The Ripper's Wife

by Brandy Purdy

  Many of them were people I knew, members of the Currant Jelly Set I had danced and dined with. Ladies came, dressed in the height of fashion, in huge hats to the dismay of those seated behind them. They came to my trial as though it were a matinée, a fun, festive occasion, not my very life and death, my freedom, at stake. Many brought a boxed lunch so they need never relinquish their seat and risk losing it to another, and opera glasses through which to gawk at me, and chatted gaily with the journalists who obliged them by describing their hats and dresses in detail in the newspapers in return for their opinions and reminiscences about me. Women I knew who were avid players of the game of musical beds, couples who indulged in discreet wife swapping during weekends at genteel country houses, all sat there frowning, shaking their heads, and mouthing, SHAME! and calling me a “brazen American hussy” just like the Puritans who had surrounded the marketplace scaffold where Hester Prynne had stood, staring at the scarlet A embroidered with flamboyant defiance upon her breast. Their eyes bored into me and they put their heads together and whispered about me and Alfred Brierley, who had, upon his physician’s advice, conveniently set sail for South America. The papers reported that Alfred “appeared reserved and to feel the delicacy of his position most acutely.” Before he went, he issued a terse statement to the press: “I have figured more prominently in this case than my real connection with it warranted. Besides this I have nothing to say regarding anything.”

  As I stood there in the dock gazing out at them through the hazy black of my veil it was all I could do not to shout, You’re all a bunch of hypocrites! These people who were so fickle and free with their affections, not a one of them would have recognized true sincerity, instead of the feigned variety they donned and doffed just like carnival masks, if it had come up and slapped them in the face or kicked them in the pants!

  They even put up a waxwork figure of me in Madame Tussaud’s Chamber of Horrors, “most carefully modeled after actual photographs,” gowned in “an authentic replication” of my widow’s weeds. A packet labeled “ARSENIC!” peeked from my pocket and a red taffeta petticoat peeped from beneath my black skirt as I, with my hand also clutching a black-bordered mourning handkerchief and a bottle of Valentine’s Meat Juice, coyly raised it to give the people a glimpse. For weeks, they tell me, people were lined up around the block from morning till night, over fifty thousand of them, waiting to get in to see it, and souvenir postcards of it sold so briskly the printing presses were taxed to keep up with the demand. Edwin even dared flash one at me, when I was being led out of the courtroom, smiling and saying, “I’ll save one for you, Florie, in case they don’t hang you.” I didn’t know whether to spit at him or slap him. I felt like doing both, but, of course, I did neither. With all the eyes of the world upon me, just waiting to catch a glimpse of the evil they were convinced was lurking inside me, it wouldn’t have been wise. All I could do was “accidentally” tread upon his toes, then falter and gasp out an apology, and we both knew just how sincere that was!

  From the start Judge Stephen displayed a shocking prejudice against me, describing my late husband as a man “unhappy enough to have an unfaithful wife” and using words like adulterous intrigue every chance he got. Every single time he addressed the jury he seemed more concerned with my infidelity than whether the evidence presented was truly sufficient to convict me of murder. In truth, he seemed quite bored with that, though given the dry, ponderous nature of the medical testimony I could hardly blame him. There were moments when those doctors and scientists were on the stand when I could hardly keep my eyes open and was grateful to my heavy black veil for hiding my yawns. Time and again Justice Stephen would swat the medical arguments aside like a bothersome fly, commenting on their complexity and declaring them too difficult for his mind to grasp, and draw the jury’s attention back to my adultery. He seemed to particularly relish the reading aloud of my love letters and the testimony of those witnesses brought in to provide proof of my illicit trysts. Like a Bible-banging zealot he saw in me the reincarnation of all the evil women of history—Eve, Delilah, Jezebel, Salome, Agrippina, Cleopatra, Messalina, Catherine de Medici, and Lucrezia Borgia, to name just a few he cited in his apparent passion for the subject.

