21 OCTOBER

1856 Officers from the Shoreditch workhouse today attended the Worship Street court to seek advice on how to proceed against an inmate named John Sayers, aged sixteen. A few days earlier, another inmate named William White had noticed that Sayers had not touched his basin of breakfast gruel. Not wanting to let it go to waste, White, with Sayers' consent, consumed the gruel but noticed a brown-coloured sediment at the bottom of the bowl. Sayers told him that it was only the brown sugar used to sweeten the gruel. A few hours later, White was seized with such violent pains and sickness that he took to his bed, and continued in a state of excruciating suffering until the workhouse medical officer, Mr James Clarke, was called in. White successfully responded to treatment, but the liquid discharged by him had been thrown away, leaving no opportunity for analysis of its contents. Sayers was later reported to have said that he had mixed up some stuff to give to the 'Old Prophet' – a reference to an inmate called Tom Pickard, who had predicted that Sayers would die on the gallows. According to another witness, Sayers had said that the 'stuff ' was arsenic, and that he could access the workhouse surgery at any time and obtain any drugs he wanted. Sayers was sorry that White had taken the substance, which was not meant for him. The magistrate, Mr Arnold, eventually decided that no substantive proof had been offered against Sayers, and he could only recommend that the parish authorities continue to watch the matter. Sayers was escorted back to the workhouse in the charge of the beadle.