They All Love Jack

by Bruce Robinson

  Brighouse took it upon himself to issue a verdict before the accused had got anywhere near a court. On 8 June he signed a death certificate for the already interred James. As in the bent certificate naming William Barrit as Johnnie Gill’s murderer, Florence Maybrick was now officially the murderer of James Maybrick. Brighouse couldn’t nominate arsenic as the offending substance, so we must suppose she offed him with a dose of meat.

  Under ‘Cause of death’ this corrupt document says: ‘Irritant poison administered to him by Florence Elizabeth Maybrick. Wilful murder.’

  Were it not for the compromised sanctums in which these accusers and swearers of Queen Victoria’s England grovelled for the Crown, such a monstrosity could never have got into a court.

  Michael Maybrick was well aware of what any honest lawyer in America would make of it. On 3 June the Liverpool Daily Post had this: ‘Considerable speculation was caused in the city by the telegram published from New York, to the effect that proof will be forthcoming of the deceased gentleman having been in the habit of taking arsenic in large quantities.’ This was followed shortly after by an intercession from Florence’s lawyer, Alfred Row of Manhattan. He made a statement to the press, reported in the New York Herald just before commencement of the ‘trial’: ‘We have no doubt that she will be acquitted as the evidence against her amounts to almost nothing. Maybrick had been addicted to the use of arsenic for a number of years, and the evidence on which the prosecution is based is not worth a puff.’102

  Further witnesses to James Maybrick’s nasty habits came forward in the United States, including Edward Nacy, a past employee, and Archie Church, a former valet, both prepared to testify to his ravenous consumption of arsenic. It’s clear as day that many in America knew of his addiction, and curious it is that Russell couldn’t replicate such deposition in Liverpool. Neither he nor Cleaver could find anyone to attest to it, even when it came knocking on the fucking door.

  If suppressing Dalgleish was an outrage, the same word might do for Morden Rigg. It will be remembered that it was he and his wife who had met James at the Wirral races, when he was deep into an O/D from ‘the London Medicine’. Rigg recognised this as a potentially important contribution to Mrs Maybrick’s defence, and like Dalgleish gave a statement to her solicitor: ‘I knew Mr James Maybrick well. My general impression of him was that he was a man with a tendency to talk about his ailments, or fancied ailments, and to take various supposed specifics for them. I saw him on the course [on 27 April]. He turned round to my wife’s carriage and told her he had taken an overdose of strychnine that morning and that his limbs were quite rigid. She is prepared to testify to this if necessary.’103

  This went to Russell, and not another word was ever heard of it. Thus we have three crucial witnesses denied – Dalgleish and the Riggs – any one of whom would have seen Michael’s flypapers laughed out of Liverpool. But they were never called, and nor was anyone like them. Russell had ‘reserved the defence’, meaning everyone was ignorant of it. He proclaimed this as a strategy in his client’s favour, when in reality it was a treachery on behalf of the prosecution. He knew that to ensnare Florence he had to avoid Maybrick’s various addictions, and that if witnesses to arsenic-taking were advertised for, half of the Cotton Exchange would have been in stampede to the court.

  Back at Battlecrease, Florence was allowed to speak to no one, and no one spoke to her but in insolence. Yapp was heard to say that she’d do anything to ‘prevent the mistress from having her children back’. In despair, Florence turned to Briggs, an enemy who shared a mask of friendship with the Irish Judas. As she was later to admit in court, it was ‘in sarcasm’ that she suggested Florence should write to Brierley for help:

  I am writing to you to give me every assistance in your power in my present fearful trouble. I am in custody, without any of my family with me, and without money. I have cabled to my solicitor in New York to come here at once. In the meantime send some money for present needs. The truth is known about my visit to London. Your last letter is at present in the hands of the police. Appearances may be against me, but before God I swear I am innocent! Florence E. Maybrick.104