  There was a lengthy parade of scientific witnesses largely consisting of bickering doctors. I wondered even if you could get them all to agree to the sky being blue if they would fight one another like tigers over the precise hue; I could picture them coming to verbal blows over celestial versus cerulean. The tide seemed to be turning unexpectedly in my favor when a Mr. Davies who was an analytical chemist, brought in by the prosecution no less, admitted that the traces of arsenic found in Jim’s organs were too slight to be measured and insufficient to cause the death of a normal person, let alone a habitual arsenic eater like James Maybrick was said to have been. But then a Dr. Stevenson, an esteemed toxicologist, took the stand and spoke with such a resounding air of authority when he declared, “I have no doubts that this man died from the effects of arsenic,” that the jury could not fail to be impressed.

  Michael was there every day, staring at me, smiling like the cat that got the canary, and stroking his gold Mason’s ring. When he was called to the stand he emphatically declared that Jim was not a person given to dosing himself with medicines. Michael recounted Nurse Gore’s tale of my tampering with the bottle of Valentine’s Meat Juice, claiming “my brother grew gradually worse from that time on.” When queried about Jim’s habitual use of arsenic, Michael briefly lost his composure, sitting forward with his fists clenched. “Whoever told you that is a damned liar!” he said, his eyes daring anyone to disagree. “They should think of my brother’s children before uttering such rubbish!”

  Then it was Edwin’s turn. He admitted that he was “very fond of Florence, and I would never have believed anything wrong about her . . . until a letter to a man was found. . . .” Judge Stephen loved that! He was actually leaning over, nodding encouragingly at Edwin, almost begging for more, and Edwin, his pride still smarting, eagerly acquiesced. Following in Michael’s footsteps, Edwin feigned ignorance about Jim’s use of drugs, which he knew to be habitual; standing over what turned out to be Jim’s deathbed he had blamed his brother’s sad and sorry state on those “damn strychnine pills; he’s been taking them like candy!” Edwin sat there, after laying his hand on the Holy Bible and swearing to tell the truth, insisting that “on the whole my brother enjoyed very good health and only occasionally took digestive remedies as prescribed by his physician.” There was a moment of comedy when Edwin sought to mop his sweat-beaded brow in the sweltering courtroom and drew out a whole string of rainbow silk handkerchiefs and couldn’t quite manage to cram them all back into his pocket, so that when he exited the stand they were trailing behind him like the tail of a kite. I would have laughed if I hadn’t been crying.

  Then the servants had their moment to bask in the sun of fame or infamy, call it what you will. They got to see their names and pictures in the newspapers, souvenirs to save for their grandchildren. Everything I had ever done suddenly seemed sinister and suspect to them in hindsight and they tattled and prattled on endlessly about my ineptly run household and the occasionally violent quarrels between the master and mistress, the cause of which was, no doubt, some grievous fault of mine, since it was quite obvious by this point that James Maybrick had been a saint. I was expecting Judge Stephen to usurp the Pope’s authority and canonize Jim at any moment. Jim and I got along like a house on fire in our passion and our fury. There was no denying that; even I would have admitted it if anyone had ever asked. Mr. Maybrick, each and every one of our servants avowed, had been the best and kindest master and gentleman it had been their pleasure to serve; he was one of the finest men who ever lived. And it hurt all their hearts to see how Mrs. Maybrick, to save her own skin, was trying to paint a picture of this goodly and godly Christian gentleman as some kind of drug fiend. They were simply appalled when my counsel dared to bring up the fact that Jim had a mistress and
five bastard children to try to balance the scales when everyone knew it was different for men and what was good for the gander wasn’t necessarily appropriate behavior for the goose. Oh, what hypocrites!

  Next Nanny Yapp came flouncing up the center aisle, for all the world like a Floradora girl—a blind Floradora girl, since she had forsaken her spectacles for this performance. She was wearing one of my dresses, custard-yellow satin trimmed with rows of black velvet bows and black lace flounces, with stuffed canary birds perched amongst frills of black lace on her—my!—hat, twirling her—my!—parasol like a flirtatious belle promenading in the park trying to catch a gentleman’s eye. I could just hear her in my mind again singing, While strolling through the park one day, in the merry, merry month of May . . .

