Echoing Florence Maybrick’s description of her brother-in-law, the writer calls the Ripper a ‘brute’. The rest is a tedious descant of glee at the notion of policemen dressed as women. But let me stay with the ‘Funny Little Game’. ‘I forgot yesterday,’ he writes, ‘by reason of that be in the business, (with old silk Lady sufferer, a very poor one)’.
Only a ferocious ego could have risked something like this. The writer was indeed ‘in business’ with an old silk suffering a lady. The ‘business’ can be encapsulated in the ‘Blucher’ letter. The lady was ‘the Lady From Surrey’, a.k.a. Florence Maybrick, and the old silk was Sir Charles Russell QC.
This isn’t the Enigma code. It’s the spite of a cruel child out of a rubbish brain. Who did the police think was writing these letters? After the murder of Alice McKenzie on 17 July 1889 (about a week before the beginning of Mrs Maybrick’s ‘trial’), even the dimmest twat on the block must have realised they’d been duped.
‘My brother in trade’ was dead. No way did Bro James Maybrick kill Alice McKenzie. The ‘Snicker’ says, ‘if father Matthews had offered publickly £100 reward he would have had the Whitehall Mystery cleared up’. And in a letter dated 23 October 1888, Jack the Ripper said, ‘I lent three women from London about a hundred pounds sterling’. Michael lent Florence £100, and it gnaws at both Jack the Ripper’s and Jack the Snicker’s psyche. There’s a Freudian slip from the Snicker. Corroborating my point about the grown-ups, he calls Home Secretary Henry Matthews ‘father Matthews’, a daddy figure – and he hates the dads, like he hates the police, and hates the Freemasons. But not as much as he hated Florence Maybrick. He wanted her hanged, and struggled to achieve it, but was ultimately satisfied with her life imprisonment.
Underlined and overlined on the envelope of a Ripper letter, it’s as well to bear this arsehole’s ‘HA!’ in mind.
Over the following months a formidable engine of dissent evolved in Mrs Maybrick’s favour, most notably in the United States. There was a lengthy petition from ‘The Women of America’, and even the American Freemasons had taken up the case. Bro John Vincle, Grand Secretary of the Grand Lodge of Missouri, had exchanged letters with a British counterpart, which he proposed should serve ‘as a basis for action by the Masonic Fraternity of the United States, who expect to reach the Queen through the Prince of Wales’.85 It was an expectation shared by the Baroness von Roques; but like her, they got nowhere.
Alexander Macdougall and Helen Densmore remained indefatigable, the latter attracting an equally zealous convert to her cause. The public first heard of him in the columns of a British magazine called the Hawk. ‘Who is Gail Hamilton?’ it asked. ‘He is indeed a very impudent fellow.’ This view was predicated on an article published in the North American Review, which Hamilton had the brass Yankee neck to call ‘An Open Letter to the Queen’. ‘In terms of easy familiarity,’ reported the Hawk, ‘he requests Her Majesty to release Mrs Maybrick. A formal petition to that effect bearing the signatures of many influential Americans, has already been received by the Sovereign.’86
Received with disdain. Her Majesty didn’t care for it any more than she was charmed by the man who organised it.
‘Mr Gail Hamilton,’ continued the Hawk, ‘addresses the throne with an air of easy patronage, saucy to such a degree that were he to display his ill-breeding this side of the herring pond, he might be subjected to disagreeable consequences.’
One such disagreeable consequence now stuck his oar in. ‘Taking the most lenient view which the facts proved,’ warbled Prime Minister Salisbury, ‘and known to Her Majesty’s Secretary of State admit: the case of this convict was that of an adulteress attempting to poison her husband under the most cruel circumstances, while she pretended to be nursing him on his sick bed. The Secretary of State regrets that he has been unable to find any grounds for recommending to the Queen any further act of clemency towards the prisoner.’87
Had Hamilton been English, he would probably have got a dose of the Ernest Parke treatment. But he wasn’t English, and he wasn’t Mr either. She was in fact a Miss Hamilton, whose real name was Mary Dodge. Like Helen Densmore, she was a writer and feminist firebrand who had honed her campaigning skills fighting for the abolition of slavery, from which she graduated to become one of America’s loudest mouths championing women’s suffrage. Together with Densmore she would organise the Women’s International Maybrick Society, whose president, Caroline Harrison, was wife of the President of the United States. ‘No mountain of opposition was too high for these feminine Zolas to scale,’ wrote Trevor Christie, ‘no pit of apathy too deep for them to scour in their zeal for their heroine.’88 This was a powerful, well-connected bunch of women, driven by a stubborn anger for justice, and neither the British government nor Hawk magazine had heard the last of them.
