The Pimlico Poisoning!

17 April 1886

Apr 17, 2026

It’s 140 years to the day since the not guilty verdict on Adelaide Bartlett, accused of poisoning the husband who was 11 years older than her, possibly in order to take up with a Wesleyan minister who had bought the poison, and who – they claimed – had the dead husband’s blessing to woo Adelaide.

Image from one of those dodgy Victorian-era sensationalist pamphlets, probably the Illustrated Police News, showing various scenes in the Pimlico Poisoning Case, such as a vicar reading Ovid to a young woman, said women asking if there must be an inquest, and the chemist where her alleged lover bought the liquid chloroform

Adélaïde Blanche de la Tremoille was born in Orléans in 1855 (possibly the illegitimate daughter of a count and an English woman), moved to Kingston to live with an aunt, and met Edwin Bartlett, who owned grocery stores and had some cash. Her parents approved, but it was an odd marriage.

As soon as they wed, in 1875, Edwin sent her to a boarding school in Stoke Newington to “rectify gaps in her formal education” according to the British Medical Journal, and then to a finishing school in Belgium. She didn’t live with Edwin (over a shop in Herne Hill) until 1878.

Unfortunately, Edwin’s father, who didn’t like her, lost his wife and moved in, too. He accused Adelaide of having an affair with Edwin’s younger brother Frederick, and Edwin made his father retract the allegations in front of a solicitor.

In 1883, they moved to a flat over another shop in East Dulwich, and in 1885 to Merton Abbey, near Wimbledon, “where they met a 27 year old Wesleyan minister, George Dyson, with whom they became friendly”

Strangely enough, Edwin encouraged an affectionate relationship between the clergyman and his wife and was happy to see them kiss in his presence, although it is doubtful if the relationship between the Reverend Dyson and Adelaide ever passed beyond the bounds of mutual platonic affection. Edwin made a new will in which he left his estate to Adelaide without any stipulation that she should not remarry. Edwin made it clear that if he died he expected the pastor to became Adelaide’s husband.

Mind you, according to Adelaide, the Bartletts only had sex once – in order to conceive a child, which was stillborn – although ‘contraceptives’ were found in Edwin’s clothes, and the midwife said that the Bartletts shared a bed, and thought it was “their one act of unprotected intercourse”.

Anyway, in 1885, they were sleeping separately, but in the same room – “the drawing room; she on a couch, he on a folding bed”. This was supposedly because Edwin had terrible breath due to horribly decaying teeth (and the fact that he took mercury because he thought he had syphilis).

All in all, it’s not surprising that Edwin suffered from ‘nerves’ and – according to Colin Wilson in Unsolved Murders and Mysteries – had had a breakdown (which his father said was brought on by “laying a floor”), and that Dyson thought Edwin “exceedingly odd”.

For example, he was a devotee of a work called Esoteric Anthropology by Thomas Low Nichols, whose long sub-title declared it to be a ‘confidential’ treatise on the passionate attractions and perversions of the most intimate relations between men and women. It was not, as the judge later assumed, disguised pornography, but an early ‘women’s lib’ discourse on the unfairness of using women as sexual objects. It recommended birth control and suggested that sexual intercourse should only be practised for the purpose of begetting children. Another of Edwin’s rather peculiar beliefs was that men should have two wives, one for ‘use’ and one for intellectual companionship. He was also, like many Victorians, interested in hypnotism, and in the doctrines of Anton Mesmer, according to which human beings possess a ‘vital magnetic fluid’ that can be passed from one to another.

Later in 1885, they moved to Pimlico, and Edwin bought Dyson a season ticket so he could come and visit and ‘tutor’ Adelaide. A maid (according to the BMJ again)

several times came upon Dyson and Adelaide in positions unusual for a tutor and pupil, once surprising them on the floor together.

Edwin’s health still wasn’t good, although a dentist had helped with his teeth, and a doctor diagnosed diarrhoea and gastritis. Adelaide asked for a second opinion because

If Mr Bartlett does not get better soon his friends and relations will accuse me of poisoning him.

(You may wish to imagine your author looking at camera at this point.)

C. J. S. Thompson’s Poisons and Poisoners of 1931 says Edwin’s mercury was “in some way ... being administered to him”, and that Edwin asked for the second opinion because he didn’t want suspicion to fall on his beloved Adelaide. Fuck knows.

Either way, on 27 December 1885 (or 20th; your guess is as good as mine) Adelaide asked Dyson to buy some chloroform. As the BMJ puts it: “A heavy colourless fluid with a sweet sickly smell, its vapour has been used as an anaesthetic because it is easily administered, is not inflammable, and acts quickly”.

Extract from C. J. S. Thompson’s ‘Poisons and Poisoners’: which she told him she had previously used on her husband for some internal ailment of long standing, and that this internal affection had upon previous occasions given him paroxysms. She further expressed a belief that he might die suddenly in one of these attacks. Dyson seems to have yielded to her request without question and obtained three different lots of chloroform, in all six ounces, from various chemists, giving the reason that he required it for taking out grease spots. He then placed it all together in one bottle. Two days after he met Mrs. Bartlett on the Embankment and handed her the chloroform.

