The Pimlico Mystery

24 June

The case discussed is the poisoning of Thomas Edwin Bartlett. Joe solves the case using his trusty companion, science, and Sandra speculates about how many food items one eats whole without chewing.

Bonus content:

A very insistent vocal cameo by Bodil (the cat)
Introduction of G.I Joes arch nemesis G.I Damage
A personalised message to the Russian bots (tirelessly scouring the InterNjet)

Sandra got her information from murderpedia.org, Joe got his information from wikipedia (which is also where the photo of Adelaide comes from), as well as these two articles:

Audio transcript

Midweek Murders contains graphic and explicit content, listener discretion is advised.

Oh! Oh ho hoo! Crystal is clanking!

I've opted for uh glenmoray single malt 18 pounds from tesco, other retailers are available.

Well somebody is living life.

Yeah. Well, I had to go to the shops because it's father's day in the UK tomorrow and I hadn't got my dad anything.

What are you gonna get him?

I got him some dessert flavored chocolates and a fancy bottle of birra morate, which I think is an italian brand of beer. I'm not sure. These continental europeans, it's post-brexit I don't care about them.

That would have been a good opening of the episode. People are gonna kill us for that, no they aren't, because nobody listens.

Um, we had 47 bots download our podcast thank you very much.

True story.

Of which I would like to express my eternal gratitude. Thank you the programmers who have created a bot to download any old kind of shit from the internet. [Music]

Bodil broke into...It was very funny, she broke into the bedroom very decisively...

Oh, I heard that!

You can't come here and just scream at me, what is the point?! Oh god, no, she can't get out. What is..

Kom då Bodil!

Oh my god, she answered you but not me. Bodil, do you want to get out? I walked into the radiator on my way back.

Smooth.

Smooth as caramel. Or smooth as that whiskey you bought from tesco for 18 pounds.

It's actually pretty nice. Will you tell Bodil to shut up? She's introducing a lot of background noise.

I think she wants dinner. She is very much wanting to be in this room but when she's in, she's like: "I can't get out, I can't get out. What did you do to me?" I was like: "you did this to yourself".

I know that feeling it's every time we press record. [Laughter]

Am I holding you hostage in our friendship? [Laughter]

Okay should we start?

I've been waiting for you to start for 15 minutes.

Oh god.

Play the jingle. It worked last time.

You're listening to Midweek Murders, and it's time to talk about crime.

That's what I'm talking about! Do the introductions!

Oh my god, nooo. I'm Sandra and this is my friend Joe. Say hi Joe.

Hi Joe.

Oh I knew you were gonna go for that one, low hanging fruit. On today's episode [get's interrupted again], on today's episode. [Laughter]

Sorry, sorry you're doing great.

Wikiwikiwah...pedia.

Okay I'm ready.

Today we're gonna talk about the pimlico mystery. So our case starts on the 1st of january 1886 when Adelaide...

ADELAIDE! Adelaide, you know like the place. [Laughter]

I actually practiced her name by myself on the toilet when I was pooping. A lot of times before we had this call, and I still can't say it.

You should probably cut the pooping part out.

Adelaide.

Adelaide, yeah...

I'm gonna...

Like the place in america.

Is that a place in america?

Yeah it is.

The case we're gonna talk about today is the pimlico mystery, and it started the first of january 1886 when Adelaide called her landlord to say: "come down I think miss Mr Bartlett is dead" and Mr Bartlett was Thomas Edwin Bartlett. Her...

Husband.

That's the one. She married Thomas Edwin Bartlett when she was 19 and he was 29. Still younger than I am right now.

Oh yeah.

And Thomas Edwin Bartlett had been diagnosed with subacute gastritis a couple of weeks before he was poisoned, I think. What is sub-acute gastritis?

You know so gastritis is the inflammation of the gastric system so it's like your abdominals, and your stomach, and places like that.

And inflammation is that like IBS or is it...

It could be yeah, so it's a general medical term to encompass an entire range of inflammatory diseases. So it could be IBS, it could be inflammatory bowel disease. I'm pretty sure that's what IBS is.

