TRAGICALLY she never spoke a truer word.

“I shall die through that old man,” croaked Maria Kimber and within hours she did.

“I can cure her of these fits,” Sidney Churchill had bragged to her family.

On the contrary it hastened her death and the inquest jury, who sat at the Sloop In, Wooton Bridge, on July 9, 1831, returned a verdict of manslaughter against him, with the quaintly named Hampshire Advertiser and Royal Yacht Club Gazette readily denouncing him as a quack and of unsound mind.

Churchill appeared at the next Hampshire Assizes days later at Winchester, charged that in the parish of Arreton, he occasioned her death by administering deleterious drugs to her as medicine.

Eliza Kimber told jurors how her 19-year-old sister had been always been prone to fits and three weeks before her death was first visited by Churchill, a stranger on the island and who introduced himself as a doctor.

Churchill began his treatment with a powder mixed with warm milk but that only made her very ill. On further visits he gave her medicine from of a bottle to allay a fever but with no beneficial effect.

“He threw away a teacup in which was left some of the powder and milk after my sister complained of burning in her throat. She languished for nine days and then died.”

As her health failed, her increasingly fraught family sought Ryde surgeon Mr Joburn.

“I found her very much exhausted, very cold, complaining of a burning in her throat, and great nausea. I gave her some medicine to alleviate the symptoms and saw her several times and on the day of her death. The symptoms were always the same.”

The post-mortem revealed her throat and intestines had been badly ulcerated, leading him to comment: “I should imagine it was occasioned by something corrosive which had been administered to her.”

His evidence was corroborated by fellow surgeon Richard Watewell who added that while she was lying in bed feeling very cold, “a great deal of matter was flowing from her mouth. She was very much exhausted and her gums much ulcerated.”

The prosecution then called Mr Hearne, one of the coroners for the Isle of Wight, who read part of the examination of the prisoner taken at the inquest in which he stated he had some corrosive sublimate which he had used in ulcerated cases.

Ann Gilbert, the teenager’s mother, testified how she had seen her daughter vomiting after taking the medicine, and how he had then given her something out of a phial which had no affect.

“He was very much agitated and threw a bottle of medicine out of the window. When he saw the state my daughter was in, he said he would not charge anything for the medicine. Her body was covered with black spots and she complained her throat was burning hot.”

The court finally heard from Martha Payne who had visited Kimber shortly before her death, the teenager grimly warning her: “I shall die through that old man.”

Churchill defending himself by expiating on the number of his loyal patients and the wonderful cures he had effected.

But jurors were not take in and swiftly convicted him and. After what was termed “a very suitable address,” the judge jailed for 12 months.