The case of the young woman from Glasgow accused of poisoning her lover with arsenic
Glasgow and Edinburgh, Scotland, 1857
This case is a work of fiction. The characters, names, places and events in the game do not portray real people. The account below is a factual summary, based on public sources, of the case that served as inspiration.
In the mid-1850s, the daughter of a wealthy Glasgow family carried on a secret romance for about two years with a poor clerk, born in the Channel Islands and ten years her senior, and wrote him hundreds of passionate letters. In early 1857, her parents arranged a rich and respectable fiancé for her, and she accepted the marriage. She asked her former lover to return the letters; he refused and threatened to show them to her father.
In the following weeks, the clerk fell ill more than once after visiting the young woman at night, and he died of arsenic poisoning in the early hours of 23 March 1857. The prosecution argued that she served him the poison in a hot drink, chocolate according to most accounts. The police found the letters in his room and discovered that she had bought arsenic from apothecaries in the city, signing the register; at the time, the law required apothecaries to dye the powder to prevent accidents.
Sources
In the game
The Basement Window
Glasgow, Monday, 23 March 1857. Gaspard Morel, 31, a French clerk at a tea warehouse, died at dawn in his boarding-house room after a whole night of vomiting and cramps.
The trial, at the High Court of Justiciary in Edinburgh, between late June and early July 1857, became a national scandal. The defence questioned the dates of the meetings, and the jury acquitted the accused on one of the charges and gave the murder charge the Scottish verdict "not proven". She moved to London, married, and died in New York in 1928, aged 93. The game borrows the secret romance, the letters, the arranged engagement, the dyed arsenic bought at the apothecary's and the cup served at night. Characters, investigative details and outcome are fiction.
