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TRIAL OF JOHN W. WEBSTER.
365
the tea-chest, as found. My own impression has been, that this was
not done till after the second visit of the officers which was on Tuesday;
but Kingsley's testimony shows that it must have been done sooner.
The perforation of the thorax had been made by the knife at the time
of removing the viscera.
On Wednesday, I put on kindling and made a fire in the furnace
below, having first poked down the ashes. Some of the limbs-I can-
not remember what ones or how many-were consumed at that time.
This was the last I had to do with the remains.
The tin box was designed to receive the thorax, though I had not
concluded where I should finally put the box. The fish-hooks, tied up
as grapples, were to be used for drawing up the parts in the vault, when-
ever I should determine how to dispose of them. And yet, strange
enough, I had a confused double object in ordering the box and making
the grapples. I had before intended to get such things to send to Fayal;
-the box to hold plants and other articles which I wished to protect
from salt water and the sea air,-and the hooks to be used there in
obtaining coraline plants from the sea. It was this previously intended
use of them that suggested and mixed itself up with the idea of the
other application. I doubt, even now, to which use they would have
been applied. I had not used the hooks at the time of the discovery.
The tan put into the tea-chest was taken from a barrel of it that
had been in the laboratory some time. The bag of tan brought in on
Monday was not used, nor intended to be used. It belonged to a quantity
obtained by me a long time ago for experiments in tanning, and was
sent in by the family to get it out of the way. Its being sent just at
that time was accidental.
I was not aware that I had put the knife into the tea-chest.
The stick found in the saucer of ink
on cloth.
The bunch of
was for making coarse diagrams
" filed " keys had been long ago picked up by me in
Fruit street, and thrown carelessly into a drawer. I never examined
them, and do not know whether they would fit any of the locks. of the
College or not. If there were other keys fitting doors with which I had
nothing to do I suppose they must have been duplicates, or keys of
former locks, left there by the mechanics or janitor. I know nothing
about them and should never be likely to notice them amongst the
multitude of articles large and small, and of all kinds, collected in my
rooms. The janitor had furnished me a key to the dissecting-room for
the admission of medical friends visiting the College; but I had never
used it.
The nitric acid on the stairs was not used to remove spots of blood,
but dropped by accident.
When the officers called for me on Friday, 30th, I was in doubt
whether I was under arrest or whether a more strict search of my
rooms was to be had; the latter hypothesis being hardly less appalling
than the former. When I found that we went over Cragie's bridge, I
thought the arrest most probable. When I found that the carriage was
stopping at the jail, I was sure of my fate; and before leaving the car-
riage, I took a dose of strychnine from my pocket and swallowed it.
I had prepared it in the shape of a pill before I left my laboratory on the
23d. I thought I could not bear to survive detection. I thought it was
a large dose. The state of my nervous system probably defeated its
action, partially. The effects of the poison were terrible beyond descrip-
tion. It was in operation at the College, and before I went there; but
more severely, afterwards.
I wrote but one of the anonymous letters produced at the trial,-the
one mailed at East Cambridge.
The " little bundle," referred to in the letter detained by the jailer,
contained only a bottle of citric acid, for domestic use. I had seen it
stated in a newspaper, that I had purchased a quantity of oxalic acid,
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