On Thursday night, the 9th 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 again implored me to give him this powder which he had referred to earlier in the evening, and which I declined to give him. I was overwrought, terribly anxious, miserably unhappy and his evident distress utterly unnerved me. He had told me the powder would not harm him and I could put it in his food. I then consented. My Lord, I had not one true or honest friend in the house. I had no one to consult, no one to advise me. I was deposed from my position as mistress in my own house and from the position of attending on my husband, notwithstanding that he was so ill. Notwithstanding the evidence of 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 to the inner room with the beef juice, 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 attention, to the top of the washstand where he could not see it. There I left it, my Lord, until, I believe Mr Michael Maybrick took possession of it. Until Tuesday 14th 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, or that a post-mortem 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.
What Florie did not realise was that powdered white arsenic does not dissolve easily. The arsenic found in the bottle of meat juice must have been in solution and could not have been added in the way that Florie described. So what was the powder that Maybrick had begged her to give him? Could it have been strychnine? According to the Diary, he had written ten days before of his intention to ask Florie to kill him, wondering if she had the strength to do so. If she had poisoned him with strychnine, the tests for arsenic applied by the analysts would not have revealed it. In any case, they were not looking for strychnine.
Much was made of the fly papers. Only five years earlier, two married sisters from Liverpool named Flanagan and Higgins had been hanged for using arsenic extracted from fly papers to kill three people. Florie’s defence argued that the fly papers could not have been responsible for Maybrick’s death, since no fibres from them had been found in any of the contaminated bottles in the house. Of this, Florie said in her statement:
The fly papers 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, elderflower water and some other ingredients. This prescription I lost or mislaid last April and, as at the time I was suffering from a 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 fly papers, 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 fly papers 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 fly papers, and put a folded towel over that, and another towel over that. My mother has been aware for a great many years that I use an arsenical cosmetic in solution.
It sounded harmless enough. But because the statement had not been made at the magisterial inquiry, Judge Stephen interpreted it as a lie, made up for the occasion — and said so.
Many months after the trial, the Baroness von Roques was turning the pages of the Chandler family Bible — one of the few items that had been saved from auction. There she found the lost presciption, written on the back of a New York chemist’s label and dated 1878. Florie had not been lying. And the year after the trial, 1890 — too late for Florie — E.Godwin Clayton, a consulting chemist and Member of the Society of Public Analysts, carried out a test in which he attempted to extract arsenic from two fly papers. His verdict was that ‘It is next to impossible for any person without opportunities for and knowledge of chemical manipulation to make or procure an aqueous infusion of fly papers which could be added to Valentine’s Meat Juice in sufficient quanity to introduce half a grain of arsenic.’
* * *
The trial ended after seven days. The judge’s summing-up took an interminable twelve hours, spread over two days. ‘For a person to go deliberately administering poison to a poor, helpless sick man upon whom she has already inflicted a dreadful injury — an injury fatal to married life — the person who could do such a thing as that must indeed be destitute of the least trace of human feeling.’
By the end of the summing-up, everyone was in utter confusion. (A witness to the proceedings said that he ‘had never in a court of law heard such a pathetic exhibition of incompetence and inaccuracy.’)
The judge ranted on. ‘The circumstances indicated in the evidence are very varied and the witnesses go backwards and forwards in a way which makes the evidence somewhat confusing from beginning to end. I am sorry to say I shall not be able to arrange it before you exactly as I would wish…’
Journalists, spectators and the thousands of people thronging the square outside St George’s Hall were confident that Florie would be acquitted. There had been a huge surge of public opinion in her favour. After all, there was no evidence linking Florie with any of the arsenic found in the house; none to prove that she had consciously administered arsenic, or even that arsenic had killed James Maybrick.
Still, the jury took just 35 minutes to record their verdict: ‘Guilty’.
The only telephone in St George’s Hall had been booked in advance by the Evening Express and the Morning Courier, eager for a scoop. Equally enterprising, the Daily Post and Echo organised a system of semaphores between a reporter in the court and a string of correspondents stationed on the way to the newspaper office. But in the turmoil, the confused journalist in court waved the wrong flag and 5,000 copies of the newspaper flooded on to the streets carrying banner headlines announcing that Florie was free.
Mr Justice Stephen put on his black cap. The silence in court was broken only by a gasp. Men were in tears. Women fainted.
Should not James Maybrick, who was lying in Anfield cemetery, have been in that dock, to stand trial? Instead, it was Florie, his widow and last victim, who stiffened, stumbled and then, after sentence of death had been passed, walked from the court, unaided and alone.
* * *
So many questions about the case are unanswered still.
