This is an addendum to our previous post. Newspaper archives can also be a valuable source for medical and legal precedents as they relate to the Arbuckle case. We found one source that is worth noting. It further supports the hypothesis that the fatal injury that Virginia Rappe suffered had to involve violence or, at least, physical mistreatment approximating the same. And this nineteenth-century case is one that so far comes closest to People vs. Arbuckle. We found it in The Household Narrative of Current Events by Charles Dickens.

The author of A Christmas Tale, David Copperfield, Oliver Twist and so many other classics also published magazines in the 1850s. Bound annual volumes existed. But you wouldn’t find them in Dickens’ collected works. So, as well-read as some of the Arbuckle trial reporters and lawyers were—Gavin McNab, Arbuckle’s chief counsel, was an autodidact who could quote Shakespeare from the vast library his father amassed—we can’t expect anyone in 1921 to know about Dickens very Victorian reportage from seventy years in the past.

But it can be found with the right keywords. In the October 1854 number The Household Narrative, Dickens described a case of spontaneous rupture of bladder in a female victim. The young woman, Matilda Jane Lodge, had been invited aboard the hulk of the HMS Victorious, a former ship-of-the-line reduced to a floating barracks for the Royal Marines, by a lieutenant serving aboard the steamer HMS Dauntless, also at anchor on the Thames.* Miss Lodge and her friend Emma White had spent the day drinking brandies and water with the lieutenant. He eventually lured them to the Victorious, and took them to his quarters. There the two women drank brandy—without water. Miss Lodge had port wine as well. Thinking that port might be drugged, Miss White departed, while Miss Lodge continued to drink. She eventually entered the gun room and entertained the lieutenant and his friends. She sang songs. She recited Shakespeare. She began to scream. She felt sick. She became hysterical. She was carried back to the lieutenant’s bedroom, from which she was said to have fallen.

The next day she was rowed back ashore, with the sleeves and front of her dress torn off. She was virtually topless as a ferryman pushed her in a wheelbarrow to the police station

The constables could see the many bruises on her arms, legs, and torso. She had a pronounced black eye. She had been severely beaten. But she was evasive. What she did say over and over again was that “I am dying”; “I am a murdered woman.” She was right. In a few days, she was dead and the criminal investigation began.

An autopsy was performed. Her bladder had ruptured at the fundus (the “crown”). Lodge had died of rupture attributed to a distended bladder.

You can read Dickens’ version below. His narrative is so close to what confronts us in People vs. Arbuckle that it must serve admittedly as too-clever, too-consciously literary, as poignant indirection to set up the story we tell over many more pages, a like “disgraceful scene.” But we do use paragraphs unlike our eminent Victorian below.

*A careful reading of the original accounts in the London newspapers archived in the British Museum reveals that Dickens had elided over this and other details in digesting the story from various and conflicting sources.

