The Crimes of Charlotte Bronte (40 page)

In the event he found that no problem existed. Martha had faced the reality that Nicholls would not marry her voluntarily – despite anything which he may have said – and she had no wish to force him and thus risk the fate which had befallen Charlotte. In any case she was desperately unhappy and homesick in what was to her a totally alien environment, and longed to be back with her own kind. As she says, within a relatively short time, she and Nicholls came to an amicable agreement about money and she summoned up the courage to return to Haworth and her family.

For Nicholls it was the ideal solution. He was delighted, and once she was safely out of the way he wasted no time at all in fulfilling another of his long-held ambitions. He courted and married Mary Bell, one of those ‘strikingly pretty' cousins of his upon whom Charlotte had remarked during their honeymoon.

For the rest of his life Nicholls lived in quiet obscurity, and continued to have a horror of publicity. The only times he broke his silence was to write a few letters to England about his first wife.

However, readers will not be surprised to have learned from Martha that he
did
keep up a correspondence with her. Nor will they have been totally unprepared for the news that she visited Nicholls and his wife regularly, and for quite long periods, although we are not told how Mary felt about that!

I am surprised that nobody else appears to have commented upon this incongruity. Nicholls did not write regularly to anyone else, why then to a former servant? He did not receive regular visits from anyone else, why then from Martha – and who financed her trips? They, of course, knew the answers to those questions and now, thanks to Martha, so do we.

As one would expect, Ellen Nussey was one with whom he
did
sever all ties, but that did not bother her, especially as she also now had money on her mind. In the years after Charlotte's death, she ran hither and thither trying to capitalize upon her friendship with her erstwhile friend, and upon the letters which she had received from her.

She asked George Smith if he would publish Charlotte's letters but was told: ‘The right to print those letters (otherwise the copyright in those letters) belongs to Mr Nicholls, not to you. The letters themselves are your property and Mr Nicholls cannot claim them from you, but you cannot print them without his permission.' He went on to say that he did not think that such permission would be easy to obtain!

A month later Ellen wrote again: ‘I have some letters which most people in his (Mr Nicholls') place, would give almost a fortune to possess.' She continued: ‘If you think it right you can give him a hint that he has not all the power on his side . . .' However, George Smith was not in the blackmailing business and he would have none of it. In any case, he had done enough running around after Charlotte, and he was not going to make the same mistake with her friend. That apart, he had no wish to antagonize Nicholls as the latter possessed most of the Brontë papers, including manuscripts and letters, and if there was money to be made from them George Smith wanted to be the one making it.

At what, though, was Ellen hinting? Just what did ‘some letters' contain which was, apparently, so dangerous that it made her think that Nicholls would be prepared to pay ‘almost a fortune' to suppress them? It would have been most interesting to see how Nicholls would have reacted had Ellen's remarks been put to him, but Smith
would
not write and Ellen
did
not. Referring to Nicholls, she told Smith: ‘His notes to me became less and less civil in time till the time of Mr B's death when I ceased to write at all.'

Nicholls, of course, was blissfully unaware of all of this and carried on with his life as a farmer and country gentleman. Meanwhile, the manuscripts, books, letters and other documents which he had taken with him from the Parsonage lay undisturbed in cupboards in Hill House for over thirty years.

Upon the walls of the house were drawings by the three sisters, and the idealized portrait of Charlotte by George Richmond. However, what Nicholls treasured most was the famous profile portrait of Emily, which Branwell had painted when she was seventeen. Originally it had been part of a group painting of the three sisters, but Nicholls had mutilated the canvas, cutting out Charlotte and Anne. That action alone, I feel, speaks volumes for where his true feelings had lain.

Martha Brown died at Haworth on 19 January 1880. She was fifty-two, and was buried in Haworth churchyard, near Tabitha Aykroyd.

