341 The Psychological Aspect of the Bravo Case
The circumstances connected with this extraordinary case have given rise to much comment and conjecture in medical circles. The theories which have from time to time been propounded, and the numerous explanations that have been offered, are peculiar as well as numerous.
It is not our intention to enter into a discussion upon the facts incidental to the trial, as they are too well known to need any recapitulation at our hands. The point at issue is, whether the deceased Mr. Bravo committed suicide whilst in an unsound state of mind. Public opinion from the very onset determined not to accept this theory, let the evidence be ever so strong, or substantiated by convincing facts.
The deceased was a man of excitable temperament, liable to sudden outbursts of passion without any adequate cause. He was morbidly jealous ; his mind absorbed in one train of thought relative to certain events previous to his marriage, upon which we need not dwell in detail. The evidence went to prove his frequent liability to these furious outbreaks and fits of morbid suspicion, which on every opportunity he vented on his wife, especially when he was in the vicinity of a certain house, the sight of which stirred up the angry passions rankling in his breast, and which he was unable to throw off in consequence of the firm grasp they had obtained. The deceased might have passed through life without any harm accruing, had not there been a strong predisposing cause which rendered his mind unable to battle against!his thoughts. This predisposing cause alluded to was a taint^of hereditary insanity, prevalent in his family, but which carried no weight at the inquest. We are much surprised that, with the facts so prominently elicited, the jury should have entirely abandoned this consideration. A jury consisting of tradesmen <?f Balham could not be expected to know that in cases of insanity there generally exist two distinct causes con- ducive to mental aberration?an exciting, and a predisposing cause. Both these existed, the exciting cause being the one pre- dominant thought previously mentioned; the predisposing, the hereditary taint. We are strongly of opinion that in an enquiry of such gravity, and involving such important issues, that the Coroner should have been assisted by a medical as well as a legal assessor. The question at issue was whether the case was one of murder or suicide. If the latter verdict had been given, we may presume that that verdict would have been ” Suicide whilst in an unsound state of mind,” and therefore, with such a presumption, which must have existed in the mind of the Coroner, he should have insisted upon having the assistance of a physician learned and experienced in mental disorders. We do not, however, know what his full powers are, but we are led to believe that had he expressed a wish to this effect it would have been granted, especially as the Crown was desirous of sifting the matter to the uttermost. We give in extenso an excellent and able letter, written by Dr Edgar Sheppard, of Colney Hatch, to the Times, and the views as expressed by the Medical Times and Gazette, together with the views of the Editor of this journal as stated in the Daily News.
Dr Sheppard writes : ” The ‘ Bravo Case,’ as far as public proceedings of an incriminating kind are concerned, is probably over, but the ‘ Balham Mystery’ remains a mystery still. These are the two verbal formulae which for some weeks have attracted so much notice, and under the heads of which there has been so large a revelation of what is unsavoury in our social life. I venture to submit that there is a psychological aspect of this 4 mystery’ which has not been sufficiently contemplated, and which the unsatisfactory verdict of the Coroner’s jury makes it more imperative to consider. And I ask you to let me place this aspect before the public in the Times.
” I call the finding of the jury unsatisfactory, because it attests their incapacity to deal in a proper and manly spirit with the evidence submitted to them. They fix an indelible stigma upon certain persons, and at the same time affirm that there is nothing of a kind sufficiently conclusive to lead to’1 absolute identification of the guilty. Murder, they say, has been com- mitted by some one; and while by implication they attach th PSYCHOLOGICAL ASPECT OF THE BRAVO CASE. 343 guilt to one or more of an unfortunate trio, they do not officially charge it upon either or upon all. It is idle to say that this is not what the jury really mean when they affirm that Mr. Bravo has not come to his untimely end by suicide or by misadventure, but by wilful murder. Certainly it may be questioned whether, *in a moral point of view, such a verdict admits of justification. Regarded as an intellectual problem, the position is absolutely untenable. For if there is any proof of ‘wilfulness,’ there should necessarily be proof of the source from which that wilfulness arose, and the desperate deed should be positively charged upon one or more persons. The jury are thus thrust upon the horns of a dilemma from which there is no escape. To my thinking, therefore, the verdict is both illogical and cowardly in the extreme.
