FULL TEXT: Philadelphia, August 18. – Agnes Criddle, aged fourteen, a servant in the employ of John C. Macy, a provision dealer, was arrested last night upon the charge of poisoning Mrs. Macy and two male boarders by placing oxalic acid in their coffee. Physicians succeeded in counteracting the effects of the acid, but Mrs. Macy suffered intensely. The girl denies the crime, but admits having bought oxalic acid at a neighboring drug store.
[“A Modern Borgia –
Arrested In The City Of Philadelphia – She Is Charged with Poisoning Three
Persons with Oxalic Acid – … Arrest of Female Poisoner,” Harrisburg Telegraph
(Pa.), Aug. 18, 1880, p. 1]
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FULL TEXT: Mrs. Mary Macy, whose husband ia a grocer at 1012
South Eleventh street, is seriously ill from poisoning by oxalic acid, taken in
coffee on Tuesday evening, and from which she narrowly escaped death. Agnes
Criddle, aged thirteen years, a mite of a girl, employed as domestic in the
Macy household, has been committed to prison by Magistrate Everly on suspicion
of having administered the poison. The girl had been but a week in the service
of the family, having been accepted in response to an advertisement for a servant,
and the only motive for the crime ascribable is that she had been embittered
against the family because Mrs. Macy had reproved her on two or three occasions
for gadding about the streets instead of performing her work.
Mrs. Macy prepared the coffee, taking the berries from a bag
in the store and grinding them in the mill on the counter. She took the pot
from the range in the kitchen, where it rested bottom upwards, and after
rinsing it thoroughly with warm water placed in it the ground coffee. She poured
boiling water into the pot from the kettle on the range and on the latter sat
the pot to simmer. She was absent from the kitchen in the store waiting on
customers for the space of fifteen minutes, during which interval the girl,
Agnes, was alone in the kitchen, at the ironing-board. At twenty minutes past
six, Charles Hall and Joseph Koaukoff, Mrs. Macy’s boarders, sat down to the
supper table. Hall lifted to his lips the coffee, with which Mrs. Macy had in
the meantime filled his cup, and spat out a mouthful in disgust. Boarders are
prone to laugh at the fare set before them, and Hall’s companion, after taking
a sip of the nauseating dose, joined in making sport of the beverage. They
called on Mrs. Macy to note the taste of the mixture, which, they said,
puckered up their mouths like persimmons. She tasted the coffee incredulously,
drinking a saucerful.
THE POISONED COFFEE.
“Have you men been putting vinegar in your coffee?” she
demanded. Hall put in a disclaimer and suggested that perhaps the milk was
sour. To make certain Mrs. Macy poured into a saucer a quantity of coffee from
the pot and drank it without milk or sugar. The same queer taste was present,
unlike any Mrs. Macy had ever known. Her husband also took a sip, but gingerly,
and he, like the others, was mystified at the strange taste. The color of the
coffee to which milk and sugar had been added now turned to the hue of the yolk
of an egg, and the milk curdled and settled at the bottom of the cup, forming a
sediment, or precipitate, that resembled oat meal. None partook of the coffee
except that portion sampled by Mrs. Macy, and the contents of the pot were
thrown away. About this time the Criddle girl ran out of doors and across
Eleventh street to Dennis J. Loughlin’s pharmacy, at the southeast corner of
Eleventh and Carpenter streets, a stone’s throw from Macy’s place. Mrs. Macy
saw Agnes enter the drug store, and then it flashed upon her that the girl had
gone upon a similar errand in the afternoon between 1 and 2 o’clock. She spoke
to her husband of the incident, and then it was that suspicion was entertained
that some poisonous substance had been placed in the coffee through the
instrumentality of Agnes. Mrs. Macy became alarmed, and shortly afterwards was
seized with griping pains in the stomach. That region swelled considerably, and
an agonizing burning set in, which drove the woman almost frantic. Mr. Macy
went at once to the drug stove and accosted the clerk, William Hedenberg, with:
“What did that girl of ours want over here?” “Some toothache drops,” said
Hedenberg: “I dropped them into a cavity in one of her teeth and did not charge
her anything.” Somewhat reassured, but with considerable misgivings, Macy
returned to his wife, whom he found grievously ill. Her stomach was in great
distress, her extremities were being chilled rapidly and a death-like sweat
oozed out from her forehead and temples.
WHAT THE GIRL BOUGHT.
Hedenberg, the apothecary’s clerk, noticed the throng
gathering around the provision dealer’s door and sent a boy to ask Mr. Macy to
come over. Macy complied and Hedenberg told him that the Criddle girl had
obtained five cents’ worth of oxalic acid crystals at Loughlin’s store that
afternoon, which was to be used, ostensibly, for removing rust stains from
clothing. The clerk then conferred with his employer and prepared an antidote,
consisting of prepared chalk, disguised with cinnamon, and gum arabic, and this
preparation Mrs. Macy, who in the meantime had been brought to the place, was
made to take. The woman was in the throes of unutterable agony and was taken
home and placed in bed. At Apothecary Loughlin’s suggestion Dr. G. A. Hewitt,
of 801 Smith Tenth street, was sent for. He came in haste and administered to
the sufferer a further antidote, which seemed to afford her great relief.
