In September 1833, a widow named Mrs. Clara Smith took a room at a Bristol lodging house run by Marianne Williams, a woman who presented herself as Mrs. Wade. The elderly boarder was rumored to be wealthy and kept her money locked in a tin box, and her landlady was unusually attentive, even hiring a servant girl, Mary Allen, to look after her.
On October 26, 1833, Mrs. Smith was suddenly struck by terrible stomach pains and died soon after. There was nothing suspicious about the death at the time, and Marianne arranged a cheap, quick burial, telling the undertaker that the deceased was poor and had no friends or relatives. Mrs.
Smith was laid to rest in the churchyard of St. Augustine’s. In the months that followed, Marianne and her partner, Charles Wade, appeared to enjoy a remarkable change in fortune. She told curious neighbors that a rich uncle had died and left her a large house.
The couple paid off their debts and bought stock, but just six months after Mrs. Smith’s death, Charles Wade also died. Marianne soon married a man named Paul Burdock, even though she was already legally married to a tailor named Charles Agar, who had abandoned her years earlier. Bigamy was a capital offense at the time, punishable by death.
It was not until December 1834, fourteen months after Mrs. Smith’s death, that her relatives learned what had happened and traveled to Bristol. They were astonished to hear that Clara had died in poor circumstances, knowing she had carried considerable money in her tin box. They reported their suspicions to the police.
Officers had already looked into the death and accepted Marianne’s account, but with new information, they decided to exhume the body. On December 22, 1834, doctors led by physician Dr. Riley and assisted by Dr. Kelson and Dr.
Simmons examined the remains. The body was remarkably well preserved, and when the stomach was opened, it contained a yellow substance that was sent to the Bristol Medical School. A chemistry lecturer confirmed it was arsenic. The young servant Mary Allen then told police she had witnessed Marianne adding a strange yellow powder to a bowl of gruel prepared for Mrs.
Smith. Shortly after eating it, the old lady became ill and died. Mary also said Marianne instructed her to tell anyone who asked that Mrs. Smith was a stranger, a foreigner from the East Indies, and never to speak of her or of what she had seen.
Marianne was arrested and charged with murder. Her trial opened on April 10, 1835, at Bristol’s Guildhall before Sir Charles Wetherell, a hardline anti-reformist judge. Four years earlier, his arrival in Bristol had triggered three days of riots after the House of Lords rejected the second Reform Bill. The prosecution presented a circumstantial but logical case: the defendant had gained sudden wealth after the death of a reportedly wealthy boarder, then arranged a cheap funeral while claiming the lady had no family.
A former lodger, Mr. Evans, told the court that six days before Mrs. Smith fell ill, he had purchased arsenic at Marianne’s request, saying she needed it to kill rats she had seen in the kitchen. He said he had never seen any rats in the house, and Mary Allen testified she had not either.
Two witnesses confirmed the arsenic purchase. Another witness, Mr. Charles Reed, testified that after Mrs. Smith’s death, he asked about her property, money, and bonds.
Marianne replied that the old lady had died poor and that her clothes were so worn she had burned them. The trial lasted three days. The defense presented witnesses to Marianne’s good character, and she strongly protested her innocence. The judge instructed the jury to decide whether Mrs.
Smith had died by poison, whether the prisoner administered it, and whether she knew it was poison. After just fifteen minutes of deliberation, the jury found Marianne Burdock guilty of murder. She was hanged on April 15, 1835, before a crowd estimated at more than fifty thousand people.
She never confessed to the crime.