On 31st, “he was apparently in good health”, until 4am when he wasn’t. The first person in the room was the landlord, who “noticed a peculiar smell that reminded him of chloric ether”, and the post mortem said cause of death was “eleven and a quarter grains of pure chloroform” in his stomach.

An inquest led by Athelstan Braxton Hicks (no, really – the coroner son of obstetrician John Braxton Hicks, who gave his name to the contractions, fact fans) said she done him in. Well... ‘wilful murder’ by Adelaide Bartlett, with George Dyson an accessory before the fact, to use their exact terms. Both were arrested.

At the trial, the first thing that happened was the prosecution withdrew their case against Dyson, because they wanted him to be a witness but what he told the court – Adelaide devotedly looked after Edwin, who thought he was terminally ill – only helped the defence.

The prosecution had already said there were only three possibilities: Suicide (“highly improbable”), accident (“practically impossible because the pain that the poison would cause would immediately alert the patient”) and “deliberate administration by another person”. They argued that she’d got him to inhale chloroform from a hanky, and then poured the rest down his throat while he was asleep, but the senior scientific analyst to the Home Office said some would end up in his windpipe that way, and none had been found there.

Another doctor said if she’d poured it down him, he would have vomited, because he’d had a rich meal not long before. The defence couldn’t call Adelaide, because giving sworn evidence on one’s own behalf wasn’t allowed until the Civil Evidence Act of 1898. They also cunningly didn’t call anyone else, preventing the prosecution from hostile questioning of defence witnesses. Instead, barrister Edward Clarke gave a six-hour speech saying Edwin was deeply weird and wanted a platonic relationship with this attractive young woman, and had encouraged her to get it on with Dyson. Then, one day he suddenly decided he fancied a bit of the old how’s-yer-father.

Adelaide felt this was wrong, since she now regarded herself as affianced to Dyson. So she asked Dyson to get her chloroform, so she might wave it in his face if he made sexual demands. However, she had been unable to go through with it. She had never been able to keep a secret from Edwin, and on that last evening of his life, had confessed her intention and showed him the bottle of chloroform.

I think we can all agree that the tragedy of Adelaide and Edwin is that they didn’t live in the era of Viz Comic, when the small ads would have helped them.

An advert from Viz illustrated with a large picture of a teaspoon, plus the words “Ladies! Nip Tumescence in the Bud...with the SEXUAL TEMPERANCE SPOON. Guaranteed to soften even the most optimistic ardour! SCHOOL nurses have known for centuries that a sharp blow from a cold spoon is the best way to tame an unwelcome erection. Now at last, these spoons are available to the public. If you finished with all that non-sense twenty years ago, but it still raises its ugly head, then this spoon is for YOU! ONE WHACK AND IT’S ON THE SLACK! Stop it before he starts! Made in Sheffield from finest quality stainless steel, the Sexual Temperance Spoon is kept nice and cold in its own miniature chilling cabinet. Measuring only 6ins x 6ins x 10ins, the cabinet fits easily on the bed side table, ready for any nocturnal emergency. “My hubby got ideas one night after watching ‘Carry On Camping. A quick flick with the Temperance Spoon sent him scampering to the spare room with his tail between his legs. Thanks!” Mrs. R “It’s a SPOON!” Barnsley Mrs. B Essex It’s the only spoon that STOPS stirring! only £24.99 from all good shops Please note: Extremely turgid erections may require more than one whack on the lid. “Down, Boy’ Chastity Products. Unit 6. Fulchester Industrial Estate. Leeds

Anyway, while Clarke was less successful when representing Oscar Wilde a few years later, this time, the jury came back and said

Although we think grave suspicion is attached to the prisoner, we do not think there is sufficient evidence to show how or by whom the chloroform was administered.

Surgeon Sir James Paget famously joked “Now that she has been acquitted for murder and cannot be tried again, she should tell us in the interest of science how she did it!” Sadly, she disappeared from the public record, and no one knows whether she and Dyson married or never saw each other again.

One doctor thought that, because had Adelaide confessed she was planning to chloroform him because of his saucy urges, Edwin might have taken the chloroform to make himself ill (and her feel guilty), but accidentally took too much. Another theory is he took it because he thought it was medicine.

The BMJ points out that if his mouth was inflamed after all the dentistry, that “may have delayed the sensations of burning pain until it was too late and he had swallowed the poison” – and she said she poured brandy down his throat to revive him, but it may have been to disguise the smell of chloroform.

Maybe she did it, or maybe he did. Basically, no one has a bleedin’ clue – and in Poirot novel The Clocks in 1963, Agatha Christie was still referring to the Pimlico Poisoning as the kind of ‘old murder’ which the retired Belgian enjoyed reading about and trying to figure out.

Odd This Day

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