Although first greeted with ridicule, Mary Dodge had a foot in the door at the Hawk, and with initial reluctance and then intrigued acceptance, it published her letters. Alexander Macdougall added his voice, and over the weeks there was an extraordinary turnaround in the magazine’s attitude. ‘Certain events,’ wrote its editor, Augustus Moore, ‘tend to induce me to keep these columns open for some time to come for the possible ėlucidation of what is unquestionably shrouded in mystery.’89
This was immediately countered by a letter from Macdougall. ‘Why not leave the word “mystery” out,’ he asked, ‘and confirm any discussion that might take place to the hard dry facts (1) Did James Maybrick die of arsenic? (2) If so, was the arsenic of which he died administered to him by Mrs Maybrick?’90 Following in the footsteps of Mr Muckley, Macdougall and Mary Dodge were dragging Michael Maybrick back into the light.
‘After several weeks’ publication of letters relating to Florence Maybrick’s case,’ opined Moore in an editorial,
wherein a decisive authoritative statement should be made upon the cumulative evidence which has been brought forward by ‘Gail Hamilton’, Mrs Maybrick’s champion in the U.S.A. and by Mr Alexander Macdougall, her counsel and staunch defender in England. In a former issue, I appealed to the Messrs. Maybrick [Michael and Edwin], to state in these columns whatever information they might desire to make public in reference to the very pointed allusions contained in Gail Hamilton’s résumé of the case, as well as Mr Macdougall’s letters. They did not deem it fit to make any reply to what was considered by some as a challenge on my part to them, to clear the atmosphere of mystery which apparently surrounds the inmate of Woking. However, better counsels have prevailed, and for the first time since the close of the trial, Messrs. Maybrick have volunteered to me directly, with a view of its being published in the columns of The Hawk, the information that all and every statement which refers to themselves, and which has appeared in print, is absolutely without foundation, and further, that they are prepared at any time to show me documents, which might prove of an extremely interesting character.91 [Emphasis in original.]
What these documents were wasn’t disclosed, but Moore acquiesced at the threat of them, publicly declaring a complete volte-face. There would be no more of Mrs Maybrick in his magazine: ‘I practically close any further discussion until hypothesis and conviction have given way to facts.’92
It was an onslaught of irrefutable facts that had aroused Moore’s interest in the first place. Surely the offer of sensational evidence countering all that had preceded it in the Hawk, and settling ‘the Maybrick Mystery’ forever, would have been embraced and published with enthusiasm? But Moore didn’t want to know. Whether by the Maybrick brothers or some other clandestine intercession, he and his magazine had been shut up.
Such an unexpected change of mind was greeted with dismay on both sides of the Atlantic. ‘This is, to say the least, a most surprising denouement,’ wrote Helen Densmore. She questioned how it was that after so many weeks of silence the brothers had finally deigned to give information, and without the production of any of it, it was accepted unreservedly by the editor of the Hawk: ‘It will occur to the thoughtful
mind to ask what bearing the Maybrick brothers’ denial has upon the many facts that have no relation to any statement said to emanate from them, or about them; and why, when demanding “facts” for Mrs Maybrick, the Editor of the Hawk so freely accepts the unsupported denial of these gentlemen. The Editor ignores the fact that, before the public, the Maybrick brothers are quite as much on trial as Mrs Maybrick.’93
Any traction Florence Maybrick’s supporters had achieved in the Hawk was over, and by the winter of 1892 (with one dramatic exception) virtually all the British press had closed ranks against them. They persevered with the struggle, but were like flies that didn’t understand the windowpane. They could buzz up and down and squabble about forever, but they were never going to get through.