  She took the stand and regaled the crowd with a melodramatic rendering of how she—the heroine of the hour!—had alerted the household to my murderous intentions, rousing the alarm by crying out in turn to Edwin, Michael, and Mrs. Briggs that “the mistress intends to poison the master!” With stage-worthy gestures, Nanny Yapp vividly recounted her discovery of the flypapers soaking in my bedroom, in a washbasin covered with a towel in the hope of concealing my “nefarious intentions,” and how in innocently intending to do a good deed by putting the letter my little girl had soiled by dropping it in a mud puddle into a clean envelope she had inadvertently discovered my adultery—the obvious motive for my crime! She went on to tell how she had been the one to discover the packets of arsenic nesting amidst my underclothes and yet more hidden in the linen closet. “I always knew she was up to no good!” she cried, staring daggers at me before bursting into tears. “Oh, the poor master! The poor, poor master!” she blubbered into her, or rather my, handkerchief; I spied my initials embroidered upon it in sky-blue silk.

  Judge Stephen looked like a stage-door johnny wanting to shower Alice Yapp with gems and roses after that performance! He actually told the jury that she was “an exceedingly nice young woman” and that “her courageous act in retaining the letter and handing it to Mr. Edwin Maybrick must be commended.”

  When she was asked about any medicine she might have seen Jim taking she was simply aghast. Mr. Maybrick had been “the most godly and temperate man” she ever knew, and she knew for a fact that he was loath to take even a simple cough remedy, preferring to trust Jesus Christ, Our Savior, to save him from any earthly infirmity. BALDERDASH! Not one year ago, my husband had stood right in the middle of the nursery, in full sight of Nanny Yapp’s adoring eyes, and drunk straight from a bottle of cough syrup to prove to the children, who were both sick, that it didn’t taste bad. He ended up drinking the whole bottle right then and there and having to send out for more—for himself and the children!

  Mrs. Briggs took the stand in full mourning, replete with a complaisant air that seemed to confirm without actually saying a single word that she always knew something like this would happen from the moment she discovered that Jim had jilted her for me. She behaved as though Jim had been her husband, weeping as she recounted how Nanny Yapp, in a state of wild, weeping despair and frenzy, had met her at the door, crying out, “Thank God you have come, Mrs. Briggs! The mistress is poisoning the master! For God’s sake, go up and see him for yourself!” Wings must have sprouted from her heels, she flew so fast to his side, and found him a mere faint and fading shadow of his former self. She pooh-poohed the “absurd and ridiculous notion” that Mr. Maybrick had been an arsenic eater, then went on to enumerate all my grievous and many faults, harping, for the benefit of the housewives in the audience and all those who judged a woman by her house, on my inept and ill-managed household, my extravagance, shopping sprees, racking up debts that led me into dealings with moneylenders, and then, of course, there was “that business with Mr. Brierley.. . .”

  Nurse Gore and the two other nurses who had been in attendance at Battlecrease House also had their little tale to tell, namely how Michael had forbidden me the sickroom and cautioned them to be very vigilant whenever I was near and to report any suspicious behavior on my part promptly to him.

  And Mr. Samuelson, whose wife had betrayed him with my husband, took the stand against me to testify to my admission that I often said I hated Jim, taking it totally out of context and turning what I had intended to be an act of genuine kindness against me.

  Mr. Schweisso, the headwaiter at Flatman’s Hotel, was the sensation of the sixth day when he was called to give evidence about how I had stayed there with Alfred Brierley, registering the two of us as man and wife—Mr. and Mrs. James Maybrick—and confirming that the two of us had slept in the same room, in the same bed, together.

  I had for my defending counsel the flamboyant Irishman Sir Charles Russell, an inveterate gambler with the air of exhaustion clinging to him like a wet cloak despite all his bluff and bluster after mounting a grueling defense of Parnell, the Irish Nationalist fighting a charge of sedition. Russell came at great cost, a retainer of five hundred pounds and an additional one hundred pounds a day, but Mama said he was worth it. He was a most gallant gentleman who from the start viewed me as innocent and the case against me as a house of cards he was determined to topple. “Don’t worry, Mrs. Maybrick; the English have ever loved an underdog,” he said. “The tide may seem against you now, but it will turn in your favor.” He always referred to me as “that friendless lady” and told the jury that it was all very simple; there were just two key points they must consider: (1) Was James Maybrick’s death due to arsenic poisoning? and (2) If so, was that poison administered by his wife?

