Manslaughter by a doctress.* Mercury used to be prescribed as a treatment for syphilis, so this sailor was probably not in the best of health. If mercury didn’t poison you, then the cure to rid your body of it would kill you anyway. Another treatment for syphilis was the use of sweat baths as it was thought induced salivation and sweating eliminated the syphilitic poisons.
But to get away with murder, or manslaughter in this case, you had to be a proper doctor.
“A woman named Nancy Simpson, a pretended doctress at Liverpool, has been committed to Lancaster Castle for trial at the next assizes, charged by the coroner’s inquest with manslaughter, in having occasioned the death of Wm. Birkett, a fine, stout, comely seafaring man, 21 years of age, by giving him some quack mixture, “to get the mercury out of his bones,” as she said, (it having been lately necessary that he should undergo salivation,) and which mixture had poisoned the young man.–The wretch lived in a cellar in Liverpool, and in her apartment were found numerous powders, pills and other nostrums, of a most potent and dangerous character.”
Stamford Mercury, 21 November, 1828.
*Another alternative for a female doctor was ‘doctrix’.