What Miss Densmore didn’t know, and Alexander Macdougall didn’t know, and the American Freemasons didn’t know, was what this was all about. The English Establishment had a full-blown psychopath still active in their midst – but no problem, they could cope with the odd dead kid or two, even more with the odd dead whore. Their only problem was that if he got caught they all got caught, all the way up to the Grand Glutton. How could this profligate prance about in his pinafore when he shared one with Jack the Ripper?
The winter of 1892–93 was not the best of times for the supporters of Florence Maybrick. In August 1892 there had been a change of government, as a result of which Henry Matthews was replaced by Herbert Asquith, a heavy-drinking, highly intelligent Liberal who was Russell’s junior counsel during the Parnell frame-up. At first the new Home Secretary appeared to look favourably upon Mrs Maybrick’s plight. The petition dismissed by Salisbury, it was announced, would now receive ‘due consideration’. But within weeks Asquith had made as sudden a turnaround as Augustus Moore. If anything, his point of view was now more draconianly negative than that of the Tories.
On 10 December 1892, about a week before Moore slammed his door at the Hawk, the British government announced a cessation of all diplomatic exchange with the US government in respect of the Maybrick case. As was reported in the New York Herald on 11 December, the Brits were attempting to play the victim: ‘There is a general feeling here that Asquith should not go out of his way to release Mrs Maybrick just to oblige the United States government. The only explanation for this is that they feel that England has been treated cavalierly by the United States.’
The explanation, for what it was worth – and it was worthless – fell back behind the predictably moth-eaten camouflage of Ireland. ‘England,’ continued the report, quoting an unnamed politician, ‘is constantly held up to ridicule and contempt to please the Irish, yet your people ask us to release legally committed convicts for no other reason than that they are Americans.’ By this facile casuistry, Mrs Maybrick must remain incarcerated because of American support for Home Rule.
Concurrent with this, Asquith revoked what meagre concessions Florence was allowed. ‘The only result of Mr Asquith’s appointment,’ wrote the barrister J.H. Levy, ‘was the curtailment of a few privileges, as to the reception of visitors, etc., which had been conceded by Mr Matthews.’94 There were to be no more conferences with her mother, and excepting the Bible, no further access to any printed material. The prisoner who was already incommunicado was now doubly so. ‘Mr Asquith never gave any reason for this action,’ continued Levy, at a loss to understand. Like everyone else struggling to free Mrs Maybrick, he’d anticipated progress from a Liberal Home Secretary. To get the opposite was inexplicable as the pirouette at the Hawk.
In respect of the latter, it’s apparent that the Hawk’s editor had indeed been warned off, rather as Muckley and his publisher had been silenced in Manchester. Macdougall however was made of different stuff, and wasn’t going away. His charges of misfeasance were escalating into specific accusation, and his penultimate letter to Moore might well have been the clincher. Published on 6 December 1892, it was an openly provocative attack on the Maybrick brothers:
They could not dispute or deny what are simple plain facts which are both incontroverted and incontrovertible. The arsenic was not found by the police, but was produced to them by the five persons who put the charge of murdering her husband upon Mrs Maybrick. These five people – the Maybrick brothers, Yapp, Briggs, and Mrs Hughes – said they had found it after the death of James Maybrick, while Mrs Maybrick was lying in her mysterious swoon, and before they called the police. Neither the police nor anybody else produced any evidence as to where this arsenic had been procured, or who had procured any of it, as to where and by whom it had been introduced into the house.
Although Macdougall left it at that, at least for the time being, it’s worth one last reiteration of the obvious: if Florence Maybrick was in possession of enough arsenic to wipe out a street, why bother to soak fifteen one thousandths of a grain of it out of a bloody flypaper?
In her evidence at the inquest, when these ‘criminal instruments’ were fresh in her memory, Bessie Brierley described their discovery: ‘On going into Mrs Maybrick’s bedroom,’ she said, ‘I noticed a small basin with a towel over it. I lifted up the towel and looked under it. There was a fly-paper under this.’ Coroner Brighouse immediately converted this solitary flypaper into a plural. ‘What did you see in the basin beside fly-papers?’ In answer she said she found ‘some bits of fly-paper in the slop-pail’. In other words, there was only one, and this was the only occasion on which a single flypaper was ever seen soaking in Battlecrease House.