  Like the cable, the letter went straight to the police. A quartet of helmets and nurses Gore and Wilson were on around-the-clock guard duty. It was into this environment that Florence’s mother Baroness von Roques was hastening. Michael had sent a telegram to Paris: ‘Florie ill and in awful trouble. Do not delay.’ It was he who had delayed, not troubling to inform her of the situation until James was under the granite. By chance the Baroness had run into Michael at Lime Street station, on his way to London. ‘Florie is very ill,’ he said. ‘Edwin will tell you every thing. It is a case of murder, and there is a man in the case.’ She’d heard from Florence by telegram that ‘James passed away on Saturday,’ but what was this of murder? Plunged into the trauma of it all, she took a cab to Battlecrease, a residence she’d never visited before.105

  In the vestibule Edwin gave her a lowdown on the Brierley letter and the manufactured intrigue that came with it. ‘The police are in the house,’ he said, a presence that was already evident. Hurrying upstairs, she passed two coppers outside the bedroom door, and on entry her reception was as hard as stone. Her first instinct was to embrace her still prostrate child, but Nurse Wilson interposed. The Baroness ignored her, and spoke to her daughter in French. ‘You must speak only in English,’ commanded one of the helmets. ‘I must warn you Madam, I shall write down what you say,’ and he proffered his paper and pencil to prove it.106

  Later that evening, Florence had ‘a violent fit of hysteria and crying’. Her mother rushed back into the room. ‘Four policemen and the two nurses were holding her down on the bed. The men had hold of her bared arms and legs,’ wrote the Baroness, ‘and I was outraged. I pulled the fat nurse [Wilson] away, and ordered the men out, and said, “If you will let me hold her hand and speak to her, she will be calm.”’ The fat nurse was very insolent, and said ‘she would put me out if I did not take care, she was in charge and should act as she thought best’. There was no way of having any private conversation with her daughter that night, nor the morning after: ‘The police and nurses were listening, and they all had paper and pencil, and were always rapidly taking notes of heaven knows what, and whispering together.107

  Although the Baroness didn’t realise it, it was her presence that freaked the authorities out. They were paranoid that Florence should have any external communication, that she might say something or hear something that could spring her from captivity. Now James was dead they were fearful she might squawk the ‘secret’ that she knew nothing of, but that traumatised them all. Keeping her mouth shut was what the intimidation was all about, and they decided to move her from the house immediately.

  I do not say of course that the nurses or helmets were aware of ‘the secret’, but there were others who certainly were. Midway through that Saturday morning, following von Roques’ arrival, thirteen men were milling about inside Battlecrease House. They included Florence’s solicitors, Richard and Arnold Cleaver, who prior to their entry had held a brisk discussion outside with a magistrate called Colonel Bidwell, his clerk Mr Swift and Superintendent Bryning. Once in agreement, the conclave tramped upstairs into Mrs Maybrick’s bedroom. It was apparent to her mother that they were going to take Florence away, and she begged Bidwell for an opportunity to say goodbye. He refused, and instead initiated an impromptu court in the bedroom.

  Bryning was back at the end of the bed. ‘This person is Mrs Maybrick,’ he said, ‘wife of the late James Maybrick. She is charged with having caused his death by administering poison to him. I understand her consent is given to a remand, and therefore I need not introduce any evidence.’ What did he mean, ‘her consent’? Other than the slanders whispered by Bro Michael Maybrick, there was no ‘evidence’ against her. ‘You asked for a remand of eight days?’ enquired Bro Swift. ‘Yes, that is so,’ affirmed Superintendent Bryning.

  CLEAVER: I appear for the pri
soner, and consent to a remand.

  BIDWELL: Very well. That is all.108

  Her mother watched from an upstairs window as, too sick (or drugged) to walk, Florence was carried out of the house in a chair. Accompanied by Humphreys, Bryning and a nurse, she was put in a carriage and was on her way to prison.

  The Baroness heard the twist of a key: someone had locked her in. It was probably Edwin, and the symbolism of the act was apposite. From that moment on her daughter would never again be allowed to speak openly to anyone but her jailers, her abberation of a solicitor, and the Irish Bastard betraying her.109

  On the following day the Baroness was asked to leave, and a few days later Michael slammed the door on the lot of them. Retaining only Grant the gardener as caretaker, he dismissed the entire staff. Even Yapp was out, and Battlecrease was his. Over the following weeks he kept up the pressure, dissembling through magisterial hearings and manipulating the authorities to his will. His sister-in-law remained hermetically sealed in Walton Jail, represented by nothing but Russell’s silence. At the ‘trial’ he was to call her ‘this friendless lady’, and Michael aside, he was first amongst her enemies.

