…Real-life coroner’s juries also tended to deal harshly with the greedy, especially with shady financiers and embezzlers as was the case with John Sadleir in 1856. Sadleir, a member of Parliament and Junior Lord of the Treasury, fraudulently oversold 150,000 pounds of shares in the Royal Swedish Railway, overdrew more than 230,000 pounds from a Tipperary bank, which he managed, represented certain assets of that bank at 100,000 pounds when in fact they were 30,000, and in the end tried to raise money to cover his enormous debts by means of a forged deed.
When he realized that he could not hide his fraudulent activities, he repaired to Hampstead Heath on a cold, February night, carrying prussic acid and a case of razors. The poison proved sufficient to kill him without the razors, and the next morning he was discovered stiff and cold on the Heath. The inquest into his death went on through four sessions before the verdict felo-de-se was reached. It was found that Sadleir had left intensely remorseful suicide notes reproving himself for the ruin of others:
I cannot live — I have ruined too many — I could not live and see their agony — I have committed diabolical crimes unknown to any human being. They will [63/64] now appear, bringing my family and others to distress — causing to all shame and grief that they should have ever known me.
I blame no one, but attribute all to my own infamous villainy. I could go through any torture as a punishment for my crimes, No torture could be too much for such crimes, but I cannot live to see the tortures I inflict upon others. [AR, p. 35]
Hidden at first by friends who had hoped for a verdict of temporary insanity, the notes ultimately convinced the coroner’s jury that Sadleir was sane. No one, their thinking went, could so clearly realize the harm that he had done to others and be intellectually impaired.
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