This distressing and sudden death changed
'matters, and gave a new and quite unexpected
significancy to that mysterious insurance
business. Eighteen thousand pounds now became
payable to the elegant, needy, and somewhat
desperate man; part of the money as executor
for Phoebe; two of the policies being assigned
to himself, with a secret understanding that they
were for the benefit of Madeleine.

Unchristian suspicions soon arose, degrading,
as Mr. Wainewright remarked, only to those
who entertained them. Exasperated by the loss
which, by the dear girl's distressing death, they
had incurred, all the insurance offices meanly and
criminally refused payment. The crisis came,
but Wainewright was too poor to stay and press
his legal claims, and therefore stealthily retired
to the friendly asylum of France, where
urbanity always reigns, and claret is delightfully
cheap; where the air is ever sunny, and
meat is lean, but not dear. He there resided,
gay as ever, for several years.

After many delays, occasioned chiefly by
proceedings in equity, the question of the validity of
the policies was tried in the Court of Exchequer,
before Lord Abinger, on the 29th of June, 1835,
in an action by Mr. Wainewright, as the executor
of Miss Abercrombie, on the Imperial policy of
three thousand pounds. Extraordinary as were
the circumstances under which the defence was
made, it rested, says Mr. Serjeant Talfourd, on
a narrow basis, on the mere allegation that
the insurance was not, as it professed to be, that
of Miss Abercrombie for her own benefit, but
the insurance of Mr. Wainewright, effected at
his cost, for some purpose of his own, and on the
falsehood of representations she had been induced
to make in reply to inquiries as to insurances in
other offices. The cause of her death, if the
insurance was really hers, was immaterial.

Lord Abinger, always wishing to look at the
pleasant side of things, refused to enter into the
cause of death, and intimated that the defence
had been injured by a darker suggestion.

Sir William Follett appeared for the plaintiff,
and the Attorney-General, Sir F. Pollock, and
Mr. Thesiger for the defendant. The real
plaintiff was not Mr. Wainewright, but Mr.
Wheatley, a respectable bookseller, who had
married the sister of the deceased. The jury,
partaking of the judge's disinclination to attribute
the most dreadful guilt to a plaintiff on a
nisi prius record, and, perhaps, scarcely
perceiving how they could discover for the
imputed fraud an intelligible motive without it,
were unable to agree, and were discharged
without giving a verdict. It was clear to every
one there had been foul play. The cause was
tried again, before the same judge, on the 3rd
of December following, when the counsel for
the defence, following the obvious inclination of
the bench, avoided the fearful charge, and
obtained a verdict for the office without hesitation,
sanctioned by Lord Abinger's proffered
approval to the jury. In the mean time, says
Mr. Serjeant Talfourd, Mr. Wainewright, leaving
his wife and child in London, had acquired
the confidence and enjoyed the hospitality of
the members of an English family residing in
Boulogne. While he was thus associated, a
proposal was made to the Pelican office to
insure the life of his host for five thousand
pounds; which, as the medical inquiries were
satisfactorily answered, was accepted. The
office, however, received only one premium, for
the life survived the completion of the
insurance only a few months; falling after a very
short illness, and, singularly enough, with
symptoms not unlike those of Dr. Griffiths, Mrs.
Abercrombie, and poor Phoebe. The world is
full of coincidences.

And here we feel compelled to throw off our
mask, to turn suddenly on the delight of the
boudoirs and salons of May Fair, and, shaking
him by the throat, proclaim him as A
POISONER— one of the most cruel, subtle, and
successful secret murderers since the time of the
Borgias. It is now well keown that he wore a
ring in which he always carried strychnine,
crystals of the Indian nux vomica, half a grain
of which blown into the throat of a rabbit
kills it dead in two minutes; a poison almost
tasteless, difficult of discovery, and capable of
almost infinite dilution. On the night the
Norfolk gentleman in difficulties at Boulogne
died, Wainewright had insisted on making his
friend's coffee, and passed the poison into the
sugar. The poisoner had succeeded before this
in winning the affections of his friend's daughter,
and gaining a supreme influence in the house.

A friend of the writer's, at a visit to this Norfolk
gentleman's house in Caroline-place, Mecklenburgh-
square, London, long before his murder,
was arrested in mistake for Wainewright, who,
at that very time, was serenading with a
Spanish guitar in the garden of the square.
He was eventually seized opposite the house of
his friend Van Holst, a pupil of Fuseli's.

Waiuewright, obtaining the insurance, left
Boulogne, and became a needy wanderer in
France, but being brought under the notice
of the correctional police for passing under
a feigned name, was arrested. In his
possession was found the vegetable poison called
strychnine, a fact which, though unconnected
with any specific charge, increased his liability
to temporary restraint, and led to a six months'
incarceration in Paris. After his release he
ventured to revisit London, when, in June,
1837, soon after his arrival, he was met in the
street by Forester, the police-officer, who had
identified him in France, and was committed for
trial for forgery.

July 5, 1837 (seven years after the death of
Miss Abercrombie), Wainewright, then forty-
two years old, "a man of gentlemanly appearance,
wearing moustachios," was tried at the
Central Criminal Court for forging certain
powers of attorney to sell out two thousand two
hundred and fifty-nine pounds' worth of Bank
Stock, which had been settled on him and his
wife at their marriage. This was a capital
offence at that time, but the Bank not wishing
to shed blood, Wainewright at first declared