Husbands, wives, and lawyers: Gender roles and professional representation in Trollope and the Adelaide Bartlett case

An autopsy clearly established that Edwin Bartlett died from ingesting chloroform sometime between midnight and two a.m., but how the chloroform got in his stomach remained to be answered. Several witnesses testified to the fact that Adelaide had chloroform in her possession and had asked questions about its effects. Dr. Leach asked her how she had intended to use the chloroform, and she told him it was to subdue her husband's sexual urges. According to Adelaide Bartlett, she and her husband did not have sexual intercourse. On one occasion only, after she begged for a child, did they engage in sex. In 1881, she gave birth to a stillborn child after a long and painful labor. Mrs. Bartlett claimed that after subsequently deciding never to have children, she and her husband maintained pleasant but platonic relations. Dr. Leach further recounted his conversation with Mrs. Bartlett, saying that she told him her husband "manifested some desire to renew sexual intercourse with her; that she did not desire this .... She considered that she had been made over in the future to Dyson." She planned to wave the chloroform under his nose, "lulling him into a kind of a stupor, and so prevent him giving effect to his sexual passion. That is the story she tells" (Bart 88).17 Here, as we saw earlier, this is the story that Dr. Leach tells the court, serving again as an authoritative mouth piece for the defendant.

Justice Wills then summed up.18 He spent considerable time dwelling on a book found in the Bartlett home that discussed birth control and suggesting its dangerous effects on women, referring to it as "reading which helped to unsex them" (Times 17 April 1886).19 He further stated that the jury ought to pity a woman whose husband "could throw such literature her way, and encourage her to read it ... One has learned to-day what is the natural and to be expected consequence of indulgence in literature of that kind." (Bart 372). Clearly, Judge Wills was referring to the belief that books and the information in them were potentially dangerous to the minds of women readers and that husbands ought to protect wives from such dangers. Mr. Bartlett failed decidedly in his duty to protect his wife from corrupting literature.20 Finally, the Judge pointed out that the "French Letters" (condoms) found in Mr. Bartlett's pocket contradicted the defendant's story of a platonic relationship, and thus her reasons for wanting to obtain chloroform. Dropping even the appearance of objectivity, the judge concluded:

When a young wife and a younger male friend get discussing, in or out of the presence of the husband, the possibilities of his decease within measurable time and of the friend succeeding to the husband's place, according to all experience of human life, the life of the husband was one that an insurance office would not like to take. (Times 17 April 1886)

Justice Wills clearly leaned heavily towards prosecution, finding marriage with Dyson to be a convincing motive for murder. The jury returned to the courtroom after two hours of deliberation: