Cambridgeshire Murders by Alison Bruce Page B

shown, and that if the murder had been planned by both parties then the plan must have existed since the previous year when Lucas had acquired the arsenic. If this had been the case, it was inconceivable that the defendants would have been so careless in their conversations. Mr Couch asked the jury to consider whether Susan Lucas had died through self-inflicted poisoning, either deliberately or accidentally.
    The jury, however, retired for only a short time before returning a guilty verdict. Mr Justice Wightman then passed the death sentence upon both the prisoners. Lucas’s response was to call out, ‘I am not guilty. Good bye, ladies and gentlemen. I am innocent.’
    The next edition of the Cambridge Chronicle published a report that Mary Reeder had confessed:
    All doubt as to the propriety of the verdict, and the guilt of the two wretched prisoners now awaiting execution in Cambridge county gaol upon this charge, has been set at rest by the confession of the female prisoner, Mary Reeder. Immediately after leaving the dock, this criminal became apparently resigned and penitent, and on one or two occasions gave vent to observations indicative of a desire to unburthen her mind of the load which oppressed it.
    On Tuesday evening she expressed a wish to see her father and he accordingly attended on Wednesday morning, and was admitted to an interview with her in the presence of the reverend chaplain and the matron of the gaol. The presence of the chaplain appeared to act somewhat as a restraint upon her freedom of speech, so he withdrew, leaving her alone with her father and the matron; and then she acknowledged to her father that it was her hand that put the poison in her sister’s mess, and attributed the desire to be rid of her to an illicit connection that existed between herself and the male prisoner, Lucas.
    This connection, she said, had not taken place since Christmas last, and she most strenuously denied that she was in the family way. She has not in terms accused her partner in crime of inciting her to the commission of the deed, but she has done so by implication. She is now quite resigned to the fate that awaits her, and appears fully cognisant of the enormity of her offence.
    She states that she made up her mind to commit the crime only a few minutes before its execution, and that she has not the slightest wish to live. She has paid marked attention to her religious duties. Yesterday, Good Friday, she was present in chapel in the morning, but fainted during the service and remained in her cell in the afternoon. She is constantly watched, a female attendant being with her by day and two throughout the night.
    While awaiting execution she made several statements, variously saying that she alone had poisoned her sister then saying that she had committed the crime on Lucas’s instruction. She claimed to have asked Lucas, ‘Do you think there is any harm, Elias, in poisoning for love, as Catherine Foster 4 did?’ to which he replied, ‘No.’ She claimed she had asked him what quantity of arsenic was needed to poison a person and he had replied, ‘as much as will lie on a shilling.’
    Three days before the execution Mary Reeder sent for the chaplain and in the presence of visiting justices stated that the murder was solely her doing and that Lucas had no involvement in the crime. This statement was passed to the Secretary of State, Sir George Grey, who had also received several petitions asking for the capital sentence to be lifted. A reply eventually came on the morning of the execution: a letter arrived at the gaol to say ‘that it was the opinion of the learned judge who tried the case, that both the prisoners were equally guilty, and therefore the law must take its course’.
    When Lucas was informed that there would be no reprieve he replied, ‘I am glad of it. I am quite prepared to die. I would not now live for £10,000. I know I shall go to Heaven if I die