Following the sudden death of Mr. Bartlett on 1st January, 1886, a coroner's jury returned a verdict of "wilful murder," against Mrs. Bartlett, and found that the Rev. George Dyson had been an accessory before the fact.
When the trial opened at the Old Bailey the charge against Dyson was withdrawn and he became the principal witness for the prosecution. A feature of the trial was the brilliant defence of Mrs. Bartlett by the late Sir Edward Clarke, to whose skilful advocacy the verdict of "not guilty" was mainly due; but Sir James Paget has said that, once it was all over, she should have told us in the interests of science how she did it!
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