In 1899 J.H. Levy edited a major 609 page book on the case The Necessity for Criminal Appeal. In this he referred to Florie’s trial as ‘one of the most extraordinary miscarriages of justice of modern times’ and talked of a ‘deep blush of shame’. He wrote his book in order to help repair the ‘defective working of the machinery of justice’. Even the judge admitted later that this was the one case in his career in which ‘there could be any doubt about the facts’.
What of the behaviour of Michael and Edwin, who it was said would not tie his shoes without instruction from his older brother? Even before Maybrick’s death the two had discussed with Mrs Briggs, M
rs Hughes and even Nurse Yapp the possibility that he was being poisoned. Yet the search of Battlecrease House was not made until it was too late. Then the entire premises were blitzed in a frenzied search — for what? Compromising love letters were found from Edwin to Florie — and destroyed.
Edwin had discussed Maybrick’s habit of taking ‘that damned strychnine’ with friends and yet denied it at the trial. Michael also knew of his brother’s use of drugs and denied it. So why did the analysts search only for arsenic? And why, between Maybrick’s death and the trial, did Dr Hopper destroy all his prescriptions?
Michael managed to prevent James’ latest will being used in court, for it gave him and Thomas enormous powers and Florie nothing. So why did Florie’s solicitors not stop Michael’s sale of contents from Battlecrease?
Much was made of Florie’s debts; nothing was said of her husband’s. Maybrick’s lifetime of infidelity was ignored; Florie’s lapse was enough to see her convicted.
Why were so many important witnesses not called to testify? Where were the Baroness, Maybrick’s other brothers, Alfred Brierley himself, John Baillie Knight (Florie’s friend and supporter), Mrs Christina Samuelson or the Hobsons, with whom Maybrick dined on the night of the Wirral Races?
What was the suppressed evidence which both the Baroness and solicitor Jonathan Harris referred to in correspondence with Henry Matthews and later with the Rt Hon H.H. Asquith?
Maybrick moved in the shadowy fringes of his brother Michael’s world, a world of bright lights, high society, masonic brotherhood and military manoeuvres. He was small time. But if he was Jack the Ripper he was a threat to that world and I believe that it is very likely he was the victim of a plot that went wrong and for which Florie suffered.
I doubt that Florie herself was aware of the dark secrets of his London life, although the Diary does confess ‘My dear Bunny knows all’. I am deeply suspicious of Edwin and Michael. One day their undoubtedly sinister role in the tragedy of Florence Maybrick may be revealed.
* * *
The Maybrick case was to be Mr Justice Stephen’s last. Within two years he was sent to a private asylum for the insane in Ipswich, where he died in 1894.
As Florie’s scaffold was being noisily hammered into place within earshot of the condemned cell, she was granted a reprieve. The Home Secretary, Mr Henry Matthews, who had worked so hard and so unsuccessfully the year before to catch the Whitechapel killer, commuted the sentence to one of penal servitude for life.
Levy believed, as did many others, that Florie should have been released. Instead she was kept in prison for 15 years for attempting to murder her husband — a crime for which she had not been tried or found guilty and which in any case carried a maximum sentence of 10 years.
Ironically, history has several times linked the name of Florence Maybrick, not James, with that of Jack the Ripper. The judge’s son, J.K. Stephen, was tutor to the Duke of Clarence and was himself named as a suspect by Michael Harrison, in his book Clarence. Stewart Evans, co-author of Jack the Ripper, the First American Serial Killer discovered a cartoon which had appeared in a journal called St Stephen’s Review in August 1889. It depicted the Home Secretary with Jack the Ripper on his right and Florence on his left. The caption read ‘Attempted murder of Florence Maybrick — save her Mr Matthews’!
The names of Chandler, Leipzig and Liverpool all appear in The Lodger, the famous novel by Marie Belloc Lowndes based on the Whitechapel murders, which was published in 1913. This is one of the books which Melvin Harris names as an inspirational source reference for the ‘forgers’ although there is only a veiled reference to the Maybrick case.
Even more bizarre was the case of the Maybrick diary. On September 16th 1889, the Liverpool Echo carried a story headed ‘Mrs Maybrick’s Diary.’ It told how the three volumes had been found in a case of Florie’s effects at Battlecrease House and offered for sale to a London publisher, Triscler and Co. They were, said the story, tied with blue silk cord and were each in a different handwriting, though by the same person and seemed to describe Mrs Maybrick’s childhood, youth and married life.
The article related that the publisher was uncertain of the diaries’ authenticity and recommended that they be taken to a Mr Stuart Cumberland. Why Mr Cumberland? Keith Skinner went on the trail of Stuart Cumberland and discovered that his quarry was the editor of the Illustrated Mirror. Mr Cumberland himself wrote an article on September 17th 1889, doubting the authenticity of the diaries and complaining that they were being offered for publication as ‘a shilling shocker’.