‘So far as evidence has been adduced, there has been no proof that the cause of death was arsenical poisoning,’ wrote a correspondent to the editor of the Daily Post. ‘The whole case is about the most mysterious and extraordinary in judicial records.’
Does this flagrant entrapment of Florence Maybrick merit the word ‘mysterious’? After the ‘trial’ various statements were made that are very material to the question. In an interview with the Liverpool Daily Post, Mrs Briggs was asked, ‘When did you first hear anything about the letter opened by Alice Yapp?’ To which she replied, ‘I knew nothing about it until it was publicly mentioned, and I was perfectly ignorant of Mrs Maybrick’s intrigue with Brierley.’95
In respect of Alfred Brierley, she’s lying through her teeth. The intercepted letter wasn’t made public until 28 May, when it was revealed at the coroner’s inquest. If Briggs had no knowledge of Mrs Maybrick’s affair until then, how was it that she could suggest, in self-admitted sarcasm, that a desperate Florence should write to Brierley for assistance on 14 May? She clearly knew all about the adultery long before the newspapers got hold of it. Notwithstanding that, Briggs’s claim that she had no knowledge of the intercepted letter was certainly true. It was true because it hadn’t yet been concocted. On that Wednesday morning, she and her sister went barging into Battlecrease House at Michael Maybrick’s request. In her evidence at the inquest, Briggs deposed: ‘On Wednesday May 8th I went to Battlecrease. When I got there Alice Yapp said something, and in consequence I went into Mrs Maybrick’s room.’96
Alice Yapp said something? Something about what? What happened to ‘Thank God, Mrs Briggs, you have come, for the mistress is poisoning the master’? Given the circumstance of her mission, it’s hardly something the prying old ghoul would be likely to forget. Yet Briggs didn’t regurgitate this indelible exclamation at the coroner’s court, and neither did she speak of it at the ‘trial’.97 She said absolutely nothing about it, and the reason was because Alice Yapp had never said it. It was a subsequent invention, designed to inflict further injury upon an innocent woman whose hours were already an anguish. Briggs’s statement – or rather, slander – about the poison was first made to a newspaper on 14 August, while Mrs Maybrick waited under sentence of death.
‘On Tuesday May 7th,’ she said, ‘I received a telegram from Mr Michael Maybrick, informing me that his brother was ill, and requesting me to go and see him. On the following day my sister and myself went to his residence. Nurse Yapp beckoned to us across the lawn, and said to me, “Thank God, Mrs Briggs,
you have come, for the mistress is poisoning the master.”’
Not according to Alice Yapp she didn’t. On 20 August Yapp told the same newspaper, ‘I never said to Mrs Briggs as she has stated, that the mistress is poisoning the master.’98 This was consistent with her evidence at the trial, where she denied any suspicion in respect of the flypapers. As Macdougall was later to write, ‘It is clear that one or the other of these women is a liar,’ and equally clear which one of them it was.
Had Alice Yapp really said it, Briggs and her sibling could have bolted up the stairs and saved James Maybrick’s life. Both Edwin and Dr Humphreys were in the house, and with the briefest of conferences Briggs could have solved James Maybrick’s mysterious illness there and then. Wednesday, 8 May could have been the end of ‘the Maybrick Mystery’ rather than the beginning of it.
But flypapers were not yet in the equation, and saving James wasn’t part of Michael Maybrick’s plan. The crucial day in the frame-up was this monstrous Wednesday, when Michael Maybrick arrived from London. More interested in chauffeuring than attending to his dying brother, Edwin picked Michael up at Edge Hill railway station at about 8.15 that evening. It isn’t difficult to imagine their conversation in the cab. It probably went something like the whispers overheard by the absconding eavesdropper Robert Reeves. Michael would have wanted to know which of his instructions were in progress, what Briggs was up to, and where his ‘servant girl’ was at. Yapp claimed in her cross-examination that she’d given the intercepted letter to Edwin earlier that afternoon. But for some mysterious reason he’d neglected to bring this most incriminating of documents with him. Asked in forthcoming questions at the ‘trial’ whether he had read the letter during the drive, Michael replied, ‘No, I was told about it.’ His memory fails him. On its production at the inquest, he identified the letter, ‘which Edwin had given him on his arrival from London’.99
They All Love Jack Page 77