A Sip Of Abortionist Ale
True Crime Historian
Richard O Jones
4.4 • 729 Ratings
🗓️ 5 April 2024
⏱️ 100 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Episode 216 comes not only with a mysterious poisoning, but a side dish of “illegal operations.” Either it’s a devilishly clever plot, or perhaps the police didn’t really give it their all, considering the scandalous nature of Dr. Wilson’s practice.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Popular.com |
| 0:03.4 | Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, June 28th, 1908. |
| 0:11.0 | In the puzzling death of Dr. William H. Wilson, who died on Friday night last at St. Joseph's |
| 0:18.2 | hospital, shortly after he had swallowed a mouth full of ale as his residence. |
| 0:23.8 | The coroner's office and the police were inclined yesterday to scent a deep mystery, and faith |
| 0:30.4 | in the death from natural causes theory was considerably shaken. Although confronted by the fact that the physician was subject of vertigo, |
| 0:40.8 | the detectives who began a rigid probe of the strange case |
| 0:44.2 | gathered sufficient information to lead them to suspect |
| 0:47.3 | that in the sip of ale he took just before his death, |
| 0:51.4 | there may have lurked a deadly poison. |
| 0:56.9 | Confronted by the many difficulties in their investigation of the circumstances surrounding the physician's fatal end, the sleuths found themselves |
| 1:02.9 | called upon to solve an unusually elusive mystery. He had but lately returned from an outing |
| 1:09.7 | at his bungalow at Cornwall, Pennsylvania, |
| 1:12.6 | where he had indulged in that fondness for athletic pastimes, for which he was noted, among those who knew him. |
| 1:19.6 | A theory advanced yesterday was that the ale might not have been responsible for his death at all, |
| 1:25.6 | but that through some other channel poison may have been conveyed into his system at all, but that through some other channel, poison may have |
| 1:28.3 | been conveyed into his system just before he drank the fluid. Mrs. Wilson explained that the |
| 1:34.4 | ale had come into her husband's possession through a circular he had previously received from a firm |
| 1:40.4 | by which it was brewed. The physician had become interested in the circular, which set |
| 1:45.9 | forth the claim that the beverage contained valuable medicinal qualities, and in response to it, |
| 1:52.1 | sent for a sample. Mrs. Wilson said that her husband was not a drinking man, and that he had only |
| 1:59.0 | taken a sip from the glass into which he had poured |
... |
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