” What I am chiefly concerned with, however, is the theory of suicide in this very sad but interesting case. Misadventure, the jury say, is clearly out of the question. And so, also, of suicide. Neither of these will furnish a solution of the ‘ mystery.’ But has the theory of suicide been at all -adequately studied from a psychological point of view ? People have really been driven from the contemplation of suicide; 1st, because (they say) there is not a sufficient motive for it; 2nd, because (they say) there has been a sufficient motive for murder; 3rd, because a dying man (confessedly having no religious belief) declared that he had no knowledge of the cause of his approaching death, and had only rubbed his gums with laudanum and chloroform. It should be added that there is conflicting testimony as to whether this was or was not a ‘ corrected’ declaration.
” Now, is a higher value to be attached to the credibility of this witness, even though dying, than to that of the lady who affirms that Mr. Bravo had previously said to her, * I’ve taken poison for Dr Gully; don’t tell Florence ? ‘ Comparing their antecedents, as far as they can be gathered from the history that has been unfolded to us, I know to which of these two my per- ceptive faculties incline me. But the Coroner’s jury think otherwise.
” Let us enquire as to the ‘ motive’ for suicide in this par- ticular case. Now, the word motive, as conventionally used, would seem to imply something involving the exercise of judg- rnent and reflection. It cannot, therefore, be an equivalent for the mental attitude of a violent and impulsive man, in circum- stances of intense and fiery provocation. If Mr. Bravo com- mitted suicide he did it on the spur of the moment. That spur may have led him to obtain poison at an earlier date than the day on which he took it, or he may have procured it a few hours before the commission of the fearful act. That spur may have goaded him into the frenzied thought of an escape from tumul- tuous suffering by a mode commonly regarded as cowardly, and generally associated with the irresponsibility of disease. There is much to support the view of temporary irresponsibility here. It is in evidence that Mr. Bravo was a spoiled and wayward child, that his passions were strong, that his anger was of a brief but desperate kind. Fired by an almost fiendish jealousy, he could strike the dearest object of his affection, and then prostrate himself in tears of contrition. The extremes of mental exaltation and depression were equally conditioned by his emotional temperament. I do not see how any one can read the history of this unhappy man and not see, growing day by day in intensity, the fire which at last consumed him in one of the clumsiest of suicidal acts. Clearly, the 4 green-eyed monster’ was dominating his whole nature. He had threatened on several occasions to leave the home that had been created for him ; he was constantly referring, in the most ungenerous manner, to an earlier period of his wife’s career, which had a parallel in his own, but to which that wife made no corresponding allusion. He was oppressed also by a morbid conviction of Mrs. Bravo’s extravagance, and to a growing habit with respect to her alcoholic tendencies. Matters culminated on that fatal day when he drove into London for the last time, and passed the house of the man whose image was ever pursuing him. He tries to work off the steam of his highly-charged system by a Turkish bath, and subsequently a gallop in which the horse got the better of the man, and he returned home in a state of complete exaspera- tion. Better put out this brief candle and make an end to this distracting misery ! Little, in his recklessness, did he think of the agony-producing agent which he had selected to serve his desperate purpose; but he soon discovered it, flies to laudanum and chloroform, calls for hot water, blurts out to his wife’s friend impulsively what he had done; urges her to secrecy, and, hoping she would preserve it, set himself defiantly to meet a fate which he knew he had brought upon himself, and which he had not the manly courage to avow openly in the calmer moments which followed. When urged, for obvious reasons, to a confession of guilt, he denied it in terms, the solemnity of which has been disputed, but as to the evasive persistency of which there has been no question.
” Is it possible (say those who disbelieve the theory of suicide) that a dying man should go out into the untried future with a lie in his mouth, when he might make his exodus with less imperilling of his condition there by a simple acknowledg- ment which would render all so easy both for himself and others? Well, that depends upon the religious belief of the dying man, and on the mental effect produced by a catastrophe from which he is assured there is no escape. Jf the jealousy which had so fired him, and had culminated in this suicidal act, still domi- nated him, he would be reluctant to admit suicide, but would satisfy his revenge in the chance of implicating in a charge of murder the man whose mental presence was ever being obtruded on him. There would be a tragic completeness about such an issue which would feed with some satisfaction a morbid psychical condition with which alienist physicians are not unfamiliar. And hundreds of men die yearly, and will continue to die, with lies on their lips, to the end of time.
