Poisoner Caught

One dark night last week two men watched a house near Park Avenue, Manhattan. A woman came out, glanced about her, bent down, sprinkled a powder about each house corner, quietly disappeared indoors. The two men gathered up pinches of the powder from the sidewalk, took the pinches to a chemist to be analyzed. As they had suspected, it was arsenic.

The two men, agents for the A. S. P. C. A., had been assigned to the Park Avenue district to catch poison-sprinklers who have been endangering the lives of expensive Park Avenue dogs (TIME. Jan. 12). Neighbors in the immediate vicinity of the suspicious house had complained particularly. They told the agents that twelve nearby dogs had died in agony. Two fine bird dogs, valued at $500 each, had barely been saved.

Summoned to court, the poison-sprinkler, Mrs. Helen Corel, housekeeper for one John J. Smith, realtor, first stated that she had been after rats. But after being questioned she admitted that she had intended the arsenic for dogs. She said she did not wish to kill them; she was fond of dogs in the country or a large back yard. She had only meant to discourage them from loitering. Her basement windows had to be washed twice a day because of them. "Early in the morning and late at night and . . . during the day there were dogs in front of the house" said Mrs. Corel. "They bark and howl. We tried to grow plants in window boxes but the dogs would not let them alone. . . . The dogs of neighbors destroyed the trees and shrubbery in front of the house and the dogs' owners would not restrain them."

Mrs. Corel was fined $5.

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