  The gallant Sir Charles did his best to demolish the prosecution’s case and produced several solid, unshakable witnesses who testified in detail to my husband’s hypochondriacal tendencies and long-standing habit of casually taking dangerous medicines, namely strychnine and arsenic. Some witnesses even came all the way from America in the interest of seeing justice done. Sir Charles summoned the black valet who had attended Jim in Virginia and a madam, Mrs. Hogwood, whose brothel Jim had frequented, both of whom testified that they’d been scared to death he would suddenly drop dead on account of the white powder he was always taking and that they might in some way be held accountable. He also had the druggist, Mr. Eaton, whose shop Jim was accustomed to frequenting several times a day for his “pick-me-up” tonic, take the stand and give a detailed account of Jim’s steadily increasing dosages and visits. The druggist even told how once when Jim had gone away on a business trip he had insisted that Mr. Eaton prepare sixteen vials of this tonic for him to take with him just in case he couldn’t find an obliging druggist to cater to his special needs. Sir Charles brought in other doctors to counter the prosecution’s parade of learned medicos, all stating firmly that Jim had most likely died of gastroenteritis, insisting that in reviewing the case as well as the postmortem findings they had found no solid proof of arsenical poisoning, though years of abuse had most certainly taken a toll on his constitution.

  Gradually what Sir Charles had promised began to happen; public opinion began to swing round to my side. I was becoming a cause célèbre on both sides of the Atlantic and the “friendless lady” was not so friendless anymore. People were actually getting into fistfights over the subject of my innocence or guilt and just how Jim had died. The papers were full of us; there was even a daily column in one of the local papers called “Maybrick Mania.”

  But Judge Stephen simply could not let the matter of my adultery rest. He kept harping on it incessantly, worrying it like a bad tooth his tongue couldn’t keep away from, and it was the jury’s opinion and not the public’s that mattered. He dismissed the contradictory twaddle of complex medical opinions and repeatedly stressed that my “adulterous intrigue with Mr. Brierley” was a “very strong motive why Mrs. Maybrick should wish to get rid of her husband. It is easy enough to conceive how a horrible woman, in so terrible a position, might be assailed by some terrible temptation.”

  It took the jury only thirty-eight minutes to convict me.

  When they came bac
k and the judge asked me to rise, I knew I was going to die. Not one man sitting in that jury box could look at me; they all turned their faces away.

  “Guilty!” the foreman pronounced, and I tottered back as though I had been struck a physical blow.

  Judge Stephen asked me if I had anything to say. This would be my first and most likely last chance to speak, since the law at that time denied accused murderers the right to take the stand in their own defense, so I forced myself to stand up straight and look him square in the eye.

  “My lord,” I said, “everything has been against me. Although evidence has been given as to a great many circumstances in connection to Mr. Brierley, much has been withheld which might have influenced the jury in my favor had it been told. I am not guilty of this crime!”

  Judge Stephen’s eyes were smiling as he put the black silk cap on over his white wig and sternly spoke the following words to me: “Prisoner at the bar, I am no longer able to treat you as being innocent of the dreadful crime laid to your charge. The jury has convicted you, and the Law leaves me no discretion, and I must pass this sentence upon you: The court doth order you to be taken from hence to the place from whence you came, and from thence to the place of execution, and that you be hanged by the neck until you are dead. May the Lord have mercy upon your soul!”

  According to the law, since three Sundays must pass before a condemned person could mount the gallows, I had eighteen days left to live. There being no Court of Appeal in England at that time, my only hope was a royal pardon.

  A great crowd had assembled outside and there was much outrage expressed about the verdict, so much so that Judge Stephen, being hissed as “Mr. Injustice,” required a police escort home and had rocks thrown through his windows.

  Surrounded by a quartet of constables and a prison matron, I was taken out a side door to the prison van, the infamous Black Maria. But, of course, the crowd found me. Though many hissed, spit, shook their fists, and hurled insults at me, there were a great many who shouted, “God go with you, Mrs. Maybrick!” and in the crush and press of the crowd someone snatched my veil away, as a souvenir I suppose.