Madeleine Smith
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- For the English actress see Madeline Smith
Madeleine Smith was a nineteenth century Glasgow socialite who was the defendant in sensational murder trial in Scotland in the summer of 1857. Although she is widely regarded as a convicted murderess, in fact, the verdict given at her trial was not proven.
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[edit] Background
Madeleine was the first child of an upper-class couple living in Glasgow. She broke the strict Victorian conventions of the time when, as a young woman in the spring of 1855, she began a secret love affair with Emile L'Angelier, a foreign-born apprentice nurseryman.
The two met late at night at Madeleine’s bedroom window and also carried on a voluminous correspondence. During one of their infrequent meetings alone, she lost her virginity to Emile.
Madeleine’s parents, not knowing that Madeleine was carrying on an affair with Emile (whom she had promised to marry), found a suitable fiancé for her within the Glasgow upper-class.
Madeleine attempted to break her connection with Emile and, in February of 1857, asked him to return the letters she had written to him. Instead, Emile threatened to use those letters to expose her and force her to marry him.
Early in the morning of March 23, 1857, Emile died from arsenic poisoning. After Madeleine’s numerous letters were found in his lodging house, she was arrested for murder.
[edit] The trial
Although the circumstantial evidence pointed towards her guilt (Madeleine had made purchases of arsenic in the weeks leading up to Emile’s death, Madeleine had a clear motive, etc.), the jury in her trial freed her by way of the Scottish verdict Not Proven, which essentially said that they did not believe she was innocent of the charge, but the Prosecution had failed to make a strong enough case against her.
The notoriety of the crime and trial were scandalous enough that Madeleine left Scotland, eventually marrying and raising a family in London.
[edit] Later life
At the turn of the 20th century, she and her husband separated and the final years of Madeleine are lost to view. A common (but most likely erroneous) theory that she died in New York City in 1928 under another name is strongly contradicted by that woman’s death certificate, which states that she was 29 years younger than Madeleine would have been at the time. Other questionable newspaper stories have Madeleine living and/or dying at various times in places such as New Zealand and New Orleans.
Somewhat dubious lore continues to state, however, that she was in New York in 1927, under the name of Lena Wardle Sheehy, when her true identity was discovered. She was then approached by a film company who wished her to appear in a film about her life, but when she refused she found herself outed to the press. She was then questioned by the authorities about her connections with Socialism in the UK and her ability to pay her own way in her old age. Madeleine supposedly asserted that she would not become a drain on the funds of the American people, having sufficient capital of her own.
It is true that the death certificate for Lena Wardle Sheehy records her age as 64, whereas Madeleine Smith would have been in her early 90s in 1927. But it is possible that this is a mistake. Madeleine is reputed to have looked youthful even in old age, and it has been suggested that she was somewhat mendacious with regard to her real date of birth. Neither of her parents are named on the death certificate and her birthplace is recorded as England, which could lend weight to the theory that Lena Wardle Sheehy and Madeleine Smith were two different people. Or it could be indicative of a death certificate filled out with haste and little care -- although this is made less likely considering that the doctor who filled out the death certificate had "attended" to Mrs. Sheehy for some time prior to her death, and would most likely be able to tell the difference between a 64-year-old patient and a patient in her 90s.
For more information, see Douglas MacGowan's "Murder in Victorian Scotland", Nigel Morland's "That Nice Miss Smith", Peter Hunt's "The Madeleine Smith Affair" or the Notable British Trials series, edited by Tennyson Jesse.
[edit] Later theories
As in the case of Lizzie Borden, scholars and amateur criminologists have spent decades going over the minutiae of the case and trying to decide “did she or didn’t she?”
Most modern scholars of the case believe that Madeleine committed the crime and the only thing that saved her from the noose was the fact that no eyewitness could prove that Madeleine and Emile had met in the weeks before his death.
There are a few, however, who believe that Emile killed himself in an attempt to frame Madeleine as an act of revenge. There is little to no evidence for this, however, and some "proof" brought forward by proponents of this theory is in direct contradiction to the concrete evidence that is available.
[edit] Dramatisations
Madeleine's story was the basis for several plays and the 1950 film Madeleine directed by David Lean.
