The prosecution received a letter from Brierley’s solicitors, Banks and Kendall, on July 6th. They protested that their client had never received the letter of May 8th and requested that he should not be subpoenaed as he was booked for a holiday. The request must have been refused.
On July 8th, not seven weeks after Florie’s arrest, Michael flagrantly disregarded the instructions in his brother’s will. Claiming it was with her consent, he auctioned the entire contents of the house. It was as though he was sure Florie would never return. While Florie waited in her prison cell, Michael and Thomas disposed of every single item from the young widow’s home in a sale that took place in the showrooms of Messrs Branch and Leete.
Opening the proceedings, Mr Leete was greeted from the packed room with a murmur of approval. He explained that he knew both the dead and the living and he hoped they would all withhold their judgement in this sad case as all Englishmen should. Bidding was brisk and many items sold for more than their expected price. A burnished French bedstead fetched 10 guineas, and a suite of American walnut from the best bedroom fetched 36 guineas. There were numerous, not very distinguished, paintings and a library of books described as ‘the usual commonplace books’. Poignant among the shattering of this family home were the toys — the child’s saddle with girths and a child’s tricycle horse. Florie’s beautiful clothes were bundled into trunks marked with the initials FEC and sent to storage at Woolwright’s. What happened to them nobody knows but the store eventually became a branch of John Lewis and in 1938 was sold to become a gas showroom.
There was also a gold watch, mentioned in the auction preview which did not arrive at the auction itself. It was not the only item that went missing. The Liverpool Post commented that Alice Yapp arrived for Florie’s trial brazenly carrying one of her umbrellas. The New York Herald London edition, of August 9th, commented, ‘the other servants do not hesitate to say that she has made good use of her position to possess herself of many of Florence Maybrick’s dresses and suchlike.’
What happened to the money from the auction? At one point Michael claimed that he spent half to help pay for Florie’s counsel. Later he said that since he was to be a witness for the prosecution he would not fund Florie’s defence. It was one more contradiction.
At least the Mutual Reserve Fund Life Association of New York waived its three-month embargo after a person’s death and sent the sum of $1,000 to Florie. Her mother, meantime, managed to raise funds by selling family land in Kentucky. Florie needed every penny since the terms of Maybrick’s new will were extremely stringent.
Florie was very anxious that her trial should not take place in Liverpool. She wrote again to her mother:
I sincerely hope the Cleavers will arrange for my trial to take place in London. I shall receive an impartial verdict there which I cannot expect from a jury in Liverpool whose minds have come to a ‘moral conviction’, en attendant, which must influence their decision to a certain extent. The tittle-tattle of servants, the public, friends and enemies and from a thousand by-currents, besides their personal feeling for Jim, must leave their traces and prejudice their minds, no matter what the defence is.
It was not to be. Florie’s advisers believed she would have a stronger case if she stood firm on home ground, and she accepted their counsel.
Arnold Cleaver set off for America to rally support and witnesses. There, the newspapers were wildly excited by the image of the forlorn and friendless expatriate, married to a debauched foreigner, in a distant land. It was the beginning of a groundswell of support.
But at Madame Tussaud’s, in London, they were already designing her waxwork for the Chamber of Horrors.
13
THE WHORE WILL SUFFER UNLIKE SHE HAS EVER SUFFERED.
St George’s Hall, Liverpool, opened in 1854, is one of those magnificent Victorian monuments to a time of confident pride and commercial exuberance. Standing Acropolis-like above the centre of the city, it is said to be one of the finest neo-classical buildings in the world and a favourite of the present Prince of Wales. Inside, the 169-foot-long Great Hall is breathtaking, with its polished porphyry columns, richly panelled vaulting, gaudy stained glass and glorious Minton mosaic floor. The small circular concert room, encircled by graceful sculptures, reflecting mirrors and illusion of space, has been described as the most beautiful of all early Victorian interiors. Today, the Hall is still the scene of many a social gathering as it was in Florie’s day. No doubt Michael Maybrick performed there on the organ which, until the building of a larger version in the Royal Albert Hall in 1871, was the best in Britain.
