Wattinson was a married man. Mrs Wattinson was a friend of Mrs Emma Faggotter.
Shortly after she had gone out with Wattinson, Elsie started to receive odd and vaguely threatening postcards, apparently sent by various women in the suburb of Railway Town.
One postcard had advertising for an undertaker depicting a picture of a hearse pasted on its face. Written in red ink on the back were the words:
Prepare to meet your doom, for in this hearse I hope to see you soon. I wish it was your blood I was writing this in. With my best respects to you. Revenge is sweet. May your soul rest in hell.
Then in August, a parcel came in the post. It contained a piece of wedding cake purporting to come from a friend of Elsie’s in Railway Town. The note with it said:
Dear Elsie, I am sending you a piece of my wedding cake.
When she ate some of the cake, Elsie became violently ill.
Elsie took the remaining cake to the police to be examined and analysed. It was found to be studded with Condy’s Crystals.
The Public Analyst found that twenty-five grams of the cake contained seven grams of Condy’s Crystals.
Condy’s Crystals, or Potassium Permanganate, was much used at the time as a disinfectant or for treating skin disorders or fungal infections.
The dark purple crystals are odourless and highly soluble in water. Any solution of them is highly staining and caustic.
Taken internally, they are extremely toxic, causing nausea and vomiting. Ten grams can be fatal.
When police investigated, Elsie Johns’ grandmother admitted that she had sent some of the postcards, but not the postcard with the hearse on it.
She also conceded that she had purchased an amount of Condy’s Crystals.
This she left with Mrs Faggotter. The grandmother also stated that she had asked Mrs Faggotter to address the postcards that she had sent.
When questioned by police, Emma Faggotter also admitted sending some postcards but not the postcard with the hearse on it.
She admitted that the message on the wedding cake parcel was written by her, but she denied sending the cake. Subsequently, she denied that the writing was hers.
Emma Faggotter was committed for trial in the NSW equivalent of the County Court on a charge of maliciously causing a poison to be taken by Elsie Johns with intent to annoy.
When the case against Mrs Faggotter was heard in the County Court before a jury, the jury was unable to agree.
The jury was dismissed and the matter relisted for a second trial. The case and its evidence was reviewed by the NSW Solicitor-General before the second trial.
From a distance of more than a century, this case is relatively clear.
John Garland KC, the Solicitor-General, saw what the police sergeant in Broken Hill had not.
Mrs Faggotter had been the unwitting tool of those in Railway Town, including Elsie Johns’ own kin, who were determined to send the young woman a lesson about her choices and her behaviour.
One of the enforcers of morality had got a little too creative with an undertaker’s advertisement and its doggerel verse.
Almost certainly the grandmother had sent the cake with Condy’s Crystals. She had tricked Mrs Faggotter into addressing the parcel
Afterwards, she had given evidence about Condy’s Crystals being stored at Mrs Faggotter’s home.
In August 1910, the NSW Solicitor-General declined to proceed with a second trial.
Thirty-year-old Emma Faggotter was free. She lived on to be eighty-two and, when she died in 1961, she was buried in the red soil of Broken Hill Cemetery.
– John Barry
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