History Scotland Magazine: Madeleine Smith . . . After the Trial

MADELEINE SMITH .... After the Trial

It is now over 150 years since one of the most fascinating and enigmatic cases in Scots law occurred, that of Madeleine Smith who was charged with the murder of her lover, Emile l,'Angelier, by arsenic poisoning. Her trial in the High Court of Justiciary in Edinburgh in 1857 has been one of the most discussed in the annals of crime. It even ousted the Indian Mutiny from the pages of The Scotsman and relegated that event to a few lines on the front page.

Every day during the nine-day trial a dense crowd assembled outside the courtroom in Parliament Square at a very early hour and by 10.00am every seat was occupied. Some seats were available by ticket only. Memories of the French Revolution were brought to life as women carried their sewing with them to the courtroom and stitched as they listened to the trial. Public opinion at the time was that if she had murdered Emile L'Angelier then he certainly deserved it and if she hadn't she should have. The jury of fifteen men cou1d not make up their minds and after half an hour they returned a verdict, on two of the three charges, of Not Proven, a verdict peculiar to Scots Law.

One author has said of Madeleine Smith that she came from obscurity and returned to obscurity; that is not true. Her father was a well-known and respected architect in Glasgow and her grandfather was David Hamilton, a very well known Scottish architect of the period. In an article in the Scottish Field (May 1968), which celebrated the 200th anniversary of his birth, it was stated that David Hamilton, the architect, gave style and dignity to Glasgow at a time when the city was just becoming conscious of its modern greatness.

Ironically in 1857 (the year of Madeleine's trial) a new concert hall was erected in Glasgow. Medallion heads of great figures in various artistic fields were included and amongst them was one of David Hamilton. It is recorded that he ran an old fashioned office-house and was a real father figure to his apprentices. As his future son-in-law was also an architect it is not difficult to accept that he too had been one of Hamilton's apprentices. Madeleine's parents were married in 1833 and she was born two years later, the first of five children.

After the trial Madeleine escaped to Rhuelyn, the country house (now named Invergare, built in 1855 by James Smith) outside Rhu, near Helensburgh where some of her assignations with Emile L'Angelier were held. I have long been interested in what happened after the trial and the connections she made with some famous people.

Madeleine did not come from obscurity and after the trial she managed to live an interesting and fulfilling life... certainly not obscure, but not as Madeleine Smith, as Lena Wardle. Lena was the name given her by her youngest sister, Janet, who had been her only family witness at the trial.

LENA WARDLE

Soon after the trial Madeleine went to live at a minister's house in Plymouth and then on to London while her family lived on in Scotland. They had to bear the brunt of all the whisperings and gossip. This took its toll, and her father eventually had to sell the house at Rhuelyn. The family moved to various other houses until Mr Smith's death in 1863. Madeleine's trial had cost 4000, not an inconsiderable sum in those days. Mr Smith did, however, see his daughter married on July 4, 1861 to George Wardle, James Smith supplying a very generous dowry, although he left her nothing when he died. Perhaps this was because she had married into the avant garde section of London Society, mixing with the young Pre-Raphaelite group, who were unconcerned about her history, maybe even a little titillated by it.

Lena's brother James also attended the wedding but no other member of the family. Lena and George set up house in Bloomsbury, near the British Museum. They became members of the young Pre-Raphaelite group and by 1871 George Wardle was manager of William Morris's business in Queen Square. Here he met members of the Pre-Raphaelite group such as Rossetti, Maddox Brown, Philip Webb (who had trained with Street the architects as had Morris) and a close friend of Morris's, Burne Jones, a great admirer of the Pre-Raphaelite school and a friend of Ruskin.

