“On May 5th, we have another purchase of arsenic. The prisoner, as she herself states, this time procured a tin of arsenical weed-killer, of the same brand that was mentioned in the Kidwelly poisoning case.”
–Mr. Justice Crossley’s summing-up at the murder trial of Harriet Vane, Dorothy L. Sayers, Strong Poison, Chapter I, 1930.
In the Kidwelly poisoning case, so known because of the town in Wales in which it occurred, solicitor Harold Greenwood was accused of murdering his wife Mabel by arsenic poisoning in 1919. Prior to his wife’s death, Greenwood purchased a ten-gallon tin (!) of Eureka weed killer, but he was acquitted in court. Sayers may have had the name of the parlourmaid in the case, Hannah Williams, in mind when she named Norman Urquhart’s maid Hannah Westlock. (x, x)
From the BFI, film footage from outside the courthouse during the Kidwelly trial.
Image: Advertisement for “Eureka” weed killer, 1896. (x)
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