The woman, the lover and the disputed contents of cups of cocoa

The accusation that a 20-year old girl poisoned her lover after a better offer came along has never been proved, says David Mclean

IT was dubbed ‘the crime of the century’, and the Madeleine Smith murder case continues to fascinate criminologists and forensic experts 160 years on.

Smith was accused in 1857 of fatally poisoning her lover, Pierre Emile L’angelier, as she tried to cover up their relationship, but walked free after a sensational trial at the High Court in Edinburgh.

Opinion remains divided over her innocence to this day.

Madeleine and Emile made an unlikely 19th century pairing. She was just 20 years old, from a prosperous, middle-class family who lived at 7 Blythswood Square, one of the finest addresses in the city of Glasgow.

He was an apprentice nurseryman from the Channel Islands, ten years her senior.

After being introduced by a neighbour of the Smith family, the pair began a passionate affair in 1855.

Meeting at Miss Smith’s home while her family and servants slept, the couple communicated in secret by letter.

L’angelier hand-delivered his notes through Smith’s bedroom window, while she used the local postal service.

Over time, the letters became increasingly intimate and suggestive in tone. Eventually, they were to become key pieces of the prosection’s case.

The couple become engaged, but the architect’s daughter was well aware that her family would disapprove of such a match.

Indeed, in January 1857, her family approved a marriage proposal from another man, William Minnoch, and the arrangement was to change everything.

The relationship with L’angelier swiftly ended and Smith went into overdrive to retrieve the passionladenmailshehadsenttohisaddress. She wrote to him: “I trust your honour as a gentleman that you will not reveal anything that may have passed between us.”

L’angelier refused her request – and threatened instead to forward the letters to her father if she did not agree to marry him instead.

Within 12 weeks, on 23 March, 1857, Emile L’angelier was dead, with the coroner finding that an enormous amount of arsenic was detected in his stomach.

Police then discovered Smith’s love letters – and proof that she had recently purchased arsenic from a local chemist.

Smith was arrested and charged with murder, with an eager public forming queues outside the Edinburgh courthouse as the trial got under way that July.

The indictment alleged Smith issued arsenic to her lover on several occasions between 22 February and 22 March of that year.

The court heard L’angelier had spent two months battling against an unknown ailment. Suffering from an extreme thirst and uncontrollable vomiting, his complexion was described as a pale, deathly yellow.

It was claimed L’angelier had unwittingly ingested the deadly poison in spiked cups of cocoa which Madeleine had served him from her own home.

After a short recess on the eighth day of the trial, the jury resumed court proceedings to return a shock verdict of not proven.

Smith, who had spent much of the trial looking quite emotionless and vacant, was said to have cracked a brief smile upon hearing the news.

Despite the verdict, Madeleine Smith was unable to shake off a newfound notoriety and she struggled to slip back in to her old life. 0 Madeleine Smithwas tried for the murder of her lover in 1857 when a not proven verdict was returned though she had bought arsenic after Emile L’angelier refused to return her letters

Smith changed her first name to Lena and relocated to London, eventually settling down to marry Preraphaelite painter, George Wardle.

The marriage did not last, though, and Smith moved again, this time to the USA where she married for a second time.

With most in her home country having assumed that Madeleine had long since passed away, a 1926 Scotsman newspaper report sensationally revealed that this was not the case.

In April 1928, Madeleine Smith died in New York state under the name of Lena Wardle Sheehy. She was 93.