Later, referring to the medical controversy, he remarked: “It is extremely difficult to decide in this matter. It is a special science, of which I know nothing, and of which, I think, it is very unlikely that any one of you could possibly know very much. It is not a kind of knowledge that is likely, in the ordinary course of affairs, to fall to your lot. Two eminent men are put forward as very great authorities on this subject, and they both arrive at different conclusions on the matter; and the point in dispute is one upon which I cannot myself profess to form an opinion; and I don’t see how to suggest to you that you should form an opinion.”
The sort of evidence on which the jury however still had the responsibility of forming an opinion is typified by this further quotation:
“He [Dr Stevenson] says, ‘I found rather more arsenic than Mr Davies,’ and then he gives some calculations. He says, ‘I had 28 ounces of liver out of 48 ounces, which the liver weighed, and I found 27–1000ths of a grain. I actually weighed from the liver .034 of sulphide of arsenic, equivalent to .026 of a grain of white arsenic,’ and he makes out .087 or .091 of a grain—altogether 100–1000ths of a grain, or 1–10th of a grain, and this would be less. I cannot convey to your minds, or to any human being’s mind, anything to enable you to attach any meaning to figures representing such very small quantities … The globules of blood in a man’s body are so small that there are more than a billion, but really that conveys no idea whatever to our minds.”
It seems obvious from these repeated doubts about the possibility of arriving at any conclusion on this question that the judge should have at least warned the jury in the strongest terms to use great caution in examining this part of the evidence, and made plain to them that if, as was likely, they could not form an opinion, then this must constitute a genuine doubt as to whether murder had been committed. He appeared to do the very opposite: to indicate to the jury that if they could not decide on this evidence, they might minimize its importance, suggesting that the objectivity of the medical witnesses might be doubtful.
“You know perfectly well,” he told them, “that there is such a thing in scientific and legal questions … as subtle partisanship, which very much diminishes the value of the evidence given under such circumstances … The mere fact of a man coming into a Court and swearing this, that and the other, does not by any means give a reason for unqualified belief in what he says.
“You have to take off a good deal of discount from the testimony of skilled witnesses on the ground of their becoming, probably insensibly to themselves, advocates rather than witnesses. I certainly would not like to be invidious, and I would not do so unjust a thing as to impute in this awful inquiry advocacy to those gentlemen who have given the Court the benefit of their experience. Well, you must exercise your own free judgement, free from all unnecessary modesty about your own opinion, and free from all unnecessary respect for the opinions and special knowledge of men especially acquainted with these things.”
This invitation to the jury not to be unduly modest about their own opinion simply because it was based on ignorance, and not to be unduly respectful of the opinions of others merely on the grounds that they knew what they were talking about, was the only attempt Mr Justice Stephen made to solve the anomalous situation in which laymen had to reach a decision in a matter where experts could not agree. His reference to partisanship or advocacy, insensible or otherwise (quite unwarranted in the case of the medical witnesses called, for neither side made any such imputations about the other) was not really removed from the jury’s mind by his immediate retraction; the doubt had been implanted; a spoonful of tar can spoil a barrel of honey, and a chance remark may have an undue significance at a critical moment of decision.
It is obvious that the jury accepted the direction not to be unduly modest about their capacity for judgement of medical evidence, and did in fact judge it; and that they also took heed of the suggestion not to be unduly respectful of specialists’ opinion. They either decided it was wrong or “subtly partisan” or they simply dismissed it from their minds. The last seems the most likely, because, whilst the experts took hours to expound their point of view, the jury only took about thirty-five minutes to reach a decision.
