iP»l§#;;#s:/«-::'.c,,- 
 
((nrufU ICaui irljool Ulthtatjj 
 
..Maybrick case: 
 
 3 1924 024 898 896 
 
a Cornell University 
 fj Library 
 
 The original of this book is in 
 the Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924024898896 
 
The Maybrick Case 
 
 ENGLISH CRIMINAL LAW 
 
 BY 
 
 DR. HELEN DENSMORE 
 
 Author of " Report on Immigration," "The Chorfbnhing Claim," "Mind 
 Cure from a Physiological Standpoint," etc. 
 
 "Call me Guilty, 
 1 do but pay the tax that's due to Justice; 
 But call me Guiltless, then my punishment 
 Is shame to those alone who do inflict it." 
 
 Eontian : 
 
 SWAN SONNENSCHEIN & CO. 
 
 PATERNOSTER SQUARE. 
 
 'Stia gorfc: 
 
 STILLMAN & CO. 
 
 1398 BROADWAY. 
 
^'1 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 Preface 3-7 
 
 English Law — The Maybrick Case 8-30 
 
 A Confession from South Africa 33-35 
 
 Editor Stead's Review of the Case $6-44 
 
 Medical Testimony — ^Extracts from Mr. Thomas' Book. . . . 45-76 
 
 Facts Concerning Arsenic Eating 63-7 
 
 Efforts made for Mrs. Maybrick's Release 77-82 
 
 Gail Hamilton to Home Secretary Asquith 83-94 
 
 Lady Somerset and Miss Frances Willard Criticised 95-98 
 
 Gail Hamilton to Lady Somerset 98-104 
 
 A Demand for Justice 105-6 
 
 The London Hawk on the Case 107-9 
 
 Letter from Alexander W. MacDougall 110-15 
 
 CTa.yr^s\anghy The Hawk 1 17-18 
 
 Mr. MacDougall's Second Letter 118-26 
 
 New and Startling Evidence 124-5 
 
 Injustice and Prejudice Exposed 126-8 
 
 A Vile Conspiracy 129-30 
 
 An Appeal to Justice-Lovers '3i-3 
 
 Gail Hamilton to Mr. Gladstone 134-9 
 
 Agitation the Only Remedy Remaining 140-1 
 
 The Scottish Leader's Ixigical Statement >42-7 
 
 A Plea for Aid «4* 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 I first became interested in the Maybrick case 
 during the trial, in August, 1889. I -was resid- 
 ing in London, and every morning I read only 
 the headlines of the proceedings, without other 
 investigation or thought, until one morning I 
 happened to read. in one of the newspapers a 
 letter written by a physician criticising with 
 considerable warmth the medical testimony of 
 the prosecution. This aroused my attention, and 
 from that time I read attentively each day the 
 proceedings of the trial. As day by day there 
 was chronicled the unfairness with which the 
 accused was treated, the inadequacy of the de- 
 fence, the evident prejudice and extrajudicial con- 
 duct of the judge, and the alertness of the jury 
 in finding a verdict of guilty, my interest in- 
 creased to fever heat. Then when the uprising 
 of the people in protest against the miscarriage of 
 justice inundated the Home Office with prayer 
 and petition for a revocation of the sentence, 
 judging by what would surely happen in my own 
 country, I was confident that the decision would 
 be revoked. But as the days dragged on their 
 weary length and the air grew heavy with ex- 
 pectancy and suspense, and no word came from 
 the Home Office ; when the gallows was being 
 built, and this done within hearing of the un- 
 happy woman's c6ll, I began to realize the possi- 
 
iv PREFACE. 
 
 bility of an innocent woman being hanged in one 
 of the most enlightened countries of the world ; 
 and this possibility absorbed my mind until it 
 was at last given out that the sentence was com- 
 muted to penal servitude for life — a sadder fate 
 by far than death, even by hanging, except that it 
 held out the hope that she could yet be. rescued. 
 
 I looked in vain for a continuance of the agita- 
 tion, for some sign of which I scanned the news- 
 papers for weeks. I heard nothing more of it 
 for nearly two years. Then I read Gail Hamil- 
 ton's appeal in America for money to engage able 
 English legal counsel to the end of learning 
 whether it was possible to get a rehearing of the 
 case. So I found the interest had not died out 
 as I had feared, but that a few friends had been 
 working silently during the interval. 
 
 Alexander W. MacDougall, a reputable barrister 
 of London, became actively interested in Mrs. 
 Maybrick's behalf at the time of the trial, and 
 during the efforts for her release. He acted as 
 chairman at the public meetings called in Lon- 
 don to discuss ways and means for her release, 
 and he has laboured almost to the exclusion of all 
 other duties for this unhappy woman's deliver- 
 ance. Mr. MacDougall wrote a book which is a 
 complete record of the case. It contains verba- 
 tim reports of the whole evidence relating to 
 every incident of the case as given at the inquest, 
 magisterial inquiry, and trial ; and thus there is 
 preserved in an available form the whole of this 
 fateful story. It is dedicated to Mrs. Maybrick's 
 children, to the end that if their raother is al- 
 
PREFACE. V 
 
 lowed to die in prison witliout public vindication, 
 this record, which I feel sure no fair-minded 
 person can read without being convinced of her 
 innocence, will show them the truth* 
 
 I quote a paragraph from an answer made by 
 Mr. MacDougall to an American newspaper re- 
 garding this record : 
 
 ' ' I am an utter stranger to Mrs. Maybrick and 
 her friends, and I am wholly uninterested either 
 in the personality or in the nationality of this 
 woman, and I do not even know and had never 
 even heard the name of a single person who was 
 concerned in her trial. The book which I wrote 
 was written by me for the purpose of preserving 
 for public reference a complete record of the case, 
 and it contains complete verbatim reports of the 
 whole evidence relating to every incident of the 
 case as given on the three occasions when it was 
 before the courts, viz., the inquest, magisterial 
 inquiry and trial, literce scriptos maneut, and the 
 whole of the evidence is now available for public 
 reference. . . . Instead of being employed by 
 Mrs. Maybrick's friends in the preparation of this 
 book and the collection of materials, it cost me out 
 of my own pocket upward of ^^500, and occupied 
 a year's working hours, all of which expense and 
 labour should have been undertaken by Mrs. May- 
 brick's friends, but was not." 
 
 The title of this book is, " The Maybrick 
 Case," written by A. W. MacDougall, Esq., B. A., 
 Trin. Coll., Cantab, Barrister-at-Law, Lincoln's 
 Inn, and published by Messrs. Baillibre, Tendall 
 & Cox, King William Street, Strand, London. 
 
 Since that time I have worked unremittingly. 
 Convinced of Mrs. Maybrick's innocence of poi- 
 
vi PREFACE. 
 
 soning, or attempting to poison, her husband, I 
 was, and still am, persuaded that if the people 
 could be reached with the facts establishing her 
 innocence, she would be released. 
 
 I found the press closed to a discussion of the 
 case. I wrote letters to editors all over England, 
 but at first, with few exceptions, no notice was 
 taken of them. I found nearly all the persons 
 with whom I talked believing in her guilt, 
 
 I wrote the following essay on the Maybrick 
 case and offered it to a prominent New York 
 monthly magazine. It was declined on the 
 ground that it was not a proper subject for a 
 magazine — ^the editor said it was more appropriate 
 for a newspaper. It was then offered to a prom- 
 inent New York daily, and was declined on the 
 ground that it was inappropriate for a newspaper 
 — more suitable for a magazine ! So, finding the 
 subject of a great miscarriage of justice utterly 
 tabooed as without sufficient public interest for 
 either newspaper or magazine, and believing that 
 it has great interest, both public and private, for 
 every citizen in the world who deprecates wrong 
 and emulates the right, I have decided to publish 
 the article in a suitable form for wide distribution 
 
 Although the press in Great Britain was solidly 
 closed against me at first, by dint of persever- 
 ance I succeeded in getting a few letters pub- 
 lished, not only in the metropolis, but in Man- 
 chester, Sheffield, Glasgow, Dundee, and other 
 places ; and as the months have come and gone 
 I have been cheered and encouraged by the in- 
 creasing interest manifested by press and public. 
 
ri(£.i<AU£.. vil 
 
 Mr. Stead has published a notable article in the 
 Review of Reviews. Mr. Wm. Thomas has written 
 a very valuable little book, reviewing the medi- 
 cal testimony at the trial. 
 
 Mrs. Maybrick has been very ill; so ill that 
 her mother was telegraphed for on the tenth of 
 December. The fact that Mrs. Maybrick's 
 brother died of the same disease as has attacked 
 her, at about her present age, increases the serious- 
 ness of the situation, and calls for prompt meas- 
 ures for her release, if she be innocent. If she 
 is guilty of poisoning her husband under pre- 
 tence of nursing him, sickness is no reason for 
 her release. It is a part of the penalty incurred 
 by her own act. 
 
 Each new development has but added proof 
 that Mrs. Maybrick is entirely innocent, and I 
 am fully persuaded that all that is necessary to 
 secure her vindication and release is to put the 
 people of England in possession of the facts. To 
 this end I appeal to every lover of justice to join 
 in efforts to circulate these facts. 
 
 Helen Pensmop.p. 
 December go, i§^2. 
 
ENGLISH LAW— THE MAYBRICK CASE. 
 
 That " divinity doth hedge a king" has long 
 been accepted by mankind without question. 
 This belief the world is fast outgrowing ; but in 
 England at the present time the oracles of law, so 
 far as infallibility goes, seem to have usurped the 
 place that was formerly accorded to the monarch. 
 Laws, no matter how old and moss-grown with 
 error, are regarded by the masses as something to 
 be revered, to be obeyed without protest or thought 
 of change. The person and office of judge are 
 regarded as little less than fetiches or names to 
 conjure with. The masses do not realize that 
 laws are man-made, and are wise or foolish ac- 
 cording to the intellectual and moral develop- 
 ment of the law-makers. Whenever any regu- 
 lation — no matter how unjust or absurd — becomes 
 law, that settles it ; and when the judge decides 
 one way or the other in a dispute at law, his de- 
 cision assumes the value of a sacred revelation. 
 
 In a recent discussion in the House of Com- 
 mons, Mr. Conybeare attempted to ask the Home 
 Secretary a question concerning the extraordinary 
 severity of the sentence passed on one Fanny 
 Gane for infanticide, and was interrupted by_the 
 Speaker as follows : "Order, that is not a proper 
 question to put ; it contains a reflection upon a 
 judge which is not permissible in the House." 
 
lo JUDGE-WORSHIP A FETICH. 
 
 The training of a judge in England tends to 
 place him outside of the influence of public 
 opinion, and has a tendency to raise him in his 
 own estimation as superior to the average sense 
 of justice represented by the jury system. In- 
 deed, although he is not supposed to sit in judg- 
 ment upon an accused person, the judge carries 
 himself in such a manner as to impress the jury, 
 who ought to be the judges, with his superiority ; 
 and they generally follow his nod. Under the 
 influence of this fetich, judge-worship, trial by 
 jury in England has become practically trial by 
 judge and counsel. 
 
 In a recent discussion in the House of Com- 
 mons upon a proposition to change, or to make 
 more clear, the definition of the word "murder," 
 Mr. Matthews said : 
 
 ' ' Attempts to amend the definition of murder 
 were made by a committee of the House in 1874, 
 and by the Royal Commission on Capital Punish- 
 ments which reported in 1876. Those attempts 
 were pronounced by the Royal Commissioners 
 who prepared a draft of a Criminal Code in 1879 
 to be unsatisfactory. In 1882 the right honour- 
 able gentleman, the member for Derby, at- 
 tempted to frame a bill amending the definition 
 of murder. He consulted the greatest living 
 authorities, and devoted much labour to the ques- 
 tion, but ultimately, as he informed the House in 
 1886, he gave up the attempt, as he was satis- 
 fied it could not be satisfactorily accomplished. 
 Warned by these examples, I do not propose to 
 introduce on an early day a bill to alter the la-v^ 
 that has existed for centuries in this country." 
 — London Times, March 2 2d, 1892. 
 
tHE LAW OF CONSPIRACY. II 
 
 A few weeks since, it was proposed in the 
 House bf Commons to amend the law concerning 
 conspiracy. As it now stands, like the law de- 
 fining mutder, it is exceedingly vague, and has 
 been the cause of many judicial scandals. A 
 number of persons consulting together about 
 committing acts which in themselves are not 
 criminal, become guilty of conspiracy and pun- 
 ishable by law. But any attempt to alter this 
 unjust and indefinite statute meets with deter- 
 mined opposition from the Government. The 
 morning after the debate the Daily Telegraph, 
 commenting on the proceedings, said: "When 
 the night was over and the motion was rejected, 
 'conspiracy' remained a slippery article, for 
 opinion was unanimous that he is a clever man 
 who can define it." 
 
 Another pernicious system, which has no pos- 
 sible justification except custom, is that of re- 
 warding the police for the discovery of crime. 
 This practice serves as an artificial stimulus for 
 the discovery of clues, often making the police 
 efficient tools in the hands of conspirators, parti- 
 sans and enemies to follow up suggested points, 
 leading to revelations previously prepared by 
 those conspirators and enemies. Promotion fol- 
 lows success on such lines, while clues to discover 
 innocence or to neutralize seemingly criminating 
 circumstances have no market value. 
 
 The police force outside the Metropolitan dis- 
 trict of London is under control of the chief con- 
 stables, and the Watch Committee of the locality 
 directs them. The Home Secretary grants a cer- 
 
13 POLICE AND PROSECUTING ATTORNEY. 
 
 tificate every year to each squad or section of the 
 police, and can withhold this certificate from any 
 section failing to show eflaciency. Efficiency 
 means alertness in discovering and following up 
 cases of crime or misdemeanor, and securing 
 convictions therefor. This undoubtedly opens 
 the way to great temptations, both in the direc- 
 tion of over-exertion in the investigation of clues 
 and in sowing the seeds of suspicion that may 
 secure them cases, the fees and costs of which go 
 to pay expenses. On the other hand, there is 
 temptation to receive hush money from the 
 guilty, while in the efforts of the police to appear 
 "efficient " the innocent are often made to suffer. 
 The office of Queen's Counsel for the state, in 
 the nature of things, is to see that the Crown is 
 protected against the machinations of its ene- 
 mies, and that the lives and property of its sub- 
 jects are defended ; it should not be the office of 
 a prosecuting attorney to secure the conviction 
 of the accused, whether guilty or not. It is as 
 much the duty of the state to protect and guard 
 the innocent as to convict the guilty. If justice 
 must miscarry at all, it is of far more importance 
 to all concerned that the guilty go free than that 
 the innocent be punished. But in our fiercely 
 commercial, competitive social system it is suc- 
 cess that is sought, whether it be in trade, in 
 politics, in commerce, in literature, or profes- 
 sional life ; so when the Queen's Counsel for the 
 state is called to try a case, conviction means 
 success, and he too often uses his utmost en- 
 deavour to secure it, regardless of the innocence 
 
LA CK IN ENGLISH LAW. 13 
 
 of the accused. This has come to be the accepted 
 course of the prosecuting attorney. 
 
 Under the present condition of English law 
 regarding criminal cases, no appeal is allowed 
 from an unjust verdict or sentence, not even in a 
 case of life and death ; while in a civil action, 
 where only a bale of cotton is at stake, it is pos- 
 sible to appeal from court to court, even to the 
 House of Lords. When under such a system of 
 jurisprudence there happens a miscarriage of 
 justice in a criminal case, and a person is con- 
 demned and imprisoned, it becomes a fatal blun- 
 der for which there is no legal redress by appeal 
 to another court. For the victim, a pardon from 
 the Crown for a crime never committed is the 
 only means of escape, no matter what loss of 
 good name, fortune, social position, and suffer- 
 ing have been inflicted. That such cases do 
 happen is a matter of record. Quite recently 
 John Carlton was tried and convicted, and after 
 serving a portion of his sentence was pardoned (?) 
 because the Crown discovered that the witness 
 upon whose evidence he was convicted had per- 
 jured himself. A man named Habron was con- 
 victed at Manchester of murder, sentenced to be 
 hanged, and his sentence commuted to penal 
 servitude for life. Within two years the real 
 murderer. Peace, was discovered, and Habron 
 was ' ' graciously pardoned " by the Queen. A man 
 named Travis was found guilty at Birkenhead of 
 murdering a woman and sentenced at Chester 
 Assizes to death. This man was reprieved and lib- 
 erated within two years — "pardoned," as it was 
 
14 COURT OF CRIMINAL APPEAL. 
 
 found that lie could not have committed the crime. 
 
 A bill is now before Parliament, although it i§ 
 not retroactive, which provides for a court of 
 criminal appeal. This bill was presented by Sir 
 Henry James, Q. C, but unfortunately it is not 
 likely to be reached before the dissolution. 
 This bill provides : "That if there was no evi- 
 dence given at a trial proper to be submitted to 
 the jury in proof of the crime charged in the in- 
 dictment, the court may order a verdict of ' not 
 guilty ' to be entered. ' ' This bill further provides 
 that the court may order a new trial when it ap- 
 pears (i) that the verdict was against the -^^ight 
 of evidence, or was not founded on sufficient 
 evidence, or that evidence tendered by the de- 
 fendant, which ought to have been received, was 
 rejected, or that evidence tendered on the part 
 of the Crown, which ought to have bepn rejected, 
 was received; (2) that the court of trial-r^tjig 
 judge — ^misdirected the jury on a matter qf |aw, 
 or came to a wrong conclusion upon a question 
 of law, and that such misdirection or conclusion 
 was adverse to the defendant ; or (3) that by rea-f 
 son of some informality or irregularity in the 
 trial, or the non-production of evidence, whether 
 known or not to the defendant at the time of 
 trial, and material to have been brought fqrijy^rd 
 in the interests of justice, or from any cause 
 whatsoever, there has been such a miscarriage as 
 to render it necessary in the interests of justice 
 that a new trial should be had. 
 
