The Mammoth Book of Unsolved Crimes

by Wilkes, Roger

  In his address, Sir Charles made the point that with all the arsenic available to her in that extraordinary household—the packet marked “Arsenic: Poison for cats” and the bottles of solid arsenic and arsenic in solution—had she wished to poison her husband, it would have been entirely unnecessary to extract arsenic from flypapers. It was a very strong argument, indeed, if rather an obvious one.

  Sir Charles, however, seemed to have overlooked an even stronger point. The purchase of these flypapers for the extraction of arsenic, whatever its purpose—either to poison or to make a cosmetic preparation—clearly indicated that Mrs Maybrick was unaware of the existence of all this other arsenical substance in the trunk or on the hat-boxes, and proved beyond reasonable doubt that it was Maybrick who had hoarded this deadly toxic; and the facts that could be inferred from this, as we shall see, would have enabled the defence to counter the most devastating part of the prosecution’s case.

  According to the law at the time, the prisoner was not allowed to give evidence, but the judge permitted a statement to be made by her which was to be prepared by her without any advice from counsel, and during the preparation of which she was to remain incommunicado. At the conclusion of all the other evidence for the defence, Sir Charles asked her if she wished to make the statement, and she said she did.

  She said, “My lord, I wish to make a statement, as well as I can, to you—a few facts in connection with the dreadful, crushing charge that has been made against me, namely, the wilful and deliberate poisoning of my husband, the father of my dear children. I wish principally to refer to the use of the flypapers and to the bottle of meat essence. The flypapers were bought with the intention of using as a cosmetic. Before my marriage, and since, for many years I have been in the habit of using a face-wash prescribed for me by Dr Greggs, of Brooklyn. It consisted principally of arsenic, tincture of benzoin, elder flower water, and some other ingredients. This prescription I lost or mislaid last April, and, as at the time I was suffering from slight eruption of the face, I thought I should like to try to make a substitute myself. I was anxious to get rid of this eruption before I went to a ball on the 30th of that month. When I had been in Germany many of my young friends there I had seen using a solution derived from flypapers, elder water, lavender water and other things mixed, and then applied to the face with a handkerchief well soaked in the solution. I used the flypapers in the same manner. But to avoid the evaporation of the scent it was necessary to exclude the air as much as possible, and for that purpose I put a plate over the flypapers, and put a folded towel over that, and another towel over that. My mother has been aware for a great many years that I have used an arsenical cosmetic in solution.

  “I now wish to refer to the bottle of meat essence. On Thursday night, the 9th of May, after Nurse Gore had given my husband beef tea, I went and sat on the bed beside him. He complained to me of being very sick and very depressed, and he implored me then to give him this powder, which he had referred to early in the evening and which I had declined to give him. I was overwrought, terribly anxious, miserably unhappy, and his evident distress utterly unnerved me. He had told me that the powder would not harm him, and that I could put it in his food. I then consented. My lord, I had not one true or honest friend in that house. I had no one to consult and no one to advise me. I was deposed from my position as mistress in my own house, and from the position of attending upon my husband, notwithstanding that he was so ill. Notwithstanding the evidence of the nurses and servants, I may say that he wished to have me with him. He missed me whenever I was not with him; whenever I went out of the room he asked for me, and for four days before he died I was not allowed to give him a piece of ice without its being taken out of my hand. When I found the powder, I took it into the inner room with the beefjuice, and in pushing through the door I upset the bottle, and, in order to make up the quantity of fluid spilled, I added a considerable quantity of water. On returning to the room, I found my husband asleep, and I placed the bottle on the table by the window. When he awoke, he had a choking sensation in his throat, and vomited. After that he appeared a little better, and as he did not ask for the powder again, and as I was not anxious to give it to him, I removed the bottle from the small table, where it would attract his attention, to the top of the washstand, where he could not see it … Until Tuesday, the 14th of May, the Tuesday after my husband’s death, and until a few minutes before Mr Bryning made this terrible charge against me, no one in that house had informed me of the fact that a death certificate had been refused, and that a postmortem examination had taken place; or that there was any reason to suppose that my husband had died from other than natural causes. It was only when Mrs Briggs alluded to the presence of arsenic in the meat juice that I was made aware of the nature of the powder my husband had asked me to give him. I then attempted to make an explanation to Mrs Briggs, such as I am stating to your lordship, when a policeman interrupted the conversation and put a stop to it. In conclusion, I have only to add that, for the love of our children, and for the sake of their future, a perfect reconciliation had taken place between us, and that on the day before his death I had made a full and free confession to him and received his entire forgiveness for the fearful wrong I had done him.”