It was here that Florie was to stand trial in what was anticipated to be the greatest show Liverpool had staged in years. Already scores of requests for seats were being received from people who, as the Southport Guardian put it, ‘like flowers in Spring had nothing to do with the case.’
Outside, the city was overrun with thousands of American tourists, passing through on their way to the Paris Exhibition. ‘I feel so lonely’, Florie wrote to a friend at that time. ‘As if every hand were against me. To think that I must be unveiled before all those uncharitable eyes… the darkest days of my life are now to be lived through. I trust in God’s justice, whatever I may be in the sight of man.’
Florie had already been through the inquest and the magisterial inquiry, which delivered the magistrates’ ruling that she would be tried on a charge of murder. There was one more proceeding before she could be called into the dock to answer the charge against her — the Grand Jury.
The function of the Grand Jury was to stand between the crown and the accused and decide if a person committed for trial by magistrates should be so tried. Unless the Grand Jury agreed, by returning a ‘true bill’, there could be no trial. The Grand Jury had the last word. Its members were selected not at random, but for their rank and intelligence. They were deemed to be free of local influence and constraint by the Crown. If the Grand Jury thus represented the people, the judge at the proceedings represented the Crown.
The judge for Florie’s trial, Mr Justice (better known as Mr ‘Injustice’) Fitzjames Stephen, was at the end of a very distinguished career. The Liverpool Review described him as a ‘big burly brainy man’, adding, ‘His mind is like one of those very wonderful and exact machines that one sees in manufacturing districts. It does its work with remarkable precision and laborious and untiring exactness, but unless it is carefully watched by the attendant and occasionally set in the right direction, it is liable to go all wrong.’
At the time of the Maybrick trial it seemed clear that Mr Justice Stephen had already gone ‘all wrong’. Reason was sliding away, and this once great man no longer seemed capable of sustained concentration. In correspondence with Lord Lytton in 1889, he had revealed, ‘I do still now and then smoke an opium pipe as my nose requires one occasionally and is comforted by it.’
On July 26th, the day of the Grand Jury, several thousand people jostled for a sight of the prisoner outside the courthouse. Inside, the sunshine poured through the glass roof and lit the judge, who sat in his scarlet and ermine robes beneath a gold and crimson canopy. In his address to the Grand Jury, Mr Justice Stephen set out the details, injecting them with innuendo and failing to master the basic facts. His opening words were an outrage. He referred to James Maybrick as a man ‘unhappy enough to have an unfaithful wife.’
‘If the prisoner is guilty of the crime alleged to her in the charge,’ he continued, ‘it is the most cruel and horrible murder that could be committed.’ His words were reported in full, so that, before the end of the trial, the world knew the judge’s opinions on adultery. Unfortunately for Florie, his strictures applied only to women. There was no discussion of James’ extramarital cavortings.
Two questions were at the heart of the case against Florie. Was arsenic the cause of death and, if so, had it been administered by Mrs Maybrick with felonious intent?
It was open to the Crown to add other counts to the charge of murder, and to do
so was quite common. However, in Florie’s case the sole charge was to be that of murder, despite the fact that there was absolutely no evidence to connect the defendant with any of the arsenic found at Battlecrease House, apart from the fly papers. The Grand Jury’s deliberations finished, Florie’s trial was scheduled to begin on July 31st.
* * *
Florie’s counsel, Sir Charles Russell QC, was a persuasive, flamboyant Irishman, who habitually sported in his breast pocket a bandana, which he waved to emphasise his views. He was also a Member of Parliament and a former Attorney General who had been one of Britain’s most respected lawyers. His title greatly impressed the Baroness, and everyone deemed Florie fortunate to have so famous a man to defend her. With hindsight, she could have done better.
