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Emporia 82 Dr. John Filkins, formerly a doctor and presently a broker (he seemed surprised that the defense discovered he had once been a physician), said he saw James Walkup that saturday, August 15, and they had a conversation about his having been sick in Topeka. Walkup had supposedly gone to Filkins a couple of years before that and complained of vomiting, pains, and a burning in his throat. While he was relating these symptoms in that earlier visit, he was eating a can of cove oysters, whereupon he threw them up and was sick for an hour. Filkins was asked about the woman he treated for syphilis at Walkup’s request, and he admitted it “under protest.” He said Walkup was keeping the woman in a room over the doctor’s office. On cross-examination, Filkins admitted that Walkup had never said he was taking arsenic, nor did he think the man was suffering from poisoning when he saw him. He did not know the name of the woman he was asked to treat. After that, there were some witnesses as to Walkup’s feeling ill, or saying so, when he got off the train in emporia on his return from Topeka, and a doctor in Topeka who said that Walkup had consulted him—on Thursday, August 13—about his taking arsenic for syphilis for the past five or six years. A deposition from the druggist in Cairo—the one who had filled Walkup’s prescriptions on his trip back from New orleans—revealed that the drugs were not arsenic and were not for syphilis. (They were for “certain disorders ,” but it was not stated what these were.) sheriff Jefferson Wilhite had to take the stand that day and admit to a serious breach of duty. Colonel Feighan and isaac Lambert had told him to search the Walkup house for any evidence and turn it over to them. Wilhite now claimed he did not remember their telling him this. And he did find something: two bottles containing medicine, which he promptly turned over to . . . William scott, minnie’s defense attorney. even without having been specifically told to turn evidence over to the prosecution, common sense would seem to dictate that he do so. Certainly, no self-respecting law enforcement officer would turn it over to the defense. Yet, this is what sheriff Wilhite did, and both the Daily News and the Daily Republican— rivals in other respects—joined forces in encouraging emporia citizens not to reelect him. As it turned out, the bottles contained a prescription for a “common private disease” (the name of which is maddeningly omitted from records), but it was not syphilis. still, as the newspapers pointed out, the bottles Defending Minnie Walkup 83 were the kind of evidence that could have been used to avoid an expensive trial if they had contained arsenic (which they did not), which would have supported the theory that Walkup was taking the poison on his own. Mr. Jay’s Big Day A Dr. A. N. Connaway of Toledo, Kansas, both a doctor and a farmer, started out the third day of the defense. He said he had known James Walkup since 1871 and had a conversation with him in the fall of 1880 regarding his relations with women and how he “kept up.” Walkup said he had a preparation of arsenic that helped him “keep up.” But the defense had a problem with all these witnesses to Walkup’s arsenic use: Not one of them was from emporia. it is to be assumed that the lawyers and their detectives had searched the poison registers and interviewed Walkup’s local associates regarding arsenic use, all in vain— until William Jay came forward with his outlandish story. surely, he had heard scott and the others bemoaning the lack of an emporia witness and how essential it was to find one, so Jay found himself. on the stand that third day, minnie’s staunchest defender was energetic, feisty, contentious, ungrammatical, immensely entertaining, and almost certainly a perjurer. Asked what his business was, he spoke about the lumber and farming, but then said his “business” for the past two months had been “devoting [my time] to the cause of this innocent girl.” When the prosecution was successful in getting this remark stricken from the record, Jay was incensed. He supposed he was to tell the whole truth. “is part of that to be suppressed?” Jay’s story was that one day in July...

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