” There is an alternative. The dying man might have been ashamed to admit (though it is in evidence that he impulsively blurted out the admission, with a charge of secrecy to its recipient) in calmer moments an act of cowardice of which he was now ashamed ; or he may have wished to spare the woman he had so passionately adored the pain of reflecting that she had been the means of driving him to an act which might rob her future of all consolation.
” Having disposed of this point, we now come to two all- important questions:?1. Is it conceivable that if ‘misadven- ture ‘ was responsible for this tragedy, the question would not have been asked by the poisoned subject, ‘ How did this mis- adventure occur ?’ Or, knowing himself how it had occurred, would he not at once have alluded to it in terms and in a man- ner which could not be mistaken ? 2. Is it conceivable ?is it not, indeed, contrary to all the instincts of human nature?that a man should believe himself to be poisoned by someone dear or hateful to him, and make no charge of incrimination ??never make a single allusion to those who might have had a hand in despatching him by a deed of transcendant infamy??never make use of the word ‘ murder,’ or give any verbal intimation that any other than himself was responsible for the abrupt termination of this young life ? There can be no instance on record of such a metaphysical anomaly. Our knowledge of the human mind forbids its possibility. It could not have occurred to the meekest and mildest Christian that ever lived. With all his faults, Mr. Bravo was not base enough to charge others with his death. Why ? Because he knew that the sin lay at his own door. And he died commending his wife to the care of his and her friends and relations.
” It is worthy of note that nearly all suicides which are the result of sudden and violent impulse are exceedingly clumsy in their execution, because done without thought and deliberation. The suicides of calmer moments (and there are such) have a character for completeness about them which is foreign to those momentarily conceived and carried out.
” The fact is not without great significance as bearing upon the psychological aspect of this case which I have endeavoured to elucidate?that it is in evidence that Mr. Bravo had a deaf and dumb sister, and another, of feeble capacity, in a convent. This clearly establishes a family instability of nerve element, which loves to show its capriciousness?here in weakness, there in waywardness, and elsewhere, it may be, in undue and fretful intellectuality.
” I have been anxious to put forward this view of what has been termed a ‘ mystery,’ for the public mind has been com- pletely possessed by the theory of murder, without, as it seems to me, any adequate reason. Nor will the ungenerous verdict of the Coroner’s jury do much to allay the unsatisfactory feeling which has existed concerning this domestic tragedy?this terrible revelation of our social life. As I view the matter, I believe the verdict to be utterly unwarranted ; and I am borne to the irresisti- ble conclusion that Mr. Bravo met his death by his own hands.” The Editor of this journal writes: “The letter of Dr Edgar Sheppard elucidates very concisely and clearly the true facts con- nected with the ‘ Balham mystery,’ and tends materially to throw a true light upon it. A verdict of ‘wilful murder,’ without one tittle of evidence to justify such a decision, is of rare occurrence in England, but in this case such a verdict was arrived at. It is admitted by psychologists that suicidal insanity is generally an impulsive act, whilst homicidal is premeditated. This impor- tant point was entirely lost sight of in the consideration of the case, and one strange argument urged against a verdict of suicide was that Mr. Bravo had met some friends the day pre- viously, who reported his general demeanour, conduct, and appearance as those of a sane man. This evidence, to all who have studied the various phases of insanity, is worthless ; let me draw your readers’ attention as a proof of this to the sad suicide of the Bishop of Meath, which occurred during the hearing of the case, as one instance of impulsive insanity. Many such instances could be cited to refute the erroneous conclusions which might be arrived at from the evidence of such witnesses. Again, a most important point connected with the case was the predisposition which existed to mental deficiency stated in the evidence and alluded to by Dr Sheppard. With this strong hereditary taint acting as a predisposing cause, and the facts cognisant to him of the relations between Mrs. Bravo and Dr Grully?which, according to the evidence, were uppermost in his mind the day before?acting as an exciting cause, we are not surprised at the result. We here, then, have a predisposing and an exciting cause to insanity. The general conduct of the deceased upon many occasions was not consistent with the behaviour of a sane man; the violent fits of temper?impulsive, no doubt?the mind absorbed by the one predominant thought, and being unable to shake it off, no doubt led to the impul- sive act. These are important facts which favour strongly a verdict of suicide, together with the other evidence previously alluded to.