Sir Charles had recently had a bad record with murder cases. In 1883, he had defended a man named O’Donnell for murder. O’Donnell was executed. Three years later he prosecuted Mrs Adelaide Bartlett for poisoning her husband with chloroform. She got off. But most recently, Russell had been leading counsel for Charles Stewart Parnell, the Irish MP, who had been charged with sedition. The trial, which took place in 1888/9, required Russell to listen to 340 witnesses and make a six-day speech. Parnell was not convicted but by July 31st, the day Florie’s trial was due to begin, the barrister was exhausted.
About 8 a.m. on that day, Florie was bundled into a prison van with a number of male prisoners and driven to St George’s Hall, where a crowd of several thousand had gathered in the already blistering heat. Florie could not help but observe the carnival atmosphere. ‘During all the days of my trial, I am told, Liverpool society fought for tickets. Ladies were attired as for a matinee, and some had brought their luncheons that they might retain their seats. Many of them carried opera glasses, which they did not hesitate to level at me.’
Among the attractions was an itinerant street singer who had drawn a huge crowd by rendering songs based on the Maybrick case.
Oh! Naughty Mrs Maybrick what have you been and done
Your goings on are bad I must confess
To get mashed on Mr Brierley you know was very wrong
And get yourself in such a blooming mess.
The Crown Court is quite small and appropriately sombre, closed in by dark wood-lined walls and lit from above by a glass roof. It remains exactly as it was in 1889 when, just before ten o’clock, the handsome Sir Charles Russell appeared, flourishing his bandana. Counsel for the prosecution was the jovial John Addison QC. The jury consisted of twelve Lancashire men, at least one of whom could neither read nor write, while another had been recently convicted of beating his wife. They were a mix of tradesmen and labourers who could not have been expected to understand the technicalities of this particular case.
At ten o’clock, to a fanfare of trumpets, the court rose and Mr Justice Stephen appeared, unsmiling, in a full-bottomed wig, his sideburns bristling below. After a few preliminaries, the clerk called out ‘Put up Florence Elizabeth Maybrick.’ Downstairs, in the tiny holding cell, sat case number 24. The cell, too, remains unchanged today, a cold memorial to her tragic story. There is no light, a single candle still flickers on the stone walls above the bench where Florie waited to know her destiny.
She climbed the steep narrow stairs into the dock, a small figure in a black dress, a crepe jacket and bonnet with black streamers. A thin black veil covered her face. Then, to the charge against her, she answered clearly and firmly, ‘Not guilty’.
* * *
After the trial, Alexander MacDougall became Florie’s champion, believing her to be the victim of a complete travesty of justice. His book recounts the inconsistencies and inaccuracies in the case against her. Among the medical men who testified there was general agreement that the cause of Maybrick’s death was gastroenteritis. They could not agree, however, on whether this was the result of bad food or poison, or, if the latter, whether the poison was arsenic.
DR RICHARD HUMPHREYS
Dr Richard Humphreys, who had treated Maybrick for the first time during his illness, was one of those who attributed the death to arsenic. But at the magisterial inquiry he acknowledged that he had never treated anyone who had died of arsenic poisoning, nor had he assisted at any such post-mortem examination.
DR WILLIAM CARTER
Dr William Carter had treated Maybrick just four times. Moreover, he acknowledged under cross-examination that he, too, had never assisted at a case involving death by arsenic, nor at a post-mortem examination involving arsenic. Dr Carter had, on May 9th diagnosed Maybrick with acute dyspepsia due to ‘indiscretion of food or drink.’ Two days later, after a conversation in which Michael Maybrick mentioned his own suspicion of arsenic poisoning, he changed his mind. At the trial he agreed with Dr Humphreys.
DR ALEXANDER BARRON
Dr Alexander Barron, professor of pathology at Liverpool’s University College, was present at Maybrick’s post-mortem and exhumation but had never treated him. He concluded that death was due to ‘acute inflammation of the stomach, probably caused by some irritant poison.’
Under cross-examination by Sir Charles, Dr Barron was asked, ‘Is it possible to differentiate the symptoms of arsenical poisoning or poisoning from impure food?’
