Â鶹ԼÅÄ

Did she or didn't she? We're still asking the question over the murder trial of Madeleine Smith 150 years on. Denise explores the latest theories.

Madeleine Smith caused a terrible scandal in Victorian Glasgow when she was accused of murder. The public could not make sense of a respectable middle class lady being both so wildly passionate in her sexual exploits with lover Emile L'Angelier, as her own letters revealed, and yet also capable of such cold blooded, calculated killing by gradual arsenic poisoning. She just didn’'t fit with society’s ideals of womanhood. Not proven was the verdict and a sense of 'she did it but you just couldn't prove it' doesn't seem to have impeded her future life in bohemian London and glamorous New York.