They All Love Jack

by Bruce Robinson

  ‘Any sort of arsenic?’ asked Addison.

  ‘No,’ replied the perjuring pipsqueak.13

  Before arriving at Russell’s cross-examination of Michael Maybrick it’s worth a moment to put these two into context. Both were celebrities on the same social circuit, both were members of the Savage, and shared intimacy with the same famous names. Russell lived at 86 Harley Street, all but next door to one of Maybrick’s oldest friends, the musician and composer Wilhelm Ganz, who himself considered Russell an intimate. ‘At that time,’ wrote Ganz, ‘Harley Street was not only a street of doctors, but my neighbours and friends included the Kendalls [famous actors], the Chappells [music publishers], Mr Gully [Speaker of the House of Commons], and Sir Charles Russell [Queen’s Counsel, and liar, on behalf of the Victorian Establishment].’

  These eminent men were the Establishment, at least the glittering manifestation of it, and Russell himself, was a frequent house-guest of the King to be. Shagger Ed’s special friend was Russell’s closest friend, the composer Sir Arthur Sullivan. Russell had defended Sullivan in a suit against the Comedy Company for illicitly performing his operetta HMS Pinafore, and they became firm friends, sharing an obsession with the card game bezique. ‘Played Bezique with Sir C Russell (6 a.m.!),’ wrote Sullivan, ‘and won a hundred and two pounds!’ They spent at least one Christmas together on the Riviera, at Sullivan’s villa on the French side of the border with Monaco.14 And Sullivan was equally no stranger to Maybrick. As far back as 1880 they had been co-instigators of a musicians’ union to protect their respective copyrights.15 Asked many years later who his ‘best friends’ were, Michael replied, ‘Well, I practically knew everyone of note in the profession. Sir Arthur Sullivan took a great deal of interest in me, and I succeeded him as Freemasonry’s Grand Organist.’16

  That he did, Sullivan having succeeded Bro Wilhelm Ganz.17

  So when Michael Maybrick got into the witness box, the questioner and questionee enjoyed a much greater social interaction than was public knowledge. They were stars of the same circuit, sharing the same friends, and members of the same club.

  RUSSELL: I will ask you one or two questions about your brother. Was he a man rather fond of his appearance?

  MICHAEL MAYBRICK: He was particular about it.

  RUSSELL: Was he a man given to dosing himself?

  MICHAEL MAYBRICK: That I am not aware of. I never saw him. At times he took a little phosphorus I know.18

  The above question was put by a liar to a liar with a lie as the answer. Predicated on secret discussion of the ‘Blucher’ letter and its strychnine, both were lying through their teeth.

  RUSSELL: Have you ever heard about his dosing himself?

  MICHAEL MAYBRICK: I never heard, except in a letter from Mrs Maybrick.

  RUSSELL: I should be glad to see that letter.

  MICHAEL MAYBRICK: Well, unfortunately, I destroyed it. I did not think it of any importance.

  RUSSELL: Did she say she had seen him take a white powder on several occasions?

  MICHAEL MAYBRICK: Yes, I believe she did say something to that effect.

  RUSSELL: Did she say she herself had searched for the powder, and could not find any trace of the powder he took?

  MICHAEL MAYBRICK: That I do not remember. I have no recollection of it.19

  Victorian courts made no provision for the defendant to speak. Florence could neither contest nor contribute, but it is recorded that ‘she studied Michael Maybrick the whole time he was in the witness box, her expression being one of “fascinated disbelief”, almost of repugnance’.20 She had to sit there and listen to these zombies lying her life away with no one to defend her but Russell, who was no defence at all. Did James take ‘a little phosphorus’ from 163 different medicine bottles?

  At one point the prosecution required a confirmation of Mrs Maybrick’s handwriting, and to obtain this Addison called upon the skills of a world-famous scribe and impartial graphologist: ‘With your permission, my Lord, I should like to recall Mr Michael Maybrick to prove the handwriting of these letters before I put them in [as evidence].’

  Back in the box, Michael studied the letters, including the ‘Brierley text’ that Mrs Briggs had adjusted on his behalf.

  ADDISON: Will you look at those letters and tell me in whose handwriting they are.

