THE MAYBRICK CASE

On July 31, 1889, one of the most remarkable poisoning cases of modern times was brought before Mr. Justice Stephen, at the Liverpool Assizes. The trial, which lasted eight days, excited the keenest interest throughout the country, especially as the principal actors in the tragedy were people of good social position. The accused, Florence Maybrick, wife of a Liverpool merchant, was charged with causing the death of her husband by administering arsenic to him.

About the end of April, 1889, Mr. James Maybrick was seized with a peculiar illness, of which the main symptoms consisted of a rigidity of the limbs and a general feeling of sickness, which quite prostrated him, and eventually confined him to bed. The medical man who was called in to attend him, attributed the cause to extreme irritability of the stomach and treated him accordingly; but, becoming puzzled by the persistent sickness and the rapidly increasing weakness of his patent, a second practitioner was called in consultation. From this time he grew considerably worse, severer symptoms and diarrhoea set in, which caused the doctors to suspect the cause was due to some irritant poison. This was confirmed by the discovery that arsenic had been placed in a bottle of meat juice that was being administered to the sick man. Trained nurses were placed in charge, and a close watch kept on the patient, but without avail, and he died on May 11.

Suspicions having been aroused, and from statements made to the police, Mrs. Maybrick was arrested, and eventually charged with the wilful murder of her husband. From evidence given at the trial, it transpired that the relations between husband and wife had not been of the most cordial character for some time. There were frequent disagreements, and just before Mr. Maybrick was taken ill there had been a serious quarrel, resulting from his wife's relations with another man. The lady resented the accusation, and a separation was talked of. The fatal illness then intervened, during the first portion of which Mrs. Maybrick nursed her husband; but through a letter addressed to her lover, which she had given to her nursemaid to post, having been opened by the latter and handed to Mr. Maybrick's brother, trained nurses were called in, and the sick man was placed in their charge entirely. This letter, which formed one of the strongest pieces of evidence against the accused, revealed the connection between Mrs. Maybrick and her lover, and contained the intelligence to him that her husband was "sick unto death." Evidence was also given by the servants, of flypapers having been seen in process of maceration in water in Mrs. Maybrick's bedroom. The trained nurses also gave evidence concerning the suspicious conduct of Mrs. Maybrick, with reference to tampering with the medicines and meat juice which were to be administered to the patient. These suspicions culminated in the discovery of arsenic in a bottle of the meat juice by one of the medical attendants. Considerable quantities of arsenic were found by the police in the house, including a packet containing seventy-one grains, mixed with charcoal, and labelled "Poison for cats."

The analytical examination was made by Dr. Stevenson and a local analytical chemist, who discovered traces of arsenic in the intestines, and .049 of a grain of arsenic in the liver, traces of the poison being also found in the spleen. Arsenic was also found in various medicine bottles, handkerchiefs, bottles of glycerine, and in the pocket of a dressing-gown belonging to the accused. Dr. Stevenson further stated, he believed the body of the deceased at the time of death probably contained a fatal dose of arsenic. The scientific evidence adduced was of a very conflicting character. On one hand, the medical men who attended the deceased, and the Government analyst, swore they believed that death was caused from the effects of arsenic; while on the other, Dr. Tidy, who was called for the defence, as an expert stated that the quantity of arsenic discovered in the body did not point to the fact that an overdose had been administered. He believed that death had been due to gastro-enteritis of some kind or other, but that the symptoms and post-mortem appearances distinctly pointed away from arsenic as the cause of death. Dr. MacNamara, ex-president of the Royal College of Surgeons, Ireland, also stated, that in his opinion Mr. Maybrick's death had not been caused by arsenical poisoning and that he agreed with Dr. Tidy that the cause was gastro-enteritis, unconnected with arsenical poisoning. For the defence it was also urged that the deceased man had been in the habit of taking arsenic in considerable quantities for some years. In support of this, witnesses were called to prove that he had been in the habit of taking a mysterious white powder, and that while living in America, he frequently purchased arsenic from chemists who knew he was in the habit of taking it. A black man, who had been in the service of deceased in America, also deposed to seeing him take this white powder in beef tea.

