Читать книгу WEST PORT MURDERS (True Crime Classic) - Various Authors - Страница 38

Q. Did you see the body of an elderly female at the police-office at the commencement of November? A. Yes. I saw and minutely examined a body there on the 2d and 3d of November.

Q. Did you perceive any marks of violence on it? A. Yes.

Q. Describe what you saw to the Court and Jury?

A. I saw several contusions on the legs and the elbows, one on the loin, one on the right shoulder blade, a very small one on the inside of the upper lip, and two upon the head; one on the back part of the left side of the head, and another upon the fore part of the right side. I also found pale lividity of the features generally, and dark lividity of the lips; great redness (from vascularity) of the whites of the eyes; an almost total want of lividity on almost every other part of the body except the face; and roughing of the scarf-skin or cuticle under the chin and over the upper part of the throat. Internally, I found a general fluidity of the blood, and an accumulation of it in the right cavities of the heart. In the middle of the neck, I found the ligaments connecting posterior parts of the vertebræ torn, and blood effused among the spinal muscles, near the laceration, and into the cavities of the spinal muscles. I found no sign of natural disease, except a very slight incipient disorder of the liver. All the other organs of the head, the chest, and the belly, were unusually sound. I forgot to mention a small patch of blood on the left cheek, and also a very slight contusion over the left eye.

Q. Did you consider that those contusions could be produced after death?

A. No; but the injury of the spine and other appearances described might have been caused as well after death as before it. An injury properly applied eighteen hours after death, would, I think, cause the same appearances. Cramming into a box or chest like that shown might have caused these appearances. Strangulation or smothering, or throttling, is consistent with what has been described, but particularly throttling or applying the hand under the throat, and throwing the head backward, would prevent the access of air. I found unequivocal proof of violence, in the contusions dispersed throughout the body, and in no signs of disease being visible. I beg to add, from the woman being seen so recently alive and well, from the blood under the bed, as well as the appearances already mentioned, death by violence is extremely probable. If the woman had met her death by the prisoners at the bar, the appearances were such as would correspond with these circumstances. The appearances in some cases of suffocation would be similar to those in the present instance. The appearance of blood from the mouth or nose after death may be produced by any species of suffocation. Directly or indirectly, death by intoxication must physiologically be occasioned by suffocation.

By Mr. Cockburn.—Q. Did the appearances found on the body justify only a suspicion? A. Coupled with the circumstances mentioned they amount to a probability.

By the Court.—Q. Did you open the stomach?

A. Yes, my Lord.

Q. Describe the contents. A. I found half-digested porridge, but no smell of whisky or of any narcotic. The smell is not a necessary circumstance even in cases of intoxication where a person was said to have died of continuous intoxication. At least I know of a reported case where a person was said to have died from constant intoxication, without any smell having been found in the stomach, though it was found in the brain and other parts of the body, but I also know a similar case where the stomach, on being opened, gave out the effluvia of whisky.

This closed the case for the prosecution.

The declarations of the pannels were then read.