” Dr Sheppard has ably treated the case in a psychological point of view, and it is unnecessary for me to go over the same ground. I wish, however, to endorse the views expressed by him, that the verdict was quite unjustifiable, and, in my opinion, not based upon evidence; whereas, if the decision of the jury had been that of suicide, the history of the case and the evidence deduced would have justified such a verdict.” The Medical Times and Gazette says as follows:?
” English society is very humane?far too humane to allow the vivisection of a cat; but it loves sensation, and has found it of late in the vivisection of Mrs. Bravo,?in the utter remorse- less dissection of all her inmost thoughts and cherished frailties. It has been circulating the most atrocious statements respecting the three persons whose lives and characters were involved in the ‘ Balham Mystery,’ and has been dangling the hangman’s rope before them, as the cat plays with a mouse.
” We propose here only to consider how far the theory is tenable that the unhappy Mr. Charles Bravo committed suicide, and shall avoid any details not bearing upon this theory, although, of course, this involves the guilt or innocence of the persons who, if he did not kill himself, are suspected of having killed him.
” Florence Campbell, a beautiful and accomplished girl of nineteen, married Captain Ricardo in 1864. After three years of happiness he fell into habits of drunkenness; delirium and ill-conduct followed; and at last the couple were separated. He went to Cologne, accompanied by some woman, and there he died in April 1871. His wife had not been under the same roof with him since November 1870. This disposes of the current slander that the vomitings which followed Captain Ricardo’s debauches were the effects of antimony administered by his wife, and that the captain’s corpse had been ‘ had up’ for analysis.
” During the latter part of her married life, Mrs. Ricardo visited Malvern, and there met her evil genius in Dr Gully. She had, in fact, known him from childhood, liked him for his kindness, and admired his intellectual gifts. He, on his part, combining the character of paternal and professional protector and adviser, of ” guide, philosopher, and friend,” seems, after the husband’s death, to have inspired the widow with what her mother justly called an ‘ infatuation.’ The result was, that down to last October they were almost constantly in each other’s society: they travelled together, he lived near her and had a key of the garden gate ; in fact, this young and handsome woman gave up the society of her family and her good name for the sake of a man older than her father. She would, doubtless, have married him had not Dr Griilly’s aged wife been in the way.
” But in October 1875 Mrs. Ricardo seems to have felt lier estrangement from the members of her own family, and de- termined to give up the society of Dr Gully in order to be admitted again into the family circle. About the same time she made the acquaintance of a young barrister, Mr. C. Bravo. He seems to have become enamoured of herself and her for- tune, and, after about six weeks’ acquaintance, married her. It appears that he knew of the intimacy with Dr Grully, but was not deterred from the match.
” Four months only of married life followed, and then a catastrophe. On April 18, Mr. C. Bravo came home to dinner, sat a short time after dinner with his wife and her companion, Mrs. Cox, and before half-past nine went to bed, according to his habit. His wife, who was scarcely recovered from a mis- carriage, also retired early, was undressed with the help of Mrs. Cox, and went to bed in another room at about the same time. Very soon there was an alarm that Mr. Bravo was ill; he appeared at the door of his chamber, calling loudly for hot water. Mrs. Cox and the housemaid came to him, and found him standing by an open window, out of which he had vomited on to some leads below, and he soon became unconscious. It is not our purpose to give a history of what followed?how Drs. Moore and Harrison were sent for, next Mr. Royes Bell and Dr Gr. Johnson, and Sir W. Gull on the following day ; how the practitioners who came first found the patient almost dying of collapse and heart failure ; how, when consciousness returned, they recognised the symptoms of poisoning by some metallic irritant, the dose of which had been sufficient to produce at first an almost fatal collapse ; and how the patient lingered in great agony, but with a clear intellect, till death occurred in about sixty hours. Antimony was found in the vomit and in the fluids of the corpse, and was without doubt the cause of death.