This part of the evidence, the “contrariety of expert opinion” as Sir Charles Russell put it, raises an interesting and controversial issue. In the case of the imponderable or the incalculable in some important question of evidence, would it not be wise for the judge to implement his discretionary powers and direct the jury to bring a verdict in favour of the prisoner? These powers are used of course when the judge believes that the weight of evidence brought by the prosecution is clearly insufficient to prove a charge, and that the danger of a perverse decision by the jury must be obviated. In the Maybrick case a different problem faced the court—not that of insufficient evidence, for there was prosecution evidence in profusion about arsenical poisoning, but that of the jury’s incapacity to judge the facts. With such conclusive evidence before him of the jury’s inability to form a decision as to whether or not a murder had been committed, for the judge to proceed with the case seemed to defy reason and commonsense; it was, by implication, a tacit invitation, to the jury to dismiss the whole of this part of the evidence from their minds.
Mr Justice Stephen went even further than this, the implicit character of the invitation assuming an ominously explicit form when towards the end of his marathon summing-up he said: “There are three or four circumstances in the case which are circumstances of very grave suspicion indeed; and where you find a case in which this dreadful accusation is made and is accompanied by circumstances which, apart from the physical, chemical and medical aspects of the case, are of such a character as are likely to produce suspicion, you must consider how far they corroborate the other evidence that has been given … Supposing you find a man dying of arsenic, and it is proved that a person put arsenic in his plate, and if he gives an explanation which you do not consider satisfactory, that is a very strong question to be considered.”
The sinister illustration devised by Judge Stephen to point his meaning undoubtedly gave tremendous force to this part of his summary; and the point seemed to be that “corroboration” of “other evidence” might be assumed by suspicious surrounding circumstances, this “other evidence”, it might be inferred, being the medical. The emotionally potent turn of language and the judge’s failure to add the customary rider that suspicion, however grave, does not actually amount to proof, undoubtedly had a strong effect on the jury.
(iii)
The second and equally powerful buttress of the defence was the extraordinary coincidence, that is, the evidence brought to show quite conclusively that for many years Maybrick had been in the habit of taking arsenic in large doses approximating to these which the prosecution claimed had brought about his death.
The defence’s claim was so surprising, and the facts so unusual, that the greatest consideration had to be given to the evidence supporting it. It is worth examining this evidence in some detail, but before doing so it is of interest to try and establish the cause of Maybrick’s eccentric addiction.
As previously indicated, his hypochondria took a very serious form. Those who knew him—his friends, the doctors, his brothers, his wife—frequently noted his preoccupation with his health; he was obsessed with it; he would discuss his symptoms, whether real or imagined, interminably; he would visit chemists for the purpose of trying varieties of cures: tonics, “pick-me-ups”, stimulants, sedatives, patented brands, druggists’ concoctions, his own privately prepared mixtures, doctors’ prescriptions, anything that a friend recommended. He consulted his own family doctor but, not content with that, took advice from the children’s doctor, his brother’s, his friends’; he would get through a medicine at twice the rate prescribed and simultaneously ring the changes on other medicines, many of them containing strong drugs, thus imbibing several mixtures at once for the same ailment, a circumstance quite unknown to any of the doctors treatin
g him. His stomach was a pharmaceutical-toxicological depository. Wherever he stayed he surrounded himself with medicines; his closet and medical cabinet were minor arsenals; shortly after his death a bottle found on one of his hat-boxes contained enough poison to kill a dozen strong men.
Maybrick clearly was a neurotic, a fact not appreciated in those days. At the trial he was judged a normal person with an idiosyncrasy: he had a taste for arsenic rather in the manner you took snuff. Snuff and arsenic were both stimulants, arsenic stronger stuff than snuff, certainly, but the general principle was the same. That was the defence’s line. Sir Charles did a neat piece of theatrical demonstration of this. Examining a witness who had been sent to purchase arsenic for Maybrick, he asked: “Did you go to the druggist’s?” “Yes, sir,” said the witness. “Were you asked who it was for?” “Yes.” Sir Charles, taking out a large snuff-box: “Did you state?” “Yes.” “And brought it back?” “Yes.” Sir Charles, helping himself to a pinch of snuff: “What did you get?” “A very small package; not so long as the box you have in your hand.” The witness pointed to the snuff-box, which Sir Charles flourished eloquently.
