I was trawling various Scottish newspaper archives to try and find further reports of the stress occasioned by the Madeleine Smith trial – I was looking for reports of lunacy or hysteria occasioned by the event when I came across this little snippet from the Glasgow Herald of 1 March 1858:

to be closely followed by a refutation from the Edinburgh Witness:

Interesting how even before Australia was connected to the rest of the world by telegraph, false news and rumours spread and were picked up on the other side of the world …