” Then the question came, How was the antimony taken ? Was it taken by the deceased as a means of suicide ? “W as it given him by others with murderous intent ? or was it swallowed by accident, mistake, or misadventure? The Coroner’s jury, after a lengthened investigation, have decided that the antimony was given with murderous intent by some person or persons unknown, and have emphatically negatived the theory of suicide ; but considering the character of the proceedings, and the evidence which may have influenced their judgment, it will be no mark of disrespect to them if we say that the theory of suicide has a good deal to be said for it.
” Now, forasmuch as suicide is an act depending on the moral condition of the person committing it, it will be worth while to sift the evidence given as to the moral and mental character of the unhappy deceased : and in sp doing we discover two pictures of the same man?one drawn as he appeared in public ?r in the society of his acquaintance; the other as he was known to his family and at home,?each picture true so far as it goes, but each requiring to be combined with the other before it is taken as evidence of so grave a matter as the pro- bability or not of suicide.
“According, then, to his outside acquaintance, and what may be called his public, he was an intellectual, bright, active, pushing, ambitious man ; determined to rise in his profession; very frank and outspoken; very happy ; proud of his marriage with a rich, accomplished, and beautiful widow; high-spirited, courageous ; with plenty of money,?the whole summed up in the evidence of Mr. Joseph Bravo, his stepfather, who swore that, ‘ knowing him intimately, he could aver that he was a man not likely to commit suicide.’ Mr. Royes Bell, a relation and intimate friend, described him as ‘ full of fun,’ truthful, and ‘ outspoken to a fault,’ and said, ‘ from my knowledge of him, I can say he was not a man likely to commit suicide.’ Mr. M’Calmont (who described himself as a barrister) swore that deceased was quite happy about his wife, and spoke affec- tionately of her; ‘he was the last man to commit suicide.’ Miss Bell, ‘ from intimate knowledge,’ would swear that ‘ de- ceased was not a likely man to commit suicide.’ Mr. Hope knew the deceased as a high-spirited and cheery person, and ‘ decidedly a man not likely to commit suicide.’ Mr. Wil- loughby and Mr. Atkinson, barristers, deposed to the same effect in the same words; and so did Mrs. Campbell, the unhappy mother of the unhappy widow.
” Now, it never seems to have occurred to these gentlemen that the value of an opinion depends on the knowledge and experience of the person who gives it; and we may ask what knowledge had any one of them of the mental condition of a person likely to kill himself ? The number of suicides is very small; how many had these barristers seen ? Had they ever seen any? And if not, what is the value of their judgment that deceased was the last person likely to destroy himself? But all this worthless testimony is disposed of by three words of common-sense evidence from blunt, honest Henry Smith, who, though he reiterated the formula, ‘ I do not think from my knowledge of him that he was likely to commit suicide,’ yet added with perfect fairness that it was difficult to say what frame of mind indicated suicide; and that of two friends of his who had done so, one was of the jolliest, the other always miserable. There is, in fact, no outward demeanour that excludes the possibility of suicide.
” But, as we have said, there is a reverse to this flattering picture of Mr. C. Bravo’s character. Mr. Henry Smith de- scribes him as of a morbidly excitable nature ; apt to lose his temper from trivial causes?in argument, for example,? ‘from causes which should disturb no sane man.’ Of his two sisters, one is deaf and dumb ; the other with a nervous system so feeble as not to allow of her going into society. The same witness (H. Smith), like Mr. Royes Bell, deposed that deceased was a ‘ truthful’ man, ‘ far too communicative and outspoken.’ Thus we are led to suppose that deceased kept nothing secret from intimate friends; yet H. Smith, though intimate, was not told by deceased that Mrs. Bravo took too much wine. Mr. M’Calmont, the gushing barrister, who swore that Mr. Bravo was not a man likely to commit suicide, and that he spoke cheerfully and affectionately of his wife, yet knew nothing of the Gully affair, and confessed that he should not have thought deceased likely to marry a woman whose name had been mixed up with such a scandal.