That was the method a skilful barrister employed to impress a point on the jury’s memory, associating one form of stimulant with another.
The point was well made and established, but it was a weak point, not really convincing; the judge later expressed his scepticism, and the jury no doubt shared it. Sir Charles referred to the habit of opium-eating as practised by De Quincey to explain the form of addiction that might have motivated Maybrick; and the judge wouldn’t have it. He was equally unimpressed by the other argument based on the alleged habits of Styrian peasants. Sir James Stephen failed to see what the habits of Styrian peasants had to do with the behaviour of an English gentleman, merchant and cotton broker, residing in Liverpool. He was probably quite right.
An explanation in modern psychiatric terms would be far more convincing. In the absence of a proper clinical study this can only be tentatively suggested in a broad theoretic frame-work. In the case of aggravated hypochondria—the form that it took with Maybrick—the theory is that this excessive preoccupation with building up the normal powers of resistance to ill health springs from the deep-seated unconscious desire for self-destruction. Now it is not of course suggested that Maybrick was suicidal in the sense we normally understand it; he did not deliberately or knowingly plan to do away with himself. Unquestionably, however, there was in him morbidity, a deep fascination with illness and possibly death; and there is considerable authority supporting the concept of an almost universal unconscious “death-wish” which wages a never-ending contest with the instinct of self-preservation, and which psychoanalysts believe expresses itself in the general pattern of our lives.
The dark hinterland of the mind holds its secrets even from the inward eye, and to Maybrick perhaps the effects of arsenic produced an intoxication with the thought of death. We shall never know, but if it did, and he did thus contrive his own destruction, tortuously, deviously, unknowingly but inexorably, then Mrs Maybrick’s innocence (which otherwise we cannot assume, although a reasonable doubt certainly exists about her guilt) must be accepted. Whatever the reason for it, there can be no doubt that Maybrick took arsenic more or less regularly for very many years.
Sir Charles called witnesses from America where, it will be remembered, Maybrick had stayed for some time. The first of these was Nicholas Bateson of Memphis, who remembered Maybrick well. In 1877, Maybrick had chills and fever, and for about three months was given a prescribed treatment by a Dr Ward, consisting of arsenic and strychnine. Maybrick was nervous about his health and complained of other symptoms than the chills and fevers: numbness and cramp in his hands and limbs. He feared paralysis. Obviously he impressed Bateson with his ill health or imagined ailments.
R. Thompson, formerly a master mariner, recalled that Maybrick took him to a druggist one day and collected some small packages. The shop assistant used words that Thompson found curious. “Now, Mr Maybrick, be careful,” he said as he handed his customer the purchases. Thompson was a good friend of Maybrick’s and, concerned at this strange warning, later went back to the chemist’s to speak privately with the assistant. He saw Maybrick afterwards and spoke to him frankly: “I believe, Mr Maybrick, you are in the habit of taking a dangerous and noxious drug.” “What is that?” Maybrick challenged. “Arsenic,” Thompson told him. “Who the devil told you?” demanded Maybrick, who was sometimes very sensitive about his drug-taking. “I asked the druggist’s assistant at the store and he told me you are in the habit of taking it. It’s a pity.” “Damn his impudence!” said Maybrick.
“He was very touchy about the subject,” Thompson said finally, which suggested that Maybrick tried to conceal the habit. (Mrs Maybrick had told both Dr Hopper and Michael Maybrick about her husband’s drug-taking habits some time before his death. She was concerned about it and tried to enlist their help to break him of the habit, a point which was admitted by the two men in earlier evidence. Indeed she wrote specially to Michael about it, and when he tackled his brother on the subject, Maybrick reacted just as violently as in the outburst against the shop assistant: “It’s a damned lie!” Even if she had cause to lie later, there was clearly no reason for Mrs Maybrick to lie about such a thing at the time, and the strength of Maybrick’s reaction suggests that the accusation had touched him on a sore point.)