  Sir Charles asked for leave to bring two witnesses to whom the statement had been made before the inquest, but Mr Justice Stephen could not allow it; he said he could not go beyond what the law permitted.

  Mrs Maybrick could not, according to the law, be cross-examined and then re-examined on this statement.

  A superficial reading of this statement by Mrs Maybrick suggests that it was a very dangerous one to her. The whole of her case had been built on the twin supports that it was extremely doubtful that Maybrick had died from arsenical poison and that there was a strong possibility, even likelihood, that if he had it had been self-administered. Both these supports had been severely undermined by her admission that she had prepared a “white powder” to give to him.

  In a few seconds the whole of the admirable and well-nigh irrefutable part of the defence dealing with the medical evidence and Maybrick’s private history of addiction to arsenic, suggesting that, had he died from it, he had poisoned himself, was cast into doubt. She had prepared a “white powder”, reluctantly, under protest, not knowing what it was, if she were to be believed, and in the end putting it out of his reach on a washstand—nevertheless, there was this white powder, and it was she who had doctored his prescribed medicine at a time when he was dangerously ill.

  Sir Charles, in a long, closely-reasoned and brilliant final speech, dealt with everything fully except the statement of Mrs Maybrick, that is, with all the evidence except the part that most damaged it.

  About the statement he said: “I will not enlarge on it. I leave it to speak with such effect on your ears and hearts as the circumstances under which it was delivered, and the way in which it was delivered, and the tone in which it was delivered and the inherent probabilities of the delivery itself will suggest to you what ought to be its proper and legitimate result.” This was an eloquent and moving observation, but no grist to the mill of advocacy.

  Mr Addison had no hesitation in “enlarging” on the statement; he climaxed his speech with as deadly a reference to its content as was heard at the Assizes. Until he came to deal with Mrs Maybrick’s statement he was labouring under the difficulties of the prosecution case, and had referred only briefly to its most important part, the medical evidence; but dealing with Mrs Maybrick’s statement, his argument suddenly became rejuvenated in direction and force. The judge later commented on its impressiveness.

  Mr Addison said: “Now we get to the 9th. I can hardly help having a feeling of regret that the terrible statement which has been made today should have been made. I cannot help thinking, if my friend with his art had not intended to leave this case enshrouded in mystery and doubt, it is a great pity that statement was ever made … She stated that she had put a white powder in the glass because he asked
her to do so, and had said it would do him no harm. Well, gentlemen, I shall stop here for a moment … If she had done it innocently, why did she not tell the nurse? What was the necessity for concealment? Why were the doctors and the nurses not told about it? What necessity was there to keep it quiet and secret? It was not a time when she could put a white powder in his food innocently or unsuspiciously. She had said he was dying … Is not that an extraordinary time to put a white powder in?”

  Undoubtedly this was the strongest challenge presented by the prosecution, and it could no longer be answered. It could not, because the time was past, the opportunity gone.

  Yet it could have been answered; answered in anticipation. The material was there, the evidence. It is one of the most responsible parts of an advocate’s function to anticipate the arguments and interpretations of fact by the other side. That Mrs Maybrick was doctoring a sick man’s medicine on her own admission was a dangerous weapon in the prosecution’s armoury. A defence had to be constructed in anticipation of its challenge; and there was a strong defence.