 These facts have a painful significance just 
 now in the case pf a young America^ woman 
 
MRS. MAVERICK'S TRIAL. 15 
 
 who is most unjustly imprisoned in England 
 upon a charge of poisoning her husband. I refer 
 to Mrs. Florence Maybrick. She was tried in 
 Liverpool, August, 1889, was condemned, and 
 sentenced to be hanged August 27, 1889, and 
 the record of that trial will forever darken a page 
 in the history of English criminal jurisprudence. 
 The trial, condemnation and sentence of this 
 most unhappy woman caused great public excite- 
 ment during the whole course of the proceedings. 
 Great attention was given by the public to the 
 details of the trial; and when the verdict of 
 "guilty" was announced, after the jury had 
 been out only thirty- six minutes, there was a 
 storm of protest made within the court-room, by 
 the crowd assembled outside, and by the press 
 throughout the country. The judge was hooted 
 and hissed, and with difficulty reached his car- 
 riage without violence. Public meetings were 
 held, petitions signed by thousands, and during 
 the fourteen days the Home Secretary had the 
 matter under advisement, such a fury of prayer, 
 demand, and protest as is seldom witnessed in 
 law-abiding England inundated the Home Office 
 as moved the Secretary to commute the sentence 
 to penal servitude for life, giving as a reason 
 therefor, that after a careful investigation of all 
 the facts, he had come to the conclusion that 
 ' ' there was a reasonable doubt whether in fact 
 James Maybrick's death was caused by poison." 
 Mrs. Maybrick has already served nearly three 
 years of this sentence. With such a court of ap- 
 peal open to her as Sir Henry James' bill pro- 
 
i6 CONDITION OF JUSTICE STEPHEN. 
 
 vides, her right to a new trial would be recog- 
 nized, and the probability of a fairer one than 
 the first assured, and under such conditions her 
 acquittal would be sure to follow. 
 
 The preliminary action of the authorities in this 
 case, — the unprecedented proceedings of the ar- 
 rest, the remand to prison before the post-mor- 
 tem had been made, the report of the coroner 
 that poison had been found in the stomach of Mr. 
 Maybrick, when none had been found, — furnishes 
 a fitting prelude to the extraordinary conduct of 
 the trial itself. 
 
 Time has perhaps developed an explanation 
 and apology for the extraordinary conduct of the 
 presiding judge. Because of his behaviour in 
 subsequent trials, a hue and cry was raised by 
 the English press that he was showing unmistak- 
 able symptoms of insanity and imbecility, and fol- 
 lowing this agitation Justice Stephen resigned. 
 His conduct in the Maybrick case was a disgraceful 
 disregard of the true functions of his office. He 
 displayed prejudice, and settled disapproval of 
 Mrs. Maybrick as a woman, from the first. Even 
 before the inquiry commenced he made while 
 on the bench a remark about the case which 
 the papers next morning characterized as " A 
 Ghastly Judicial Joke." During the trial he was 
 unfair in his rulings, harsh in his language, dic- 
 tatorial and self-assertive to the jury. This was 
 so plain to the intelligent readers of the news- 
 paper reports of the trial, and so shocking to the 
 sense of justice and fair-play of the people there 
 assembled, that it moved the crowd outside the 
 
QUEEN-' S COUNSEL EMPLOYED. 17 
 
 court-room, at the conclusion of the case, to vent 
 their indignation on the judge, which outrage to 
 the person of this august official was used as an 
 additional count against Mrs. Maybrick, in whose 
 behalf the demonstration was made. 
 
 The apathetic defence, further weakened by 
 adverse rulings of the court, the extrajudicial con- 
 duct of the judge, and the precipitate action of 
 the jury, are all matters of record, and were so 
 evident to the public who followed the daily re- 
 ports as to cause great indignation at the time ; 
 but to all this popular resentment of injustice the 
 chief actors in the tragedy, playing the judicial 
 game with the life of a young widow and mother 
 for stakes, were both blind and deaf. 
 
 The friends of Mrs. Maybrick, unwilling to 
 rest under this injustice, appealed to America for 
 means to make an effort to test the possibility of 
 legal redress. With funds thus raised eminent 
 Queen's Counsel were employed ; and after a long 
 and exhaustive investigation into all the facts of 
 the trial, and into fresh evidence since obtained, 
 which corroborates Mrs. Maybrick's own state- 
 ment made in court — which by the judge and 
 Queen's Counsel, by unfair conjectures and insin- 
 uations as to its truthfulness, was made to go 
 against her instead of in her favour — and with the 
 new light shed on the case, especially regarding 
 Mr. Maybrick's habits of arsenic eating, the 
 opinions of the learned counsel are that there 
 was a great miscarriage of justice, but that there 
 is no constitutional way open for a retrial, con- 
 firming and illustrating Herbert Spencer's recent 
 
i8 THEIR COMCLUSTON. 
 
 criticism, where lie says : ' ' Our system of juris- 
 prudence takes a very one-sided view of the re- 
 ciprocal claims of state and subject. It is strin- 
 gent enough in enforcing the claim of the state 
 against the subject; but as to the correlative 
 claim of the subject against the state, it is com- 
 paratively careless." 
 
 The learned counsel, after looking into the 
 case and carefully sifting all the evidence, do 
 not believe in the attempt to poison, or that evi- 
 dence exists of the attempted administration of 
 poison, but they see no road open by which a 
 new trial can be secured. Fortunately, there is 
 no law against a "free pardon " for persons who 
 are unjustly undergoing punishment for crimes 
 never committed. It would seem as if the opin- 
 ion of the eminent Q. C.'s that Mrs. Maybrick is 
 innocent ought to form a basis upon which a 
 public demand sufficiently strong to secure her 
 release can be made. But how can this be ac- 
 complished? The columns of the press are at 
 present closed against re-introduction of the sub- 
 ject, and the wave of public indignation which 
 rose to such tremendous proportions at the time 
 of the trial has apparently expended itself with- 
 out power to reform. The net so subtly woven 
 by conspiracy and enmity around this unfortunate 
 woman seems almost inextricable. In spite of 
 the extrajudicial conduct of the judge, the apathy 
 of the defence, and the ignorance of the jury, 
 which resulted in this great miscarriage of jus- 
 tice, the proceedings were regarded as legal ; the 
 prison doors have closed upon her, and from 
 
MEAT.yUICE EPISODE. 19 
 
 a legal point of view there seems no way by 
 which the law — this contrivance of man, but 
 regarded as divine — can be invoked in her be- 
 half. 
 
 Since the trial the foundation upon which the 
 superstructure of suspicion was built has become 
 plain. An unfinished prescription made by a 
 medical man was sent by a maid to the chemist, 
 instead of one intended to be sent for Valentine's 
 Meat- Juice. This prescription was returned with 
 the message that it could not be filled, whereupon 
 the proper one was found and returned to the 
 chemist, and the unfinished prescription was com- 
 pleted and also filled ; but this did not prevent 
 the maid from telling below stairs that Mrs. 
 Maybrick had sent for poison, and that the chem- 
 ist refused to give it. This information was 
 eagerly caught up by the servants as tittle-tattle, 
 while nothing above stairs was known of it. 
 And as late as two days before the Home Secre- 
 tary's reprieve was granted, the same combina- 
 tion that had pursued Mrs. Maybrick through 
 the trial told this story to a reporter just at a 
 time when, if it had not bepn promptly neutral- 
 ized by the facts, it would have sealed her doom. 
 
 Some time before the Maybrick trial, two women 
 were convicted in Liverpool for poisoning a woman 
 with arsenic obtained from fly-papers. Mrs. May- 
 brick used fly-papers to make a complexion wash, 
 which fact the judge during the trial warned the 
 jury was not proven. That it was true, however, 
 can now be satisfactorily established by the pre- 
 scription containing arsenic to which she referred 
 
20 MR. MAYBRICK'S HABITS AND MEDICINES. 
 
 in her statement to the court, and which has 
 since been found. This use of fly-paper, taken 
 in connection with the tittle-tattle about the un- 
 filled prescription, was the basis of the before- 
 mentioned superstructure of suspicion. 
 
 The keeping back by the defence of the fact 
 that Mrs. Maybrick, months before, made the 
 same statement that she made at the trial, went 
 greatly against her; and the judge's refusal of 
 Sir Charles Russell's subsequent request to bring 
 two witnesses to prove that fact prevented the 
 benefit which might have accrued to the prisoner. 
 
 The fact that Mr. Maybrick was in the habit of 
 taking arsenic was very inadequately put forward 
 by the defence, and adroitly passed by the prose- 
 cution. There is upon this point, also, much new 
 testimony. Dr. Humphreys testified to having 
 prescribed, during the eight days that he treated 
 Mr. Maybrick, the following poisons in allopathic 
 doses: April 28th, diluted prussic acid; April 
 29th, papatine and iridium; May 3d, morphia 
 suppository; May 4th, ipecacuanha; May 5th, 
 prussic acid; May 6th, Fowler's solution of 
 arsenic; May 7th, jaborandi tincture and anti- 
 pyrine ; May loth, sulphonal, cocaine, and phos- 
 phoric acid. Is it any wonder that this man had 
 gastro-enteritis ? 
 
 There were three doctors called as witnesses 
 for the prosecution, and four for the defence. 
 Dr. Carter for the prosecution, by his own testi- 
 mony and confession, was not an expert in the 
 detection of poison; and Dr. Humphreys testi- 
 fied at the coroner's inquest that he could only 
 
DR. STEVENSON' S INCOMPETENCE. 21 
 
 say that the death was due to some irritant 
 poison, but that he would not like to swear it 
 was arsenic. Dr. Carter testified that he had no 
 suspicion of poison until it was suggested to him ; 
 that but for such suggestion he would have given 
 a certificate of death. He testified that he had 
 never assisted at a post-mortem examination of 
 a person of whom it was alleged that death had 
 been caused by arsenic, and that he had never 
 before attended a patient whom it was alleged 
 had died from arsenical poisoning. Dr. Hum- 
 phreys examined the fasces and urine by Reinsch's 
 test, from which examination positively no evi- 
 dence was obtained of arsenic having been taken, 
 for if there had been a thousandth part of a grain 
 in these fasces, there would have been a deposit 
 on the copper, and Dr. Humphreys says in his 
 testimony, "I got no deposit on the copper." 
 Dr. Stevenson, of Guy's Hospital, London, and 
 analyst to the Home Office, the other witness for 
 the Crown, had only a short time before made 
 what might have proved a fatal mistake in the 
 case of a child belonging to a woman named 
 Winson, in Deptford, which child died from the 
 effect of a mercury powder given to it by the 
 mother. Dr. Stevenson was called in by the 
 Home Office authorities, who suspected the mother 
 of poisoning the child. The doctor reported the 
 finding of arsenic in the child's stomach, and 
 the woman was prosecuted on this testimony, 
 and undoubtedly would have been convicted, but 
 for the fortunate discovery that she had given 
 the child a powder of mercury, as she said she 
 
22 TESTIMONY OF EXPERTS. 
 
 Had done, and because of this error of judgment 
 on tlie part of Dr. Stevenson the Crown withdrew. 
 All the witnesses agreed that there was no 
 arsenic found in the stomach, and only the 
 twentieth part of a fatal dose found in the liver ; 
 indeed, it is not at all certain that even that was 
 found. Of the four doctors called for the de- 
 fence, three are acknowledged experts. Dr. 
 Paul, whom the London Times refers to (March 
 7th, 1892) as the "greatest authority in this coun- 
 try on the effect of various poisons," testified that 
 in his opinion there was no evidence of arsenical 
 poisoning, but that the double dose of medicine 
 taken by Mr. Maybrick just before he went to the 
 Wirral races, taken in connection with the chill 
 induced by exposure to wet and cold, was quite 
 likely to increase any chronic derangement, and 
 to account for gastro-enteritis, toward which the 
 symptoms strongly pointed. Dr. Barron, who 
 has been pathologist to the Royal Infirmary for 
 four years, testified that he had been present at 
 upwards of five hundred post-mortems, and it 
 was his opinion that death in this case was due to 
 acute inflammation of the stomach, caused by 
 some irritant poison, such as sausages, grouse, 
 fish, mushrooms, etc. , might contain. The other 
 two gentlemen, Drs. Tidy and Macnamara, were 
 both experts of universal fame, and their testi- 
 mony as such always commanded attention. 
 They testified that all the symptoms pointed 
 away from rather than toward arsenical poison- 
 ing; that there was no arsenic found in the 
 stotnach ; that Mr. Maybrick was in the habit of 
 
A TOXJCOLOGICAL STUDY. 23 
 
 takiiig drugs, among them arsenic ; that the ar- 
 senic found in his body might have been taken 
 in merely medicinal doses, and that probably it 
 was so taken ; that the arsenic might have been 
 taken a considerable time before his death or ill- 
 ness, and that probably it was so taken. These 
 facts led them to the conclusions that the symp- 
 toms from which Mr. Maybrick suffered were 
 consistent with any form of acute dyspepsia, and 
 that they absolutely pointed away from rather 
 than toward arsenic as the cause of such dyspep- 
 tic condition ; that the post-mortem appearances 
 pointed away from arsenic as the cause of death ; 
 that the analyst failed to find more than one- 
 twentieth part of a fatal dose of arsenic, and that 
 the quantity so found was perfectly consistent 
 with its medicinal ingestion. 
 
 Not only was this testimony given at the trial, 
 but a careful reconsideration of all the facts, after 
 all popular feeling had died out, induced the ex- 
 perts to place upon record, for future reference, 
 the precise grounds upon which their opinion 
 was formed. This is embodied in a little pamph- 
 let called " A Toxicologieal Study." 
 
 Surely, if such expert testimony as Drs. Paul, 
 Tidy, and Macnamara have gfiven has no influ- 
 ence in a trial for murder by poisoning, then, in 
 the language of the closing sentence of the 
 above-named pamphlet, if such failure were oft 
 repeated, it would shake the public faith in Eng- 
 lish justice. These proofs, taken in connection 
 With the expressed opinion of the Home Secre- 
 tary, after fourteen days of investigation into all 
 
84 THE JURY WRONGLY INSTRUCTED. 
 
 the facts and circumstances of the trial, that there 
 was " doubt " of Mr. Maybrick having come to 
 his death through arsenical poisoning, and with 
 the charge of Mr. Justice Stephen that it is " es- 
 sential to this case, and it must be the basis of a 
 judgment unfavorable to the prisoner, that the de- 
 ceased died of arsenic, ' ' make it plain that the ver- 
 dict of the jury was a great miscarriage of justice. 
 Mr. Justice Stephen, after fully summing up, 
 and ably commenting upon the conflicting evi- 
 dence of the seven doctors, said : ' ' The doctors 
 are divided in opinion, and, of course, I cannot 
 answer the question." If Justice Stephen could 
 not answer the question, how could he expect 
 the jury, composed of unlearned men — ^laborers, 
 plumbers, bakers, and milliners — to answer it ? 
 It would have been well for Justice Stephen, in- 
 stead of allowing this unlettered jury to answer a 
 question he felt unable to answer himself, to 
 have told them that the case ought never to have 
 been brought into court, and to have followed 
 the example of Lord Justice Bowen, who, a short 
 time previously, had dismissed a case because of 
 a difference of medical opinion upon the question 
 whether a wound was sufficiently large to cause 
 death. The judge said he would not allow a 
 criminal court to be used, nor a jury "exposed 
 to the task of solving surgical puzzles." Instead, 
 however. Justice Stephen instructed the jury 
 upon this disagreement ' ' that the mere fact of a 
 man coming into court and swearing this, that, 
 and the other thing does not by any means give 
 a reason for unqualified belief in what he says." 
 
THE '' FEARFUL WRONG." 25 
 
 The feature of the case which undoubtedly had 
 most to do with Mrs. Maybrick's condemnation 
 (but which had no logical bearing upon it, though 
 it constitutes the most painful and the most dam- 
 aging phase in the conduct of the trial, and fur- 
 nished to the judge's mind a motive for murder, 
 and which he described as the ' ' theory of the 
 prosecution"), was the supposed confession by 
 Mrs. Maybrick of criminal relations with a Mr. 
 Brierly. This theory, founded upon a penciled 
 letter to Brierly, which was stolen and tampered 
 with by the nurse, and kept by her for days be- 
 fore its theft was made known, put the matter 
 beyond doubt in the mind of the judge, and by 
 him was passed on to the jury, and this unfor' 
 tunate woman was in reality put on trial for 
 adultery instead of murder, and upon testimony 
 that would never have been received in a divorce 
 court. 
 
 The "fearful wrong" which Mrs. Maybrick 
 said in her statement she confessed to her hus- 
 band, and for which she from him received for- 
 giveness, was not criminal intimacy with Mr. 
 Brierly, as the public at once concluded, and 
 have since insisted upon believing. Having 
 heard a story that her husband was supporting 
 four illegitimate children and their mother, and 
 not at the time being acquainted with the fact 
 that this episode had happened before his mar- 
 riage, she had gone up to London, unknown to 
 her husband, to consult with a firm of solicitors^ 
 
 Messrs. & , regarding a divorce. 
 
