An artist and etcher of Sheffield, named Thomas Skinner, aged
sixty-two, has been poisoned with arsenic, administered on December 6th in the stuffing of a fowl. Suspicion has fallen on his housekeeper—Felicia Dorothea Kate Dover, aged twenty-six—who on December 2nd purchased some arsenic, and who cooked Mr. Skinner's food. She had, moreover, previously tried to buy prussic acid, and had suc-
ceeded in buying opium. Some evidence was produced before the Coroner, showing that Miss Dover had said she was sick of the old man, that she received love- letters from a younger one, and that she was apprehensive that Mr. Skinner would reclaim some money lent to her mother, Mrs. Dover. It is alleged, however, by the mother, that Mr. Skinner himself directed Miss Dover to buy the arsenic, and to say that it was for artificial flowers, and that he took the packet from her•. The idea, apparently, is to plead that Mr. Skinner himself poisoned his own food, the poison being found in the dish, and not actually in the fowl. The Coroner's jury returned a verdict of wilful murder, and the accused is in custody.
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