The trial of Eugene Marie Chantrelle was one of the biggest scandals of 1870s Scotland. Victorian society had not witnessed a case as gripping since the trial of Dr Pritchard in 1865 for poisoning and killing his wife and motherin-law. In many ways Chantrelle’s trial mirrored Pritchard’s: the public were fascinated and horrified by the case of a middleclass gentleman in a respectable social position murdering his wife. A four-day trial at the High Court in Edinburgh saw members of the public queuing to hear evidence surrounding the mysterious case, and to bear witness to the sentence of death by hanging.
Chantrelle was born in Nantes, France, in 1834. He began training in medicine as a young man, but left the country during the French revolution of 1848.