 After arriving in London she telegraphed for 
 
26 CONSPIRACY AND PREJUDICE. 
 
 Mr. Brieiiy to come for the purpose of giving in- 
 formation, which he, as an intimate friend of the 
 family, could do. The only testimony at the 
 trial showing that they remained together at the 
 hotel can now be controverted by the statutory dec- 
 laration of Alfred Schweisso, the witness for the 
 prosecution, who testified to the circumstances 
 upon which was built the theory of adultery. This 
 witness has sincp sworn that he was prompted to 
 the act by the police, and swore to a recognition 
 that he could not make. After her return home, 
 and her discovery of the true state of the case, 
 she felt that she had done her husband a " fear- 
 ful wrong " in taking this step, thus exposing his 
 private affairs, without first advising with him in 
 regard to it. And so, in the light of this ex- 
 planation, that which was universally accepted as 
 a confession of a crime for which husbands do 
 not readily forgive their wives, is shown to be a 
 very different affair, and one which, had it been 
 made known, would have relieved the case of 
 what proved to be its fatal support ; and this at 
 the same time shows, that if really desiring to 
 be rid of her husband, Mrs. Maybrick knew that 
 the divorce court was open to her, which abso- 
 lutely destroys the theory of motive so laboriously 
 argued by Mr. Justice Stephen, 
 
 Thus the false appearances which were worked 
 up by conspiracy and prejudice, by known and 
 proven enemies of Mrs. Maybrick, and were 
 made to tell so fearfully against her as to create 
 a cloud of darkness the murkiness of which en- 
 veloped even the defense, show us the picture of 
 
PERNICIOUS POLICE REGULATIONS. 27 
 
 a lone woman, powerless in a net woven with the 
 most cunning subtlety, and with no one to advise 
 her — refused even the poor consolation of her 
 counsel, who seemed paralyzed by a belief in these 
 fajse appearances. 
 
 The conduct of the police, in conjunction with 
 those conspiring against Mrs. May brick, at the 
 time of the arrest, aptly illustrates the pernicious 
 system of police regulations before alluded to. 
 The clues were given to them, none were discov- 
 ered by them. The evidence shows, for example, 
 that large quantities of arsenic were found in the 
 house after Mr. Maybrick's death — some ninety 
 grains, scattered profusely in all sorts of queer 
 places. Not a grain, however, was found in any 
 secret or locked-up place, and not one grain of 
 this arsenic was ever traced to Mrs. Maybrick, 
 nor was it found before Mr. Maybrick's death, 
 but was shown to the police afterward. Upon 
 this prepared line of discovery an abnormal 
 activity was at once developed. It was quite 
 clear that no portion of this arsenic was used by 
 Mrs. Maybrick to poison her husband ; and if the 
 police could discover this suspiciously large quan- 
 tity of arsenic — enough to kill fifty persons — 
 their activity, it would seem, might also furnish 
 a valuable clue to the real criminal in this most 
 abhorrent and unnatural combination to destroy 
 an innocent woman. Not in her behalf, how- 
 ever, were their endeavours directed. They 
 swarmed through the house like barbarians ; they 
 were stationed in Mrs. Maybrick's bedchamber, 
 when she was unconscious of what was going on 
 
28 ACTIVITY OF CONSPIRATORS. 
 
 around her, too ill to resent the uncalled-for in- 
 trusion; and when her mother, the only friend 
 she had in the world, arrived upon the scene, she 
 was not permitted to minister to her, while the 
 policemen with rough hands and sacrilegious 
 touch held her upon her bed while she was con- 
 sumed with the fever of delirium. And all this 
 before an inquest was held, before anything but 
 the vaguest suspicions, based on still vaguer 
 suggestions, existed to warrant such conduct. 
 From the custody of these coarse men she was 
 remanded to prison, without even the poor excuse 
 of the finding of poison in the dead man's body — 
 the arsenic scattered through the house, and ' 
 noted by the police, being the only circumstance 
 upon which an excuse for arrest could be made. 
 
 Throughout the weary weeks that followed this 
 unhappy history to its end, these men preserved 
 the alertness that characterized their first en- 
 deavours. After the conviction, and during the 
 two weeks that the Home Secretary had the peti- 
 tions for reprieve under advisement, they were 
 active in attempts to head off every effort made 
 in favour of the condemned woman. Upon one 
 occasion, when unsuccessful in an effort to se- 
 cure information, a policeman told the party 
 approached — who stands ready to swear to the 
 fact — that she had better be careful, she might 
 get herself into trouble, as he had been instructed 
 by the Home Oiifice to see her for testimony to 
 sustain the conviction. 
 
 Why are the columns of the press of England 
 so firmly closed against a full ventilation of the 
 
THE DUTY OF AMERICA. 29 
 
 true facts of the case — the convincing proofs that 
 Mrs. Maybrick was not guilty of attempting to 
 poison her husband ? The answer is plain ; it is 
 because, as a result of the ingenious net woven 
 by the conspirators, and of the total misunder- 
 standing of Mrs. Maybrick's statement, the public 
 have become convinced that whatever may be 
 the facts as to Mrs. Maybrick's attempt to poison 
 her husband, she was guilty of adultery. 
 
 As to Mrs. Maybrick's statement, it is quite 
 true that a woman out of her teens ought to have 
 known her own interests better than to have 
 made it ; but the fact that she did not know the 
 interpretation that would be put upon it, is of itself 
 strong evidence of her innocence. It should be 
 obvious that a married woman, and the mother 
 of children, who has got far enough in the ways 
 of the world to arrange an assignation at a public 
 hotel, has already learned enough not to make 
 such a statement in her own behalf. 
 
 What can be done in the face of the conclusion 
 that Mrs. Maybrick is innocent, but by form of 
 law condemned, and by pretence of law illegally 
 detained in prison ? It can scarcely be doubted 
 that by the death of her husband Mrs. Maybrick 
 became again an American citizen. What would 
 be the attitude of England in the event that one 
 of her citizens, shown to be innocent, was con- 
 demned to imprisonment with hard labour for life 
 in the United States ; and that, because of some 
 defect in American criminal law, there was no 
 way of legal redress? Is not her loyalty to and 
 generous protection of her citizens England's 
 
30 MRS. MAYB RICK'S HELPLESSNESS. 
 
 pride, and the admiration of the world? Under 
 similar circumstances, would she not at once de- 
 mand the release of an innocent subject? 
 
 Mrs. Maybrick comes from a long line of 
 worthy ancestors, who for services to the govern- 
 ment deserve well of the Republic. She is with- 
 out father, brother, or male relative to protect 
 her good name and that of her innocent children. 
 
 The agitation in America has already done 
 great good in behalf of Mrs. Maybrick; it has 
 opened the eyes of thousands to the convincing 
 proofs of her innocence. Can those who love 
 justice rest until she is free, and until the only 
 restitution has been made that is now possible 
 for so frightful a miscarriage of justice? 
 
FURTHER DEVELOPMENTS. 
 
 Since the above article was written, Mr. Stead, 
 editor of the Review of Reviews, has received from 
 South Africa a letter written by a man named 
 Neuberg, a Dutch Boer, giving what purported 
 to be the dying confession of a man named Henry 
 Wilson. This man confessed that, aided by a 
 woman j he put poison in things intended for 
 Mr. Maybrick, giving as a reason therefor that 
 he had a grudge against Mrs. Maybrick. I quote 
 from the October issue of the Review of Reviews : 
 
 A somewhat curious experience befel me this 
 autumn. A voice, as it were, from the grave 
 compelled me to look into an almost forgotten 
 past and reconsider conclusions which seemed at 
 one time to be final. Three years ago, when I 
 was editor of the Pall Mall Gazette, Florence 
 Maybrick was tried and convicted and sentenced 
 to be hanged for the wilful murder of her hus- 
 band. In accordance with principles on which I 
 had always acted, with one fatal exception, the 
 Pall Mall Gazette objected to any retrial of the 
 case by the Home Secretary in deference to 
 clamour. I was on holiday at the time, and paid 
 no attention to the case, merely assuring my lo- 
 cum tenems that I approved his adherence to the 
 sound principle that a judge and a jury who have 
 seen the witnesses and heard them give their 
 evidence are more likely to be right than a het- 
 
32 A LIVING TOMB. 
 
 erogeneous omnium gatherum of newspaper read- 
 ers who had no opportunity of forming an opin- 
 ion of the comparative credibility of the opposing 
 witnesses. Logically, Mrs. Maybrick should 
 have been hanged. Mr. Matthews, however, 
 was Home Secretary, and Sir Fitzjames Stephen 
 was the judge, and between them they contrived 
 to make as nice a botch of the whole business as 
 wrong-headedness on one side and semi-dotage 
 on the other could have brought about. Not 
 daring to carry out the capital sentence, they 
 evaded the gallows by a solemn declaration that 
 there was a reasonable doubt whether any mur- 
 der had ever been committed ; and then, instead 
 of sending Mrs. Maybrick for trial on the charge 
 of attempting to poison, they commuted the sen- 
 tence passed for murder to penal servitude for 
 life. 
 
 The excitement, however, died down, Mrs. 
 Maybrick went to her living tomb in Woking, 
 the newspaper reader passed to the next sensa- 
 tion, and probably not a vote was lost to the 
 Unionist party at the General Election on account 
 of the illogical absurdity of the Home Secretary's 
 dealing with Mrs. Maybrick. 
 
 Her case was buried and forgotten, at least on 
 this side of the Atlantic, and I certainly had not 
 the least inclination to refer to it again. 
 
 But no sooner was the General Election over 
 than the Maybrick case was thrust upon my at- 
 tention by a letter which reached me from the 
 Transvaal Republic — of all places in the world. 
 It was a quaintly addressed letter, bearing the 
 postmark of Krugersdorp, July 19, and franked 
 by four penny stamps of the South African Re- 
 public. The address was as follows : 
 
THE AFRICAN LETTER. 33 
 
 Staed Esq 
 Editor of the Palmall 
 Gazeeth and Reweu of Reweujs 
 London. England. 
 
 On opening this missive, which reached me 
 August 15th or i6th, I found it was dated Rith- 
 fontein, July loth, 1892, and contained a remark- 
 able communication purporting to be the death- 
 bed confession of a man who accused himself of 
 having conspired with others to bring suspicion 
 upon Mrs. Maybrick. At first I was not disposed 
 to pay it much attention. When any great mur- 
 der case is in the air there are usually some peo- 
 ple ready to accuse themselves of a share in it, 
 especially if they are at a safe distance or at the 
 point of death. But after a time I reflected that 
 the Maybrick case was not by any means in the 
 air, and that even if it had been before the public 
 at home, the contagion of morbid curiosity could 
 hardly have spread to the banks of the Limpopo. 
 There was also an air of genuine conviction about 
 the letter which impressed me more in a second 
 and third reading than it did at first. The extra- 
 ordinary spelling, due to the effort of a South 
 African Dutchman to spell English as he pro- 
 nounces it, gave the communication an unmis- 
 takable stamp of authenticity so far as its writer 
 was concerned. So after much consideration I 
 decided to look into the matter. But before giv- 
 ing my conclusions let me give my readers the 
 exact text of the letter. Being Englished it runs 
 as follows : 
 
 Mr. Stead. — Dear Sir, — Please will you insert 
 this in your valuable and widely-read paper, in 
 justice to a poor woman, who is still in prison for 
 a crime ' another person has committed. It is 
 about five months ago since (I was) in company 
 
34 A SIGNIFICANT IMPRESSION. 
 
 with Harry Wilson from Mashonaland to the 
 Transvaal. He was sick with fever, and at last 
 died on January 14th, 1892. Before he died he 
 made the following confession, which he in- 
 structed me to send to Sir Charles Russell, Bar- 
 rister-at-Law, London, England. There were 
 four of us who started back, and all three died 
 from fever except myself. 
 
 And as nothing has been done in the matter — 
 Sir C. Russell has not moved in the matter, I 
 hope that you, loving justice to your fellow men, 
 will move in the matter. He died on the Lim- 
 popo Flats on January 14th, 1892, and was buried 
 by me, and what is the worst part I was the only 
 one of the four left to hear that miserable con- 
 fession. 
 
 Trusting that you, loving justice, will take this 
 into consideration, I will subscribe myself your 
 most humble servant, 
 
 MoREAU Masina Berthrad Neuberg. 
 
 These I will swear to at any time. M. M. B. N. 
 
 CONFESSION OF HENRY WILSON. 
 
 He stated that he, in conjunction with a woman 
 by the name of , tampered with medi- 
 cine which was intended for Mr. Maybrick, put 
 arsenic into the . He said because Mrs. May- 
 brick and he could not agree, and he had a grudge 
 against her. There was also another woman, he 
 called her Sarah, but I don't remember the other 
 name. It was somewhere near Manchester, some 
 time ago, and she is still in prison. He told me 
 to send this statement to Sir Charles Russell, 
 Barrister-at-Law. 
 
 On communicating with Sir Charles RusseU, 
 he kindly afforded me an opportunity of perusing 
 the letter which had been sent to him. Without 
 
LETTER TO SIR CHARLES RUSSELL. 35 
 
 reproducing- the Dutch spelling, this is the first 
 letter Englished : 
 
 Johannesberg, March 25, 1892. 
 Sir Charles Russell 
 
 Sir, — A man of the name of Henry Wilson made 
 a confession to me in my tent at Mashonaland that 
 he put arsenic into some medicine for purposes of 
 revenge on Mrs. Maybrick, near Manchester, some 
 years ago. She was convicted of the crime of mur- 
 der and sent to prison for life, and he wants me 
 to write to you his confession of the crime. He 
 died and was buried on the Limpopo River, near 
 the drift crossing to the Transvaal. 
 
 CONFESSION OF HENRY WILSON. 
 
 He said he wanted to be revenged on Mrs. May- 
 brick. He with a servant girl tampered with the 
 medicine for Mr. Maybrick, and put arsenic into 
 it, but how much I could not get to know as he 
 was delirious for fourteen days. He died and I 
 buried him on the Limpopo Flats on the other side 
 of the Transvaal two months ago. Trusting you 
 will interest yourself on behalf of the woman Mrs. 
 Maybrick, I remain, your most humble servant, 
 M. M. Berthrad Neuberg. 
 
 This is written on arrival from Mashonaland. 
 I am sorry there is not another witness to this 
 miserable statement. — M. M. B. Neuberg. 
 
 After carefully reading and re-reading these 
 pathetic appeals from the solitary survivor of tbe 
 ill-fated party of farmers in Mashonaland, I came 
 to the conclusion that it was simply impossible to 
 refuse to look into the whole matter. Mr. Neu- 
 berg was evidently profoundly convinced of the 
 serious importance of the case. He seems to have 
 written to Sir Charles Russell as soon as he got 
 within range of a post office. After waiting four 
 
36 WRONG-HEADED JOHN BULL. 
 
 months, when he heard nothing from Sir Charles, 
 who, however, had sent his letter at once to the 
 solicitors, he could not remain at rest, and all the 
 difficulties of caligraphy notwithstanding, he wrote 
 tome, believing that I would at least look into the 
 matter as " one loving justice for my fellow men." 
 
 A NATIONAL DISGRACE. 
 
 So, without more ado, I did look into the mat- 
 ter, with this result, that whether there is any- 
 thing in the confession or whether there is not, I 
 cannot resist the conclusion that the case is so 
 scandalous an illustration of the very worst sides 
 of the British judicial system and of the British 
 character, that, if only to give us a chance of 
 burying the matter in oblivion, Mrs. Maybrick 
 should be released. I do not care how prejudiced 
 anyone may be against Mrs. Maybrick. No En- 
 glishman can feel otherwise than ashamed of hav- 
 ing to defend the manner in which she has been 
 dealt with by our courts and our governments. 
 If, as seems by no means improbable, the case 
 should become a subject of diplomatic represen- 
 tations between the governments, as it has al- 
 ready become the subject of very vehement jour- 
 nalistic disputation between the papers in Amer- 
 ica and Great Britain, we shall not be able to es- 
 cape a gibbetting that is little short of a national 
 humiliation. The Americans, who in high places 
 and in low are criticising the way in which we 
 dealt with Mrs. Maybrick, have us on the hip. A 
 sorrier exhibition of all that is worst in the blun- 
 dering, wrong-headed, illogical side of John Bull 
 has seldom or never given occasion for his ene- 
 mies to exult and his friends to wince. 
 
 THE ATTORNEY- GENERAL ON THE JUDGE. 
 
 The fact is that the case was decided not in the 
 least upon the evidence of experts, but solely 
 
JUSTICE STEPHEN'S FRENZY. 37 
 
 upon the prejudice imported into the case by the 
 judge on the last day of his summing-up. Sir 
 Fitzjames Stephen, who was much prejudiced 
 against wives suspected of misbehaviour, had 
 worked himself up into a kind of frenzy at the 
 thought of Mrs. Maybrick becoming a popular 
 heroine. The judge's charge was of a nature 
 happily almost without precedent in British 
 courts. Sir Charles Russell, the Attorney-Gen- 
 eral, in his memorandum to the Home Office, 
 used the following weighty M'ords of censure of 
 the judge's conduct. After saying that it was 
 eminently a case in which the judge was bound 
 to allay prejudice instead of exciting it by vehe- 
 ment appeal. Sir Charles pointed out that Sir 
 Fitzjames Stephen had "passionately invited 
 them " to find a verdict of guilty. He made sug- 
 gestions which were untenable, and had never 
 been advanced by the prosecution, and went out 
 of his way to make misleading references, Sir 
 Charles continues : 
 
 But most important of all, instead of distinctly 
 separating the two issues of cause of death, and the 
 prisoner's guilt in connection with it, he appears to 
 have told the jury not to consider the case separately, 
 but as a whole. It is submitted this is clearly wrong 
 and misleading. 
 
 It is no exaggeration to say that every point made 
 by the prosecution was put by the learned judge, 
 and with greater insistence, as well as other points 
 which the prosecution had not made — while, at the 
 same time, he does not seem to have realized the im- 
 portance of many of the points made on the part of 
 the prisoner, and did not put some of them at all, 
 and those which he did put he minimised and dis- 
 counted. 
 
