THE PIMLICO MYSTERY

Adelaide Bartlett and the Chloroform Enigma

By: Alana Sanchez

Narrated by: Virtual Voice

London, 1886. A husband dies in a rented room in Pimlico.
Chloroform is found in his stomach.

Adelaide Bartlett was accused of murdering her husband, Thomas Edwin Bartlett, in one of the most perplexing poison cases of the Victorian era. The medical evidence revealed a lethal quantity of chloroform — yet no clear explanation of how it had been administered.

At the Old Bailey, expert witnesses clashed. The marriage was dissected. A minister’s involvement deepened suspicion. But suspicion is not proof.

Acquitted in April 1886, Adelaide Bartlett walked free. The question of how chloroform entered Edwin Bartlett’s body has never been definitively answered.

The Pimlico Mystery revisits the case with restraint and clarity, separating documented fact from enduring myth. Drawing on court transcripts, contemporary reporting, and forensic context, Alana Sanchez reconstructs the events that shocked Victorian London — and examines why the enigma remains unresolved more than a century later.

Some mysteries are solved.
Others survive because the evidence refuses to close.