Yeah, I was just gonna say. Irritable bowel syndrome, I think it stands for. So they married kind of ten years before in 1875. Their friend, or spiritual guide, or spiritual counsel, and five-time winner of witch weekly's most charming smile award [Laughter] reverend George Dyson had bought the chloroform at four different stores, in such a small capacity that he didn't have to sign his name. And the product that he bought, because if he had bought the same amount of chloroform at one store... Wait, shit, I should have said where I got my... Well I can say it now. I got my research from murderpedia.org.

Whereas I got my information from wikipedia and a pubmed article published by Dushan Jayaweera, that was probably about seven different authors. And the BMJ, which was authored by an M. Farrell.

Oh. You did so much more research than I did.

Yeah like three times as many sources. I think it's important to mention that Thomas Edwin Bartlett had a history of conditions that he was being treated for. So he had several teeth removed, he had his teeth filed down into stumps, and it was well documented by Adelaide that their relationship was non-sexual because of his foul aroma.

Oh. Did she actually say that?

I'm not sure if those are her exact words, but it I think it was mentioned in her trial that they didn't regularly consummate their marriage because she was off put by the smell from his mouth.

Well one thing's for sure, he was not a five-time witch weekly most charming smile award winner.

He's no gilderoy lockhart let's put it that way.

To be honest, I never fancied gilderoy Lockhart, did you?

No, but I am susceptible to a nice set of teeth.

Well Adelaide probably was as well.

Yeah, and that's why they never boned.

But they did though, I read that she did have a baby fathered by Thomas that was still born, I think. Wait...

Yes it was delivered unfortunately deceased. And Thomas Bartlett was very reluctant to have any kind of medical help in that delivery, whether that's any significance to his character or the case at all remains to be determined.

I did read that he had said during the delivery that he didn't want a doctor's help because he didn't want another man interfering with her, which is curious because she said that she was encouraged to have a relationship with George Dyson, the minister.

Yeah. So the sources that I read also confirmed that they were encouraged to have a relationship in so much as that he didn't mind them kissing in front of him.

But that's what they said, wasn't it?

Yeah that was the opinion of Adelaide and George.

Yeah. So Adelaide Blanche de la Tremoille married him, as I said when she was 19, and he came from a very close-knit family of prosperous grocers and some sources say that she, well I say some sources, I only read the murderpedia so what do I know. But it's like difference in opinion I think, about like how much they accepted her into the family. Which doesn't obviously make any difference to what happened in the end, but her father-in-law accused her of having a sexual relationship with Thomas's younger brother.

Yes, yeah, that's seconded in the sources that I read. So the the father-in-law was a a particularly strong voice against their relationship.

Which, of course, is hard to say anything about because it was so long ago, but might have been might have not have been. Thomas Bartlett had drafted a will before he fell acutely ill, as it seemed leaving everything to Adelaide and there was a stipulation in that will, saying that she couldn't remarry if she had inherited his estate. But then they redrew the will, or he redrew the will, and made George Dyson an executor of that will, and removed the bar where it said that Adelaide couldn't remarry. And that, for me, also indicates murder.

It's quite suspicious that George Dyson should come on the scene, and somehow Thomas Bartlett would redraft his entire will, in that not only would Adelaide inherit, but she was now also allowed to remarry and basically do whatever she wanted.

And that also happened just four months before he died, so for me that's like a red flag.

I concur.

The doctor that was treating Thomas Bartlett was Dr Alfred Leach, and Leach said that he prescribed chloroform reluctantly, but that Thomas insisted on that. Which is also a bit strange, but I guess like if he couldn't get to sleep, at some point you get desperate.

So I think it's important to note here, that at the time chloroform was like a seen as a miracle drug. It had recently come onto the scene, a lot of different countries and practitioners have used chloroform as the perfect anesthetic, the perfect drug that would send you to sleep, so it was it was widely used throughout continental europe for both pain relief and as an analgesic. So to ask your practitioner to prescribe you chloroform in those times was less questionable than it would be in today's economy.

Just like if I were have to been alive at that time they would have prescribed me cocaine...

and morphine...

and vaginal stimulus.

Well we went, we went different ways with that.

The mystery around the pimlico mystery is that Adelaide and Dyson was put on trial, but mostly Adelaide, for poisoning him, Thomas Bartlett, because at the autopsy they discovered a lethal dose of chloroform in his stomach. But the mystery of it is that he didn't have abrasions in his throat or mouth. Like if he had swallowed chloroform there would have been like, wear I guess?