On August 19th, the Illustrated Mirror published an unsigned letter from Liverpool. It began ‘You call yourself a thought reader and claim to know all about that bloodthirsty scoundrel ‘Jack the Ripper’; but up to the present I have seen no sign from you respecting the innocent woman who lies in agonised suspense in Walton Gaol.
‘You can have visions about the Whitechapel murderer, but poor Mrs Maybrick is apparently unworthy of a dream. It ought all to be clear to you, but perhaps you don’t want it to be so.’
What should be clear? Was there an implied link between the case of Florence Maybrick and that of the Ripper? And what happened to those diaries?
14
I AM JACK A WATCH IS DISCOVERED
A few weeks before the first edition of this book was due at the printers, our publisher at the time, Robert Smith, took a phone call. The voice at the other end of the line, in an unmistakable Liverpool accent, said, ‘I think I have got James Maybrick’s watch.’
On June 4th 1993, Robert Smith received a rough drawing of the inside of the watch, from its owner Albert Johnson of Wallasey. This drawing convinced Robert that he should meet Albert and his brother Robbie, and on June 14th they brought their prize to London. At this stage Robert Smith was playing his cards very close to his chest — even Sally Evemy and I were not yet aware of the existence of the watch, although Robert had spoken of it with Keith.
When I was brought into the picture, I was far from elated; instead I felt a sense of near panic. Here, more than likely, was the first of the bandwagon riders we had imagined might try to capitalise on the Diary. Yet we dared not ignore the possibility that the call could be genuine and so Sally and I drove up to Liverpool to meet the owner, Albert Johnson, at his younger brother Robbie’s modern bungalow in the Wirral.
At first sight they were an oddly assorted pair. Albert was a quietly dignified and clearly straightforward family man, semi-retired from his college security job. Robbie was wiry, frenetically eager and anxious, and worked on the fringes of the pop music industry.
The watch lay on the glass-topped table in front of us. It was a small, elaborately engraved pocket-watch. Gently, Albert opened the back of the case and I could just see some very faint scratches on the inside cover. Try as we could, neither Sally nor I could make out the words. So the brothers produced a small microscope and we took the watch to better light in the kitchen. There, I could just read a signature — ‘J. Maybrick’, and I felt that the K and the M seemed very like those on Maybrick’s wedding certificate. Across the centre, even less distinct, appeared to be the words ‘I am Jack’. Around the edge were five sets of initials: they were those of the murdered women in Whitechapel.
I could see there were other initials, which meant nothing to me. On the back the monogram ‘J. O’ had at some time been professionally engraved. I was speechless, but overwhelmingly suspicious.
Like everything else connected with the Diary, the discovery of the watch provoked furious controversy. Albert told us that he had first seen the watch in Stewart’s jewellery shop in Wallasey (Cheshire) and had passed it several times. ‘I’d always had a liking for antique bits and pieces, so I thought I’d buy it as an investment for my little granddaughter, Daisy. The shop receipt dates the purchase as July 14th 1992. I paid £225. I took it home and put it in a drawer and thought no more about it.’
Later, Sally, Keith Skinner and I went to visit Albert’s pal, John White, who had wo
rked with him at Liverpool Polytechnic for 12 years. John was also a sensible, family man. He recalled the first time the watch was mentioned. ‘It all stemmed from the Antiques Road Show… we were talking about gold and Albert said he had this watch; he said it was 18 carat gold and one of our group said they didn’t have 18 carat gold in Victorian times. So Albert brought the watch in to show us — Albert collected anything, his house was full of stuff. We could see the scratches but we couldn’t make them out. The light was bad so we said we’d take it over to the Science and Technology block. When Albert came back he said, “It’s just initials and there’s a name — Maybrick — in it and there’s also something about Jack. I said to him — I tell you whose watch that is — it’s Jack the Ripper’s”. And he said “What do you mean?” I said “Well, that Maybrick could be Jack the Ripper. I was reading his diary in the Echo. He is supposed to have murdered his wife and buried her body under the floorboards and gone off to America.” Albert phoned the Echo and they knew nothing about it. I was wrong, it was the Liverpool Daily Post and they said it wasn’t Maybrick that murdered his wife anyway but she was supposed to have murdered him. So we went to the college library and we couldn’t find anything about Maybrick but then we looked in this one on Jack the Ripper. The initials in the watch belonged to the murder victims. That was where it all started.’
The Liverpool Post, sensing scandal, ran a cynical article. As was to happen so often in the future, the Maybrick/Ripper possibility was condemned before it was investigated.
The Diary of Jack the Ripper - The Chilling Confessions of James Maybrick Page 22