  Florence wanted the proceedings moved to London, and it was Russell who denied this. Years later she wrote: ‘It was a mockery of justice to hold such a trial in such a place as Liverpool. The excitement ran so high that the Liverpool crowds even hissed me as I was driven through the streets.’110 She wanted her mother to speak in her defence, but Russell denied that too, refusing to allow the Baroness anywhere near the witness box, or even to sit in the court. He knew only too well that she was a major threat to the frame-up, able to confirm the soaking of flypapers as the precursor to a common cosmetic, and more dangerous still, testify to James’s habitual use of arsenic when he wasn’t out of it on strychnine.

  Baroness von Roques was locked out just as her daughter was locked in. So anxious were her accusers to enforce the isolation, they descended to trickery. The whole affair became like one of those old-fashioned roller towels in a municipal toilet: it went round and round, more soiled with every hand that touched it.

  Coroner Brighouse was not only adept at lying, he proved his competence in deception. On 28 May he opened his inquest at the Wellington Rooms in the Liverpool suburb of Garston. The dirty-hands were naturally concerned about press interest, so the press were tricked en masse. On 29 May the Liverpool Citizen published an enraged complaint from one of the journalists who had been subjected to it:

  THE MAYBRICK SCANDAL

  A Pressman’s Protest

  That was a clever dodge of which the local Press representatives were the victims on Monday morning. It was a triumph of legal subtlety and police craft of which both Swift and Superintendent Bryning have every reason to be proud. From the very first discovery of the Maybrick cause celebre, all the ingenuity of the county coroner, county police, and county magistrates’ clerks has been employed to prevent the press from obtaining the slightest information of the affair. The initial enquiry before Mr Coroner Brighouse was conducted in private, and strict injunctions having been issued that under no circumstances were the newspapers to be told the result.

  It was another put-up job, like Bradford. Though his report is rather lengthy, it’s worth hearing this journalist out:

  The reporters had positively to organise a kind of secret detective service to fight this conspiracy of silence. The same tactics were brought into play at the County Police Court yesterday. The business of trying prisoners in this temple of ‘county justice’, always commences at eleven o’clock, and having taken their places, the reporters settled down to await the calling of Mrs Maybrick’s case. But while they were thus waiting the advent of justice, the magistrate and his swift clerk were actually on their way to Walton Jail for the purpose of remanding the accused in secret. The learned ‘beak’ and his legal advisor, together with the astute Bryning and the irreproachable [Arnold] Cleaver, stole off to the prison, leaving the hoodwinked stenographers in ignorance of this remarkable skedaddle. It will scarcely be credited that the dispensers of justice should have deliberately given the slip to the public’s representatives in this absurdly undignified and preposterously stupid manner. On learning that the trick had been played on them, one Pressman took a hansom to the jail but arrived too late. Mrs Maybrick had been tried clandestinely within the gloomy walls of the Walton Bastille, and the newspapers were again baffled by the agents of law.111

  ‘The principle of trying a prisoner,’ concludes the article, ‘(accused of the most terrible crime known to law), with the secrecy of the Inquisition is repugnant to modern ideas. Somehow people don’t place much confidence in justice which hides its, head, throwing a black veil over its tribunal.’112

  Michael Maybrick and his friends had been busy. On the same day, Brighouse suspended his inquest so that James’s corpse could be exhumed. In my view this was just a bit of low theatre, designed to further titillate the public mind. Either way, the press made the most of whatever they could get, inventing a ‘family vault’ to fit the occasion. In reality there was no vault and no family skeletons, simply James’s parents’ names on a modest headstone.

  The scene of the exhumation was one of the most ghastly that can be imagined. The body had been interred in a family vault not far from the catacombs, and covered with a large flat stone now much discoloured with age. Beneath this were two heavy flag-stones, and below the whitewashed brick vault, which contained not only the remains of the late Mr James Maybrick but also those of his mother and father.113

  The account continues via ‘the sickly glow of naphtha lamps’, complemented with the steady rhythm of gravediggers’ shovels. Why midnight should have been chosen to dig him out isn’t explored, but Drs Barron, Humphreys, Hopper and Carter, plus a couple of police inspectors, were at the ready.