George Wardle was a talented young artist and designer, friend of Philip Webb who designed William Morris's Red House. In 1865-66 Morris commissioned George Wardle to study the painted screens and roofs of the medieval churches in Norfolk. Wardle did this enthusiastically, paying great attention to colour combinations and the stencilling techniques used during this period. On completion of this study Wardle was able to present drawings to Morris which were used in his designs. Later (about 1871) George Wardle became Morris's manager and as technical and processual experiments at Queen Square were not satisfactory on Georges suggestion Morris approached Thomas (later Sir Thomas) Wardle, an independent dyer who owned two silk dyeing factories on the banks of the River Churnet at Leek in Staffordshire. Morris visited Leek in February 1875 and he and Thomas Wardle began collaborating to perfect vegetable dying techniques. The dye vats at Wardle's Hencroft Works in Abbey Green Road, Leek, were used for large scale experiments with organic dyes on wild silk from India known as tussor. Thomas had undertaken a lot of research into this strong but coarse thread. Its colour - dark beige - lacked fashionable appeal and was not responsive to bleaching or dyeing but Wardle developed a method of dissolving the fibre's protective layer of gum to enable various shades of grey silk to be produced. Weak toned primary colours followed and by 1872 tussor could be effectively dyed to any shade required. Between 1875 and 1878 Thomas Wardle printed many of Morris' designs, which were to become famous. The earliest of the designs produced by Thomas Wardle were clearly influenced by experiments in wallpaper printing. Despite this fruitful start, by 1881 there was some friction between Morris and Thomas Wardle. The relationship, however, had been beneficial, for it was through their association that Morris enhanced his knowledge of silk dyeing.

William Morris himself liked to encourage women whom he knew, through his wife Jane, who were good embroiderers. He wanted them to become involved in producing his patterns in embroidery and he believed art and craft should be a part of living. His wife Jane Morris and her sister Elizabeth Burden were encouraged to compile a company of keen embroiderers. Lena Wardle was probably incorporated into this company as she was known to be a good seamstress. She was also a popular hostess and a good conversationalist given to forthright ideas, always well expressed. Her dinner parties were considered enjoyable and novel as she started a fashion of not using tablecloths on the surfaces of her polished tables.

Lena Wardle's life was becoming more interesting, although she was wise enough not to court publicity and never again used her given name Madeleine Smith. Her husband's involvement with William Morris as his manager and Morris's friendship with Burne-Jones, Maddox Brown and Rosetti and their pursuing of schemes to forward Morris's work with colours would mean that Lena would meet Burne Jones' wife, Georgiana, one of the famous Macdonald sisters.

Of these four sisters, two married famous painters and two were mothers of famous men - Rudyard Kipling and Stanley Baldwin. Georgiana, was nineteen when she married Edward Coley Burne-Jones (he was seven years her senior). They met through her brother, Harry, who was a student at Oxford studying Divinity, as was Burne-Jones at that time. However Burne- Jones decided that painting was his calling. Another wedding in 1866 was that of Edward Poynter to Agnes Macdonald. Poynter was an excellent draughtsman, landscape, painter and teacher and became an ARA in 1869. In 1876 he was elected a Royal Academician and finally was President of the Royal Academy from 1894 until 1905, when he was also knighted. Alice, the oldest sister, married John Kipling in 1865 when she was 28 and he a few weeks younger. They became engaged at Rudyard Lake, near Leek, hence the name of their famous son, Rudyard. Finally, Louisa married Alfred Baldwin in 1866, when she was 21 years old. Alfred Baldwin did not go to University, as being the twelfth child there was no money to spare, instead he started work with other relatives in the family ironworks and dedicated his life to public service, eventually becoming an MP. This obviously inspired their son Stanley, who became Prime Minister of Britain in 1923.

This was the atmosphere into which Lena Wardle was admitted and no doubt pursued her ability to produce pleasing water-colours, with some success. Her former lover L'Angelier had told her she had a talent for painting in water-colour.