  If it could be established that Mrs Maybrick had acted innocently, that she did not know, had no way of knowing, that the white powder was arsenic, had no reason to suspect that it was, then the iron in the core of the prosecution challenge was broken. The evidence was there to establish strong proof of this.

  Mrs Maybrick needed arsenic, whatever its purpose. This was a first premise, established and agreed by both sides. In order to procure it she went to a local shop and bought flypapers, had them sent to her, soaked them in water for hours and made a solution. Now, had she known there was arsenic available in the household, clearly there would have been no need for her to go shopping for it or make the further elaborate preparations for extracting it. Had she wished to poison her husband she would have used the solution and not the white powder specifically referred to. As, in fact, she did use a white powder without knowledge of what it was, it would have been on her husband’s instructions.

  Could it be argued that she should have known, and should have consulted others, and should have suspected that it was poison? On the rock of innocence of the arsenical content of the white powder the subsidiary sea of accusations must break. She was not being tried for imprudence or even downright foolishness. She was not being tried for neglect to ensure the best remedy for her husband’s treatment. And why, if she were innocent, should she suppose a white powder was poison? The poison was all in the minds of the people about her.

  Sir Charles’s failure to deal with this white powder had further repercussions: Mr Justice Stephen took up the matter in his summing-up. He wanted to know where she got it from. This could have been elicited if it had been possible to cross-examine Mrs Maybrick; she explained after her trial how her bedridden husband indicated one of the places where these powders had been put.

  A closer study of Mrs Maybrick’s statement would have provided Sir Charles with more ammunition. Her explanation as to how this cosmetic was applied, “to the face with a handkerchief well soaked,” was a very reasonable one; a handkerchief or a piece of cotton fabric is the only way to apply a liquid solution to the skin, and it had been shown that a handkerchief of Mrs Maybrick had been fairly soaked in arsenical fluid. Now, the prosecution had indicated that she had moistened her husband’s mouth with a damp handkerchief when he was unable to keep anything down, but they did not dare to connect the two things directly; it was altogether too ghoulish a supposition. She had no need, even if she wanted to poison her husband, to moisten his parched mouth with arsenical fluid—she had other opportunities to drug his food or medicine. To suggest that she was so callous that she would have refreshed her suffering husband’s avid thirst with arsenic was to suggest that she was worse than an ordinary murderess, that she was some sort of predatory vampire, morally insane.

  Sir Charles might have had the courage to put this issue squarely to the jury: either his client was a monster or the practical explanation that she had given about the cosmetic solution must be accepted. Had it been put in this way, even the most cynical and prejudiced juryman might have flinched from an absolute condemnation. The explanation she had given about the flypapers was then the true one, and that inference would have opened a wide breach in the prosecution’s case.

  An appeal of this sort is of course partly an emotional one, but since emotional prejudice about her adultery had started the whole chain reaction of suspicion and throughout coloured the minds of judge and jurymen, Sir Charles would have been justified in fighting fire with fire.

  The defence might well have endeavoured to obtain every sort of corroboration of this cosmetic preparation—in addition to the beauty specialist’s testimony—and in particular of Mrs Maybrick’s previous habit of using this form of treatment. After her trial, her mother in fact did produce an affidavit to support her statement—and there were two other affidavits by her servant and a solicitor’s clerk in Paris—that described the discovery of the prescription by a Dr Bray of New York for a face-wash with an arsenical base. Had this evidence been made available at the trial, there could have hardly been any doubt that the solution found in one of Mrs Maybrick’s handkerchiefs had been put there for the purpose she had ascribed to it in her statement.