 To begin with, he took two days to sum up. 
 The first day he spoke as a judge. The second 
 
38 AN "IMPOSSIBLE" VERDICT. 
 
 day some malign influence seemed to have pos- 
 sessed or obsessed him, and he raged like a vio- 
 lent counsel for the prosecution, leaving no stone 
 unturned to excite prejudice against the unfor- 
 tunate woman in the dock. Why this change no 
 one can say. All that was known was that. he 
 paced his room the night before the verdict as in 
 a frenzy, came into court and charged horse, foot, 
 and artillery upon the wretched, forlorn woman 
 in the dock. He laid himself out to excite preju- 
 dice against this "horrible woman," but even 
 when he had finished his twelve-hour harangue 
 for the prosecution from the Bench, he had suf- 
 ficient judicial acumen left amidst the percep- 
 tible decay of his faculties to doubt the possibil- 
 ity of a verdict of guilty. I was assured in Liver- 
 pool by one who had it direct from the official 
 concerned, that when the jury retired the judge 
 called up the clerk and asked him what the ver- 
 dict would be. " My Lord," he replied, " I am 
 not the jury." "Oh," said the judge, " it is im- 
 possible for them to find her guilty in face of the 
 medical evidence." That also was the opinion 
 of the prosecution. 
 
 THE REVOLT AGAINST THE VERDICT. 
 
 The conviction that a verdict of " Not Guilty " 
 was inevitable was so firmly entertained that both 
 the evening papers printed special editions an- 
 nouncing a verdict of "Not Guilty," and sold 
 them in the streets. When the jury returned, 
 after an absence of thirty-eight minutes, with a 
 verdict of " Guilty," the sensation was over- 
 whelming. Even the judge felt it, and in pass- 
 ing sentence of death he placed the whole re- 
 sponsibility upon the jury and the jury alone. 
 Outside the ebullition of feeling was almost un- 
 
BENEFIT OF THE DOUBT. 39 
 
 precedented. I do not remember any case in 
 •wHch the public protested so vehemently against 
 the decision of a court of law. Nor was it only the 
 general public. Every member of the Bar present 
 at the Assizes, with the addition of the Recorder 
 of Liverpool, signed the memorial in her favour. 
 Sir Charles Russell, in his memorandum to the 
 Home Oifice, says : 
 
 Lastly. It is important to note that the verdict 
 came as a surprise upon the trained minds of the Bar 
 of the Northern Circuit, and that to the very last mo- 
 ment (even after the summing-up), the leading coun- 
 sel for the prosecution, Mr. Addison, Q.C., M.P., 
 persisted in saying that the jury could not, especially 
 in view of the medical evidence, find a verdict of 
 "Guilty." 
 
 Did James May brick Die of Arsenic ? 
 
 In order to prevent any misunderstanding the 
 judge told the jury that " it is a necessary 
 step — it is essential to this charge that the man 
 died of poison, and the poison suggested is ar- 
 senic." Further, he distinctly asserted that "it 
 must be the foundation of a judgment unfavour- 
 able to the prisoner that he died of arsenic." 
 The judge did not need to remind the jury that 
 if there was any reasonable doubt, it is the es- 
 tablished principle of English law that the ac- 
 cused should have the benefit of that doubt. That 
 goes without saying. But the jury, notwithstand- 
 ing the evidence of the most distinguished medi- 
 cal experts, who swore that the deceased did not 
 die of poison, decided that there was no reason 
 for doubting but that 
 
 James May brick did Die of Arsenic. 
 
 Then comes the Home Secretary, who re-tries 
 the case, and proclaims to the world that after tak- 
 
40 A HOPELESS MUDDLE. 
 
 ing the best medical and legal advice that could 
 be obtained, lie has come to the conclusion that 
 ' ' the evidence does not wholly exclude a reason- 
 able doubt whether his death was in fact caused 
 by the administration of arsenic! " 
 
 The Home Secretary's verdict is directly op- 
 posed to that of the jury. His finding is : 
 
 I Doubt whether James May brick did Die of Arsenic. 
 
 As the prisoner is always entitled to the bene- 
 fit of the doubt, this knocks the very foundation 
 out of the verdict of the jury. If there was no 
 murder no one can be guilty of murder. If there 
 is a "reasonable doubt" that May brick did not 
 die of poison, then clearly there can be no ground 
 in law or in reason for convicting his wife of hav- 
 ing poisoned him. But although the Home Sec- 
 retary thus summarily destroys the foundation of 
 the verdict of the jury, he refuses to alter the de- 
 cision that she is guilty of wilfully murdering a 
 man who, he admits, may never have been mur- 
 dered at all. 
 
 We shall have to ransack the annals of topsy- 
 turvydom to discover a precedent for this absurd 
 and ridiculous conclusion. But it stands to this 
 day unreversed, and this morning Mrs. Maybrick 
 was recalled by the harsh clangour of the prison 
 bell at Woking to the lot of a convicted murderess, 
 doomed to spend her life in penal servitude, to 
 expiate a murder which the judge who tried her, 
 and the Home Secretary who re- tried her, agree 
 in declaring may quite possibly never have been 
 committed ! 
 
 OF WHAT, THEN, WAS MRS. MAYBRICK GUILTY ? 
 
 The answer is that, although the verdict of 
 wilful murder has been practically annulled, the 
 
ABSOLUTELY NO EVIDENCE. 41 
 
 Home Secretary decided that the evidence clearly- 
 pointed to the conclusion that Mrs. Maybrick ad- 
 ministered and attempted to administer arsenic 
 to her husband with intent to murder, and that 
 for attempting to poison she may be lawfully im- 
 prisoned for life. If so, so be it. But in that case 
 let us clearly understand that Mrs. Maybrick is at 
 this moment a convict in Woking, not for commit- 
 ting wilful murder, but for attempting to poison. 
 That surely is clear enough from the decision of 
 the Home Office. Yet, so anomalous are the ways 
 of the circumlocution office, so labyrinthine the 
 maze of British jurisprudence, that the Home Of- 
 fice still maintains that Mrs. Maybrick is under 
 sentence, not for attempting to poison, but for 
 wilful murder. It is such banal futilities which 
 will yet make the British Home Office the laugh- 
 ing-stock of the world. 
 
 DID SHE EVER GIVE HIM POISON ? 
 
 But is it true that the evidence points so clearly 
 to the administration of poison by Mrs. May- 
 brick ? She herself admitted having put a pow- 
 der, at her husband's urgent request, into a 
 bottle of meat juice, and at the trial a bottle of 
 meat juice, which Mrs. Maybrick declares she 
 never saw before, was produced which contained 
 arsenic. But it is admitted that none of that ar- 
 senious meat juice was ever administered to him, 
 so that, whatever her intent may have been, it 
 was not carried into effect. Where, then, is the 
 evidence that she administered the arsenic, if 
 she ever gave him any, which is not proved, with 
 felonious intent? If she gave him arsenic in his 
 medicine, it may have been at his own request, 
 or she may have given it to him inadvertently, 
 owing to the poison having been placed in his 
 
43 WORK OF CONSPIRATORS. 
 
 medicine by other parties. The forraer is the 
 conclusion which is suggested by the notorious 
 habits of Mr. Maybrick, the latter is put forward 
 by the confession from South Africa. In either 
 case there would be no reason for keeping Mrs. 
 Maybrick in gaol. 
 
 THE AFRICAN CONFESSION. 
 
 The case for Mrs. Maybrick, I take it, if we 
 accept the confession of Harry Wilson as genu- 
 ine, is that Mr. Maybrick did not die of poison, 
 and that after he was dead conspirators in the 
 household put about the arsenic and the arsenical 
 liquor which the dead man had in his possession, 
 so as to excite suspicion against Mrs. Maybrick. 
 Mr. Matthews, I believe, satisfied himself that 
 the arsenic found in solution in the meat juice 
 could not have been put there in powder, so that 
 it is not accounted for by Mrs. Maybrick's story 
 about the powder. Now, however, we have the 
 statement of the man, Henry Wilson, that he, for 
 purposes of revenge, aided by nurses or servants 
 in the house, put arsenic into the medicine or into 
 the tea. I admit the difficulty of believing that 
 any human being could be base enough to join in 
 so wicked a plot against an innocent woman, and 
 to carry it out at the very moment when their un- 
 fortunate victim was lying in a swoon into which 
 she fell when her husband died. But here we 
 have Henry Wilson's confession, and as some, at 
 least, of those about had made up their minds 
 Mrs. Maybrick was a poisoner, they may have 
 had slight scruples at making assurance doubly 
 sure by assisting in preparing the evidence in 
 support of their case. But I lay no stress on 
 this. . . . 
 
AN ELOQUENT APPEAL. 43 
 
 It has been from the first the contention of 
 some who have looked deeply into this case, that 
 the fact that arsenic was scattered throughout the 
 house in a very bungling fashion, and that the 
 presence of this arsenic was officiously made known 
 to the police, clearly points to the existence of a 
 conspiracy. It is not necessary to believe that it 
 was the intention of the conspirators to carry the 
 matter to the length of legal prosecution and 
 hanging. It is probable that it was intended only 
 to punish the object of their dislike — Mrs. May- 
 brick — by throwing suspicion upon her, and so 
 be revenged for supposed injuries. After start- 
 ing they found the results of their conspiracy had 
 gone further than they had expected or desired ; 
 and when they could not control it they were 
 obliged to go with the current their malignity 
 had set in motion. Mr. Stead closes his eloquent 
 appeal for justice as follows : 
 
 It is unfortunate for England that her peculiar 
 institutions should come up for review under such 
 circumstances as this of the Maybrick trial. This 
 American woman was sentenced to be hanged 
 by a judge on the verge of dotage, after the 
 counsel for the prosecution had remarked it was 
 impossible to find a verdict of guilty in the face 
 the medical evidence. She was declared by the 
 jury to have been clearly proved guilty of wil- 
 fully poisoning a man, who the Home Secretary, 
 sitting as court of appeal, found was possibly 
 not murdered at all ; and she is now serving a 
 sentence which was not pronounced by the judge, 
 for an offence which was neither alleged against 
 her in the indictment nor submitted to the jury 
 at the trial. 
 
44 SALIENT POINTS UNANSWERED. 
 
 The discussion of Mr. Stead's article by the 
 English press has been confined to attempts to 
 throw discredit on the African letter, to reviews 
 of Mr. Stead's connection with the Lipski affair, 
 to professed sensitiveness because of his alleged 
 attack on a dead man's memory ; it has been any- 
 thing but reference to, or discussion of, the real 
 questions at issue : Ought Mrs. Maybrick to be 
 tortured to death ? Is Mrs. Maybrick guilty? 
 They make no attempt to meet these salient 
 points, undisputed as to fact : that there was not 
 one-twentieth part of a fatal dose of arsenic 
 found in the body; that Mr. Maybrick was a 
 confirmed arsenic eater, and that no arsenic was 
 traced to Mrs. Maybrick in any form or shape. 
 It is not denied that, while the jury was deliber- 
 ating, the judge and the prosecuting attorney 
 had said that it was impossible to find a verdict 
 of guilty in the face of the medical testimony. 
 Until some of these things are cleared up it would 
 be more seemly in the English press to at least 
 put a stop to the ever-ready fling and the studied 
 insults with which their paragraphs relating to 
 this unhappy woman are embellished. 
 
MEDICAL TESTIMONY REVIEWED. 
 
 Mr. Wm. Thomas, a benevolent gentleman of 
 Liverpool, has written a most valuable book 
 dealing with the medical problem of the case 
 which is an important contribution to laymen if 
 not to the profession on the use and effects of 
 poisons. It conclusively demonstrates that no 
 murder was committed. It can be had from John 
 Heywood, Deansgate, Manchester and London; 
 price, IS. 6d. All friends of Mrs. Maybrick are 
 urged to purchase this valuable book and aid in 
 its distribution. The following quotations from 
 its pages will give the reader somewhat of an 
 idea of its scope and purpose. Mr. Thomas re- 
 views the medical testimony, and gives histori- 
 cal and scientific data which are startling in their 
 relation to the case : 
 
 Is Mrs. Maybrick guilty of the murder of her 
 husband? How can she be guilty of murder 
 when no murder exists? From the evidence 
 given at the trial it was shown by the medical men 
 who attended him that the poor patient suffered 
 all the symptoms of gastro-enteritis. They 
 treated him for this, in their way; anxious, no 
 doubt, to do the best they could for their patient, 
 sincerely believing with great faith in the ef- 
 ficacy of the doses they prescribed, they gave him 
 the following : 
 
46 ORTHODOX PRESCRIPTIONS. 
 
 Bismuth — double doses. 
 
 Sulphonel. 
 
 Cocaine. 
 
 Nitro-Glycerine. 
 
 Phosphoric Acid. 
 
 Solution of Cocaine. 
 
 Cascara. 
 
 Nitro Hydrochloric Acid, made up of Nux 
 
 Vomica, Strychnine and Brucine. 
 Plummer's Pills — containing Antimony and 
 
 Calomel. 
 Prussic Acid. 
 Bromide of Potassium. 
 Tincture of Hyoscyamus. 
 Tincture of Henbane. 
 Antipyrine. 
 
 Papaine's Iridine (Seymour's). 
 Jabourandi. 
 Chlorine. 
 Morphia. 
 
 Fowler's Solution of Arsenic. 
 Bismuth and Opium (suppository). 
 
 Now, here are upwards of twenty different 
 medical drugs — most of them deadly poisons — 
 given to this poor patient by his medical advis- 
 ers. What does it read like ? Is it not an in- 
 sult to common sense? What will it read like 
 in fifty years hence ? Will it not be read like a 
 burlesque on the medical science of the present 
 enlightened age? Is there a man who dares to 
 assert that if the above list of deadly poisons 
 were given to a patient during an illness, he 
 would not be injured thereby; and that those 
 poisonous drugs will not lower the vis vitm of life, 
 if given in however small quantities? This 
 poor patient died. How could it be expected 
 otherwise? 
 
AT MOST A FARCE. 47 
 
 At the inquest and the trial, the evidence of the 
 post-mortem proved that in the body of the de- 
 ceased husband was found a very small portion 
 of arsenic only — this, after a very minute search 
 and analysis, was all that could be discovered. 
 It was so infinitesimal that, when the quantity 
 was shown to the court and the jury, it was 
 scarcely visible — as described by the honourable 
 judge himself. Sir Charles Russell, examining 
 the tube, remarked that it required a strong 
 magnifying glass even to see the film upon the 
 glass, and he should like his Lordship to see it. 
 Witness (the analyst) replied : Oh, you can see 
 it distinctly enough on a black back-ground. 
 Sir Charles Russell : Before your Lordship sees 
 it : the two things on the bottom are the pieces 
 of copper foil ? Witness : Yes ; they have noth- 
 ing to do, except being the instrument ; but the 
 arsenic is on them. The arsenic is free from 
 them, except that it is in minute forms on the 
 glass itself ? — yes. 
 
 His Lordship here looked minutely at the tube. 
 Sir Charles Russell said, it looks like the breath 
 on a glass. The judge brought into play two 
 magnifying glasses, one of a very high power. 
 He tried both, and appeared to be unable to find 
 the film, and he applied to Sir Charles Russell to 
 say where the film was. Sir Charles Russell said : 
 You must look for it yourself, my Lord. His 
 Lordship then endeavored to see the object for him- 
 self, and called into requisition the state hat of the 
 chaplain, against the dark ground of which he 
 endeavored to find out the spec of arsenic which 
 Mr. Davies had indicated. After a pause of some 
 time, during which the court was silent, his Lord- 
 ship handed back the tube to the jury with his 
 two glasses, explaining that one was much more 
 
48 OWLISH WISDOM. 
 
 powerful than the Other; but the more- powerful 
 one required to be so near to the eye, on the one 
 hand, and so close to the object, on the other, 
 that it was very difficult to manage. The jury 
 then proceeded to use the glasses of his Lordship, 
 the black coats of their fellow-jurymen being used 
 as a back-ground. 
 
 Sir Charles Russell : You found arsenic in the 
 liver? A. — ^Yes. Q. — And a trace in the in- 
 testines, and a trace in the kidneys? A. — I 
 found a very distinct trace in the kidneys. Q. — 
 Have you got the tube containing that trace? 
 A. — Yes. Q. — Pass that tube. (The witness 
 here produced a small test tube.) Q. — Where 
 am I to look for this trace here? A. — In the 
 same part of the tube as the last. Sir Charles 
 Russell : Will your Lordship look at it, and let 
 the jury see it ? His Lordship (after he has taken 
 the tube in his hand) : I have looked at it through 
 my glass, and I think I can see a number of differ- 
 ent bodies ; if you can tell me what they are and 
 how many of them there are, then I can have 
 confidence in my glass? A. — They are distinctly 
 visible without any glass ; thus, getting the light 
 on them they glitter. His Lordship: How many 
 of them? A. — There will be some hundreds. 
 Q. — There is a film in the bulb of the tube? 
 A.--— Yes, there is. Q. — That has nothing to do 
 with the arsenical test? A. — Nothing whatever. It 
 argues the presence of some metal, bism.uth or anti- 
 mony — something that was not volatile. Q. — 
 What you did was to test for arsenic, and for 
 arsenic only? A. — Yes; I tested for bismuth at 
 the same time. Q. — But not with a view of see- 
 ing if it was in weighable quantities? A. — No. 
 Q. — You did not examine with that object. You 
 accidentally observed it? A. — ^Yes. (The test 
 
AMOUNT OF ARSENIC. 49 
 
 tube was then handed to the jury for examina- 
 tion.) 
 