During this period George and Lena had two children, Tom and Kitten, and the Wardles appear to have settled down to a comfortable respectability. As she was interested in contemporary problems Lena became involved with the Socialist Party to which Morris himself was connected, but, although she was sympathetic she had no intention of getting implicated in their actions. In 1889 George Wardle resigned from Wm Morris & Co. All was not well with George and Lena; they were incompatible and separated. George left suddenly for Italy while Lena stayed in London, but her income became meagre so she settled in Leek with the help of her husband's relative, Thomas, now Sir Thomas Wardle and a silk millionaire. On top of this trauma came the reappearance of her past life. In 1890 a clerk in the Justiciary Office in Edinburgh revived interest in Lena's ordeal from the past. He was prosecuted for stealing some of her letters and selling them, which, for a short time, placed her back in the limelight again.

AMERICA

Lenas avant garde lifestyle and social circle in the 1870s and 1880s had a profound impact on her family life. Her daughter, Kitten, favoured the Women's Liberation Movement, did not believe in marriage and shocked people by smoking in public. Tom, Lena's son, was more conventional, but he departed for a new life in America. At the age of 70, Lena herself decided to settle in America to be beside Tom and his family. Throughout this period of upheaval, she was still formally married to George Wardle, and it was only in 1910 that he died in a Plymouth nursing home. Within four years, she married a much younger American by name of Sheehy, and this gave her United States' citizenship. Sheehy was said to resemble Walter Minnoch, her one time fiance. She lived in New York as Lena Wardle Sheehy until her husbands death in 1926. About this time there were some reports of her being financially unsound and an article in the New York Sunday Chronicle in April 1927 reported her as saying that return to Scotland would be unbearable because of unhappy memories.

Lena died on 12 April, 1928, aged ninety-three. She was buried at Mount Hope Cemetery, Westchester County, and the inscription reads Lena Sheehy plus the date. Thus she kept her anonymity to the end. To her family she was Grandma Wardle and during her life in America she never mentioned her famous grandfather's name, retiring from the room when conversation turned to family and life in Scotland.

CONCLUSION

A remarkable and far from obscure life followed Madeleines disappearance from Scotland after her trial, which reveals her to have been a remarkable and talented woman. But was she a murderess? The question remains did she or did she not kill L'Angelier? The trial itself lasted nine days but some evidence was not allowed, L'Angelier's memo book for instance. There was also a letter which was not permitted to be read at the trial in which she stated that she considered herself to be Emile's wife and could not be the wife of any other, a damning statement in the eyes of Victorian Scotland. Parts of other letters were also excluded as various passages were unfit to be read. Miss Perry, a friend of L'Angelier, and a witness at the trial, was never asked to explain fully her visit to the Smith's house on the day of L'Angelier's death and the fact that she was met by Madeleine at the door but refused to speak to her and asked only if she could see Mrs Smith. Why?

Many people thought if Madeleine had been allowed to take the stand she would have been found guilty. Perhaps; but in the Victorian era the accused was not permitted to give evidence on their behalf. There is no doubt that she had great charisma and strength of character. How many 22-year-old girls of that period could have entered a courtroom with the air of a belle entering a ballroom but she was always mentally and physically durable with good stamina. The self-possession she showed at her trial was quite remarkable.

There are numerous little anecdotes about her during her life ....one of the lawyers after the trial was asked if he thought she was guilty. To which he replied I would rather dance with her than dine with her. Another was that in Sachervell SitweIl's book Splendours and Miseries it was stated that during Lena Wardle's years among Morris's circle the painter Rosetti used her as a model for several paintings he created of Mary Magdalene.

However make of these what you will. Madeleine Smith/Lena Wardle/Lena Wardle Sheehy lived to enjoy a ripe old age, which is more than Emile L'Angelier did.

Further Reading:

Report of the trial of Madeleine Smith...for the alleged poisoning of Pierre Emile L'Angelier. By Alexander Forbes Irvine, advocate (1857). Consult in National Library of Scotland, Edinburgh. Shelfmark: Yule 59 (two volumes)

Against the age: an introduction to William Morris, Peter Faulkner (1980).

Works of David Hamilton...short biography and index of works by Francis Worsdall. Scottish Field, May 1968.

The Macdonald Sisters, A.W. Baldwin, Earl Baldwin of Bewdley, (The Windmill Press Ltd.).