Murder of Elizabeth Chantrelle

The trial is claimed to have inspired Robert Louis Stevenson to write the story Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde in which the socially respectable character Henry Jekyll has a violent and monstrous alter-ego named Edward Hyde.

[1] Eugène Chantrelle was born 1834 in Nantes[2] and by 1868 was a French teacher who lived in Edinburgh and taught at the private Newington Academy.

He began a relationship with a pupil, Elizabeth Dyer (born 1851, 15 years old at the time).

Subsequently, traces of opium were found in vomit on her nightgown and so the death was suspected to be criminal in nature.

[3] He was hanged in the grounds of Calton Prison on 31 May, and his body buried in an unmarked grave on that site.