  MICHAEL MAYBRICK: Mrs Maybrick’s.21

  For Michael Maybrick the proceedings couldn’t have been anything other than a daily jubilation. This wasn’t a sudden flash of steel in gaslight, but an enduring torture. It would take a week in this pigsty, and another three after that, to murder Florence Maybrick. It was Whitechapel in slow motion. Everyone in this charade of a court knew they were going to nail the whore, which is why Clerk to the Assizes Bro Shuttleworth slept through most of it.

  Sir Charles Russell QC, however, was wide awake, interceding once again as Addison blundered into dangerous territory. He was questioning the Maybricks’ servant Mary Cadwallader about the arrival of the flypapers, and was about fifteen seconds from putting his foot in it.

  ADDISON: Now, about those fly-papers. Did you and the servants talk about them at all?

  CADWALLADER: Well, sir, they were mentioned one day.

  ADDISON: Do you recollect if anyone suggested what they were used for?

  CADWALLADER: Yes, the cook said they were used for cleaning silk.

  ADDISON: Did you at that time think anything of consequence of them?

  CADWALLADER: No.

  ADDISON: Now, I want to take you to another thing in connection with the fly-papers. Do you recollect a Domino Party or Ball to which Edwin Maybrick escorted Mrs Maybrick?

  She certainly did, and it was an alarm bell for Russell. Addison was about to associate the flypapers with the truth of them – that they were the ingredients of a cosmetic.

  ADDISON: Do you recollect how long before that you saw these fly-papers in the hall?

  CADWALLADER: About a week before …22

  That was quite enough of that, thank you very much, and the Irish Judas moved in to silence it. ‘Sir Charles Russell,’ records Irving’s transcript, ‘spoke to Mr Addison and the question was not pressed.’23

  Yet again the defence had shut Addison down on behalf of the prosecution. Addison’s charge against the prisoner was that she was a woman engaged in ‘a murder founded upon adultery and profligacy, and carried out with a hypocrisy and cunning rarely equalled in the annals of crime’.24 In fact the cunning belonged to the Crown, and it would never make its charges stick if flypapers were merely a primitive precursor to Max Factor. It was crucial that they remained the principal ingredients of murder, and that’s why Russell interrupted Addison. He was desperate to avoid any mention of their function as a cosmetic because, apart from adultery, they were all the Crown had.

  It wasn’t by accident that Baroness von Roques was excluded from the trial, any more than that Dalgleish and Morden Rigg were kept out. Enquiry into these flypapers would raise very serious difficulties for Russell, and unless Addison were gagged, these were about to be presented to the jury on a plate. 1) Why hadn’t he gone after the ‘Domino Party’ himself, broadcasting it, and its logistics, as an unarguable truth? 2) Why hadn’t he brought in witnesses to testify that flypapers were ingredients of a widely used cosmetic? 3) Where indeed was Florence’s mother, who could have proved they were intended to be used in a facewash, and who with scant effort could have produced prescriptions confirming it? Russell had managed to rake up some ‘black’ from the plantations, but was unable to procure easily available copies of prescriptions from Paris or New York?

  ‘The question of calling the Mother of the Prisoner,’ wrote Florence’s solicitor Richard Cleaver in his subsequent deposition to Matthews, ‘to speak of her knowledge of the use by her daughter of Arsenic for Cosmetic purposes was considered and abandoned on the ground that the value of such evidence did not appear to warrant the infliction of the pain of such an appearance.’25

  Such solicitude for the anguish
of a mother is difficult to construe as sincere in the context of her daughter’s possible death sentence. This trash out of Cleaver/Russell elevates an appearance in a witness box as more trying than her child’s broken neck.

  Russell’s farce in St George’s Hall wasn’t far removed from Warren’s fiasco in Whitechapel. He was no less a servant of the psychopath’s charms than the joke of the Metropolitan Police. Both had to pretend they were doing what they were not. À propos of that, Russell nearly blew it. He brought in two witnesses for the defence who weren’t quite so easy to handle as ‘Fat Jack’.

  They were Charles Tidy and Rawdon Macnamara, professors of forensic medicine and probably the world’s pre-eminent living authorities on irritant poisons. The evidence of either should have seen Florence reunited with her children, and together these gentlemen constituted Russell’s biggest headache.

