A few years ago, I got interested in the story of Madeleine Smith, a youg woman in Glasgow who was put on trial for murdering her clingy boyfriend by putting arsenic in his cocoa when he refused to break off the relationship and return her letters to him.

The story particularly notorious at the time because, among other things, Madeleine’s letters included a graphic description of alfresco sex with her boyfriend in the woods at Rowardennan.

The letters were read into the court transcript – literally as a court official read them out in open court. The letters were hot stuff in 1857 and were a source of mid Victorian tittilation and were reprinted in various pseudo legal works for the perusal of learned gentlemen.

I was interested in the case for two reasons – the use of arsenic, which was everywhere in the mid ninteteenth century, and the way the story was spread round the world by the first long distance telegrams. (Australia wasn’t connected until 1872, but the telegrams sent to India were sent on on steamships bound for Australia where they were retelegraphed to the east coast newspapers.)

Now, I knew that after her acquittal Madeleine had gone to ground, and later married George Wardle, who was William Morris’s workshop manager printing his wallpapers etc, and a minor artist in his own right.

Recently, when I’ve been researching early British socialists such as Walter Crane and Ethel Voynich, I’ve come across hints that Madeleine Smith, now usualy called Lena Wardle was involved in the early days of the Fabian Society before she separated from George Wardle in 1889.

But I hadn’t been able to find any trace of her, and then I had a brainwave, search for George Wardle and there he was in the 1881 census

And guess what, there was Madeleine Smith with her name mis-spelt

Neither Madeleine or George seem to appear in the 1891 census.

George Wardle, I know spent time painting in Italy after his 1889 separation and Madeleine moved to New York.

My next step is, I guess to search the US passenger records to see if I can find when she arrived.

She doesn’t seem to be in the 1890 US census records, but they are fragmentary due to most of them being lost in a fire in 1921. While some of the New York census returns have survived, by no means all of them have, so it’s not impossible she was already living in the US in 1890…