How could I resist a title like "I Am Murdered"? And then his doctors don't believe him. But he showed them. He died. And then they had the first "triHow could I resist a title like "I Am Murdered"? And then his doctors don't believe him. But he showed them. He died. And then they had the first "trial of the century."
A very thorough job by the author. Too thorough on some subjects. He just went on and on. Did he have a page/word limit that he had to hit? Otherwise, his editor wasn't doing his/her job.
A fascinating story about the murder of George Wythe by his nephew who had succumbed to the gambling bug. Wythe was friend and mentor to many of the founding fathers. He was one of them. He told Thomas Jefferson what to put in the Declaration of Independence. Taught at William and Mary. When the capital moved to Richmond he moved with it. George Wythe Sweeney was a troublesome nephew and Wythe thought he could mentor him, as he had Jefferson, James Monroe and Henry Clay. But Sweeney liked the fancy life in Richmond and had to find ways to support his bad habits. Unfortunately, he decided to do it the easy way by ripping off the old man, who was 80 years old by this time. Wythe didn't really appreciate this too much. And decided to cut him out of the will. Wythe is suddenly violently ill, along with his cook and a young man who was also living with the judge. He tells his doctors that he has been poisoned and that they will need to do an autopsy on him. And he gets his lawyer in to change his will, cutting the miscreant out.
The information about the judge was fine. And I found the information about life in Richmond in 1806 pretty interesting. In the 1780s apparently the slaves of Virginia who had been hired to work in the city had a certain amount of freedom. I had no idea. Well, that was too good to last. The slaves thought it would lead to freedom eventually. That's what the Virginians became afraid of, and revolts had been planned. And a certain amount of the information about arsenic poisoning was good but he just went on too long. Even I had to start skimming, and I almost never skim. And also too much information about autopsies and what the doctors did and what they should have done.
I actually had more interest in the trial, of which we got short shrift. Of course, many of the things the prosecution wanted to bring up couldn't be because witnesses were slaves or freed blacks and the law forbade blacks testifying against whites. And guess who wrote that law, or at least didn't try to liberalize the law when Virginia became a state. Wythe, Monroe and Jefferson modernized the laws and the legislature voted on them. So if they had tried to liberalize the law it might not have passed.
I really thought this was a ★★★★ book but I became so irritated with the author and TMI that I demoted him a ★....more