  The prosecution (and defence) were relying on the toxicological expertise of Doctors Humphreys and Carter, neither of whom had the first idea of the pathology of poisoning by arsenic or how it could be determined from an autopsy.

  RUSSELL: You have never assisted at a post-mortem examination of any person supposed to have died from arsenical poisoning?

  DR HUMPHREYS: No.

  RUSSELL: I think I might also ask you whether you have ever assisted at a post-mortem where it was alleged that death was caused due to irritant poisoning?

  DR HUMPHREYS: No.26

  Professor Tidy, by contrast, had conducted something short of a thousand autopsies, forty of which were due to arsenical poisoning. He introduced himself to the jury as a ‘Bachelor of Medicine, Master of Surgery, and an Examiner of Forensic Medicine at the London Hospital’.27 Within minutes of cross-examination his credentials were manifest. He knew everything there was to know about the ravages of arsenic, from kidneys to liver, via petechiae of the stomach, all the way up to bloodshot eyeballs. On pre- and post-mortem evidence, James Maybrick failed on all necessary criteria.

  RUSSELL: You say undoubtedly that these are not the symptoms of arsenical poisoning?

  TIDY: Certainly not.

  RUSSELL: But as regards the symptoms?

  TIDY: There is an absence of three or four of the leading symptoms, and if I had been called upon to advise, I should have said it was undoubtedly not arsenical poisoning.28

  No counsel for the defence could have asked for anything better, because the one thing Charles Tidy was absolutely certain of is that whatever killed James Maybrick, it wasn’t arsenic.

  The above is taken from The Maybrick Trial: A Toxicological Study, a pamphlet published by Tidy and Macnamara in 1890, following Mrs Maybrick’s conviction. It does Russell no favours.

  We will return to Professor Tidy in a moment, but first let us hear it from his associate, Professor Rawdon Macnamara.29

  RUSSELL: You have heard the description of Dr Humphreys of pains in the thighs. Have you in your experience known that in connection with cases of saturation or over-saturation with arsenic?

  MACNAMARA: Never.

  RUSSELL: Now, bringing your best judgement to bear upon the matter, you have been present at the whole of this trial, and heard the evidence. In your opinion was this a death due to arsenical poisoning?

  MACNAMARA: Certainly not.30

  And there you have it, gentlemen of the jury. You have heard the evidence of two of the leading experts of our day, men whose reputation is revered far beyond these shores, and both are categorical in their certainty that James Maybrick did not die of arsenical poisoning. Any honourable defence counsel would have been on his feet to remind the jury of the prosecution’s charge ‘that she murdered her husband by administering to him doses of arsenic’. Except she didn’t, and two of the most eminent toxicologists in England said she didn’t. The flypapers relied upon by the prosecution had become an irrelevance, a mere concoction of this innocent woman’s cosmetic, and anything beyond that was the unfounded charge of Michael Maybrick and the spite of a servant.

  The case was ‘rotten’, predicated on malicious gossip, police corruption and false accusation. Russell had everything he needed to kick this rubbish out of court, and after the appearance of Tidy and Macnamara the press thought so too. ‘As far as I could gather from the hundreds of people I heard speak of the case,’ wrote the Liverpool Review, ‘opinion was unanimous on the subject. I can solemnly swear that I have not heard one man, woman, or child, who has not said positively that they were absolutely certain that the prisoner would get off. After Dr Tidy’s evidence, these people dropped saying get off, and took the more important phrase “Not Guilty”.’31

  The Crown’s case had imploded, game set and match, and it would take every sinew of Russell’s duplicitous tongue to revitalise it. Without arsenic Mrs Maybrick was free, but the function of this gang was to manufacture a conviction. Just as Russell had to keep arsenic away from the jurors’ ears in respect of James Maybrick, it was equally vital to keep arsenic as a live issue in respect of his wife. But there was no arsenic, it was a dead duck, and it was with escalating incredulity that Tidy sat there and listened to Charles Russell reintroduce it.

