FULL TEXT: PROBABLY the most foolish thing Alicia Millicent Rae Hughes ever did in all her 50 years was to advertise, more as a joke than anything else, in a North Wales newspaper, “Smart widow wishes to meet widower about 48. Children no objection."
Among the 82 answers received there was one which touched Alicia's heartstrings. The writer was John Gwilym Robert of Taksarnau, Wales. He was eight years Alicia's junior and the father of five motherless children. His wife had died five years before.
In his letter Roberta said he hoped he could make Alicia happy and that she could be a mother to his children. He told her he had a fairly nice place in the mountainside village of Talsarnau where there would be room for any children she might have.
What he didn't tell her in his letter, or even after their first meeting, was that he suffered occasionally from indigestion, vomiting, and pain. Roberts' doctor thought him dyed-in-the-wool hypochrondriac.
Alicia was quite taken, with this 6-foot railroad worker whose nickname was Big Jack. She pooh-poohed his fears that she wouldn't be enough money to support his five and her three. By her first marriage she had 27-year-old son, Owen Hughes, and by adoption she had Diana, 15, and Marlene, 2. Alicia was passionately fond of children.
Sat was glad to see that the Roberts children's ages seemed to correspond somewhat with the ages of her three. For Marlene, there was Roberts' 5-year-old Jack. For Diana, there was Veronica, 9, Sheifa Ann, 13, and Hilary, 14. And for Owen, her grown son, there was Ann Doreen Roberts, 18, in 1950. With eternal optimism, Alicia was confident that "the children" would all get on well together.
But it didn't turn out that way. Alicia married Big Jack on March 3. 1931. Doreen resented the woman who took her place in the. Old Schoolhouse, the name of the Roberts cottage. (Doreen had been the mistress there ever since she was 13.) Hilary was forever messing around with conjuring equipment. And the Hughes girls were definitely smarter in school than the Roberts girls, and that made trouble, too.
Furthermore, Alicia found Big Jack a difficult fellow to have in the house – and in the house, he was, "unable to work," from the day of their marriage. On day he'd be on top of the world and the next he'd be at the bottom threatening to kill himself if him health didn't improve.
There was only $7 a week in the house. To make ends meet, Alicia, still calling herself Mrs. Hughes, continued to collect (illegally) her widow's pension and family allowance.
IT WAS a grim life, filled with hard work. Alicia had to get up at 4:45 to cook breakfast for her son and Hilary. Then she had to get the kids off to school and take care of Big Jack. Next there was house cleaning. The work ended along about 10:30 or 11 each night.
Thing eased up a little when Roberts' state of mind and health improved enough for him to go to Birmingham to work. Then Doreen got a job as a clerk in Bouraeville, near Birmingham.
But within a few months Roberts came home "sick," saying he didn't like Birmingham and he didn't know whether he was ever going to be well again. So after Christmas. 1951. he stayed home. dividing bis time between his bed in Talsarnau and his visits to young Dr. Robert James Gowan Hogg in nearby Penryndeudraeth.
~ He Gave Jack Pills Just to Humor Him ~
Dr. Hogg could find nothing wrong with Big Jack but he gave him some pills, a mild sedative, to humor him.
Last January, Alicia went to see Dr. Hogg. She wanted to know the truth about her husband. The doc tor said she had no reason to worry.
Mrs. Roberts began feeling sorry for herself. She told the doctor about her birth in Dublin, about her father's death, about her mother's' second marriage to a packetboat stoker in Holyhead. Wales. She told about the death of her first fiance from cerebral hemorrhage just 10 days before their wedding date.
Four years later she married John Hughes, a railroad worker. But he turned out to be an invalid as the result of being gassed in World War I. And so she had to turn her son, Owen, over to relatives while she worked in hotels in Preston and Llandudno.
Dr. Hogg let her talk of the adoption of Diana and Marlene, and the death of Hughes in 1950. He heard the story of her stupid advertisement, and of her, life in Talsarnau.
It was of her life with Roberts that she really wanted to talk.
Big Jack, she said, had a big appetite for food and a bigger appetite for sex, and his demands upon her were excessive. She was thinking of leaving and going with Owen to Australia.
Apparently, Dr. Hogg calmed her because she went right back home and continued to care for her husband and her brood. Now, if you believe Alicia, it was about this time that Roberts suggested she begin tidying up the garden.
"And if we're going to, use weed killer, now is the time to use it, said he.
She went to Glyn Williams, a chemist in Penryndeudraeth's High St. He didn't have the weed killer she wanted. But she got it from another chemist, John Henry Griffiths. He warned her to be careful. but through an oversight she didn't sign the poison register.