  ‘There was scarcely anyone present who did not feel an involuntary shudder as the pale worn features of the dead appeared in the flickering rays of a lamp held over the coffin by one of the medical men.’ Maybrick apparently looked rather healthy, and this was the topic of much remark. ‘As the dissecting knife of Dr Barron pursued its rapid and skilful work there was, however, whenever a slight breath of wind blew, an odour of corruption.’ Barron removed the lungs, heart, kidneys, and part of the thigh bone. ‘Coming to the head, he cut out the tongue, and, opening the skull, removed one half of the brain. Whilst the dissection was going on those present discussed the evidence given at the inquest in the earlier part of the day.’114

  During the inquest the matter of the will had arisen, Brighouse acquiescing to Michael’s request to keep its contents secret. Before Florence had ever been found guilty of anything, Michael had registered the will in London. On 29 July 1889 he became master of everything she had ever owned.

  While Florence was in Walton Prison, listening to the sounds of a gallows being erected, a reporter asked Michael, ‘Did you think during the trial that she would be convicted?’ ‘No I did not,’ he replied. ‘I said to my brother [Edwin] after the case was closed that I believed she would be acquitted,’115 which is presumably why he had auctioned off all her furniture and effects, and rented Battlecrease House to a man named Rogers.116

  Were Messrs Cleaver and Russell worthy of their profession, they would never have allowed this. Coupled with the dramatics of the exhumation, emptying the house was psychologically disastrous in terms of the public perception of their client. If her own brother-in-law thought she was never going home, why should anyone else?

  ‘The truth is,’ Michael continued, ‘I thought that no one connected with the case tried very hard to have Mrs Maybrick convicted. I know I tried my best to have the physician give a death certificate that would have prevented the trial entirely, but he refused to do so, and when the trial came I assure you I was a most unwilling witness.’117

  One of the more egregious talents of the psychopath is this facility to lie. But so misconstructed was Michael Maybrick’s ego, he finished with a stateme
nt that was breathtaking, even out of him: ‘As for my scheming with Mrs Briggs and Miss Yapp against her, that is all nonsense. Why, after my brother’s death, Mrs Maybrick thanked me for being so kind to her.’

  She had just lost her husband, her children, her home and her liberty, and while lying incapacitated in her own shit, she looked up at the kindly Michael and ‘thanked’ him.118

  By now the results from the graveyard were in. A Crown Analyst at Guy’s Hospital in London, by the name of Dr Stephenson, had found minuscule amounts of arsenic in Maybrick’s viscera. This isn’t surprising, because Humphreys was giving him Fowler’s Solution. To kill the average human at least two grains are required, and in James Maybrick’s case you could safely double that. Negligible traces were found in the intestines and liver. Although barely enough to bother a rat (and a dose Maybrick wouldn’t even have noticed), this would do nicely. They weren’t actually concerned with quantity, it was the word they were looking for, and now they had it, and the press howled ‘ARSENIC’.

  Florence Maybrick was put on trial for fifteen 1,000th parts of a grain.

  19

  Victorian Values

  He who holds the ladder is as guilty as the thief.

  Traditional

  At about ten in the morning of 31 July 1889, a pair of sheriff’s heralds announced the arrival in court of Judge Fitzjames Stephen with a blare of trumpets, and the frame-up known as Regina vs. Mrs Maybrick was officially in progress.

  Stephen took his Right Honourable seat on the bench accompanied by the High Sheriff, Mr Royds, various church officials, and the Earl of Sefton. Other than owning 23,000 acres in the vicinity (which may have qualified him for something or other), I can discover no explanation for Sefton’s presence. Next on the bill was the court chaplain, anointing proceedings with Christian prayer. He was followed by Clerk to the Assizes, Bro Thomas Shuttleworth (Grand Steward to the Earl of Lathom’s Liverpool Lodge 2229, thus sharing his Grand Master with Bro Michael Maybrick in London’s St George’s 42).