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cabinet except by himself. In my desperation to end my torment I devised a plan to administer potassium cyanide to Mr Perceval in such a way that his death would be taken for suicide.
    â€˜I have mentioned that I was accustomed to attend to the decanters which my husband keeps in the studio in order to offer a glass of wine to his sitters. The weekly order of wine is sent from Morgan’s in Brentford and arrives by noon on Mondays. At lunch-time I fill the decanters with fresh sherry, port and madeira.
    â€˜On Monday, 12th March, my husband had engaged to attend a convention of the Portrait Photographers’ League, of which he is Vice-Chairman, in Brighton, where he was to stay overnight, returning Tuesday morning. We had no sittings arranged for that day, so I knew that Mr Perceval would be working alone in the studio, developing the previous week’s dry plates. I also knew that he was likely to help himself liberally to my husband’s madeira. In the morning I waited as usual for the wine to arrive and then took the bottles to the studio and filled the decanters.
    â€˜When Mr Perceval went out for lunch at one o’clock, I returned to the studio, unlocked the poison cabinet, found the bottle of potassium cyanide and poured about a third of the contents into the decanter of madeira. I then replaced the decanter in the chiffonier where it was kept with the others, and locked the cyanide bottle in the poison cabinet as before.
    â€˜Soon after, I went out to keep an appointment at my dressmaker’s in Sandycombe Road, confident of finding Mr Perceval dead when I returned. The action of cyanide, my husband had often impressed on me, was practically instantaneous and quite fatal. I had convinced myself there was no chance of the body being discovered prematurely, as the servants were under strict orders not to enter the studio rooms in business hours. I intended on my return to arrange things to give the appearance of suicide, placing the bottle of cyanide beside the wine glass from which he had drunk, and emptying the decanter of its poisoned contents, re-filling it with fresh madeira. After searching the pockets of his suit for photographs or documents that might incriminate me, I would call the servants and raise the alarm.
    â€˜I duly returned a few minutes before four o’clock to learn that my plan had gone irretrievably wrong. The body had been discovered and Dr Eagle had already examined it. My understanding of the effects of potassium cyanide had been in error. Mr Perceval had not died instantaneously. His convulsions had been so frantic and so prolonged that two of the servants had seen fit to disregard their orders and rush to the studio to investigate. They had found him dying, unable to speak. The housemaid, I was told, had gone to fetch the doctor, who had recognised the symptoms of cyanide poisoning.
    â€˜There was nothing I could do to alter the eventual conclusion that Mr Perceval had been murdered, although Dr Eagle made no statement on the matter to me, simply asking where the poison was kept. I unlocked the cabinet and showed him the bottle of potassium cyanide. He sent one of the servants for the police and another for Mr Allingham, the family solicitor. Soon after this I was seized with the gravity of my situation, and fainted. When I had recovered sufficiently for the police inspector to question me, I pretended to have no knowledge of the events leading to Mr Perceval’s death.
    â€˜I swear that this is a true statement superseding all other statements ascribed to me and signed by my hand this first day of June, 1888.
    Miriam Jane Cromer ’
    Mr Justice Colbeck cautioned the Grand Jury that the law does not regard a confession in itself as establishing incontrovertible evidence of guilt, but that independent evidence taken in association with the statement warranted him to advise them that it was their duty to find a True Bill against Mrs Cromer.
    The True Bill was