[Sidenote: Mr. Baron Legge]

MR. BARON LEGGE[13]--Gentlemen of the jury, Mary Blandy, the prisoner
at the bar, stands indicted before you for the murder of Francis
Blandy, her late father, by mixing poison in tea and water gruel,
which she had prepared for him, to which she has pleaded that she is
not guilty.

In the first place, gentlemen, I would take notice to you of a very
improper and a very scandalous behaviour towards the prisoner by
certain people who have taken upon themselves very unjustifiably to
publish in print what they call depositions, taken before the coroner,
in relation to this very affair which is now brought before you to
determine. I hope you have not seen them; but if you have, I must tell
you, as you are men of sense and probity, that you must divest
yourselves of every prejudice that can arise from thence and attend
merely to the evidence that has now been given before you in Court,
which I shall endeavour to repeat to you as exactly as I am able after
so great a length of examination.

In support of the indictment, the counsel for the Crown have called a
great number of witnesses. In order to establish, in the first place,
the fact that Mr. Blandy died of poison, they begin with Dr.
Addington, who tells you that he did attend Mr. Blandy in his last
illness; that he was first called in upon Saturday evening, the 10th
of August last; that the deceased complained that after drinking some
water gruel on Monday night, the 5th of August, he perceived a
grittiness in his mouth, attended with a pricking-burning, especially
about his tongue and throat; that he had a pricking and burning in his
stomach, accompanied with sickness; a pricking and griping in his
bowels; but that afterwards he purged and vomited a good deal, which
had lessened those symptoms he had complained of; that on Tuesday
night, the 6th of August, he took more gruel, and had immediately a
return of the same symptoms, but more aggravated; that he had besides
hiccups, cold sweats, great anxieties, prickings in every external as
well as internal part of his body, which he compared to so many
needles darting at the same time into all parts of him; but the doctor
tells you at the time he saw him he said he was easy, except in his
mouth, his nose, lips, eyes, and fundament, and some transient
pinchings in his bowels, which the doctor then imputed to the purgings
and vomitings, for he had had some bloody stools; that he imputed the