 Mr. Davies said there was so much bis- 
 muth in the body as to make the analysis most 
 difficult. Sir Charles Russell: I would like to 
 ask you one question more — you have candidly 
 told us what would be the entire quantity in the 
 entire liver, from the fractional portion you dealt 
 with ? A. — What I found would amount to one- 
 eighth of a grain. Q. — But you did not find one- 
 tenth of a grain ; you found one two-thousandth 
 of a grain of sulphide of arsenic in the six ounces 
 of the liver ? A. — Yes. Q. — And assuming that 
 the arsenic was distributed equally, taking the 
 whole weight of the liver, supposing it were dis- 
 tributed equally over the entire liver, it would 
 amount to one-tenth of a grain ? A. — Yes. 
 
 Now, it would be some satisfaction to know 
 how many doses of this form of arsenic, under 
 the name of "Fowler's Solution," and how much 
 in a dose of this potent poison, was given by the 
 doctors ; and how much, in all, they administered 
 to him medicinally. Was it sufficient to provide 
 for what was discovered in the body ? Then 
 there are the medicines the poor man took him- 
 self, apart from the medical prescriptions, and 
 among them sometimes arsenic as a sort of 
 "pick-me-up," or stimulant, which will be re- 
 ferred to further on. 
 
 There was no thought of arsenic till they, 
 the doctors, were told of the suspicions that were 
 formed by those in attendance — then they knew all 
 about it ! And at the trial at the assize court 
 they honestly and confidently confessed they 
 knew nothing of arsenic. They never attended 
 a post-mortem case of arsenic poisoning in their 
 lives ; they never attended even a patient suffering 
 
so ABILITY OF DR. MACNAMARA. 
 
 from arsenic poisoning; they had no experience what- 
 ever, they knew nothing about it, and yet they 
 pretended to know so much as to be able to give 
 their experience. Experience? They had none, 
 they knew nothing, they were able to give their 
 opinion. Yes, their opinion. From what source 
 did they get their knowledge to form that opin- 
 ion, to be able to say that it was arsenic that 
 killed their patient? They got their knowledge 
 from reading. "They had been reading them- 
 selves up" to get information, so as to be able to 
 give their evidence. What had they been read- 
 ing up? A work published by a clever, prac- 
 tical medical man, whose experience had been of 
 a most extraordinary large character, and who 
 had attended scores of fatal arsenic poisoning 
 cases and post-mortem examinations ; a man whose 
 experience and extensive duties made him an 
 acknowledged authority in the profession, and 
 whose mental power and culture have been ex- 
 tensively enlarged by his great and continued 
 practice. This was Dr. Macnamara, who was the 
 author of the work the two good doctors had 
 been reading up to inform themselves of the 
 knowledge to enable them to give evidence in a 
 case where the life of a fellow creature was the 
 question. They had no opinion formed from 
 practical experience, and after their reading, their 
 consultation, and their study, they proved the 
 honest statement they made before they gave 
 their evidence, that they knew nothing. The 
 medical man who had so many cases of arsenical 
 poisoning under his care, and so many post- 
 mortems of arsenic poisoning cases, and who was 
 the author of the book <they had been reading 
 up to make themselves equal to the occasion, in 
 his evidence contradicted them in toto, and posi- 
 
IGNORANT WITNESSES. 51 
 
 tively denied what Drs. Humphreys and Carter 
 had asserted. How the judge or the jury could 
 have taken the opinion of men who never had a 
 case of arsenic poisoning under their notice, in 
 preference to the evidence of such a large and 
 eminent practitioner as the author of the book 
 that Drs. Humphrey and Carter had been reading 
 up, is something surprising ; as if my reading a 
 history of the "Life of Jack the Giant- Killer," 
 and studying it ever so closely, would make me 
 a Jack the Giant-Killer, or, what is of far greater 
 consequence, give me a knowledge equal to prac- 
 tical experience ! It seems so solemnly absurd, 
 taking the occasion and surrounding circumstances 
 into consideration, and the awful consequences of a 
 human life in the balance, that the evidence of two 
 inexperienced men on arsenic poisoning cases, who 
 confessed their ignorance, and who said they knew 
 nothing about it, and whose evidence was co?itradicted, 
 should be taken as fact, in preference to the great 
 practical knowledge of superior ability, by the hon- 
 ourable judge and the jury, that it is impossible to 
 understand their action. 
 
 We are on our trial before public opinion, 
 the greatest tribunal we can appeal to ; whose 
 justice is free from petty jealousies, suspicions, 
 covetousness, or bias of any description, personal 
 feeling or prejudice; therefore, there may be 
 many things which may appear incomprehen- 
 sible to an individual mind upon which public 
 opinion will form its own conclusions, and de- 
 cide that "right shall be done, and Justice be 
 supreme." The experience of medical men, in a 
 general sense, may be very extensive, in their 
 large practice, and they may be considered as 
 equal to the " acutest physicians" in the king- 
 dom; but. when a case comes before them in 
 
52 IMPORTANCE OF HYGIENE. 
 
 which they are informed there is a suspicion of 
 arsenic poisoning, where are they? They are 
 lost to all knowledge of the subject, never hav- 
 ing had any experience of a case of arsenic poi- 
 soning or a post-mortem examination. What do 
 they know? They think the illness of the patient 
 must be caused by some irritant poison. Well, 
 granted, so far, they are probably right, but stop 
 here : this is quite enough for them to treat with. 
 Do they not know— if they do not, they ought to 
 know — that when the pores of the skin are stop- 
 ped; when the safety valves of life are closed, 
 there can be no exusion of the extraneous mate- 
 rial which nature throws ofiE throiagh the pores 
 of the skin, and all this is fixed within? There 
 immediately sets up a most "irritant poison," 
 which will do its work earnestly and fatally if 
 the safety valves cannot be relieved. This is 
 the first advance of the enemy- — he is there, he 
 shows his presence with the first shiver ; he grips 
 his victim, and holds him to the finish, without 
 the aid of an extra dose of arsenic or any other 
 of the twenty poisonous drugs which were ad- 
 ministered to this poor patient. If the pores 
 cannot be opened in the early stage, this irritant 
 poisoning goes on. Gastro-enteritis sets in, and 
 the whole system is poisoned — the blood, the 
 tissues throughout, are in the highest state of 
 inflammation, which continues to increase, often- 
 times defying the highest medical skill ; and the 
 king of all conquest carries away his victim, and 
 claims the victory ! 
 
 When the late Mr. James Maybrick went to 
 the Wirral races, he got wet and was chilled, his 
 pores closed, and when he felt the trembling and 
 his hand shook so violently that he could not 
 hold the glass of wine steady at the dinner table, 
 
THE CAUSE OF DEATH. 53 
 
 the finger of death was then upon him, and, as 
 the result showed, carried him off. This was the 
 cause of his death ! How many cases do we 
 know of dear ones among our friends and im- 
 mediate circle, some of the greatest and best, who 
 have felt the first shiver, caused by the finger of 
 death, and soon after left us to sorrow and to 
 mourn. Yes, from the throne to the humblest. 
 As far as gastro-enteritis is concerned, there is 
 no doubt the two eminent doctors Carter and 
 Humphreys were correct, and, as far as their di- 
 agnosis was concerned, they were equal to the 
 occasion ; but in the recovery of their patient 
 they were not s.uccessful : death had secured his 
 victim with too firm a hold. Well, now, as to the 
 opinion of those two medical gentlemen in refer- 
 ence to arsenic being the cause of the death of 
 the late Mr. James Maybrick. What is their 
 opinion worth? The facts prove this: they hon- 
 estly and honorably said they knew nothing 
 about arsenical poisoning, they never saw a case 
 of arsenical poisoning in their lives, or a post- 
 mortem examination from the same cause. Well, 
 what can you gather from that, only that they 
 knew nothing about it ; and this is proved to the 
 " hilt" when their assertions are contradicted in 
 toto and most positively denied in the evidence 
 given by men of a large experience, of an exten- 
 sive character, in cases of arsenic poisoning, 
 while practically they, Doctors Carter and Hum- 
 phreys, knew nothing of such cases. Does not 
 the medical man of large experience, in cases of 
 gastro-enteritis, know that acute inflammation is 
 set up in the stomach and bowels, whether pro- 
 duced by chill, fever, or any other cause, when 
 the pores of the skin are closed, and the safety- 
 valves of life are shut off, thereby keeping in 
 
54 DEATH HASTENED BY POISON. 
 
 that exuberant material which nature throws off 
 through the pores when in a healthy condition, 
 and changing this material, when confined, into 
 a most irritant and deadly poison ; and the "skin 
 within," as well as the " skin without," and all 
 the tissues of the body, bones, and brain, are in 
 a state of inflammation ; and which nothing can 
 relieve, unless the portals of life. — the pores — are 
 opened to let the enemy be driven out? This 
 view of the case will be further treated of when 
 the evidence of the medical gentlemen for the 
 defence is before the court : it will be shown by 
 evidence that gastro-enteritis is produced from 
 other causes as well as from arsenic poisoning. 
 There is also a lot to be said about the effect of 
 the medicines that were administered in the 
 shape of drugs of a depreciatory character — of a 
 nature that would reduce the heart's action, and 
 gradually, slowly, but most certainly, lower the 
 power of life, even to its extinction, without any 
 assistance from the nature of the disorder the 
 patient was suffering from — gastro-enteritis, or 
 any other sort of inflammation. When we come 
 to the opinions, as in evidence given by those 
 very experienced men, that the late Mr. James 
 May brick did not die of recent arsenic poisoning, 
 we shall have to ask the question about the con- 
 stant and continuous habit of his taking arsenic 
 for years, and whether he would not discover it 
 if given to him medicinally or with murderous 
 intention ; and again, if ordinary doses only were 
 given, would it have a fatal effect upon him, who 
 had so fortified himself by the taking constantly, 
 for so many years, arsenic as a stimulant. Is it 
 not a fact that the persons who daily accustom 
 themselves to the use of arsenic, opium, or any 
 of those sort of deadly poisons, fortify them- 
 
NOT POISONED BY ARSEMIC. 55 
 
 selves against any effect of an ordinary dose of 
 those poisons? It is recorded that one of the 
 Roman emperors was so nervously afraid of be- 
 ing poisoned by some of his political adversaries, 
 that he, to preserve himself, took poisons daily, 
 so that he was able, in a little time, to defy the 
 murderous intention of those who would other- 
 wise have effected their purpose, and made him- 
 self quite impervious to the ordinary poison 
 intended for his destruction^ his whole system 
 being inept to receive the poisons, by maturing 
 himself with their use equal to the occasion. 
 There are cases known to many where persons 
 who have taken arsenic, medicinally prescribed 
 for diseases, after being cured have continued 
 to take the arsenic daily, and sufificient in one 
 dose to kill two or three ordinary people, and yet 
 not apparently affect them, though the doses are 
 constantly repeated. Now, when the evidence 
 is read as given at the trial by those who were 
 acquainted with the habits of the late Mr. James 
 Maybrick, it will be easy to understand that he 
 was devoted to the use of arsenic, and constantly 
 taking it day by day for many years previously. 
 Will it not occur to the mind of the reader that 
 any ordinary dose of arsenic would have no effect 
 upon him, supposing it had been given to him 
 surreptitiously or with a murderous intent ? And, 
 further, would it not be supposed that if any at- 
 tempt had been so made to administer it to him, 
 that his knowledge of its familiar taste and 
 sensations would have immediately discovered 
 itself to him? These are two points of great 
 importance, which no reflective mind could pass 
 over without great hesitancy, if they could pos- 
 sibly pass them at all, and show conclusively their 
 importance in the question of the possibility of 
 
S6 SMALL QUANTITY DISCOVERED. 
 
 poisoning a man who had inured himself to the 
 taking of arsenic continually, as Mr. James May- 
 brick had done, taking into consideration at the 
 same time the smallness of the quantity of 
 arsenic discovered, after so minute a search, by 
 those clever analysts who undertook the office of 
 examining and analysing the various parts nec- 
 essary for its discovery. The extraordinary scene 
 before the court will be remembered, — the per- 
 plexity of his Lordship and the jury in endeav- 
 ouring to discover, with the aid of two magnify- 
 ing glasses, the product of the analyst's careful 
 and elaborate researches, which when discovered 
 amounted to the one-tenth of a grain. This is a 
 great fact, which goes very strongly to support 
 the assertion, that Mr. James Maybrick did NOT 
 die from arsenical poisoning. There are other 
 points to be considered, as to the cause of death, 
 entirely away from arsenic. 
 
 The opinion given by those great practical 
 men, who stood so high in the profession, that 
 were called for the defence, was stated in the 
 most clear and decided manner, that the cause of 
 death did not point to arsenic, and was entirely 
 free from this cause. 
 
 There were several contradictions made also 
 by them of the evidence given by the medical 
 gentlemen who attended the deceased, as to the 
 nature and character of the medicines they ad- 
 ministered to their patient; as when asked if 
 some of them were not of a depressing character, 
 said they were not, in the small doses as given ; 
 while those same medicines were denounced by 
 the medical men for the defence as decidedly 
 DEPRESSING. Which of the two statements are 
 to be considered as right? And as this part of 
 the subject is of such a grave and serious im- 
 
DEPRESSING MEDICINES THE CAUSE. S7 
 
 port to the question which has to elicit the 
 facts of the case, upon which so much depends, 
 it will be well to gather all the information 
 possible in support of truth, and enquire into 
 the therapeutics of each medicine administered 
 to the deceased, so that a reasonable and con- 
 scientious opinion may be gathered as to the 
 effect those medicines had upon the strength of 
 the patient — how it acted upon his constitution — 
 and whether it raised or diminished the vis vita 
 of life — a question so necessary to understand, in 
 the case of a patient whose sands of life may be 
 fast ebbing away, and whose nervous system 
 may be so lowered by the suffering of his dis- 
 order — gastro-enteritis, for instance, or any other 
 disorder by which he may be affected- — that even 
 small doses of medicine of a depressing nature 
 continuously given, first one, and then another, 
 all of a most deadly and poisonous character, may 
 easily glide the poor patient into eternity by their 
 depressing and lowering influences. 
 
 I now quote extracts of the various characters 
 of the numerous medicines given to the unfortu- 
 nate patient by his medical attendants during 
 his illness, and which extracts are taken from 
 ' ' A Treatise on Poisons, in relation to Medical 
 Jurisprudence, Physiology, and the Practice of 
 Physic," by Robert Christison, M.D., Professor 
 of Materia Medica in the University of Edin- 
 burgh; Fellow of the Royal College of Physi- 
 cians and Royal Society of Edinburgh ; Member 
 of the Medico- Chirurgical and Royal Medical 
 Society of Edinburgh; Hon. Member of the 
 Portsmouth and Portsea Literary and Philological 
 Institution, and member of many other learned 
 medical societies, whose research and authority 
 cannot be impugned. 
 
58 ffIS MEDICINES CAUSED HIS DEATH. 
 
 The extracts given by Mr. Thomas describe 
 these various poisons given to this unfortunate 
 man as depressing, and show that they ought 
 not to have been administered to him. I pro- 
 ceed with other quotations from Mr. Thomas : 
 
 This description of those deadly poisons, the 
 characters of which are described by talented 
 medical men, who are acknowledged authorities 
 in the profession, may be relied on as genuine ; 
 and, may we not ask the question, is it not prob- 
 able that these poisons or medicines which were 
 given to the poor sufferer, as stated in evidence, 
 by the doctors themselves, would have the effect of 
 gradually, slowly, but surely, to lower the vitality 
 of the system ? What else could be the result? 
 Let my readers think for themselves. What will 
 their decision be ? Will they not conclude that 
 it looks like a very risky and dangerous treat- 
 ment ? How much bismuth was there found in 
 the post-mortem of the body ? Mr. Davies, the 
 analyst, said, "there was so much bismuth in 
 the body that it made the analysis most difficult." 
 What does this reveal, but a large quantity of an 
 "active poison"? Put this against the one- 
 tenth of a grain of arsenic found in the whole of 
 the body of the deceased. Does it not show that 
 Drs. Tidy, Macnamara, and others were right 
 when they said the unfortunate patient did not 
 die from recent arsenic poisoning ? and does it not 
 look something like there being enough bismuth 
 alone to poison any one individual, especially a 
 patient in so weakened a condition, and who was 
 suffering from the effects of a chill, besides being 
 dosed so continuously with the various other 
 poisons enumerated, which, if they had no other 
 effect, must all have assisted, to have helped, to 
 
MISTAKES IN JUDGMENT. 59 
 
 lower, distress, and carry away the power of life, 
 until the vital spark had ceased to exist ? Is it 
 not a fact those deadly poisons were given as 
 medicines ? Probably from the best of motives, 
 but still the fact remains, they were administered, 
 and the effect follows. 
 
 Although the verdict was that arsenic was the 
 cause of death, and this was no doubt supported 
 by the opinion of those who knew nothing of 
 what they were saying, and who were honest and 
 honourable enough to confess the truth — that they 
 had no practical knowledge or experience of ar- 
 senic poisoning cases, and this was proved by the 
 evidence of highly experienced and practical men, 
 who showed most clearly to the contrary, and 
 who contradicted them in toto. Does it not ap- 
 pear to the reader that there has been a great 
 oversight in the character of the evidence, and 
 in the inability of those who gave it to form a 
 judgment, or offer an opinion ? 
 
 The public will reason this matter over, and 
 there can be no doubt but common sense will 
 justify the facts by coming to a right conclusion. 
 
