Memory Lane: The mystery of the Priory Poisoner (From Wandsworth Guardian)

Memory Lane: The mystery of the Priory Poisoner

10:00am Monday 2nd November 2009

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On April 18, 1876 a young barrister named Charles Bravo was found poisoned at his Balham home.

The murderer has never been caught and it sparked outrage as the Victorian public played a real-life game of Cluedo.

Was it the glamorous and wealthy wife, Florence, who resented Bravo's sexual advances? Or his wife’s housekeeper, Mrs Cox, whom Bravo was about to dismiss from service?

Perhaps the murderer, as Agatha Christie suspected, was Florence's ex-lover, the physician Dr James Gully.

Bravo was killed at The Priory, his grand Gothic mansion, which is now a block of flats near the junction of Hillbury Road and Bedford Hill.

On his deathbed, he remained silent over who poisoned him and stayed strangely calm during his last agonising days.

Detectives took this ambivalence to mean that he had committed suicide.

It was only discovered in the 20th Century that potassium antimony, the poison which had been slipped into his glass, caused this tranquil reaction.

Suspicions of foul play were aroused during an inquest when details of an earlier relationship between Bravo's wife, Florence, and Dr Gully came to light.

Florence had had an abortion, carried out by Dr Gully, which in those days shocked the public who were glued to their newspapers for all the titilating details.

The inquest also heard that Bravo and Florence argued a lot about Bravo controlling her lifestyle and his desire to have children.

He wanted an heir but she was wary after suffering two miscarriages and was scared a third pregnancy would kill her.

The death stumped police and the mystery remained unsolved until a recent book, Death At The Priory, by James Ruddick.

Ruddick eliminates Dr Gully, who had given the Bravo marriage his blessing, and Mrs Cox, who was set to inherit millions, from the list of potential murders - which left only Florence.

In his book Ruddick states: “Antimony was used by women in Victorian times to control their husband's alcohol addiction, and Florence had previously been married to an alcoholic.

“She was afraid of a third pregnancy and in Victorian times women had no right to deny their husband sex so she resorted to poison.”

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