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NARRATIVE OF LAW AND CRIME

A Disgraceful Scene attended with Fatal Consequences, took place on board the hulk Dauntless, in Portsmouth Harbour. On Sunday evening, the 17th ult., two young women of loose character, Matilda Lodge and Emma White were taken on board the vessel by two officers, one of whom was Lieut. Knight, of the marines; arrived on board, they went into Mr. Knight’s cabin, and were supplied by him with wine and brandy and water, through the half open door leading from the gun-room where the officers were drinking. The girl Lodge became intoxicated, and ran singing into the gun- room among the officers. Afterwards she became violently ill, and after remaining for some hours, screaming in great agony, she was put into a boat and sent on shore, her companion having previously left the ship. Lodge was found by her mother at the police station in a dying state, and expired two days afterwards. An inquest was held on her body. Her companion detailed the circumstances till she left the ship at one o’clock in the morning. A marine on duty stated that the deceased screeched fearfully and lay screaming on the floor, until she was carried into Knight’s cabin and placed on his bed. She continued screeching at intervals up to four o’clock. The officer in command had wished to have her removed from the ship; but the surgeon thought this dangerous. Lieutenant Jervis, who had gone to bed early, was waked up by her screeching and the knocking she made against the bulkheads: he visited her twice, and behaved with great kindness: Lieutenant Knight was sleeping, with his head on a pillow, on the table. Matilda Lodge fell twice out of bed. The boat- man who rowed her ashore, said that her hair was hanging all about; her dress was torn at the shoulder, and in a terribly ruffled state. She was not sensible. The police inspector stated that when brought to the station she was insensible, and smelt strongly of port wine; her dress was much disordered, and she had nothing but her shift sleeve on her arm; her hair was hanging loose down her back. Her mother gave the following evidence: “I found Matilda in the station- room, her clothes much disordered, the sleeve torn out of her gown, and her scarf very dirty. I said to her. ‘My dear girl, where have you been to get served like this?’ She appeared to be very ill. I tried to lift her up. She said, ‘Don’t mother; I cannot move. Mother, I am dying; I shan’t live long. I have received my death-blow.’ I said, ‘You must go home.’ She said, ‘I can’t.’“ She took her home, however. “I said to her, ‘You have been cruelly ill treated.’ She rejoined, ‘Yes, mother, I have; I shall die.’ She said something to me besides concerning the outrage, but I told her to lie quiet, and when she got better we would talk it over. I told her, ‘I hear you were on board of a ship.’ She said, ‘Yes, mother, and Emma was there too; we went together.’ She said, ‘After Emma left I was unconscious.’ I said, ‘I think you must have been drugged.’ She replied, she did not recollect anything about it. Her arms were black in places, one of her eyes was blackened, her cheek was all colours, and she had a bruise under her chin. She was sensible from the time I first saw her at the station house until the time of her death, between twelve and one o’clock on Wednesday last. My daughter was about twenty-two, a single woman.” Lieutenants Seymour, Knight, and Jervis, and Assistant- Surgeon Roche, tendered their evidence; and it would lead to the belief that the girl having got drunk, hurt herself by falling about. They declared positively that there was no fighting in the gun-room, and no violence of any kind offered to the young woman. The medical evidence, after a post-mortem examination, was to the effect that her death had been caused by rupture of the bladder. The coroner’s jury returned the following verdict—”We find that, according to the evidence given by the medical men, we are bound to return a verdict that Matilda Jane Lodge died a natural death from rupture of the bladder; but we also find, from the evidence given before us, that death was mainly accelerated by ill-treatment which she had received on the night of Sunday the 17th of September 1854, in the ward-room on board of the hulk of her Majesty’s ship Dauntless, lying in Portsmouth Harbour; to which we respectfully call the attention of the authorities.” A further inquiry took place before the Portsmouth magistrates on a charge of manslaughter against Lieutenants Knight and Seymour. The result was, that both the prisoners were acquitted of that charge. In announcing the judgment of the magistrates, the mayor carefully went over the whole case; dismissing the charge against Lieutenant Seymour with the remark, that he left the court without his character being affected by the charge; but censuring Lieutenant Knight, while he dismissed the criminal charge against him,—for having taken the woman on board, and for having shown so little interest in her fate as to allow her to be put in a boat without seeing her off. There was not, he said, evidence sufficient to justify the sending of Lieutenant Knight for trial. Mr. Knight was therefore discharged by the magistrates; but he remained under arrest, awaiting the pleasure of the Lords of the Admiralty, on his own application for a court-martial.—Courts-martial were held on the 10th and 11th inst., on Lieutenant Knight, Lieutenant Jervis, and Lieutenant Elphinstone, who was in command of the vessel when the affair happened. The charges against Mr. Knight were: 1. That on the 17th September he brought “on board her Majesty’s hulk Dauntless two improper women; and did act improperly towards such women, in supplying them with wine and spirits in immoderate quantities when so on board the said hulk; the same being scandalous actions, in derogation of God’s honour and in corruption of good manners;” 2. that he suggested to Mr. Robert Hancock, Midshipman, falsely “to inform the chaplain of her Majesty’s ship Dauntless, that the women which he, the said first lieutenant Frederick Charles Knight, had so brought on board the said hulk, were sisters of him, the said first lieutenant; he the first lieutenant well knowing at the time that such was not true; the same being a scandalous action, in derogation of God’s honour and in corruption of good manners;” 3. that he appeared without “his proper uniform; and without having obtained the requisite permission, dispensing with the wearing of such uniform;” 4. that he was drunk on the night of the 17th and the following morning.—Lieutenant Knight was acquitted of the second and fourth charges, and found guilty of the first and third; but, in consideration of his previous high character, the sentence of the court- martial was, that his name should be placed at the bottom of the list of the lieutenants of the Royal Marines. The charge against Lieutenant Jervis, was, that he, being in command at the time, had suffered two women of improper character to remain on board after sunset; and that, having become aware of their presence between one and four o’clock, he did not report the same to the commanding officer. Lieutenant Jervis was acquitted of these charges. The charges against Lieutenant Elphinstone, were, that he, while senior officer on board the Victorious hulk, did permit the women to remain on board after sunset; did not report the fact to his superior officer; and allowed wine and spirits to be supplied to the women from the ward-room in immoderate quantities. After evidence had been heard on the three charges, Lieutenant Elphinstone read a brief address in defence. He pleaded that he was ignorant of his responsibility at the time, not knowing he was senior officer; that the liquor was passed to the women too quickly for him to prevent it, after he had protested against it; and that it was only after he had left the ward-room, and while undressing, that he found from what fell from Lieutenant Woodman, that he himself had been the commanding officer while in the ward-room. Lieutenant Woodman deposed to the last fact.—The Court deliberated for an hour, and then pronounced this decision—”The Court is of opinion that the charge is partly proved against Lieutenant Buller Elphinstone, inasmuch as, although he remonstrated against the disgraceful proceedings mentioned in the charge, he did not with sufficient promptitude ascertain whether he was or was not the senior officer at the time he was applied to by the chaplain; and that he did not, as such senior officer, prevent by the exercise of his authority, such disgraceful proceedings. And the Court doth adjudge that the said Lieutenant Elphinstone be admonished; and the said Lieutenant William Buller Elphinstone is hereby admonished accordingly.”