 The following, written by Mr. Auberon Her- 
 bert to The Times, in reference to the statement 
 made by Dr. Forbes Winslow "that twenty- 
 one irritant poisons had been administered to Mr. 
 May brick within six days," is worthy of atten- 
 tion: "Had it been desired to produce gastro- 
 enteritis, one can hardly suppose a better method 
 of producing it, than by this awful administra- 
 tion of drugs. To measure in illness the result 
 of one drug is what the most skilful men are 
 often unable to do; to measure the result of 
 something over twenty, including among them 
 such drugs as tincture of nux vomica, henbane 
 and jaborandi, cascara, sagrada, cocaine, morphia, 
 
6o THE LAST PROP SWEPT AWAY. 
 
 and all the others given, is simply to enter the 
 "region of conjecture, and of conjecture that is 
 perfectly unverifiable. One wonders how this 
 revelation of the drugs employed will strike that 
 portion of the medical mind that recognizes that 
 drugs are two-edged weapons, and may almost 
 as readily turn the scale against the patient as in 
 his favour ; to the ignorant lay mind it brings a 
 sense of unmitigated horror ! Be that as it may, 
 the revelation sweeps away the last prop of the prose- 
 cution. It is impossible to believe that either 
 the Judge or the Home Secretary can close their 
 eyes to the effect of this last piece of striking 
 evidence. The earlier evidence, as has been so 
 well shown, pointed away from arsenic, and to 
 some other irritant, and the irritant is now dis- 
 tinctly before the public, in form and quantity 
 that fulfil all that has been asked for." 
 
 I hope my readers will look over this portion a 
 second time, so that they may be able to consider 
 the opinion of Dr. Forbes Winslow as given in 
 his statement, which throws a strong light over 
 this miserable and unfortunate case, which ended 
 so fatally to the poor patient. 
 
 As if this mysterious case could reveal its own 
 mystery, which no doubt it eventually will, here 
 is a little more light thrown upon the subject, 
 which will support a conjecture not to be ex- 
 pressed. 
 
 I copy from the Liverpool Daily Post, of August 
 19th, i88g, an article called 
 
 A NEW CONTENTION. 
 
 Discussing the question, "Was Mr. May brick's 
 death accelerated by antimony and bismuth?" 
 Mr. William Burton, skin specialist, of Burton 
 
DR. BRUNTON OH BISMUTH. 6l 
 
 Street, London, sends us the following communi- 
 cation: "This may seem a startling question, 
 but I have good reason for asking it. That the 
 deceased gentleman had been taking both anti- 
 mony and bismuth by medical advice is admitted, 
 and equally certain it is he had been dosing him- 
 self for years with arsenic, by his own accord. 
 Ergo, it follows that three metals with a similar 
 physiological action must have entered into his 
 system, a poisonous dose of either one of which 
 would have set up the very disease which both 
 sides agree killed him, namely, gastro-enteritis. 
 Now, what more likely than that he fell a victim 
 to the three in combination ? The stomach and 
 intestines of an habitual arsenic taker are always 
 more or less inflamed — in other words, he has a 
 predisposition to gastro-enteritis, and this being 
 so, even a comparatively mild irritant might be 
 suflBcient to set it up. But neither antimony nor 
 bismuth are mild irritants ; both, on the contrary, 
 are powerful ones. Says Dr. Lauder Brunton 
 of the former, in his ' Pharmacology ' : ' In large 
 and poisonous doses it causes gastro-enteritis, 
 with profuse diarrhoea and extreme collapse ; ' and 
 of the latter : ' Large doses have an action like 
 that of antimony and arsenic, and cause gastro- 
 enteritis, with fatty degeneration of the liver.' 
 Of course, I do not mean to imply that other than 
 medical doses were given to Mr. Maybrick. My 
 contention simply is, that even medical doses, 
 under the circumstances, had a tendency, doubt- 
 less, to aggravate the disease from which he must 
 have been in some measure suffering — i.e., ar- 
 senical poisoning; — in short, that these helped 
 to make acute what before was chronic. Even 
 if the antimony and bismuth had been perfectly 
 pure, it is only reasonable to presume that they 
 
63 DR. QUAIN'S TESTIMONY. 
 
 ■would, from their nature, have this effect; but 
 suppose for a moment that they were not pure. 
 There are impure drugs, unfortunately, as well 
 as impure eatables and drinkables. And it so 
 happens that traces of the very poison of which 
 Mr. Maybrick had already had more than enough 
 have frequently been found in both the metals 
 under notice. It is for this reason that Dr. 
 Quain, in his 'Dictionary of Medicines,' particu- 
 larly warns his readers against using tartar- 
 emetic in cases of arsenical poisoning, seeing 
 that, 'in the event of an analysis, an unfounded 
 suspicion may be raised.' Bismuth, too, as I 
 have said, has often been proved to contain ar- 
 senic, a very notable instance being mentioned 
 in 'Taylor's Medical Jurisprudence.' But I will 
 not dwell on the possible impurity of the drugs 
 taken by Mr. Maybrick, though it is, certainly, a 
 point which the defence ought to have raised at the 
 trial. Let me proceed to strengthen my original 
 argument by showing that, amongst some high 
 authorities, antimony, if not bismuth, has actually 
 the reputation of accentuating the ill effects of 
 arsenic. What, for example, say Drs. Wood- 
 man and Tidy in their ' Forensic Medicine ' ? 
 They wrote as follows : ' It has been stated that 
 the poisonous effects of arsenic are greatly ag- 
 gravated when it is administered after antimony 
 has been given, and during the cessation of its 
 use. Under such circumstances, even medicinal doses 
 have proved dangerous.^ " 
 
 And in Mr. Maybrick's case, does it not seem 
 feasible that a small dose of each of three allied 
 metals may have had a very similar effect to an 
 overdose of one of them ? Bismuth, as well as 
 arsenic, was found in Mr. Maybrick's body, and 
 though no antimony was found, he had certainly 
 
FACTS CONCERNING ARSENIC EATING. 63 
 
 been taking it. Though eliminated, it must have 
 had time to do its evil work. The antimony 
 might go, but the inflammation would remain. 
 Bismuth — arsenic — antimony : an appalling list 
 of poisons, surely. A few grains of either deadly 
 in their effect. Then, as though more arsenic 
 were required, a little in the form of Fowler's 
 solution. What wonder the poor gentleman 
 needed bromide of potassium to make him sleep. 
 Oh, ye doctors ! No wonder Molifere satirised 
 you ! No wonder the philosopher lamblique 
 cynically exclaimed, "Medicine is the daughter 
 of dreams," and, may it not be said, the promoter 
 of death ! 
 
 ARSENIC- EATING AND ARSENIC 
 POISONING. 
 
 For the better understanding the nature and 
 character of arsenic, and to show the opinion 
 formed of it by many who indulge in its use, it 
 may assist the mind of the reader who feels an 
 interest in the subject now so seriously being 
 considered, to quote an extract from an article 
 published in that most interesting and useful 
 publication, "Chambers' Journal," on "Arsenic- 
 eating and Arsenic Poisoning" (taken from No. 
 399, p. 115, August 24, 1 861). 
 
 "In a paper on this subject, read before the 
 Literary and Philosophical Society of Manchester, 
 Dr. H. E. Roscoe mentioned that, through the 
 kindness of his friend Professor Pebal, of Lem- 
 berg, he had been furnished with copies of letters 
 written by seventeen medical men to the Govern- 
 ment Inspector of Gratz, one of the principal 
 cities of Styria, concerning the practice of arsenic- 
 eating. From that correspondence, containing 
 
64 HABIT IN ARSENIC TAKING. 
 
 reports of trustworthy persons as -well as the 
 record of cases under personal notice, it appeared 
 that arsenious acid, under the name of 'hidrach,' 
 was well known to and distributed amongst the 
 Styrian peasantry. That this substance is pure 
 arsenic acid, Dr. Roscoe proved by an accurate 
 chemical analysis of six grains of a white sub- 
 stance forwarded by Professor Gottlieb, of Gratz, 
 accompanied by a certificate from a district judge 
 of Knittefeld, in Styria, stating that this sub- 
 stance was brought to him by a peasant woman, 
 who told him that she had seen her farm-labourer 
 eating it, and that she gave it up to justice, to 
 put a stop to so evil a practice. On the question 
 whether arsenic was consumed in quantities 
 usually supposed to produce death, we learn that 
 Dr. Holler, of Hartberg, was acquainted with 
 forty, and Dr. Forcher, of Gratz, with eleven per- 
 sons, who indulged in the habit ; and that in one 
 case, recorded by Dr. Scafer, and assisted by Dr. 
 Knappe, of Obervehring, a man in good health, 
 aged thirty years, ate on the one day four and a 
 half, and on the succeeding five and a half grains 
 of arsenic, without the least detriment. This 
 man stated that he was in the habit of taking like 
 quantities three or four times a week. We shall 
 see now the value of the evidence brought for- 
 ward by Heisch having put himself in communi- 
 cation with Dr. Lorenz, formerly of Salzburg. 
 That gentleman informed him that the practice 
 of arsenic- eating was well known to exist, but 
 that access to individual cases was exceedingly 
 difficult, since the vice was proscribed by a gov- 
 ernment enactment that arsenic be allowed only 
 under the sanction of a medical certificate. Dr. 
 Lorenz confirmed the statepient so often made, 
 that huntsmen and wood-cutters were in the habit 
 
PARTICULARS OBTAINED BY MR. HEISCH. 65 
 
 of using it to improve their wind, and prevent 
 fatigue. The usual dose to begin with was about 
 the size of a pin's head, increasing from this, 
 gradually, to that of a pea. Those who were in 
 habit of taking it did not look so old as they 
 really were, retained a more than usually healthy 
 complexion, were long lived, and apparently 
 exempt from infectious diseases, but were liable 
 to die suddenly if they broke off the practice. 
 Dr. Lorenz, however, was not prepared to endorse 
 the opinions of Professor Johnston as to the power 
 of increasing the beauty and charms of the fair 
 sex. At the arsenic works in the neighborhood 
 of Salzburg, the only men who can long stand 
 the fumes are those who are in the habit of eat- 
 ing portions of this poison, and the director of 
 one of those establishments furnished Mr. Heisch 
 with particulars of his own case. Destined at an 
 early age to enter the arsenic factory, with the 
 view of eventually becoming the superintendent, 
 he was advised by his teacher, M. Bonsch, of 
 Eisleben, to become an arsenic-eater, as other- 
 wise the fumes from the smelting ore would 
 soon destroy his health, and render it imperative 
 that he should leave his employment. From an 
 early age, therefore, up to the time at which he 
 wrote to Mr. Heisch (being then forty- five years 
 old), he had been in the habit of weekly consum- 
 ing a large amount of arsenic. This gentleman 
 forwarded to Mr. Heisch a quantity equal to the 
 dose he first took, and also the amount he was, at 
 the time, taking. The latter was weighed at the 
 factory, as well as by Mr. Heisch on receipt, and 
 it was found that this gentleman, who had begun 
 with three, was now taking twenty-three grains 
 of pure white arsenic in coarse powder, three or 
 four times a week ! This was the only instance 
 
66 EFFECT OF ARSENIC EA TING. 
 
 of which Mr. Heisch was able to obtain full par- 
 ticulars, but many others were mentioned to him 
 by gentlemen who knew the individuals, and 
 could vouch for the truth of their statements. 
 Mr. Heisch mentions the case of a gentleman in 
 Lincolnshire, who began taking it for some skin 
 disease, and eventually reached the quantity of 
 five grains daily. This, according to the report, 
 he had taken for six years, till at length the 
 remedy became so necessary to him that he could 
 not leave it off without great inconvenience and 
 a return of his old complaint. It is well known 
 that this poison is, of all others, most readily de- 
 tected after death, even at a period so remote 
 from the interment as six or seven years; and 
 on re- opening graves which had been closed for 
 twelve years in Styria the bodies of arsenic eat- 
 ers were found so unaltered as to be at once 
 readily recognizable by their friends. This must 
 be owing to the strong antiseptic powers of the 
 mineral, and would lead us to infer that the tis- 
 sues had become so thoroughly impregnated as 
 to be able to resist for a longer period the process 
 of decay. What a stumbling block is here to the 
 physiologist, what a mine of cross-questioning 
 from which the judge may furnish himself with 
 arguments to torture and perplex the medical 
 witnesses! Those who consume this substance 
 tell us that the first dose of arsenic invariably 
 produces symptoms of poisoning, such as burn- 
 ing pain in the stomach and sickness, which 
 when it subsides is followed by a keen appetite 
 and a feeling of excitement. Like symptoms, 
 with the exception of pain, are produced by 
 every increase of the dose. The superintendent 
 of the factory at Salzburg, previously alluded to, 
 informed Mr. Heisch that he never experienced 
 
A STARTLING IDEA. 67 
 
 any ill consequence from the practice, except 
 when he endeavored to give it up. He was then 
 attacked with such violent palpitation of the 
 heart, fainting, depression of spirits, and mental 
 weakness, followed by long confinement to bed, 
 as necessitated his return to the habit — a habit 
 he resolved never to leave off until he attained 
 the age of fifty, as originally directed by his in- 
 structor Mr. Bonsch, and then only by gradually 
 retrograding to the dose from which he started. 
 Like most other arsenic eaters, he scrupulously 
 avoided spirits, and took his stimulant in some 
 warm liquid, on an empty stomach. 
 
 This latter portion of the superintendent's ex- 
 perience opens up a new feature of thought in 
 Mr. Maybrick's case that proposes a most start- 
 ling idea, which is no less than this, — NOT that 
 he did die of arsenic, but that surprising one, 
 
 DID HE NOT DIE BECAUSE IT WAS NOT SUPPLIED 
 
 TO HIM? Where are we drifting to! How can 
 we suppose anything different, when acquainted 
 with the facts ? — of his constantly taking arsenic, 
 and his craving, even at his wife's hands, for the 
 "white powder," in which he found so much 
 comfort, although she pleaded with the doctors 
 to persuade him against taking it, and though, 
 at his request, she put it in the beef tea (which 
 was taken away, and he did not get it). She did 
 not know it was arsenic, she only knew it as the 
 " white powder" — and, no doubt, at his beseech- 
 ing and earnest solicitation, it was given to him, 
 to appease his longing desire — he, knowing what 
 he had been accustomed to, and what, as an ar- 
 senic taker, was necessary to keep him in exist- 
 ence, craved for what he failed to get. That he 
 failed to get it is proved by the absence of it 
 from the body at the post-mortem, and the analy- 
 
68 NOT MURDERED BY ARSENIC. 
 
 sis, SO carefully carried out upon the most recent 
 scientific principles, when the tenth part of a 
 grain only could be found. This fact alone was 
 sufficient to prove that there was no murder by 
 recent arsenic poisoning. 
 
 If ten thousand lives had been depending upon 
 the result of the analysis, greater care and at- 
 tention could not have been paid by those very 
 practical men who gave the closest attention to 
 its research ; and what did it prove ? Only the 
 smallest possible quantity, which could scarcely 
 be seen by the judge and the jury with the 
 greatest scrutiny, and that with the aid of two 
 magnifying glasses. The one-tenth part of a 
 grain ! The doctor a few days before his pa- 
 tient's death stated he had given him as a medi- 
 cine "Fowler's Solution of Arsenic." This 
 alone would more than sufficiently account for 
 the tenth of the grain — where was the recent ar- 
 senic? Well might those greatly experienced 
 men say that Mr. Maybrick did not die of recent 
 arsenic poisoning. Messrs. Tidy and Macna- 
 mara were men who understood the nature and 
 character of arsenic, and also the habits of arsenic 
 takers, and they said the cause of death did not 
 point to arsenic at all. Does not a tenth of a grain 
 prove their assertion ? Now, why was their evi- 
 dence overlooked and passed by, and the evi- 
 dence of those who were ignorant, and confessed 
 they knew nothing about it, never having any 
 experience in arsenic cases, taken in preference? 
 Is this according to the law? Is it justice, that 
 the opinions of men who knew nothing of what 
 they were saying should be accepted, though 
 contrary to the assertions of those men whose 
 skill and practical experience in these particular 
 cases of arsenic poisoning is undeniable ? These 
 
CAPTAIN THOMPSON'S TESTIMONY. 69 
 
 considerations must be left to the mind of each 
 individual reader, so that they may be thor- 
 oughly digested according to " reason and com- 
 mon sense," that the integrity of the law may 
 be maintained. 
 
 That Mr. James Maybrick was accustomed to 
 dose himself, and take various medicines, and 
 also was an arsenic taker as early as the autumn 
 of 1877, is given in evidence by Mr. Nicholas 
 Bateson, who resided with Mr. Maybrick at 
 Memphis. He took arsenic and strychnia by 
 order of Dr. Ward, for chills and fever, which he 
 continued to take for three months. He was cured 
 of his complaint. Captain Richard Thompson 
 was on visiting terms with Mr. Maybrick, who 
 went with him in a drug store in 1 880, and said 
 to the druggist, " I want my desideratum," and 
 without asking anything further, the assistant 
 handed him two powders, and said, "It's all 
 right, Mr. Maybrick." One of the packets was 
 a white and the other a yellow paper. He put 
 his finger on the yellow paper, and said, " Now, 
 Mr. Maybrick, be careful." Captain R. Thomp- 
 son was sent to this same chemist, a couple of 
 days after, who made a statement to me. I 
 afterwards had a conversation with Mr. Maybrick, 
 as to what was told me by the assistant. I said, 
 " I believe, Mr. Maybrick, you are in the habit 
 of taking a dangerous and noxious drug." He 
 said, " What is that?" I said, "Arsenic," and 
 
 he said, ' ' Who the d told you ? " I said, ' ' I 
 
 asked the druggist's assistant at the store," and I 
 said ' ' It was a pity, " and he said, ' ' D his im- 
 pudence." He was very touchy on the subject, 
 and I dropped it. This was at Norfolk, Virginia. 
 