At the close of the evidence for the defence the accused woman by permission of the judge made the following statement amid the breathless silence of those in the court:—

"My Lord, I wish to make a statement, as well as I can, about a few facts in connection with the dreadful and crushing charge that has been made against me—the charge of poisoning my husband and father of my dear children. I wish principally to refer to the flypaper solution. The flypapers I bought with the intention of using the solution as a cosmetic. Before my marriage, and since for many years, I have been in the habit of using this wash for the face prescribed for me by Dr. Graves, of Brooklyn. It consisted, I believe, principally of arsenic, of tincture of benzoin, and elder-flower water, and some other ingredients. This prescription I lost or mislaid last April, and as at the time I was suffering from an eruption on the face I thought I should like to try and make a substitute myself. I was anxious to get rid of this eruption before I went to a ball on the 30th of that month. When I had been in Germany, among my young friends there, I had seen used a solution derived from flypapers soaked in elder-flower water, and then applied to the face with a handkerchief well soaked in the solution. I procured the flypapers and used them in the same manner, and to avoid evaporation I put the solution into a bottle so as to avoid as much as possible the admission of the air. For this purpose I put a plate over the flypapers, then a folded towel over that, and then another towel over that. My mother has been aware for a great many years that I have used arsenic in solution. I now wish to speak of his illness. On Thursday night, May 9, after the nurse had given my husband medicine, I went and sat on the bed beside him. He complained to me of feeling very sick, very weak, and very restless. He implored me then again to give him the powder which he had referred to earlier in the evening, and which I declined to give him. I was over-wrought, terribly anxious, miserably unhappy, and his evident distress utterly unnerved me. As he told me the powder would not harm him, and that I could put it in his food, I then consented. My Lord, I had not one true or honest friend in the house. I had no one to consult, no one to advise me. I was deposed from my own position as mistress of my own house, and from the position of attending on my husband, and notwithstanding that he was so ill, and notwithstanding the evidence of the nurses and the servants, I may say that he missed me whenever I was not with him; whenever I was out of the room he asked for me, and four days before he died I was not allowed to give him a piece of ice without its being taken out of my hand. I took the meat juice into the inner room. On going through the door I spilled some of the liquid from the bottle, and in order to make up the quantity spilled I put in a considerable quantity of water. On returning into the room I found my husband asleep. I placed the bottle on the table near the window. As he did not ask for anything then, and as I was not anxious to give him anything, I removed it from the small table where it attracted his attention and put it on the washstand where he could not see it. There I left it. Until Tuesday, May 14, the Tuesday after my husband's death, till a few moments before the terrible charge was made against me, no one in that house had informed me of the fact that a death certificate had been refused—but of course the post-mortem examination had taken place—or that there was any reason to suppose that my husband had died from other than natural causes. It was only when a witness alluded to the presence of arsenic in the meat juice that I was made aware of the nature of the powder my husband had been taking. In conclusion, I only wish to say that for the love of our children, and for the sake of their future, a perfect reconciliation had taken place between us, and on the day before his death I made a full and free confession to him."

Mrs. Maybrick's counsel, Sir Charles Russell, made a most brilliant and eloquent appeal in her defence. He pointed out that at the time the black shadow which could never be dispelled passed over the life of the accused woman, her husband was in the habit of drugging himself. She was deposed from her position as mistress of her own home, and pointed out as an object of suspicion.

If it had not been for the act of infidelity on her part, there would be no motive assigned in the case, and surely there was a wide chasm between the grave moral guilt of unfaithfulness and the criminal guilt involved in the deliberate plotting by such wicked means of the felonious death of her husband. There were two questions to be answered: Was there clear, safe, and satisfactory equivocal proof, either that death was in fact caused by arsenical poisoning, or that the accused woman administered that poison if to the poison the death of her husband was due? The jury, however, returned a verdict of "Guilty," and Florence Maybrick was sentenced to death. The agitation and excitement throughout the country which followed, ending in a respite being granted and the sentence being commuted to one of penal servitude for life, will be well remembered.

Whether Florence Maybrick did actually administer arsenic to her husband with intent to kill him, she alone can tell. On her own confession she admitted having given him a certain white powder for which he craved, of the nature of which she said she was ignorant. There can be no doubt this powder was arsenic. If she did not know the powder was arsenic, and did not give it with intent to take his life, which many still believe, then surely such a web of circumstantial evidence has never before been woven round one accused of having committed a terrible crime.