What may be considered surprising to some, who do not know her story and regard her simply as a former servant, is that she left a Will. It is dated 13 April 1875, and was written on one of her visits to Nicholls' home at Hill House, and witnessed by him and his wife. In it she left the sum of £20 to her niece Ellen Binns, of Saltaire, Yorkshire, and bequeathed the residue of her estate to be divided equally between her five sisters – Ann, Eliza, Tabitha, Mary and Hannah – or their progeny. Her executors were her brothers-in-law Benjamin Binns, of Saltaire, and Robert Ratcliffe, of Haworth. Probate was granted, in London, on 5 February 1880, only seventeen days after she died.

In the period following her return from Ireland, Martha sold a few of the hundreds of articles which she had acquired, one way and another, from the Parsonage over the years. However, the bulk of the inscribed copies of Brontë novels, paintings, drawings, letters and clothes went to her sisters, who often sold items to collectors.

With Martha's death Nicholls' last link with the Parsonage was severed, and after he received news of the death of his former lover he no doubt sat on many a night reliving the events since 1845. I can picture him smiling as he remembered all that had happened. He had experienced some tight scrapes, and there had been worrying times, but he had enjoyed himself along the way. All in all, he had had a good life.

Arthur Bell Nicholls lived until he was nearly eighty-eight years of age, and died peacefully on 3 December 1906.

The Brontë saga had ended.

‘And it was in my mouth sweet as honey: and as soon as I had eaten it, my belly was bitter.'

Revelation 10:10

W
hile considering, and writing, this book, I often wondered what poison – or poisons – Nicholls used.

In Branwell's case, the assumption that it was laudanum came easily to mind, but what of the others?

Time and time again, I was struck by the similarities between the Brontë deaths and those in the ‘George Chapman' case. For those unfamiliar with the case, let me state the bare facts.

Severin Klosowski, alias George Chapman – still regarded by many as having been ‘Jack the Ripper' – was a London publican who, between 1897 and 1902, murdered three women by poisoning them.

The first was a Mrs Mary Isabella Spink. She was separated from her husband, and she and Chapman, as I shall call him from now on, lived together as man and wife. If one excepts the after-effects of her frequent drinking bouts, Mrs Spink had enjoyed good health all her life until Chapman obtained the lease of the Prince of Wales Tavern, in Bartholomew Square, off London's City Road. After only a few months there her health broke down completely, and she began to suffer from abdominal pains and severe vomiting. A Dr Rogers was called in, but she became weaker and died on Christmas Day, 1897.

Dr Rogers certified the cause of death as ‘Phthisis' – shades of Charlotte!

He was to say later that he was influenced by Mrs Spink's emaciated state, but he had made no attempt to ascertain what had
caused
the wasting.

The second victim was Elizabeth Taylor, who also purported to be Chapman's wife. An enthusiastic cyclist, she was in good health but, after a time, she too became thinner and began to waste away. Although she was attended by several doctors, none could understand her symptoms. In the main she was under the care of a Dr Stoker, who was so pleased when his patient became a little better that he discharged the nurse. Only two days later he was surprised to find that Elizabeth was dying.

She expired on 13 February 1901, aged thirty-six. Dr Stoker stated that her death had resulted from ‘exhaustion from vomiting and diarrhoea', but he did not know what had
caused
the symptoms. As with Mrs Spink, no postmortem examination was made.

This case, also, has similarities with Charlotte's. Nicholls told Ellen Nussey that ‘Charlotte died last night from exhaustion', and it will be remembered that she strained ‘until what I vomit is mixed with blood'.

Chapman's third victim was Maud Marsh. By then he was the lessee of the Monument Tavern, Union Street, Borough, and Maud answered his advertisement for a barmaid. Soon they too were living as man and wife.

It was not long after that she began to suffer excessively from sickness, vomiting, diarrhoea, abdominal pains and general distress. She became so ill that she was admitted to the nearby Guy's Hospital, where she was seen by several doctors. However, all were puzzled by her illness, and all diagnosed differently. Incipient cancer, internal rheumatism, and acute dyspepsia (the last reminiscent of Mr Brontë) were all thought to be possible causes. Nevertheless, whatever treatment she received appeared to have been efficacious, and she was sent home. Only later was it realized that the improvement was due solely to her having been out of Chapman's clutches.

