THE SECOND AND THIRD HUSBANDS
I was getting tired of asking about William Outlawe Sr., and the last two questions seemed to contradict each other. It was time to move on to the issue of the second and third husbands.
Did Alice Kyteler murder her second husband, Adam Le Blund?
NO
Did Alice Kyteler murder her third husband, Richard de Valle?
WRONG QUESTION(I took this to mean fundamentally ‘no’)
Were either of Alice Kyteler’s second or third husbands physically or emotionally abusive to her?
WRONG QUESTION
Okay, did either one of them hit her with any regularity?
YES
Did either one of them verbally-berate her with any regularity?
NO
Was it just one of the two men who hit her with any regularity?
NO (So both of them did. It was once considered a man’s right to hit his wife).
Was there anything in either Adam Le Blund’s or Richard de Valle’s treatment of Alice Kyteler (while they were married to her) which could be considered emotional abuse?
NO
Was the death of Alice Kyteler’s third husband, Richard de Valle, just the incidental outcome of something else?
WRONG QUESTION
Did Alice Kyteler’s second and third husbands, Adam Le Blund and Richard de Valle, die of natural causes?
NO
Did Alice Kyteler do anything, directly or indirectly, to bring about the deaths of her second and third husbands? Did she play any roll in their deaths at all?
WRONG QUESTION
Were they murdered?
WRONG QUESTION
Were their deaths accidental?
WRONG QUESTION
Did their deaths come, in any way, shape or form, from their occupations?
NO
Following a sudden idea, I took the questioning in a different direction:
Were their deaths the result of a miscalculation?
YES
Was the miscalculation that their afflictions were mis-diagnosed and therefore they received the wrong remedy for their affliction?
YES
Was it Alice Kyteler herself who misdiagnosed and treated her husbands’ afflictions?
YES
In treating her husbands’ conditions, did she consult with anybody who had official medical training?
YES
So is it fair to say Adam Le Blund and Richard de Valle died as the result of medical malpractice?
YES
So she didn’t deliberately murder her second and third husbands. It was manslaughter at best, and practicing medicine without a license, but I don’t know how legally-punishable the latter-charge was back then. It doesn’t appear Adam le Blund and Richard de Valle treated her as badly as William Outlawe, and by this point, Alice probably learned a certain amount of physical abuse came with the territory. Indeed, as husbands, they may have been a relief to Alice after William Outlawe. I speculate their deaths could’ve been a scenario where a local healer came to Kyteler’s Inn for a pint, Alice conversationally put her husband’s ailment to the healer’s opinion, and the healer, who’d been drinking, diagnosed wrongly, and gave their medical opinion based on her description. Alice Kyteler then whipped up the concoction which was supposed to cure him, and ended up killing him.