Poison Detection and the Victorian Imagination (review)

The ordinary reader's pulse is unlikely to be set racing by a history of the emergence of nineteenth-century toxicology, but in this slim, well- written, and well-researched study, Burney has produced a page-turner. He shrewdly hangs his account of the scientific detection of poisons on the infamous murder trial of William Palmer, thereby opening his study to a variety of fascinating topics that should interest many students of Victorian culture.

Building on his earlier work on the English inquest, Burney surveys the range of cultural preoccupations of the 1830s, 1840s and 1850s that framed the discussion of poisonings. He is particularly interested in the ways in which toxicologists sought to establish their professional credibility. Accordingly, he provides an insightful account of the scientific challenges that they faced. At the same time, Burney demonstrates that in courtrooms, scientific facts and legal fictions were not easily demarcated. Scientific tests were themselves theatrical.

In essence, this book is a chronicling of the attempts made to tame and discipline poisons. Those who made such efforts included both medical scientists, such as Robert Christison and Alfred Swaine Taylor, and novelists such as Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins. Inspired by Welsh's work on circumstantial evidence, Burney skillfully uses poison trials to recast our notions of Victorian discussions of proof and evidence.¹ Moreover, he traces the host of social anxieties that the public's discussion of poisons exposed. Such worries related to contemporary evidence of both brutishness—burial clubs and misogyny—and over- civilization—secrecy, gambling, and life insurance, to name only a few. Like many fine microhistories, Burney's engaging study reveals how, in the right hands, apparently arcane and unpromising material can be exploited to cast a fresh light on the past.

There is no shortage of studies of famous nineteenth-century murders, but this book is unique; it has no obvious competitors. As noted above, Burney's book is indebted to the earlier work of Welsh on circumstantial evidence, but Welsh is primarily interested in literature. Walkowitz and Hartman's investigation of murder stories deal largely with gender, highlighting the one key theme that Burney curiously slights.² His book jacket nevertheless boasts Dante Gabriel Rossetti's beautiful portrayal of Lucrezia Borgia.

This brief original study should appeal to students of history, history of medicine, history of science, law, English, and Victorian studies. It is well organized, clearly written, and jargon free.