FIRST FORENSIC HANGING (PB)

Mary Blandy was hanged for poisoning her father in 1752. It was the first time that detailed medical evidence had been presented in a court of law on a charge of murder by poisoning, and the first time that any court had accepted toxicological evidence in an arsenic poisoning case. Opinions are still divided on the extent to which her coercive lover, Captain William Cranstoun, was responsible for this murder by proxy.