  The next witness up was Dr Frank Paul, Professor of Medical Jurisprudence at University College, Liverpool, and Examiner of Forensic Medicine and Toxicology to the Victoria University. Dr Paul was there to support the defence, but Russell craftily destroyed any chance of that, and nobbled him in his tracks. Rather than welcoming his evidence as a supplement to that of Macnamara and Tidy, he sabotaged it from the outset, catching Paul off guard by dragging back the glazed pan from which James had eaten his office lunch. It was a dastardly long shot, and nothing less than treachery, but this glazed pan was the only possible source from which Russell could reanimate the arsenic.

  By casual stealth – ‘There are one or two smaller matters I must ask you about’ – he asked Paul if he had examined any such pan. A positive answer developed Russell’s line of questions, which didn’t take a minute to arrive at the possibility of arsenic being present in the glaze. Did the doctor have any such pan in court? On being told that he did not, Russell called it a ‘great pity’, and wondered out loud whether any such pan could be obtained. When told it would take about fifteen minutes, Russell asked, ‘Can anyone go and bring it here?’ and looking directly at him said, ‘Perhaps Doctor Tidy would go for it?’32 The professor stared back with a mix of astonishment and rage. The only reason he might oblige would be in order to shove the glazed pan down Russell’s throat. Was he purposely intimidating Tidy, converting him into some kind of court usher, and making it clear that he held both him and his evidence in contempt?

  The case was won, and it didn’t include arsenic. It was obvious to Tidy that Russell was in the business of unwinning it by sneaking arsenic back in, and he couldn’t have been more right.

  In the ensuing cross-examination Russell set about deconstructing his own certain victory and replanting the virus of arsenic in the jurors’ minds. Launching forth with redundant questions about copper foil, hydrochloric acid and the irrelevant analysis of some unspecified person’s urine, he escorted Paul through details of the Reinsch test (an alternative to the Marsh test for arsenic).

  RUSSELL: Just tell us, what was the experiment?

  DR PAUL: I experimented with various quantities, and found l-200th of a grain to one ounce, which would readily be detected by a person, scientific or otherwise, who saw the test; 1-1000th of a grain would readily be detected in this way.

  Readily detected for what reason? Arsenic didn’t kill James Maybrick, so they may as well have been talking about a non-existent bullet-hole. This was nothing to do with Maybrick, but the pathology of a jug. And whose urine was it? What it wasn’t was James Maybrick’s. For all Tidy knew, it could have been from someone who took a piss round the back of a pub.33

  RUSSELL: Now, I wish just to follow that to thousandths of a grain. What I want to ask you is this. You can reduce that to proportion between the arsenic and the urine in which it was placed? [He cou
ld.] And how many times was there the quantity of urine that there was of arsenic?

  DR PAUL: About fifty five thousand.

  RUSSELL: That would be 1 to 55 thousand?

  DR PAUL: Yes.34

  And two pages later:

  RUSSELL: Taking altogether what was found quantitatively, 88-1000ths or 92-1000ths, would you explain to the jury what that quantity would represent?

  DR PAUL: A thousandth of a grain would be, I suppose, barely visible.

  FITZJAMES STEPHEN (writing): The 76 thousandths of a grain of arsenic …35

  Every question was designed to confuse the guileless mind, and every answer was another shovel of earth on Mrs Maybrick’s grave. By now Fitzjames Stephen was in the swing of it, asking how long the doctor had boiled his urine, and over what sort of flame.

  The boys were back in business.

  Tidy was ‘extremely angry’, and at the earliest opportunity he left the court to engage with Russell in his allocated chambers. A barrister at law himself (Lincoln’s Inn), Tidy wanted to know what the fuck Russell thought he was up to. Florence Maybrick was innocent, the trial was a stitch-up, and even the previously hostile press agreed.

  Russell couldn’t give a monkey’s for the press, but he had to hear it from Tidy. ‘Any more extraordinary line of argument,’ protested his own expert witness, ‘can scarcely be imagined. The post-mortem appearances were those of inflammation,’ insisted Tidy, ‘but not consistent with arsenical poisoning.’ In respect of Drs Humphreys and Carter he said, ‘They do not think it worthwhile to examine the urine, which would have set the question at rest, save on one occasion, when they found nothing. Nor do they attempt any antidotal treatment, seeing there was nothing to indicate such remedies being required.’