Luckily a cupful of the coffee had been preserved, and of this Dr. Hewitt made
an analysis. He poured lime water into the supposed poisoned fluid and tested
the precipitate for oxalate of lime by adding nitric acid. The cloudy mixture
was immediately cleared, which confirmed in his mind the suspicion that the
coffee had been charged with oxalic acid. Mrs. Macy suffered great torments
during Tuesday night and the morning of the following day. She vomited
frequently, and her stomach would retain no food. Dr. Hewitt paid her several
visits, and yesterday was of opinion that danger was past. Mrs. Macy was
resting much easier and was in good spirits, though at times she complained of
burning sensations in the abdomen. These the doctor thought would soon cease,
and the woman would quickly convalesce.
THE GIRL’S STORY.
In the midst of the bustle and confusion incidental to the
discovery of the attempt at poisoning, the girl Cridle sat in the kitchen
sullen and defiant. She denied all complicity with the poisoning, but when
pressed as to the nature of her errands to the drug store gave evasive replies.
Seventeenth District Policeman Sharp, who had been attracted to the scene, was
asked to arrest the girl, which he did and conveyed her to the station house.
On the route she broke down completely and gave her version of the affair. She
had gone to Loughlin’s store for something to take stains out of her dress and
received five cents’ worth of a white powder. She could not recall the name of
the powder, and Raid that she had lost the label while crossing Eleventh
street. She had emptied the substance into a cup from the dresser, dissolving
it in warm water, and after using it she had thrown away the contents and
rinsed the cup, replacing the latter where she had found it. Agnes protested
that she know nothing more of the affair, and lapsed into a lachrymose state
from which it was difficult to rouse her. As the Sergeant was placing the girl
in a cell she told him that she remembered now the name of the stain-eradicator
it was oxalic acid. Yesterday morning Magistrate Everly, in the absence of
Magistrate Collins, gave Agnes Criddle a hearing at the Seventeenth district
station house. The facts as above given were elicited and the girl she might
more properly be termed child was held for a further hearing on the 21st
instant, awaiting the result of Mrs. Macy’s injuries. She was very tearful, and
had nothing to add to her statement previously made. Agnes is the adopted child
of Thomas Criddle, of 735 Emily street, who was dumbfounded when told of her
arrest and is confident that the coffee was poisoned through carelessness and
not by design.
THE DRUG CLERK.
William Hagenborg, the clerk who sold the poison to the
girl, was very reluctant to speak of the matter yesterday. He feared that odium
Would unjustly attach to himself and his employer and directed an interviewer
to the latter gentleman. Alter persistent inquiry Hedenberg consented to tell
the whole truth: “I had seen the girl once or twice before she got the poison
here to-day; once at Mr. Macy’s store, where I was getting some lard.” the
clerk spoke in a nervous, jerky manner and his lips twitched convulsively.
“Early yesterday afternoon,” he continued,”she came here and said that Mrs.
Macy wanted something that would take iron-rust out of clothing. I know that
oxalic acid was the best thing for that purpose, and told her so. She bought
live cents’ worth, and as I tied the powder up I told her how to use it and
warned her to throw it away when done and rinse the vessel containing it. I
can’t say how much I gave her; enough to fill a teaspoon, I should judge.”
“Had you no hesitation in selling such a virulent poison to
a child?”
“If she had asked for oxalic acid I would not have given it,
for fear that she might want to put it to improper use; but as she took it on
my recommendation I did not think there was anything wrong about it. Besides,
she said that Mrs. Macy had sent her, and this governed my action entirely.”
“Did you give her any toothache drops?”
“I did not. I told that to Mr. Macy in order to relieve his
fears. If his wife knew that she had taken oxalic acid the fright might have
caused a great deal of harm. When Agnes ran over here the second time she
merely put her head in the door and told me not to say anything about what she
had bought here, because she might get in trouble. I did not make her any
answer, as I was busy writing.”
OXALIC ACID AS A POISON.
Dr. Hewitt estimates a teaspoonful of the poison as of the
weight of a drachm. “There were probably sixty grains in the package,” he said
yesterday, in response to a query, “ ten of which would be sufficient to cause
death. The great corrosive property of the poison can be judged when Mrs. Macy,
who certainly did not take more than two or three grains, was made so sick.
Oxalic acid possesses the attributes of sulphuric and other acids of that
class, and generally causes death, when a sufficient amount is taken, in less
than an hour. It blisters the mucous membrane of the stomach, and is accompanied
by the same nervous prostration as an external burn. Mrs. Macy is very
fortunate in that she did not lose her life, and I consider that she escaped
narrowly.” Lieutenant Brown is investigating the mystery, but so far has
arrived at nothing tangible. Circumstances point to the maiden’s guilt. One
theory, based on her version of the affair, is that Mrs. Macy in some manner
made use of the cup in which the girl had placed the poison and which the
prisoner avers she rinsed after using. Against this many points are advanced.
Mrs. Macy declares that she made no use of any cup in the preparation of the
coffee. When it was poured out both Messrs. Hall and Keaukoff, using different
cups, noticed the strange taste of the liquid. The tea-kettle, out of which the
boiling water was poured into the coffee pot, was examined soon after the
poison was suspected, but the water was found uncontaminated. The affair has
created much excitement in the southwestern portion of the city and Mr. Macy’s
store gets many new customers.
[“Oxalic Acid For Boarders’ Supper. - A Thirteen-Year-Old
Servant Girl, Who Bought the Poison, Is Held on Suspicion - The Illness of Her
Mistress The Girl’s Story and What Is Told at the Druggist’s.” The Times
(Philadelphia, Pa.), Aug. 19, 1880, p. 4]
[344-1/23/21]
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