  As the matter stood at the end of the trial, the arsenic-soaked handkerchief, with its terrible unresolved implication, cast a fearful shadow on the jury’s minds. Both sides shirked the issue: the prosecution dared not suggest that it was a murder instrument applied to the lips of a man tortured with thirst, and Sir Charles seemed afraid to tackle the problem by a direct attack. Even during the most truculent moment of the judge’s summing-up, no attempt was made to establish the dreadful link, but inevitably reference was made to the lethal nature of the handkerchief. The jury were left with the responsibility of reaching a decision from which the defence had retreated, and the emotionally charged atmosphere in which they had to pass a verdict on this adulteress must have been appallingly aggravated.

  A final comment on the defence’s treatment of the medical controversy is that, whilst the exposition of the facts was clearly and admirably made, there was no attempt to impress on the jury a method by which they could judge them impartially. This was all the more important as the judge had clearly revealed his prejudice and Sir Charles could not hope for a balanced and objective view of the case in the normal progress of events during the summing-up. He of course pleaded that the facts should be judged without prejudice on account of the unhappy woman’s domestic sins, but an altogether stronger and more effective plea was indicated. It was necessary to suggest to the jury a method of mental approach if they were to fulfil their duty in all conscience and without bias. It is not easy to propose how this could have been done, but an illustration or even a piece of theatre—like the mildly impressive “business” with the snuff-box—would have served the purpose.

  In such matters the simplest method is usually the best: a really good illustration or analogy to reinforce the logic of the argument. If the jury had been asked to decide on a technical question which did not involve the poisoning of a husband by an adulterous wife but, say, an argument between two eminent art experts on the authenticity of a Rembrandt, they would have listened coolly to the technicalities propounded and then, when asked to give their decision, have unhesitatingly said, “Why ask us? We can’t tell who is right—not to any degree of reasonable certainty. We are not art experts.”

  It is never effective merely to tell people to beware of their prejudices in making a judgement. People don’t have prejudices; they merely hold opinions strongly. It’s the other people, who don’t hold these opinions, who are prejudiced!

  (iv)

  Prejudice was by far the most important factor that operated against what is sometimes called the logic of the situation. It was a case of Victorian puritanism, of course, but there was an aspect of it which made it almost unique: it began its work and, assuming that this may have been a miscarriage of justice, its terrible mischie
f even before there was any incident to establish the chargeable offence. The murder by poison of James Maybrick by his wife, Florence, was in the minds of the members of the household whilst he was still alive. It was in the minds of the servants, who had passed it on to Maybrick’s brothers, and thence it reached the nurses and, finally, the doctors. And, because of the underhand nature of these suspicions, the charge never came out into the open, so that Mrs Maybrick never had a chance to answer it and (an even more depressing commentary on human behaviour) the doctors never had a chance to tackle the problem of Maybrick’s sickness from the standpoint that he might be a victim of arsenical poisoning. Apparently the doctors were the last to hear about it, all the servants and relatives having priority, and none of them having the moral courage to act in a way that might have saved Maybrick’s life.

  Suspicions were actively raised in the minds of the servants on 8 May on the discovery that Mrs Maybrick was soaking flypapers (although nobody made the slightest move to confiscate the results of her experiments); but the reason for suspicion may be traced to the earlier domestic fracas at the Wirral races, which resulted in Mr Maybrick bestowing a black eye on his spouse. They came home by separate ways, it will be remembered, and then the conflict was resumed by argument until Nurse Alice Yapp prevented a final breach by prevailing on Mrs Maybrick to go upstairs with her and look at her younger child—a commendable appeal to the lady’s maternal sensibility which stopped her from departing summarily in the cab specially summoned for that purpose.

  Now there were flypapers in soak in Mrs Maybrick’s washbasin and Nurse Yapp summoned another member of the household staff to come and look; there were conferences below stairs; and a telegram was dispatched to Maybrick’s brother, Michael, by a “friend of the family”, Mrs Briggs, after consultation with another lady, also a friend of the family, which read: “Come at once; strange things going on here.” Brother Edwin, staying with the Maybricks, was informed about these strange goings-on.