Yeah so chloroform is a nasty liquid to administer through the digestive tract, and quite often medics will see that liquid chloroform will cause a lot of problems. So one article that was in the BMJ was of someone that tried to overdose with 99% chloroform in liquid form, so they admitted that one particular lady into AE and she had a hepatotoxicity, which is liver failure she had severe gastritis and ulceration, she had severe enterocolitis which is inflammatory of the digestive tract and the colon, she had erosive esophagitis, and she also had dermal secretions of the chloroform. So the question of the pimlico murder is how Adelaide managed to administer a lethal dose of liquid chloroform, which was confirmed in the autopsy, but yet how Thomas Bartlett had no signs of the corrosion or the burning. And the erosion of his esophagus or his intestinal tract from that chloroform.

But what I wonder is like, how much do you digest chloroform?

Chloroform in itself is a well-absorbed metabolite, it's quickly metabolized and eliminated within the body.

Okay so it could have been... It couldn't have been like a poisoning throughout a couple of months because then that's...

No definitely not. So a couple of studies that are quoted in wikipedia have got a half-life of chloroform at 6.5 hours, so that means that if you had a 10 milliliter dose within six and a half hours that would have been metabolized down to a five milliliter dose. So it's really quickly absorbed, and also it's interesting to note that in the autopsy, they only found six to eight drops of pure chloroform in the stomach. But they did also find ulceration in the colon, which would suggest that it was administered orally and absorbed in the time frame between when it was administered and when it was reported by Adelaide. Which was supposedly a three-hour difference.

Oh only a three-hour difference?

Yeah. He went to bed and then in the morning she called the landlord. Sources vary, but from what I've read, it was a around three to four hours later that she reported to her landlord that her husband was dead.

Okay, all right, when I first read about this case I thought that well if you needed to administer a poison, well needed is... Obviously, she didn't need to, but you know. And there were no like signs of it in the mouth or the throat, I thought maybe she injected it in something that he would swallow whole without chewing but then I also realized there's not many food things that you would swallow whole without chewing.

And that raises the interesting point as to how significant Thomas' dental treatment was, and he was regularly seeing dentists and doctors regarding that. And at the time chloroform was given as an analgesic, as a pain relief. So it's quite possible that, in a combination of his remedial chloroform use as analgesic, that the coroners whilst performing an autopsy wouldn't be able to pick up the same kind of corrosion from chloroform overdose that they would have done from a patient that hadn't administered chloroform orally.

Okay. So there might have been damage to his mouth?

They found chloroform in its pure liquid form in his stomach, so you would have expected gastrointestinal damage. But if he was already administering chloroform orally to inhale, to help him sleep, and we know that he was given it to rub into his gums, it's possible that the damage that would have been caused by either inhalation or him rubbing it into his gums could have masked the damage that would have been seen through a toxic dose of chloroform being administered to him.

So you you're saying is that with the technical know-how that they had at the time, they wouldn't have been able to prove that because of his already damaged mouth?

Well there's a couple of theories as to how he died, and I think the one that lends the most reliability sort of coincides with what Adelaide told the prosecution. So she told them that she had been using chloroform to help Thomas get to sleep, so she'd been in dabbing it onto a napkin and letting him inhale it, and she followed that up once she'd realized that she had administered a lethal dose, she offered him brandy which obviously has the burning and fiery taste that is associated with chloroform. So if you ingest chloroform it's obviously going to burn your esophagus, it's quite a similar sensation to drinking neat spirits. So Adelaide could quite easily have disguised drinking brandy as a correlation between administering chloroform to him.

So what you're saying is that it's not a mystery, she just put the chloroform in the brandy?

There's no way to prove it, but in combination between the pubmed and the BMJ article that I read, the sequence of events was that she used a chloroform rag to help him get to sleep to aid with his dental problems. She then offered him brandy, which as aforementioned has the burning and fiery taste. She then could have, it's not proven, but she could have added the chloroform to a glass of wine which was found on the mantelpiece within reach of Thomas Edwin Bartlett. So if she added that chloroform to the wine, as he drank it it could have also passed through his esophagus with the burning sensation that he would have associated with brandy, and the pre-administered aspiration of the chloroform would have made him drowsy and a bit sleepy. So he wouldn't have been 100% aware of what's happening. So you drink one drink, it burns on the way down, you think: "okay, that's fine". You drink another drink, it burns on the way down, you think: "okay, that's fine, it's the same drink". You combine that with the bad condition of his mouth, and also it's well documented that she said when she found him unconscious she poured brandy down his mouth to try and rouse him, which could also be seen as an attempt to mask the smell of chloroform which is particularly sweet. And so in my opinion, it's quite likely that she spiked one of his drinks with the lethal dose of chloroform, and the combination of that with his previous dental treatment explains why he didn't have the conditions coroners would have suspected, because they were looking for damage and erosion to the GI tract. But if he was already self-administering chloroform as an analgesic, you would expect some level of that GI damage to have been in place already.