Thomas Stansell, a former servant of Maybrick and Bateson in Norfolk, Virginia, had “three or four times” been sent to a druggist to purchase arsenic for Maybrick, sometimes in a packet, sometimes in a bottle, and Maybrick put it into a teaspoon and stirred it into a cup of beef tea. (This was exactly the style of concoction Mrs Maybrick was later charged with giving him.) Stansell was told to give Maybrick’s name at a special shop, Santos and Barrowes, on Main Street, where the druggist seemed to know exactly what to give him when he called.
Edwin Garnett Heaton of Anfield, Liverpool, a retired chemist who had thirty-seven years’ experience, described how he had recognized Maybrick from a photograph that had appeared in a daily paper. He had called at the police station and at the solicitors acting for Mrs Maybrick with a most remarkable account of his dealings with the deceased.
For seventeen years he had carried on business in a shop in Exchange Street. For a very large part of this time—more than ten years—he had known Maybrick as a customer who purchased regularly from him a tonic known as a ‘pick-me-up’, to which he instructed Heaton to add liquor arsenicalis, about four drops at first but later increased to seven. This he would drink down in the shop. He would call for it from two to five times a day. A dose of seven drops was about .07 of a grain; five doses would therefore total .35 of a grain. (It will be remembered that Dr Stevenson said he had known half a grain to be a fatal dose; and slightly less than half a grain was estimated to have been found in the deceased.) When Maybrick was to be away from home, he would get a bottle containing between eight and sixteen doses.
Here then was the clearest evidence of addiction. That such doses could be sustained by any ordinary constitution was extraordinary, and that such a habit should be practised by a reputed hypochondriac seemed to give a new twist to the meaning of hypochondria. A daily dosage, continued for weeks and months (and reinforced with additional purchases in bulk in cases of absence for a day or two), when one such dose was considered practically lethal by the Home Office pathologist!
Finally, Sir James Poole, a businessman and formerly Mayor of Liverpool, was called by Sir Charles. He was a member of the Palatine Club, which had been Maybrick’s club, and he recalled that he had had a conversation with Maybrick which turned on the use of poisonous drugs for medicinal purposes. “He had an impetuous way,” Sir James Poole said, “and he blurted out, ‘I take poisonous medicines.’ I said, ‘How horrid. Don’t you know, my dear friend, that the more you take of these things the more you require, and you will go on till they carry you off?’ ”
This must be th
e “clinching” proof: evidence from a witness of the highest repute, who was not even asked a single question in cross-examination.
As far as Mrs Maybrick’s own dabbling with flypapers was concerned, the defence was ready with the answer that she needed a certain extract of arsenic to mix with toilet ingredients according to an old recipe for cosmetics. She had to attend a ball. The preparation was supposed to be good for the skin and effective as a remover of unwanted hair. She was sensitive about a skin complaint and when she bought the flypapers she had told the sort of social white lie that women often tell tradesmen, that the flypapers were needed because she was being troubled by flies in the kitchen. She had made no attempt to conceal her purchase of the flypapers; she had gone to her local shop, where she was well known, and she had ordered them to be delivered at her address, and they were brought by a boy who left them on the hall-stand. Neither did she attempt to conceal her extraction of arsenic from the flypapers, which she left to soak all day in a basin in her bedroom where they could be seen by the maid who came to tidy up, and in fact were seen by her. Had she wished to conceal this she could of course have left them to soak at night in the basin.
Evidence of the use of arsenic in cosmetic preparations was given by James Bioletti, a hairdresser and beauty specialist of thirty years” experience, who said that the recipe was asked for sometimes, particularly for use as a depilatory, although it was also supposed to be good for the complexion. Its chief purpose seemed to be to remove superfluous hair from the upper lip and arms. The use of it for such an intimate purpose was probably the reason for Mrs Maybrick’s minor pretence that she needed the flypapers for the kitchen.
The Mammoth Book of Unsolved Crimes Page 22