The symptoms recurred shortly after her return to the Monument Tavern, but Chapman did not want her to go back to Guy's and so our old friend Dr Stoker was called in. He seems to have shown no surprise that Chapman had acquired another ‘wife' so soon, nor that she was displaying the same symptoms as the one who had died the year before.

Chapman then left the Monument and took the lease of the Crown, also in Union Street. Dr Stoker continued to visit, but his treatment was ineffective and the patient failed rapidly until she was able to swallow only liquids.

On one occasion Chapman prepared a brandy and soda for Maud, but she was very weak and left most of it. Both her mother and the nurse drank a little, and soon they too were stricken with vomiting and diarrhoea – but still nobody, not even the doctor, suspected foul play.

Only later did the victim's parents become suspicious, and they consulted their own general practitioner, a Dr Grapel. At first he thought that Maud was suffering from ptomaine poisoning. However, on his way home, he decided that arsenic was involved, but only
after
he had learned of the patient's death did he telegraph Dr Stoker and urge him to look for that poison. What had happened was that Chapman had taken fright after the visit of Dr Grapel, who seemed to be on the right lines about the mysterious illness. He had therefore administered a much stronger dose, which caused Maud's sudden demise on 22 October 1902.

Had it not been for Dr Grapel's telegram, I am sure that the good Dr Stoker would have certified ‘Phthisis', or ‘Marasmus', or ‘Exhaustion' – or perhaps even ‘Spots before the Eyes' – as the cause of death. As it was, even he was placed on enquiry. He refused to sign a death certificate, and held an unofficial postmortem examination. Initially nothing was revealed to account for the unexplained death, but analysis of some of the internal organs disclosed the presence of arsenic.

Then an official postmortem was carried out. Once again some organs were analysed, but this time large quantities of antimony were found. Arsenic
was
present, but only as an impurity in the antimony.

As a result, the bodies of Spink and Taylor were exhumed. Spink's body – coincidentally considering the other suspicions about Chapman – was exhumed from a grave in the Roman Catholic cemetery at Leytonstone where, under the name ‘Mary Chapman', she had been buried near the remains of one of ‘Jack the Ripper's' victims, Mary Kelly.

Large quantities of antimony were discovered in the corpses of both of Chapman's ‘wives', but what surprised everybody was the remarkable state of preservation of the bodies which the poison had induced.

Had it not been for Maud Marsh's parents, Chapman would have escaped detection just as Nicholls did. Certainly none of the many doctors who attended Chapman's three victims was of any help to them. What chance, therefore, did the Brontës have?

Chapman was executed on 7 April 1903. Nicholls did not die until more than three years later, and I like to think that he read the reports of Chapman's trial. If he did, he no doubt felt a great deal of sympathy for him: ‘There, but for the Grace of God . . .'!

Antimony was a poison employed by many other murderers, including William Palmer, the infamous Rugeley poisoner who was hanged in 1856. That was only a year after Charlotte died, and no doubt gave Nicholls a few nervous twitches!

It was also much favoured by homicidal doctors. In 1865, and only four years after Mr Brontë had gone to meet his Maker, Dr Edward William Pritchard was hanged for the murder of his wife, his mother-in-law, and possibly a maidservant, with the use of antimony. His victims displayed the same symptoms as had Chapman's, and the Brontë children had some symptoms in common with all of them.

I was particularly interested to read that Maud Marsh had complained that her mouth and throat ‘burned'. The nurse said that the doctor examined Maud's throat ‘and said it was raw'. That put me in mind of the time, in 1852, when Charlotte had complained about
her
mouth and tongue, and when Dr Ruddock said, of the pills which he had prescribed, that ‘he never in his whole practice knew the same effect produced by the same dose on man – woman – or child'.
He
never bothered to ascertain the reason either.

Another physician, Dr Targett, who had Maud Marsh under observation at Guy's Hospital for over a fortnight, had various ideas about what ailed her. In the reports on his evidence, he is quoted as saying that he ‘thought she was suffering from peritonitis. Before she left the hospital he thought she might be suffering from
tuberculosis.
(My italics.) The possibility of any irritant poison never presented itself to his mind.' In fact, he had no idea what the trouble was, nor did any of the doctors involved in all the Brontë deaths.