In the Interests of Science: Adelaide Bartlett and the Pimlico Poisoning

On 12th April, 1886, a young woman, dark-eyed and petite, stood in the dock at the Old Bailey charged with the murder of her husband. She was the attractive, French-speaking wife of a South London grocer and of little importance socially, yet her maiden name was unusual, aristocratic even – Adelaide Blanche de la Tremoille. Uncommon, too, was her alleged crime, for her husband, Edwin Bartlett, had died with his stomach full of liquid chloroform, a poison that was more generally associated w...