did with whom Florence had engaged not believe that Charles was in a sexual affair before meeting responsible for his own death, Charles. He was married and more either intentionally or accidentally. than twice her age and suspicions Instead, the second inquest lingered that the romance might sensationally found that he had not have ended. been wilfully murdered by person
Although Mrs Cox’s bombshell or persons unknown. provided a possible reason for So who killed Charles Bravo? That Charles to commit suicide – to question has remained unanswered chivalrously allow Florence to for nearly 150 years, with armchair return to her supposed true love – it detectives poring over the cold also suggested a motive for murder. case. Even Christie wrote about it a
Worse, because Mrs Cox had not few years before her death. mentioned this to the coroner, the Her account is published in full for the first time in my new book, Poisoned at The Priory.
She was convinced that Dr Gully was the poisoner. Her theory is ingenious, but is it correct?
After all, in her brilliant fiction she had form for pointing the finger at a dodgy doctor.
Christie believed that Dr Gully prescribed some medicine for Charles, who was suffering from neuralgia and rheumatism, and one pill in the bottle was laced with antimony. It was like Russian roulette – it was just a matter of time until he swallowed the fatal pill, she believed.
Yet nothing is what it seems in this case. Antimony was a strange choice for a doctor: it is an unreliable poison. There was a recorded case in which a person ingested 10 times the amount Charles did and survived. He was so sick, he threw off all the poison.
Along with other theories, Christie’s solution is reconstructed and examined in Poisoned at The Priory. Was she correct? You can be the judge of that.
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