Episode 149: The Pimlico Poisoning: Chloroform, Scandal, and Suspicion

London in 1886 was a city brimming with contradictions. Gaslight illuminated the streets while fog crept in around Parliament, and in Pimlico, a sudden death would soon rattle Victorian society. On New Year’s Day, Edwin Bartlett was found dead in his modest home at 85 Claverton Street. He was only forty-one, chronically unwell but not expected to die so suddenly. What shocked his doctors and later the courts was not simply that he had died, but how. His stomach contained several ounces of chloroform, a substance known for its use in operating theatres, yet his throat and mouth bore none of the burns such a dose should have caused.

The case quickly became known as the Pimlico Poisoning Mystery. At its center was Adelaide Bartlett, Edwin’s young French-born wife, and the Reverend George Dyson, a Wesleyan minister who had grown close to her under Edwin’s strange encouragement. Their marriage had never been conventional. Adelaide had spent long periods away at school even after marrying Edwin, and when they did live together, she claimed they were virtually celibate. The only exception, she said, was an attempt to conceive, which ended in tragedy with a stillborn child. Edwin was eccentric and obsessed with his health, dosing himself with mercury for imagined syphilis and dabbling in animal magnetism. Yet he was oddly permissive, encouraging Dyson to tutor his wife and even allowing them open affection.

By late 1885, Edwin’s health had worsened. He complained of foul breath, gastric troubles, and depression. In December, Adelaide made an unsettling remark to a doctor: if her husband did not improve, his relatives would accuse her of poisoning him. Days later, she asked Reverend Dyson to buy chloroform. Dyson, embarrassed but persuaded, bought it from chemists, telling them he needed it for stains, and presented her with a four-ounce bottle. On New Year’s Eve, Adelaide casually mentioned to her landlady that she sometimes gave her husband chloroform sleeping drops. Hours later, Edwin was dead.

The inquest revealed the chloroform in his stomach but no clear explanation of how it had been ingested. Suicide seemed unlikely — the dose was far too large, and the absence of burns inexplicable. Murder seemed equally difficult to prove. If Adelaide had administered the drug, how had she managed it without leaving a trace? Theories emerged — perhaps mixed with milk or oil, perhaps taken voluntarily in some desperate act — but none could be demonstrated. Still, the suspicion was enough. Adelaide Bartlett was charged with murder.

The trial opened at the Old Bailey in April 1886 and quickly drew immense crowds. Poison cases were already the most sensational of Victorian crimes, and the Bartlett case had all the elements: scandal, romance, and a forensic puzzle no one could solve. Prosecutors laid out their theory of motive — a loveless marriage, Adelaide’s attachment to Dyson, and a will that left her everything, now without restrictions on remarriage. Witnesses described Adelaide’s closeness to Dyson and her odd remarks about chloroform. The real drama, however, came from the experts. Doctors testified to finding chloroform in Edwin’s stomach but admitted they could not explain how it was taken. Some suggested it had been swallowed with milk or oil, others speculated about post-mortem introduction, but all were forced to concede they could not be sure.

Adelaide’s defense, led by Sir Edward Clarke, was remarkable for its restraint. At that time, defendants were not allowed to testify in their own defense, and Clarke chose to call no witnesses at all. Instead, he relied on the contradictions in the prosecution’s case and the simple fact that no one could explain how the chloroform was administered. Suspicion, he argued, was not enough for a conviction. The jury agreed. After just two hours of deliberation, they acquitted Adelaide.

The verdict left Victorian society divided. Some believed she had escaped justice; others saw the acquittal as inevitable given the lack of proof. Adelaide Bartlett disappeared soon after, her later life shrouded in mystery. Dyson left the ministry, his reputation destroyed. The case itself became a legend, revisited by doctors and writers for decades, its central forensic puzzle still unanswered.

The Pimlico Poisoning Mystery endures because it captured something essential about the Victorian age: its fascination with science and progress, its fear of poison as invisible and intimate, and its willingness to turn private tragedy into public spectacle. Edwin Bartlett’s death was certain, but the means — and the guilt — were never resolved. More than a century later, the case remains a haunting reminder of the limits of both forensic science and human certainty.