The strychnine exhumation

Christmas 1888 was a dark time on the Eastern Shore of Virginia, US. A flat, sandy strip of land braced by the Atlantic and separated from the rest of the state by the chill waters of the Chesapeake Bay, the close community had been shocked by the death of farmer William Taylor. Now, less than a week after his burial, the local doctor, John Bowdoin, had ordered the body disinterred. Worse, rumours had begun to spread that the victim’s wife, Virginia Taylor, had been responsible for her husband’s untimely end.