Person Page - 881

Criminal History

• Maria Cage was the Defendant who was brought before the Magistrates on 7 Aug 1851 in Crown Court. The trial was reported as The Bath Chronicle, Number 4868, Thursday 7^th August, 1851, Page 2
  Poisoning a husband. - At the Ipswich Assizes on Saturday last, Maria Cage was arraigned for the wilful murder of her husband, James Cage, by administering to him arsenic. The case presented features of a great depravity. The deceased was an agricultural labourer, and with his wife, the prisoner, lived at Stonham Aspel. They had a family of 17 children, but one of them, a lad now 20 years of age, was not the result of wedlock. The deceased was imprisoned 12 months, and during his incarceration, prisoner cohabited with another man, and the result was the birth of the boy. During the last eighteen months, she left her husband not less than three times, and exposed her daughter, 16 years of age, to be corrupted. In other respects she lead a very dissolute and depraved life. About 3 weeks before the deceased died, he was taken suddenly ill while at work in the fields. He went home and died, and the funeral procession was on its way to the churchyard when the clergyman, in consequence of certain rumours, caused the body to be returned to the cottage. A coroner's inquest was called, and it was found that the deceased had died from the effects of arsenic. It then transpired that while he was ill, the prisoner visited a Mrs Lambert who lived 4 miles from her own cottage, and induced her to purchase a penny worth of stuff for her daughter to kill rats and mice. The staff comprised a compound of arsenic and linseed, enough to kill six men. The daughter was called, and swore that she never gave her mother authority to purchase the poison for her. A vast amount of evidence was given relative to the deceased’s state, confirmatory of poison having been administered to him. It was also shown that she had wished him dead and that she would sustain no loss as she had the other man near. A strong and conclusive chain of facts having been adduced, Mr. Cooper addressed the jury for the prisoner. The jury returned a verdict of “Guilty”. His lordship then put on the black cap, and said it was melancholy to consider the number of instances of similar murders that had graced the domestic and private history of the country. He could hold out no hope of mercy to her, and in the usual terms he sentenced her to be executed. The culprit, who remained seated during the solemn address, rose from her chair, apparently very weak, and was conducted from the dock. Several of her children were present while the sentence was being delivered.⁴