 Thomas Stansell, a coloured man, from the 
 above place also, was a servant to Mr. Maybrick 
 
70 MH. MAVERICK'S "PICK-ME-UPS." 
 
 during 1878, 1879 and 1880, said: "Mr. May- 
 brick gave me a half-dollar, and told me to go to 
 the druggist's and get him some arsenic, which I 
 got and gave it to him. It was a small packet. 
 I have done this three or four times. He always 
 gave me the money to pay for it ; when I brought 
 him the arsenic, he told me to go and make him 
 some beef tea. I went and filled a cup and 
 brought it to him. He asked me to give him a 
 spoon, and, taking the spoon, opened the pack- 
 age. I took a small bit out of this, he put it in 
 the tea and stirred it up. I got it in a parcel and 
 sometimes in a bottle. He told me in what form 
 he wanted it. He used to send me for a great 
 many other medicines. I could not say exactly 
 what they were. He had a great many medicine 
 bottles in his bedroom. He was in the habit of 
 dosing himself with medicines." 
 
 Mr. Edwin Garnett Heaton, a retired chemist, 
 &c., formerly carried on business at 14 Exchange 
 Street East for seventeen years; retired from 
 business 1888 (last year): Mr. Maybrick called 
 frequently at my shop for about ten years or 
 more, off and on. He used to get the tonic 
 called "pick-me-up." He would come to the 
 shop, get it and drink it up. He gave me a pre- 
 scription which altered it, which I put up with 
 liquor arsenicalis. He brought the prescription 
 for the first few times ; I used afterwards to give 
 it him at once, when he came into the shop and 
 gave his order. I prepared the "pick-me-up" 
 and added the stuff. At the beginning of giving 
 it to him, a certain quantity of liquor arsenicalis 
 was given, and as it continued it was gradually 
 increased from first to last, so at the last it was 
 75 per cent, greater in quantity than it was origi- 
 nally—he used to get it from two to five times a 
 
REGULAR DOSES OF LIQUOR ARSENICALIS. 71 
 
 day, and each containing 75 per cent, increase. 
 In the examination Sir Charles Russell asked the 
 question : Do you recollect his making any state- 
 ment to you as to why he was taking this arseni- 
 calis? A. — I do, sir. Q. — When was that, how 
 long before you gave up business in Exchange 
 Street East? A. — I should say, without prejudice, 
 at the time about twelve months. Q. — He gave 
 you a reason why he wished it ? A. — Yes. Q. — 
 Do you know that liquor arsenicalis has aphro- 
 disiacal qualities — do you know that word ? The 
 Judge — Did it excite passion? A. — Yes, sir, it 
 had that effect. Q. — When did you give it him 
 last — how long before you left Exchange Street 
 East? A.— Oh! fully six months. Q.— Then 
 you supplied it to him up to a period of six 
 months before April, 1888? A. — Yes. Q. — 
 And going back, now, how many years? A. — 
 Not more than eighteen months. His Lordship : 
 Q. — Eighteen months before you left business, 
 when? Sir C. Russell: He left that shop in 
 April, 1888. Sir C. Russell to witness: Your 
 shop was a small one? A. — It was. Q. — Is it 
 the custom for men from the flags to turn in and 
 get "pick-me-ups" there? A. — Very many of 
 them. Q. — I do not know whether this was the 
 only one who got ' ' liquor arsenicalis, " or whether 
 you had other customers? A. — I had others. 
 His Lordship : Q. — And others ? A. — And others. 
 Q. — So much as regards you supplying it to him 
 at the shop. When he has been going away 
 from home, have you done anything for him at 
 his request? A. — I have made up eight or six- 
 teen doses, according to the size of the bottle. 
 Q. — I do not know whether you are able to recall 
 about the last time you made it up in a bottle? 
 A. — I could not say. The Judge : Q.— I suppose 
 
7a DR. MACNAMARA. 
 
 the eight or sixteen doses varied according to the 
 size of the bottle, and whether he was going away 
 a longer or a shorter period? A. — Yes. Q. — 
 Now, you left Exchange Street East in 1888. 
 What became of your papers? A. — They were 
 all sold as waste paper and destroyed. 
 
 Dr. Macnamara, in giving his evidence, said : I 
 am a Fellow of the R.C.S. I have been its pres- 
 ident, and am its representative on the General 
 Medical Council of the Kingdom; I am also a 
 Doctor of Medicine of the University of London, 
 and the author of a standard work on the action 
 of medicine, which has passed through many 
 editions. I am a Professor of Materia Medica at 
 the Royal College ; I have been many years 
 senior surgeon at the Lock Hospital, Dublin, 
 and I am also surgeon of the Meath Hospital. 
 
 Sir Charles Russell : Q. — You have heard the 
 description of the case by Dr. Humphreys, where 
 he first describes the sickness, where the deceased 
 could not retain anything on his stomach? — and 
 then he went on to describe it as hawking, 
 rather than vomiting. Dr. Macnamara replies: 
 That points rather to inflammation than arsenical 
 poisoning. Q. — Now, you have noticed in Dr. 
 Humphreys' evidence where he describes the 
 application of a blister to the stomach, to stop 
 the retching, or vomiting, and when he describes 
 that it seemed to be effective for a time. Is it 
 your experience that an application of this kind 
 would stop arsenical vomiting? A. — It would not 
 stop arsenical vomiting, but it would be very judicious 
 in the case of gastro-enteritis, and would stbp it. 
 Q. — Now, some reference has been made to dry- 
 ness in the throat, and a sensation as if a hair 
 were present. Can you say whether these are 
 distinctive symptoms of arsenical poisoning? A.-— 
 
DEATH BY GASTRO-ENTERITIS. 73 
 
 In the vast number of cases I have had under 
 my treatment, in which I have been administering 
 arsenic, I never heard them complain of a hair 
 in the throat, but I have had repeatedly very 
 many patients to whom arsenic has never been 
 administered, who continually complained of 
 this sensation — a reflexation of the throat. Q. 
 — You do not attach much importance to the 
 symptom? A. — Not any. Q. — Bringing your best 
 judgment to bear upon the matter, you have been 
 present at the whole of the trial, and heard the 
 evidence; in your opinion, was this a death 
 from arsenical poison ? A. — Certainly not. Cross- 
 examined by Mr. Addison : Q. — You have lis- 
 tened to the case, and formed your own opinion; 
 will you tell me what he died of? A. — To the 
 
 BEST OF MY JUDGMENT AND BELIEF HE DIED OF 
 GASTRO-ENTERITIS, NOT CONNECTED WITH ARSEN- 
 ICAL POISONING. Q. — You are agreed, then, with 
 the gentlemen called for the Crown, and with 
 Dr. Tidy, that he died of gastro-enteritis, which 
 is an inflammation of the stomach and bowels ? 
 A. — I am. Q. — And gastro-enteritis is due also, 
 I believe, to some foreign substance — I do not 
 want to use the word "poison," because Dr. Tidy 
 guarded himself? A. — No, I do not agree with 
 Dr. Tidy in that. I think foreign substances, in 
 the manner in which he guards himself, may 
 give rise to gastro-enteritis, but I believe there 
 are outside circumstances which, in a patient, 
 would certainly result in gastro-enteritis. Q. — 
 But do outside circumstances mean taking some- 
 thing that produces it in the system? A. — Oh 
 dear, no; will I explain? Q. — Certainly, doctor. 
 A. — The case of persons affected or troubled 
 with a weak stomach, — supposed dyspeptic, — ex- 
 posed to wet for some time, and they are not 
 
74 SIGNIFICANT TESTIMONY. 
 
 taking- proper care and precaution against get- 
 ting wet, the result is that the blood from the 
 surface of the body is drawn to the internal or- 
 gans — amongst others the stomach — and there 
 produces that which you explain as congestion ; 
 and if by any accident the patient committed 
 any error of diet, the result would be gastro-en- 
 teritis — a gastritis that would extend down to the 
 bowels, constituting the infection to the bowels. 
 Q. — Then, in other words, you disagree with Dr. 
 Tidy, and you think that gastro-enteritis may be 
 produced idiopathically ? A. — I do not say idio- 
 pathically. I agree with Dr. Tidy, but I go 
 beyond Dr. Tidy, in my experience, in my 
 belief. Q. — You like to take him a little 
 further; and you suggest that foreign sub- 
 stances or food may have disagreed with him? 
 
 A. — I have known very serious Q. — Don't 
 
 speak like that, doctor, please, without going into 
 normal cases. Do you suggest that in this par- 
 ticular case it was any particular food that caused 
 this? A. — Unless I was told what the food was, 
 I could not particularise it. Q. — -Then does it 
 require some to act as an irritant or poison upon 
 that particular person ? A. — Oh, no. Q. — Then 
 will harmless food do it? A. — I have seen pips 
 of grapes produce very great gastro disturbance. 
 I liave seen skins of gooseberries, and other 
 equally harmless substances, act in that way. 
 Q. — Does it require some sort of substance taken 
 from the outside to produce it? A. — I do not 
 think all the evidence goes in that direction. Q. — 
 You have spoken of a wetting. Will a wetting 
 do it, without taking pips of grapes or sausages? 
 A. — I can perfectly believe that a wetting, coupled 
 with neglect of precautions and a weak stomach 
 and circulation, may produce these consequences. 
 
RESULT OF GETTING WET. 75 
 
 Q. — Then do you mean to say that by getting 
 wet this illness of gastro-enteritis, this acute in- 
 flammation, may be produced in the stomach and 
 bowels? A. — That I think is the evidence I have 
 given. Q.; — In saying that gastro-enteritis would 
 be produced by a man with a weak stomach get- 
 ting wet, do you understand that to be the opinion 
 of Dr. Tidy as well? A. — I do not know; Dr. 
 Tidy can speak for himself. Q. — Did you hear 
 him giving his evidence? A. — I did. Q. — Did 
 you agree or disagree with him? A. — Will you 
 kindly tell me what Dr. Tidy said? Q.— Did 
 you hear him ? A. — I have heard so much in the 
 court that it would be very hard to tax my 
 memory. Q. — Dr. Tidy said that gastro-enteritis 
 was produced by the introduction of some foreign 
 substance into the stomach, producing the effect 
 of an irritant. A. — I bow to Dr. Tidy as a 
 toxicologist, but not as a general practitioner. 
 His Lordship : Please answer the question. Do 
 you agree with him or not? A. — I do not. Mr. 
 Addison : Do you agree that there is any diagnos- 
 tic symptom in lifetime of arsenic. In other 
 words, if you saw a case of arsenic in lifetime, is 
 there anything to enable you to say this is ar- 
 senic, rather than any other irritant? A. — Well, 
 that is a very difficult question. Q. — Well, pass 
 on, then ; probably it is a difficult question. All 
 the symptoms, vomiting, purging, cramp, in- 
 tense pulse, all these are symptoms of arsenic 
 poisoning, and other poisons? A. — Yes; of 
 other irritant poisons. Q. — Do you find the 
 throat dry, glazed? A. — No. Q. — What is that 
 the effect of ? A. — Generally, febrile disturb- 
 ance. Q. — But, of course, may arise in differ- 
 ent ways. But if you find that accompanied by 
 tenesmus, what does that arise from? A. — In 
 
76 WEAKEST PARTS AFFECTED. 
 
 that case, it may be a case of gasteritis, or gastro- 
 enteritis. Q. — Suppose you leave out the dysen- 
 tery? A. — It may be due to inflammation of the 
 mucous membrane. Q. — Suppose you find the 
 temperature normal, and no fever, whatever? 
 A. — Well, I should have to take into considera- 
 tion the other symptoms. 
 
 Re-examined by Sir Charles Russell. Q. — I 
 wish to ask this, Doctor : Assume a case. When 
 there was a chronic weakness, or derangement of 
 the stomach, in the case of a man who had been 
 taking various drugs, and who in that condition 
 gets a wetting such as that described, is a man 
 in that condition more liable from a slight 
 cause to have set up in his system this gastro- 
 enteritis? A. — Yes. Q. — The weaker, from 
 whatever cause, the patent may be, the more 
 likely is disease to be set up? A. — Yes, the 
 weakest spot invariably suffers. Q. — For in- 
 stance, when you speak of cold, or wet, driving 
 the blood to the parts and congesting, would it 
 drive it to the weakest part? A. — Yes; to the 
 lungs, if they were ; and to the stomach, if it was. 
 Q. — I think, doctor, you know nothing about 
 parties concerned in this case? A. — Nothing, 
 directly or indirectly. 
 
FURTHER OBSERVATIONS. 
 
 The cross-examination of Dr. Macnamara by 
 the prosecuting attorney, Mr. Addison, offers an 
 example of the degeneration into which this 
 office has fallen. To confuse the witness, — by 
 strategy to get him to contradict himself, or make 
 him appear ridiculous and unreliable, — seems to 
 have been Mr. Addison's object instead of the 
 legitimate duty of his office — to discover, if pos- 
 sible, the truth. The duty of the Crown is not 
 to convict a prisoner on trial at all hazards, but 
 to defend the innocent and seek only to convict 
 the guilty. 
 
 It is difficult for the average mind to under- 
 stand the conduct of the government in this 
 matter, — its reluctance to commute the sentence 
 when such an unprecedented pressure of public 
 opinion was brought to bear : a petition of bar- 
 risters of Liverpool, including the Recorder of 
 Liverpool; a petition from the medical profes- 
 sion of Liverpool, setting forth five strong claims 
 for innocence from a medical point of view ; and 
 three thousand petitions with five hundred thou- 
 sand names, including some from foreign coun- 
 tries. These petitions included representatives 
 from all classes of society, besides many private 
 letters and appeals in person from prominent and 
 
78 ACT OF CLEMENCY(?). 
 
 influential sources, all begging for a stay of the 
 hangman's hand. With such an avalanche of 
 pressure, the Home Secretary was barely able to 
 bring his mind to commute the sentence while 
 the gallows was being erected, and within a few 
 hours of the time appointed for the execution. 
 The reason assigned for this act of clemency (?) 
 was, that after a careful examination into all the 
 facts there was a reasonable doubt that Mr. May- 
 brick died of arsenical poisoning, and the sen- 
 tence was commuted to penal servitude for life. 
 As the matter stands, the accused is serving a 
 life term of penal servitude for a crime for which 
 she has never been tried, and for which the usual 
 term of imprisonment is five years. 
 
 But we are met by those opposed to Mrs. May- 
 brick's release with the explanation that the 
 Home Secretary was merciful upon the doubt of 
 her success, and so commuted her sentence, but 
 that it is clear that Mrs. Maybrick tried to poison 
 her husband. But how merciful (?), with a sen- 
 tence so greatly in excess of that legally given 
 for attempt, even had this been proven? And 
 when so many able lawyers and other intelligent 
 people proclaim her innocence, it would seem 
 that the "quality of mercy" in this case was 
 greatly strained. 
 
 During the three years that Mrs. Maybrick has 
 been imprisoned, efforts for her vindication and 
 release have been carried on under great diffi- 
 culties, and constantly met by obstacles almost 
 hopeless to overcome ; and the government has 
 continued the same bewildering conduct. 
 
DISTINGUISHED SUPPORTERS. 79 
 
 Mrs. Maybrick is an American woman. Mr. 
 Blaine, the one man among Americans who can 
 be said to hold a foremost place as a statesman, 
 when holding the ofi&ce of Secretary of State be- 
 came greatly interested in this case. He read 
 Mr. MacDougall's book ; he became convinced of 
 Mrs. Maybrick's innocence, and through his ef- 
 forts obtained the names of the entire cabinet, 
 the Vice-president, and of many other influential 
 persons to a petition for her release. 
 
 Mrs. Harrison, the wife of the President of the 
 United States, wrote a letter to the Queen asking 
 for the release of Mrs. Maybrick, in which re- 
 quest the wives of all the cabinet officers joined. 
 This letter has never been answered. 
 
 Able Queen's Counsel were employed by Mrs. 
 Maybrick's American friends, only to report that 
 notwithstanding their belief in her innocence, 
 there is no possible way open for a legal rehear- 
 ing of the case. Alexander W. MacDougall, one 
 of the learned counsel, disagrees with his con- 
 freres' opinion. He is sure that if the case were 
 taken directly to the court by an able practitioner 
 at the bar, a rehearing would be granted. Re- 
 cently a man named Robertson appeared before 
 the courts asking for a writ of habeas corpus 
 directed to the Attorney-General for Mrs. May- 
 brick, the writ being refused for the reason that 
 Robertson is not a qualified practitioner, thus by 
 implication admitting his right to be heard by 
 counsel. These proceedings seem to justify Mr. 
 MacDougall's opinion that a direct appeal to the 
 courts would gain a hearing, which is all the 
 
8o POSSIBILITY OF APPEAL. 
 
 friends of Mrs. Maybrick ask. Mr. Robertson is 
 denounced as a crazy faddist by the united voice 
 of press and people. This is not strange. No 
 sane person is expected to step aside from con- 
 ventional usages to right wrongs, albeit those 
 usages are moss-grown with age and error. It 
 is most probable that this doughty defender of 
 Mrs. Maybrick has no money to pay counsel, and ■ 
 he certainly shows his philanthropy in doing 
 what he can to bring the case to legal cognizance. 
 
 The story that Mrs. Maybrick has rich and 
 powerful friends is persistently thrust forward, 
 although it has been as persistently denied. I 
 know that this tale is not true. She has no 
 friends except a mother, who for three weary 
 years has worked unceasingly in season and out 
 of season for her daughter's release. She has be- 
 come impoverished by the demands that she has 
 been obliged to meet. Alternating between hope 
 and disappointment, she has been the prey of 
 cupidity and greed. 
 
 The fund that was raised in America is ex- 
 hausted, and there seems to be no legitimate ob- 
 ject for which to ask the people for further sub- 
 scriptions. Eminent counsel have told us that 
 the courts are closed to a rehearing. It will 
 cost several hundred pounds to bring the case 
 " properly " before the courts, as Mr. MacDougall 
 advises. It could have been done in the first in- 
 stance instead of applying for opinions of counsel 
 as to possibility. 
 