Alicia says she put this pound tin first on the mantel shelf, and then on the top shell of the cupboard. She didn’t touch it herself, she said, but her husband did stir some into a bucket with a spoon. He scattered the contents of the pail into the shrubbery. She had no idea what happened to the tin.
ON Feb. 22, Doreen came home for a visit.
There was a row between the girl and her stepmother. Doreen said she thought her brother and sisters were "neglected and cowed,” that her father wasn't getting the proper care, and the house was filthy.
Mrs. Roberts admitted that she had "let things go to hell" because she was ill and overworked. Roberts made peace between his wife and his daughter, and finally Doreen went back to her job near Birmingham. It was then, if you believe Mrs. Roberts, that her husband, still concerned about the garden. told her the weed killer wasn't much good and she should get something more poisonous." '
This time she went to the town of Portmadoc. The first chemist she called upon didn't have a strong weed killer. The second, Owen Parry, said he could order some if she would call for it later. She said she would. Trouble came again to the Old Schoolhouse in the shape of -a letter from Doreen. She wanted to come home and stay there for a year until she was 22, old enough to become a police woman. '
"If she comes home it would be better for me to leave," said Mrs. Roberts. Big Jack would have none of that. He wrote Doreen that she could come home if, she wished, but it would be better if she stayed in Bourneville.
~ Doctor Found Her In Hysterical State ~
Alicia was upset. When Dr. Hogg dropped in to see Big Jack he found Alicia sitting, almost, as if she were unconscious, on the sofa. Hysteria, he thought.
On March 4, Alicia stopped in to collect her illegal pension from Noel Glyn Williams, postal official at Portmadoc She signed her name as Hughes.
Then she stopped in at Parry's to pick up the weed killer. She signed her name A. G. White. -X March 4, Roberts suffered severe pains.
On March 5, after breakfast, Big Jack went to bed vomiting and saying, "I do not feel up to mark." Alicia gave him brandy and soda, and called Dr. Hogg. The doctor wasn't in, nor did he -call back. Heaven help the hypochondriac who really has something wrong after he cries wolf too often!
On March 6, early, Alicia called the doctor again. But not before the children said, "Daddy's dead." And he was, as Dr. Hogg discovered half an hour later.
The doctor found himself in a strange position. Although he had attended this patient for a considerable period, he couldn't say why Roberts died a year and three days after his marriage. To the doctor's knowledge there had certainly been nothing physically wrong <<<2>>>> with Big Jack, the hypochondriac.
While he was having a cup of tea with the grieving widow. Dr. Hogg said he couldn't, in all honesty, sign a death certificate. He suggested a post-mortem examination. At first, Mrs. Roberts was agreeable. But before the doctor left she was balking, asking why her poor dead husband couldn't be left in peace.
DOREEN rushed home, and trouble started at once. The girl accused Dr. Hogg of letting her father die. Mrs. Roberts advised Doreen to hold her tongue until the doctor could answer for himself and he would put her mind at ease. This, Dr. Hogg tried to do.
Then Inspector Lewis Jones called to find out what Roberts, and the other members of the family, had eaten during his last illness. Mrs. Roberts gave him a package of porridge oats, and told him how she cooked and served it.
Dr. E. Gerald Evans, a pathologist, conducted the post-mortem examination and tested for food poisoning.
On Monday, March 9, there was fight between Doreen and her stepmother. Things got so bad Owen Hughes had to call a policeman to stop it. Alicia talked of suicide and her son was fearful for her.
Two days later she was still so Upset Owen took her to Dr. Hogg. She threatened to cut her throat. The two men persuaded her she should enter a mental institution voluntarily.
But Detective Inspector Lewellyn Roberts, chief of the Gwynedd Criminal Investigation Department, overheard her talk of suicide. Since suicide is a crime, he asked her to come down to the station house for a talk.
~ She Tries To Cut Throat and Wrists ~
There she told the story of her husband's death, a clear-cut story, according, to the detective inspector. Then she asked permission to go to the bathroom. When they found her she had cut her throat and wrists with a razor. She recovered in the hospital.
It was while Alicia was convalescing that Roberts' body was exhumed and his viscera examined. Pathologists at the forensic laboratory in Preston and at the Home Office in London found 6.93 grams of arsenic in his body. That was the highest quantity of identified arsenic in any case of homicide in the British Isles.
The police questioned Owen Hughes and Roberts' children. Their stories were entirely different.
The police also searched the Old Schoolhouse. They found a tin of weed killer in rubbish pile just over the Old Schoolhouse wall, and arsenic in the sweepings of the kitchen shelves.
Roberts' body was exhumed April 17. Dr. Gerald Roche Lynch, of the Home Office said he died of arsenical poisoning. Alicia was charged with murder. She went to Strangeways Prison to await her trial.
