At the end of April 1894, there was only one talking point all around Blantyre. A local woman had tried to ‘bump off’ her husband by poisoning!
The sensational affair hit all the newspapers and caused considerable excitement amongst the usually quiet inhabitants of the little village of High Blantyre. Reporters pressed everybody for more details which are pieced together here:
For some time, a miner living at High Blantyre (name removed) had been living unhappily with his wife. The reason primarily being he felt his wife was far too ‘close’ to the live in male lodger. It is unknown what caused this jealousy but the story reported that he was upset at the overly friendly relationship his wife had with the lodger and how happy she seemed when the lodger was around. But this story has the miner as an apparent victim.
On the last Friday of April 1894, the miner walked into a police station and alleged that his wife and the lodger had tried to kill him, a most serious charge which the police at once looked into. The miner told police that Friday morning, his wife had made a flask of tea as usual for him to take to work. However, at his workplace, during a break, he had opened the flask drinking a good quantity of the tea inside. Almost immediately, he had felt a most nauseous taste at the back of his throat. Looking into the flask, he was horrified to see the tea a funny colour and ablaze!
Work colleagues who had listened to his various complaints about married life, persuaded him to go to the police station and when the police examined the contents of the flask, they confirmed it contained enough phosphorous to have killed 6 men!
With the flask held as evidence, the case was referred to the Fiscal and the wife and lodger both denied all knowledge of how the phosphorous got into the flask, stating that it could have been done anytime whilst the man was at work.
The whole story however wasn’t as clear cut as the newspaper made out. A woman trying to remove her husband to be with a new man? The story caused quite a sensation in local public houses and organisations all over Blantyre as people took to discussing the case and trying to determine themselves what had happened.
Before long, a story started circulating that the miner had done it himself, put the phosphorous in the tea and tried to frame his wife and lodger for their suspected adultery. A possible revenge act with the purpose of removing them in disgrace from his household.
The case remained unproven and I couldn’t find what happened to the couple afterwards. Did the woman leave with the lodger? Did she stay with her husband? If they stayed together to ‘work things out’, I’m fairly positive this miner would have quickly started making his OWN tea and work piece each day himself!
