On New Year's morning, 1886, Adelaide Bartlett told her landlord to come downstairs. Her husband was dead.
The post-mortem found a fatal dose of liquid chloroform in his stomach, but none in his mouth, his throat, or windpipe.
Liquid chloroform burns tissue on contact. Swallowing it should leave damage all the way down. Why did Edwin Bartlett’s had no trace of this damage? How was it possible that the poison was simply there, as if it had bypassed everything between his lips and his gut?
How did the poison get there?
Adelaide had motive and she had access. A friend of the family (who was possibly her lover) had bought the chloroform for her from three different chemists. After the death of her husband, she disposed of the poison bottle.
But nobody could explain how the chloroform got into Edwin’s stomach. And so Adelaide got acquitted.
That happened 140 years ago, and the case is still unsolved.
I posted everything that’s on record (the trial, the strange marriage, the forensic puzzle) in The Commons. It's our free discussion space, no paywall.
I’m curious what you come up with!
Until next time,
