156

HOUSEHOLD WORDS.

[Conducted by

A sporting friend writes to us, that, having
shot away all his powder, the other day, he
had occasion to go into a rural grocer's shop
for more. While he was being served, there
came in a little girl, who ended a long order
for tea, sugar, soap, currants, red-herrings,
and flour, with the remarkable demand—
"and two ounces of arsenic." No comment
whatever was made by the shopkeeper; who
pulled a small blue paper of poison, out of its
proper compartment in a drawer, with the
same composure as he handed over the
packages of tea, sugar, currants, and flour.
The little girl jumbled them all into her
apron, and went her way. "Perhaps," re-
marked our friend, " some of those ingre-
dients are for a pudding."

' Loikely," answered the huxter, with a
strong Derbyshire accent.

"And should the blue paper burst, or a
little mistake be made by the cook, the whole
family will be poisoned."

"They should moind what they 're at."

This was the only life-preserver which
occurred to the chandler's mind—"They
should mind what they 're at! " His con-
science was not concerned in the transaction;
but if its dictates had been awakened, they
would have been perfectly satisfied by his
knowledge of the fact that his customers were
troubled with rats; and he enquired no fur-
ther. The sportsman mentioned the several
cases of poisoning which had recently occurred
in various parts of the country; some acci-
dental; some wilful; but the grocer could
get no further than—"They should moind
what they 're at."

It must occur, however, to everyone, that
while poisons are allowed to be sold as un-
restrictedly as bread, the public—especially
the humbler portion of it—even supposing
them to be " minding what they 're at " with
unceasing vigilance, are never wholly free
from the danger of having the doom to which
they sentence vermin, transferred to them-
selves, either by accident or by vicious
design.

In country places life's-bane is procurable
more easily than many of its necessaries.
The inscription over every chandler's door,
says that he must be " licensed " to sell tea,
coffee, tobacco, and snuff; but he may sell
arsenic without the smallest restriction. In
spring and summer seasons, tons and tons of
that deadly material pass over the counters of
general dealers in the agricultural districts,
to be used either to prevent smut in wheat,
to cure sheep of scabies, or to kill vermin.
Hence arsenic becomes as much a part of the
stores of a farmer's, shepherd's, or cottager's
cupboard, as his family's food. It is by no
means uncommon to see a provincial drug-
gist's apprentice " weighing up " two-ounce
packets of arsenic, and dispensing medicines
over the same counter—perhaps with the
same scales! When the innumerable hux-
ters are busy at the same work at one

end of a counter, their wives are often
serving out groceries to customers at the
other. In this way, it has been asserted
by medical practitioners, that minute doses
of poison get mixed with food or medicine
oftener than is imagined. The partakers
of such food fall ill, and the only pathology
they can arrive at is, that " they have eaten
something that has disagreed with them,"
though they never know what.

After the poison has left the shop, the risks
increase a hundred-fold. Take the cottar's
case. He lives in a small cottage; his
single cupboard (at once the receptacle of
food and physic) contains in a broken jug
at the top-shelf a packet of arsenic. The
label, if ever there was one, is torn away,
or, if there, unintelligible to the unlearned
cottar's family. This is the remains of the
arsenic he used in summer for his sheep,
or in spring to steep wheat-seed. It is put
away, unknown by his family and forgotten
by himself. His child some day falls ill; he
is at work; the wife "fancies she has some
cream of tartar somewhere, and that is good
for a fever." She goes to the fatal jug, deals
out the poison, and innocently kills her off-
spring. At the inquest a verdict of Accidental
Death is returned. This poor woman, through-
out her embittered life, is the victim to the
want of legislative enactments to prevent such
catastrophes. Her neighbours look on her
for a time with a strange mixture of pity and
superstitious undefined suspicion.

For the criminal, arsenic is the most deadly
of all drugs to their victim, while it is the
safest to themselves. Besides the numberless
feasible excuses they can frame for having it
in their possession, it can be administered
with the least fear of detection. Oxalic acid
disgusts the palate with a sweet acid taste;
and, to be murderously effectual, must be
administered in large quantities. Not only
the taste, but the colour and smell of laudanum
betray its secret at once. The favourite,
because most efficient, of the three poisons of
unscientific murderers—arsenic—is colourless,
flavourless, and inodorous. Hence, in all
recent cases of wilful poisoning, arsenic has
been the poisoner's drug; for he has art enough
to know, without reading blue-books, that the
chances are two to one in his favour.

While the legislature refrains from adminis-
tering some check to the sale of drugs de-
structive of life, in every other European
country, no person is allowed to sell poison
without a license and a guarantee that he
is fully alive to the precautions necessary, not
only to its sale, but to properly storing it. In,
however, imposing a necessary restriction in
this country, it must not be forgotten that,
legitimately employed, arsenic, in particular,
is a most useful drug, and the liberty of the
farmer and the manufacturer to obtain it
should not be shackled. To compel, there-
fore, an agriculturist to scour the country
to obtain a magistrate's or surgeon's signa-