” In fact, if we look a little under the very surface, we shall see evidence that this cheery, genial, good-tempered fellow, glowing with happiness, and outspoken to a fault, was at bottom a very poor devil?a miserable, as the French say ; a spoiled child, unable to act on the manly doctrine that a man should leave his father and mother and cleave to his wife ; quarrelling with his wife, and striking her ; threatening to leave the house and go back to his mother ; always harping upon Dr Gully; and annoyed by dastardly anonymous letters reviling his wife as Dr Grully’s mistress, which he believed to emanate from the doctor. He found that his wife was not only compromised by Grully (which he did not seem to care for, so long as his mother did not know it), but that she took too much wine. And then as to her money, with which he hoped to get on at the bar, and to get into Parliament; if he was not embarrassed, he was not flush of cash ; was obliged to borrow from his step-father, and had just parted from a female ‘ establishment’ at Maidenhead.
” Now, with these things before us, we may ask why such a man should not commit suicide ? Rousseau says that self- respect is the only thing that makes life bearable. Could Bravo respect himself ? Truly the wise man said, ‘ The heart knoweth his own bitterness, and a stranger cannot intermeddle with his joy.’ How could his briefless brethren, who heard him brag of his marriage, and saw him calculating how to save ?300 a year by discharging his wife’s companion, and were invited down to Balham to lawn tennis and champagne, know that all this outward show was hollow as the apples of Sodom ? “We have evidence that there had been a kind of squabble in the morning whilst he was driving to town with his wife on the fatal 18th; that at and before dinner he was dissatisfied with everything, and appeared to Rowe, the butler, ill and out of sorts, and said (according to Rowe) that he should never go to Worthing?to which place Mrs. Cox, the companion, had been that morning to take a house. Keeber, the house- maid, said that he complained on the 17th of being very cross, and on the 18th looked very queer when going to bed; his wife described him as looking ill and angry at dinner, with his face working. All these things betoken a disturbed and unhappy state of mind. If we want additional evidence that something was evidently amiss, we find it in a question which Mr. Grorst, Q.C., who appeared on behalf of the Crown, allowed himself (and was allowed by the Coroner without rebuke) to put to the witness Rowe, the butler. Rowe had described the deceased’s manner and looks before and at dinner (when, we should ob- serve in passing, he was also complaining of stiffness and soreness from riding a runaway horse), and Mr. Gorst asks, ‘Now, tell us, do you think deceased was poisoned before dinner ?’
” A more unfair question can hardly be conceived, inasmuch as it involves a statement that deceased was ‘poisoned’ by some one?which was the thing to be determined, not to be assumed. But this is a very mild specimen of the interroga- tories practised at this (so-called) legal enquiry. Anyhow, it shows that the Crown was ready to admit that the deceased was ill before dinner, though it involves the monstrous notion that a man would eat a good dinner with twenty-five grains of tartar emetic in his stomach.
” As further evidence that the theory of suicide, though en- veloped in prodigious difficulties, is yet worth considering, we may adduce the fact that deceased when seized called out for hot water. Now, we will venture to say that this is unusual, unless the patient is conscious of having swallowed something noxious ; and secondly, the profound collapse which must have come from something swallowed very quickly before. It is only a killing dose that would produce such collapse, and it would not be long about it.
” We purposely omit in this place more than a passing reference to what Mrs. Cox affirmed ?viz. that the deceased said he had taken poison, and repeated this again and again ; and to the intricate history of what deceased admitted or not, and the conversations with Dr Gr. Johnson and Sir William Grull. If the deceased said what Mrs. Cox avers, it tells in favour of suicide ; if not, there is but one more added to the intricacies of this unhappy business.
“If the deceased did not kill himself, the hypothesis occurs that he might have been poisoned by his wife, or by Mrs. Cox, or Dr Gully, or by any two, or all three of them conjointly. ” Let us say first, as regards the wife, that, after all due allowance for the prejudice arising from her past conduct, nothing can equal the malignant?the almost more than feminine?ingenuity with which every jot and tittle of her actions, even the most irrelevant or insignificant, was raked up and turned against her. As for her husband’s mother, she dis- approved the match, and we can only wish that she had dissuaded her son from it. She is said to have meddled with their household affairs, and the kind of feeling towards her daughter-in-law was well expressed by that happy and most delicate feminine phrase, ‘She hoped to like her in time.’
