112 Year Old Copy of, " The Trial of Mary Blandy"

The Trial of Mary Blandy (1752)

Printed by William Hodge and Company. Glasgow and Edinburgh, 1914.

A deliciously scandalous tale of forbidden romance, arsenic poisoning, and a daughter’s betrayal that shocked 18th-century England.

In 1751, Mary Blandy, the daughter of a wealthy English lawyer, became entangled in a forbidden romance with a Scottish army officer, Captain William Henry Cranstoun. When her father refused to approve their marriage, Mary began secretly administering a mysterious white powder to his food, allegedly believing it was a love potion that would soften his opposition.

The powder was arsenic, and her father died a slow, agonizing death. Mary insisted she had been deceived by her lover, but prosecutors painted a far darker picture of a calculating daughter willing to murder her own father for love.

Convicted and hanged in 1752, Mary Blandy’s extraordinary case became one of Georgian England’s most infamous poisoning scandals, raising a haunting question: Was she a cold-blooded murderess or a woman fatally manipulated by the man she loved?