‘I should not be able to do so myself,’ he replied.
DR CHARLES MEYMOTT TIDY
Dr Charles Meymott Tidy, for two decades a Home Office analyst and examiner in forensic medicine at the London Hospital and whose experience of poisons ranged back to 1862, declared, ‘The symptoms of the post-mortem distinctly point away from arsenic.’
DR CHARLES FULLER
Dr Charles Fuller, who had 30 years of experience as a medical practitioner and homoeopath, said he had no reason to believe Maybrick was taking arsenic. The symptoms which accompany the habitual taking of arsenic were not present in this case.
DR RAWDON MACNAMARA
Dr Rawdon Macnamara, Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons of Ireland and Doctor of Medicine at the University of London, had administered arsenic in ‘a very large number of cases’. When asked if Maybrick died of arsenic poisoning he replied, ‘Certainly not.’
DR FRANK THOMAS PAUL
Dr Frank Thomas Paul was a pathologist with some 3,000 post-mortems to his credit and Professor of Medical Jurisprudence at University College, Liverpool. His verdict was that the symptoms described in the case ‘agree with cases of gastronenteritis pure and simple… I presume that he died of exhaustion produced by gastroenteritis’.
DR THOMAS STEVENSON
Dr Thomas Stevenson, lecturer in forensic medicine at Guy’s Hospital, London, and Home Office analyst, was called in to examine Maybrick’s viscera. After a lengthy cross-examination, he testified, to the contrary, that he had ‘no doubt’ death was due to arsenical poisoning.
Incidentally, Dr Hopper, who had been the family doctor from 1881, gave evidence about Maybrick’s drug taking but was not asked for his opinion on his patient’s final illness.
Dr Glyn Volans, of Guy’s Hospital, at our request, read the contemporary ‘Toxicological Report’ on the case of James Maybrick and was ‘not at all convinced’ that he died from arsenic poisoning. ‘The lowest recorded lethal dose is two grains,’ he said, ‘yet only one-tenth of a grain of arsenic was found in James Maybrick’s body. The evidence that Florence Maybrick administered poison is just not there. It is more likely that he died from the accumulative effect of all the stuff that was being pumped into him by the doctors in the last weeks, plus the results of a lifetime of drug abuse — in addition to which, he no longer had access to his poisons so was suffering withdrawal symptoms. Renal failure is a more likely cause of death.’
* * *
If the jurors were unperturbed by the confusion of the medical evidence, it was perhaps because they had testimony far more scintillating on which to focus. By the end of the first week of the trial, Florie had heard witness after witness reconstructing her life with Maybrick and the events of 1888/9. Yet she weakened her defence by re
questing that, for the sake of their children, no mention be made of her husband’s own indiscretions.
Then there was the matter of the meat juice. Against Dr Carter’s orders it was given by Edwin to Nurse Gore and the bottle stood, new and unopened, by Maybrick’s bed on the night of May 9th. Nurse Gore knew Florie was under suspicion. Shortly after 11 p.m. Gore gave him one or two spoonfuls in water, despite Florie’s warning that it made him sick. About midnight, she watched Florie remove the bottle for a few moments, take it in to the dressing room, returning it to the bedside a few seconds later. She also noted that Florie moved the bottle out of reach to a dressing table after Maybrick had woken up. He did not drink the meat juice.
The bottle then passed from Nurse Gore to Michael to Dr Carter, before it was sent for analysis. Mr Edward Davies reported that there was half a grain of arsenic in solution in the bottle, a finding that was fuel for the prosecution. When Florie first told her story to the solicitor before the inquest, she admitted freely, but perhaps naively, to having put some powder into the meat extract but at her husband’s request. This information was suppressed in her own interest but formed part of a statement she insisted on reading, against her counsel’s advice, at the end of the trial. She told the court:
The Diary of Jack the Ripper - The Chilling Confessions of James Maybrick Page 21