So more or less, it is definitely possible that she poisoned him with a drink and then poured more drink, or he swallowed more liquids, and the traces in the esophagus and the mouth that should have been there wasn't there because he had swallowed other liquids afterwards?

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I think the dilution effect of the wine would have eased the conditions of the corrosion and the damage to the GI tract.

So more or less, the pimlico mystery isn't actually a mystery anymore?

Well it's hypothetical. I wouldn't like to criticize the coroners at the time. The coroners were were crown prosecution coroners. [does trumpet sounds] Hold for applause... [Laughter]

Excuse us listeners, we're pissed. It's the only way we can get over our social anxiety. [Laughter]

I'm so sweaty [Laughter]

But I think at the time there wasn't the science available to determine the administration route and that's what got Adelaide off. Because also, the landlord found a bottle and they found that it smelled of brandy and some kind of ether. Ether has a typically sweet smell, so they wouldn't have immediately identified it as chloroform. But the fact that chloroform was readily available as prescription and that George Dyson had suspicious circumstances in purchasing the chloroform, leads towards the guilty prosecution of Adelaide. But obviously, without being able to autopsy and determine stomach contents and body condition and things like that, it will forever remain a mystery.

But also like, looking back on it now, reverend Dyson said that: "oh, I didn't realize how suspicious this was until after I did it" like buying the bottles of small amounts of chloroform from four different shops and stuff like that. And I'm like: "oh uh, it smells like ether to me!". No, I mean like, it smells like pre-meditative murder to me!

The laws at the time said that you only had to sign for and put a record down for volumes of chloroform that were high volume. But if you had been told by someone to buy x amount of chloroform and you then went about it... And went to all of these different chemists and suppliers and bought a volume below the level that you needed to supply a reasoning and a signature, it does become slightly suspicious. And then you tie that into the fact that Thomas had changed his will not long after meeting the vicar... He was basically courting them. He was allowing them to meet, he didn't mind their relationship, they could kiss in his presence while he was smoking a pipe in the corner of the room...

But I don't think he did actually allow them to do that. I think that was like a rewrite of history from Adelaide and George Dyson. Because it's like, well they said that that was the case.

Which then begs even more questions as to why he changed his will.

I think that they probably persuaded him to take that like clause out of the will, maybe when he was already drugged.

Yeah.

And after that, after the whole shebang, she was acquitted by the way because they didn't have enough evidence.

She was also acquitted under a statement to say that there's quite overwhelming evidence to suggest that she had done it, they just couldn't prove how it had been administered without causing the damage that they would expect through oral administration.

Did you feel like you solved it?

No, I think it will always remain unsolved until someone looks at how easy it is to administer liquid chloroform through some kind of diluent.

It has to be possible, right?

Anything's possible.

So follow your dreams.

Oh, I did have a question. Are you gonna do a trailer for every podcast, or was it just a trailer for us in general?

It's a trailer for us in general.

Okay.

But I might change it if I have something better...

If I had any shit to work with. [Laughter] That's fine, I was just curious.

Curious and criouser.

All right let's get on with this shit.

Okay, should we say bye to the bots?

Sure, why not.

Goodbye bots! Is this because we talked about the russian government last time, that we have so many bot downloads? So many.

It's, it's quite possible.

Bye russian bots!

Hello russia!

[Music] Thank you for listening to this week's episode of [Music] midweek murders.

Topics

Pimlico mystery
poison crimes uk
true crime uk
forensic science
mysteries
true crime mysteries
unresolved mysteries
unsolved mystery
autopsy reports
famous old crimes
old mysteries
late Victorian crimes
chloroform poisonings

Back to episodes

02