or six negroes belonging to other owners
were more or less directly implicated. Mark, the leader, was able to
read, and signed his examination, hereafter referred to, in a bold,
legible hand. He professed to have read the Bible through, in order to
find if, in any way, his master could be killed without inducing
guilt, and had come to the conclusion that according to Scripture no
sin would be committed if the act could be accomplished without
bloodshed. It seems, moreover, to have been commonly believed by the
negroes that a Mr. Salmon had been poisoned to death by one of his
slaves, without discovery of the crime. So, application was made by
Mark, first to Kerr, the servant of Dr. John Gibbons, and then to
Robin, the servant of Dr. Wm. Clarke, at the North End of Boston, for
poison from their masters' apothecary stores, which was to be
administered by the two women.

Essex, the servant of Thomas Powers, had also furnished Mark with a
quantity of "black lead" for the same purpose. This was,
unquestionably, not the harmless plumbago to which that name is now
usually given, but galena, or _plumbum nigrum_, a native sulphuret of
lead, probably used for a glaze by the potters of Charlestown.

Kerr declined to have any hand in the business; but Robin twice
obtained and delivered to Mark a quantity of arsenic, of which the
women, Phebe and Phillis, made a solution which they kept secreted in
a vial, and from time to time mixed with the water-gruel and sago
which they sometimes gave directly to their victim to eat, and at
other times prepared to be innocently administered to him by one of
his daughters. They also mixed with his food some of the "black lead,"
which Phillis seems to have thought was the efficient poison, though
it appeared from the testimony that he was killed by the arsenic.

The crime was promptly traced home to the conspirators; and on the
second day of July, the day after Captain Codman's death, a coroner's
jury found that he died from poison feloniously procured and
administered by Mark. Ten days later, Quaco,--the nominal husband of
Phebe, and one of the negroes implicated,--who was the servant of Mr.
James Dalton, of Boston, was examined before William Stoddard, a
justice of the peace, and on the same day Robin was arrested and
committed to jail. The examination of Quaco was followed by the
examination of Mark, and of Phillis, later in the month. These last
were taken before the Attorney-General and M