It began last July 8 in Swansea before Mr. Justice Omerod. Attorney General Sir Lionel Heald, Q. conducted the prosecution and Herbert Edmund Davies, Q. C., managed the defense.
Dr. Hogg gave his testimony, then admitted to Davies that Roberts had consulted him about vomiting sometime before his marriage to Mrs. Hughes. The physician testified also that Mrs. Roberts seemed worried about her husband's state of health.
MR. EVANS, the pathologist, told of some amazing experiments he conducted in the interest of justice. He tested two kinds of weed killer for taste.
One kind was tasteless and color less in water. He cooked porridge in it. When he poured milk on the porridge it turned light green. When he poured the milk off, the porridge looked normal.
"I tasted the porridge and then spat it out," Evans testified. "I had no impression of any particular taste, but 15 minutes later I noticed" considerable burning in the back of my mouth and constriction in the back of my throat for about 10 minutes.
There was bitterness in Doreen s voice as she testified about life in the Old Schoolhouse after Alicia moved in.
Q. (by Davies) You hate your stepmother, don't you? A. I do not think of her. I have no feeling for her. '
Q. You strongly resented the arrival of another woman in the house? A. No, sir. I welcomed her. I wanted a mother.
Speaking of the March 9 trouble, Doreen denied that she told her stepmother, "The Old Schoolhouse is mine now." It was Mrs. Roberts, said Doreen, who said she was mistress and "I and the children could go to hell for all she cared."
Asked if she had sold photographs of her stepmother and her father to newspapers, Doreen answered tartly, "What I have done has been done for the benefit of the children, not myself."
Q. (by Davis) Did that not strike you as a shocking and indecent thing to do? A. It is all shocking, but' we have got to live, and I have got to keep the children.
Hilary Roberts swore that porridge was a new dish in their house and that his stepmother cooked and served it out of sight of the family.
After eating porridge on March 4, the boy said, his father had violent pains. After the March 5 breakfast, Roberts vomited. On March 6 he didn't eat.
Hilary said that Doreen was the housekeeper until Alicia arrived. After that "father always had to give in." The stepmother was away a lot, he said, and his sisters, Sheila and Veronica, had to do most of the housework.
Q. (by Davies) Aren't you presenting the blackest picture you can: A. 1 am only saying what J have seen.
Q. You said your father had pains for only three weeks. That's not true. Be had them for year, did he notf A. Sometimes.
Q. He was taking medicine for years for his stomach? A. Yes.
Q. Isn’t it a fact that long before Mrs. Roberta ever appeared on the scene your father was retching? A. Yes, sir, off and on.
Q. How did you and your father get on? A. We used to argue sometimes.
Sheila Ann Roberts, a rosy-cheeked 15-year-old, also said porridge was a new dish in the house. She testified that her stepmother did nothing to help her father as he lay dying.
"Pa was groaning the evening before he died. I went to the door of his bedroom. I was just opening it and my stepmother wanted me to go from there."
Q. Your mother was not trying to help him? A. No, she was not. She was lying down. She told me to go back to bed.
Sheila said she had never seen anyone working in the garden with or without weed killer.
Thus did the Crown try to convince the jury that Alicia Roberta, who wanted a husband and loved children, had attempted to rid herself of both just a year after she acquired them.
Then Owen Hughes took the stand for his mother.
The prosecutor’s words fell on deaf ears. It took only three and three-quarter hours for the jury deliberations. Upon their return to the courtroom the foreman announced.
“Not guilty is the verdict of us all.”
Owen Hughes fainted!
Alicia Roberts pleaded guilty to attempted suicide, but on this count the Justice discharged her “conditionally.”
“Thank you very much,” she said.
A sad story with a happy ending, you say? Now hear this.
Just three weeks after her trial and one month ago today Mrs. Roberts was called before a coroner’s jury in Holyhead.
~ Body of First Husband Exhumed ~
For while she was on trial in Swansea, the Crown had ordered the exhumation of the body of her first husband, John Hughes. There was arsenic in that body, too.
Mrs. Roberts heard Dr. F. E. Camps, a London pathologist, testify that he couldn’t support a theory that Hughes died of arsenic poisoning – that the arsenic could have seeped into the coffin and body in rainwater.
But Dr. Roche Lynch, the Government analyst, testified “I have formed the opinion that the remains contain an abnormal amount of arsenic which cannot be accounted for by confirmation by external sources after death.”
Mrs. Roberts admitted she had bought weed killer for her garden while Hughes was alive, but, she said, that she never, never gave him any of it.
The jury returned with an open verdict.
[Ruth Reynolds, “Widow's Ad for Mate Joined Two Families And Led to Tragedy,” Daily News (New York, N.Y.), Aug. 31, 1952, P. C8]
***
***
***
No comments:
Post a Comment