This is quite intelligible and natural; but Mr. Joseph Bravo, who tells it to us, was not above petty insinuations, as, for instance, that ‘ dinner was served as usual’ (at The Priory during deceased’s illness) in several courses, but that he re- mained upstairs with his son. A man can know but little of the ways of well-to-do-families who supposes that in a house full of relations the servants will not provide and send up dinner as usual, spite of the illness, without waiting to be told. The un- happy widow is placed in this strange dilemma. If Bravo was cheerful and happy in his married life, there was no reason why he should have poisoned himself; ergo, she did it. On the other hand, if the married life was unhappy, she poisoned him to get rid of him. There was not a vestige of mercy or consideration for this woman; and if the inquisitors have failed to discover the cause of Mr. Bravo’s death, they have anyhow been successful in torturing his widow. They proved that she dyed her hair, though they did not prove that she poisoned her husband. But as for evidence, what need of it ??they relied on blasting her character, so that anything should be believed of her. What a parody there was of legal proceedings, outdoing anything we hear of foreign questionings, is evident from one specimen. An old nurse, Amelia Bushel, was made to depose that ‘ she did not know any reason why deceased should not have told every- thing to Mr. Royes Bell’! The same statement is found in the reports of the evidence of Miss Bell. How were these people to have known what they were asked? and what did it matter whether they did or not ?
” Spite of a protracted public investigation, and the most un- scrupulous public inquisition which has been known in England since the Stuarts, nothing has been adduced against the widow ?neither time, place, opportunity, material, nor motive for the crime.
” As for Mrs. Cox, considering that she was known to be under the deepest obligations to the Bravo family, who had treated her with the greatest generosity, and that she was on the point of starting to see a well-to-do relative in Jamaica, it is difficult to discover a motive, and equally an opportunity. No means of administration by any person save the deceased can be easily conceived. The dinner was eaten by all three persons. The deceased was a judge of wine, according to Rowe, and the presence of tartar emetic in the burgundy lie drank seems incredible. As for the water in his bedroom, of which he usually drank at bedtime, that could not have been tampered with, according to the evidence of the housemaid, and of Drs. Moore and Harrison. However the poison was taken, not many minutes passed before it took effect.
” As for Dr Gully, the fact that the Crown thought it worth while to prove the purchase of antimony by his coachman in 1869, shows how worthless is any direct evidence against him. It seems to be forgotten that, supposing a conspiracy existed to murder Bravo, it could have been but of very short duration. Is it likely that Gully carried antimony with him whilst a favoured lover, in order to poison any man who should marry Mrs. Bravo ?
” On the whole, there is such a conflict of evidence, such deliberate perjury on one side or the other, such motiveless, useless, and gratuitously devilish wickedness, that the question between murder and suicide remains insoluble. We should prefer the theory of accidental poisoning?a thing not im- possible or unknown in the history of antimony ; and if this be objected to because mere speculation, so, be it remembered, is it with the other two suppositions. Of course, suspicion falls naturally on one of the three persons named. But, as in a chess problem, what seems an obvious move at first sight seldom leads to a solution.
” Lastly, our object is not to screen the guilty, but to protest against proceedings which are a disgrace to jurisprudence, which pervert justice at its source, and which, if repeated, would be as terrible to the innocent as to the guilty. And we must in fairness point out a series of indiscretions which justly gave a point to suspicion. That Mrs. Bravo should consult Dr Gully; that she should receive medicine, or, in fact, hold any communication with him after her marriage; that Mrs. Cox should also repeatedly converse and consult with him, and be the bearer of medicine and ‘ treatments,’ are acts of indiscretion which deserve the severest reprobation. But what shall we say of Dr Gully? How was he justified in prescribing for Mrs. Bravo in April ? Above all, why did he get medicine (laurel-water) and send it in a roundabout way to Mrs. Bravo ?an act quite unnecessary, unusual, and derogatory in any physician, and fraught with the worst suspicions to him ? More- over, as a matter of professional conduct, why did he, being her lover, treat Mrs. Ricardo for miscarriage, alone and without another practitioner in consultation ? Why did he prescribe for her in 1874, for the restoration of the uterine function, medicines not homoeopathic, but such as are discredited with the power of doing away with the fruit of illicit love ? No man, however high and pure he may be, can commit such indis- cretions without risk.”
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