 Mrs. Maybrick has been very ill with hemor- 
 rhages. Her mother, the Baroness de Rouques, 
 
FOUL SLANDERS. 8i 
 
 •was telegraphed for. The last sacrament was 
 administered, and she was supposed to be dying. 
 But she has partially recovered. Her brother, 
 at about her present age, died a few years ago of 
 rapid consumption, and the Baroness has long 
 been fearful that this will be her daughter's fate. 
 In her anxiety she has several times asked per- 
 mission of the Home Office to send an eminent 
 physician of London to visit her, which request 
 has been refused. Now a slurring doubt is cast 
 upon the fact of her illness. They admit the hem- 
 orrhages ; the telegraphing to the mother is not 
 denied ; the prostration and rejection of food are 
 not denied ; but it has since been said by friends 
 of the government that these things are not criti- 
 cal, and we are further informed that she brought 
 her sickness on herself ! 
 
 If, as has been stated in palliation of the con- 
 duct of the Home Office, the government has re- 
 ceived additional evidence of her guilt, the per- 
 sons giving it failing to appear during the trial 
 because of merciful forbearance toward her, it 
 is due that this evidence should be given to the 
 public, and the source of it. And if it be true 
 that such activity is exercised against Mrs. May- 
 brick at the Home Office at this time, after three 
 years, it affords additional proof of the existence 
 of a conspiracy, not actuated by benevolence 
 toward the public, but by fear lest a deeper 
 looking into the affair might bring to light its 
 ghoulish machinations. 
 
 Another thing. I have been told that in Great 
 Britain one hundred and sixty-six women were 
 
82 WOMEN MURDERESS EASILY RELEASED. 
 
 pardoned last year — a large portion of the number 
 sentenced for capital crimes, and among them 
 murderers for whom no claim for innocence was 
 made. If this be true, there must be some subtle 
 reason which does not appear why such strenuous 
 care is taken that this one woman should be held 
 so firmly behind bars — this woman whom so many 
 intelligent minds claim is innocent, has been un- 
 fairly dealt with, and whose trial stands a blot 
 upon the criminal jurisprudence of England. 
 
 Mr. Asquith tells us that he cannot undo the 
 doing of his predecessor. This is an unsafe pre- 
 cedent to be followed by any government. With 
 such a rule in force, where would the world be 
 to-day? 
 
GAIL HAMILTON TO MR. ASQUITH. 
 
 Attention is called to the following letter from 
 Gail Hamilton to Mr. Asquith, and published in 
 the New York Tribune of recent date : 
 
 To the Hon. H. H. Asquith, Secretary of State 
 for the Home Department. 
 
 Sir: I am authoritatively informed frpm the 
 Home Office that the Secretary of State has come 
 to the decision that he cannot "re-open a question 
 which was deliberately considered and decided 
 by his predecessor," but that he "will at all 
 times be ready to give attention to any fresh 
 materials of a relevant character which were not 
 submitted to Mr. Matthews," in the case of Mrs. 
 Maybrick. 
 
 Happily, the armory of weapons for the de- 
 fence of Mrs. Maybrick is so amply stored that a 
 fresh supply is always available. Will you per- 
 mit me, therefore, in accordance with your 
 humane and just suggestion, to claim your atten- 
 tion for several points which seem not to have 
 engaged the attention of Mr. Matthews : 
 
 That Mrs. Maybrick was charged with the 
 murder of her husband by arsenic, and by noth- 
 ing else ; that four separate stores of arsenic were 
 presented at the trial, from one or from all of 
 which stores she was argued to have poisoned 
 her husband, and from no other. 
 
 First: Arsenic in store sufficient to kill fifty 
 
84 EVIDENCE OF CONSPIRACY. 
 
 men was found in various places in lier house, 
 as, in a hat-box in Mr. Maybrick's dressing- 
 room, in a trunk in the linen-closet, and in other 
 places, but "principally in the dressing-room 
 used as a separate room for Mr. Maybrick when 
 he wished it," as the judge charged the jury. 
 Of this arsenic, the trial developed that none was 
 found or seen before Mr. Maybrick's death ; that 
 none was found after Mr. Maybrick's death by 
 the police ; but that the police were conducted 
 by Mr. Maybrick's brothers, nurses and servants 
 to the places where they asserted that they had 
 found it ; that none of this arsenic was found in 
 any. place especially appropriated to Mrs. May- 
 brick ; ihat none of Mrs. Maybrick's especial be- 
 longings were found locked, except her wardrobe, ' 
 and in that wardrobe no arsenic was found; that 
 all this arsenic was found in places at all times as 
 open to Mr. Maybrick's brothers, nurses and serv- 
 ants as it was to Mrs. Maybrick ; that for thirty- 
 six hours before and after it was said to have 
 been found it was completely under the control 
 of the brothers, nurses and servants, because from 
 the forenoon of the day on which Mr. Maybrick 
 died at 8 :40 p. m., Mrs. Maybrick lay in a swoon, 
 unconscious for thirty-six hours, at the beginning 
 of which swoon Mr. Maybrick's brother, Edwin, 
 bore her in his arms to a spare room across the 
 hall, and remote from the places were the arsenic 
 was said to have been found, and laid her on the 
 bed, on which bed she was taken into custody, 
 on which bed she was surrounded and watched 
 by policemen, on which bed she lay prostrated, 
 dazed, only partially conscious, while a magis- 
 terial court was opened around it in the same 
 room, and which bed she never left until she was 
 removed from it to Walton jail, thus leaving 
 
NOT TRACED TO MRS. MAYBRICK. 85 
 
 abundant time and space for any conspirators to 
 bring and scatter the arsenic where it was alleged 
 to have been found, without danger of detection 
 by Mrs. Maybrick ; that the evidence of the trial 
 developed no anxiety on the part of the brothers, 
 nurses and servants concerning this swoon, that 
 no curiosity was evinced as to its cause, no sur- 
 prise at its occurrence or continuance, and no 
 apprehension as to its result ; that the judge in 
 his charge not only admitted, but avowed, that 
 none of this arsenic could be traced to Mrs. May- 
 brick's possession or procuring, that he only 
 affirmed that it was accessible to her, but did not 
 deny what appeared in evidence, that it was 
 equally accessible to her brothers-in-law, to their 
 female companions, to the servants, nurses and 
 all chance visitors, some of whom, women allies 
 of the Maybrick brothers, were shown at the trial 
 to have penetrated into Mr. Maybrick's sick-room 
 without the knowledge, against the wish, and in- 
 curring the remonstrance of Mrs. Maybrick. 
 
 That the second store of arsenic brought into 
 court was said to have been detected by chemical 
 analysis in a food particle, said to have been 
 found in an imperfectly- washed jug at Mr. May- 
 brick's office, a week after his death ; which jug 
 with food was sent by Mrs. Maybrick from the 
 house to his office nearly two weeks before his 
 death ; that this food particle was not analyzed 
 by itself, but that the chemist testified at the 
 trial that he boiled water in the jug, and in a 
 basin and a pan, used at the office by Mr. May- 
 brick, and found and delivered to the chemist 
 not by the police but by Edwin Maybrick, and 
 that what he analyzed was the rinsings of the 
 three vessels ; that Dr. Paul, one of the expert 
 witnesses, testified that he had four times ana- 
 
86 EDWIN MAYBRICK'S TESTIMONY. 
 
 lyzed the glaze of four pans similar to the one 
 used in this experiment, and had always found 
 the glaze to contain arsenic ; that there is thus no 
 certainty that the arsenic was set free from the 
 food particle, while there is the highest probabil- 
 ity that at the beginning of the experiment arsenic 
 existed in the glaze of the pan ; that at the trial it 
 was abundantly proved, and since the trial it has 
 been more abundantly confirmed, that Mr. May- 
 brick had been for many years a confirmed, 
 though secret, arsenic eater ; that Mrs. Maybrick 
 had feared that he was taking some harmful drug 
 and had appealed to his physician and to his 
 brother Michael to warn him against it, as the 
 physician and the brother testified at the trial ; 
 that Edwin Maybrick, his brother, after Mr. May- 
 brick's death, had found a pill-box containing ar- 
 senic pills in his brother's washstand drawer, but 
 kept it concealed, saying nothing, notwithstand- 
 ing the peril of his brother's wife, until her so- 
 licitor. Sir Charles Russell, hearing of it, dragged 
 the admission from him during the later stages 
 of the trial ; that therefore if the arsenic found 
 in the office were freed from the food particle, 
 and not from the glaze, it is more reasonable to 
 assume that it was placed in the food particle 
 by Mr. Maybrick, who, the evidence showed, was 
 in the habit of eating arsenic, than by Mrs. May- 
 brick, who is not shown to have known anything 
 about arsenic except as an ingredient of a cos- 
 metic. 
 
 That the third store of arsenic was asserted to 
 have been found in a bottle of meat-juice which 
 Mrs. Maybrick was alleged to have prepared to 
 give her husband ; that the evidence developed 
 that a bottle of meat-juice had been in Mrs. May- 
 brick's hands, for her husband, and had been by 
 
THE ME AT. JUICE EPISODE. 87 
 
 her placed on the washstand, where there were 
 no other bottles, but where the usual toilet uten- 
 sils stood and nothing else ; that it was by her 
 never afterward touched or inquired for, and that 
 she never afterward exhibited the smallest con- 
 cern about it — either desire to administer its con- 
 tents to her husband or desire to hide its con- 
 tents from other persons; that her husband's 
 brother, Michael, testified at the inquest that the 
 bottle in which he alleged the poisoned meat- 
 juice was found, he took, not from the washstand 
 on which it stood with only the ordinary basins 
 and jugs of a washstand, but from a table by the 
 window, where, he testified, it stood " mixed up 
 with several other bottles; " that there is, there- 
 fore, no proof that it is the same bottle which 
 was in Mrs. Maybrick's hands, but there is direct 
 proof that it was another bottle, for no evidence 
 was adduced and no attempt was made to show 
 that any person had removed the bottle that was 
 in Mrs. Maybrick's hands from the washstand, 
 where she had placed it by itself, to the ' ' table 
 by the window, among other bottles," whence 
 Michael Maybrick took it ; that the bottle which 
 Michael Maybrick took from the table by the 
 window, he, by his own testimony, held in his 
 own private, undisputed possession, in the house 
 and in the garden, from noon until after 4 o'clock 
 in the afternoon, when he delivered it to Dr. 
 Carter for analysis — during which time it was in 
 the private and unwitnessed possession of at 
 least one person who was already, by his own 
 evidence, plotting and preparing accusations 
 against Mrs. Maybrick — a time abundantly suffi- 
 cient to stock the meat- juice with arsenic, if ar- 
 senic were indeed found in it; that the judge 
 charged the jury : " In the whole case from first 
 
88 EVIDENCE OF INNOCENCE. 
 
 to last there is no evidence at all of her having 
 bought any poison or definitely had anything to 
 do with the procuring of any, with the exception 
 of the fly-papers." 
 
 That the fourth store of arsenic was found in 
 fly-papers, which, according to the evidence in 
 court, Mrs. Maybrick openly bought and sent 
 openly home by the chemist's assistant, which- lay 
 openly on the hall table, which were seen and 
 handled by her husband, which were openly 
 soaked in a sponge-basin in the dressing-room 
 ordinarily used by Mr. Maybrick, where they 
 were seen and handled by at least two of her 
 maids, and of which no attempt at concealment 
 appeared; that she averred they were bought 
 and soaked in order to make a face-wash for her 
 complexion ; that the judge in court threw doubt 
 on the face-wash story, but that her solicitors 
 subsequently discovered evidence proving her 
 knowledge and use of such a face-wash in this 
 country and in Europe before her marriage, but 
 that the trial had been concluded so swiftly that 
 the defence did not reach them until the gallows 
 was being built within hearing of the prisoner, who 
 was to be thereon executed ; that the analytical 
 chemist testified at the trial that the fly-paper 
 arsenic would have left in Mr. Maybrick's body 
 traces of vegetable fibre, and that such fibre was 
 sought and was not found either in his body or 
 in the meat-juice ; that Superintendent Bryning, 
 in making his charge before the magistrate, 
 avowed : ' ' What became of the fly-papers, or of 
 the liquid in which they were seen, there was 
 absolutely no trace;" that, therefore, no trace of 
 it could have been found in Mr. Maybrick's body. 
 
 That, therefore, all the evidence at the trial 
 failed to reveal any connection whatever between 
 
CRUEL ASSUMPTION. 89 
 
 the arsenic store found in the house, or the ar- 
 senic store found in the office, or the arsenic store 
 found in the meat-juice, or the arsenic store 
 found in the fly-paper, and Mr. Maybrick's death ; 
 or between these and any malicious intent or evil 
 act of Mrs. Maybrick. 
 
 That, since Mr. Maybrick was a confirmed 
 arsenic-eater, and Mrs. Maybrick was not; and 
 since a large part of the arsenic was found in Mr. 
 Maybrick's dressing-room and office and no part 
 in Mrs. Maybrick's private possession, and since 
 the only arsenic which could be traced to Mrs. 
 Maybrick stopped at Mrs. Maybrick's cosmetic 
 basin and could not be traced to Mr. Maybrick's 
 body, it is unreasonable, unwarrantable, clumsy 
 and cruel to transfer the arsenic from Mr. May- 
 brick's hat-boxes to Mrs. Maybrick's assumed 
 malice. 
 
 That the post-mortem examination revealed in 
 Mr. Maybrick's body only one-twentieth part of a 
 fatal dose of arsenic, an amount entirely consist- 
 ent with its medicinal ingestion; that Drs. Tidy, 
 Paul and Macnamara testified that all his symp- 
 .toms pointed away from arsenic as the cause 
 of death ; that Mrs. Maybrick asserted that her 
 husband in his last illness repeatedly and pathet- 
 ically implored her to give him a certain powder 
 (in his own possession and unknown to the doc- 
 tors, and hitherto unknown to herself, and of 
 whose composition she remained ignorant), be- 
 cause he said he was in great distress and that it 
 would relieve him ; that the nurse present testi- 
 fied that they talked much together in a low tone, 
 so that there was abundant opportunity for him 
 to make these requests unheard ; that the effect 
 upon an habitual arsenic-eater of the sudden and 
 entire deprivation of arsenic is great distress and 
 
go A SUBORNED WITNESS. 
 
 depression ; that, therefore, is there not only no 
 proof that Mr. Maybrick died of arsenical poison- 
 ing, but something very near an impossibility 
 that he could have died of arsenical poisoning, 
 and a possibility, if not a probability, that his 
 death was hastened by the deprivation, conse- 
 quent upon the constant presence of nurses and 
 doctors and wife, of his customary allowance of 
 arsenic. 
 
 That the judge, recognising the imperfection 
 of the evidence against Mrs. Maybrick, laid chief 
 stress on motive, and found it in an assumed un- 
 lawful attachment to, and a desired marriage 
 with, another man than her husband ; that the 
 chief evidence of such an illicit connection was 
 their presence together at an hotel in London, as 
 sworn to by a waiter at the hotel ; that since the 
 trial this waiter has protested, over his own sig- 
 nature, that he had not understood his duty ; that 
 as he was employed by the prosecution he ' ' went 
 by their orders;" that he did not in any true 
 sense identify Mrs. Maybrick or her alleged para- 
 mour as he swore, but they were pointed out to 
 him by the inspector ; and though he stood ' ' all 
 the morning" close to the latter in the court- 
 room, he did not recognize him, or suspect that 
 he had seen him before, until the police pointed 
 him out as the paramour; that this statement 
 has been many months before the public and has 
 not been contradicted by the inspector or bj'^ the 
 police ; that either this statement is true, or it is 
 false ; that if it is true it destroys the evidence 
 the waiter gave in court, and if it is false it de- 
 prives all his statements of value, including his 
 evidence at the trial. 
 
 That it partially appeared in court, and has 
 since been distinctly stated, and is ready at any 
 
"A REASONABLE DOUBT." gi 
 
 time to be sworn to before you, that Mrs. May- 
 brick went to London to secure, and did secure 
 and send to her husband, a deed of separation 
 from him for his suddenly discovered immoral- 
 ities, thus proving that she was quite aware of the 
 laws of marriage and divorce, and that her dis- 
 agreements were a motive to divorce, but were 
 not a motive to murder ; that in the light of her 
 knowledge of his immorality, of her knowledge 
 of the laws of separation and divorce and her 
 prompt action upon them, and in the absence of 
 all proof of murder or attempt at murder, the 
 illicit love for another man would, if proven, 
 furnish no motive for murder, and in view of the 
 waiter's subsequent withdrawal and explanation 
 of his testimony such an illicit connection is not 
 proven. 
 
 That the judge laid down to the jury as a first 
 principle of proof, that it was necessary to a ver- 
 dict unfavourable to the prisoner that Mr. May- 
 brick died of arsenic ; that ' ' if they thought he 
 died of some other disease the case was not made 
 out against the prisoner. It could not be made 
 out. ... If there was a possibility of doubt 
 they ought to acquit the prisoner ; " that the Home 
 Secretary, reviewing the case ten days after the 
 verdict, proclaimed that there was ' ' a reasonable 
 doubt whether Mr. Maybrick's death was in fact 
 caused by the administration of arsenic;" that, 
 therefore, the highest legal authority in England 
 has established the premises of which Mrs. May- 
 brick's acquittal is the only logical and legal 
 conclusion. 
 
 That in dealing with the expert testimony, 
 which bore heavily against the possibility of 
 death by arsenic, the judge introduced a principle 
 new to English law, and charged the jury : ' ' You 
 
92 AN INCOMPE TENT JUR Y. 
 
 must not consider the case a mere medical case, 
 in which you are to decide whether the man did 
 or did not die of arsenic, according to the medi- 
 cal evidence, or as a mere chemical case in which 
 you decide whether the man died from arsenic as 
 the result of a chemical analysis, but as a great 
 and highly important case involving in itself a 
 most highly important moral question, questions 
 into which human nature enters and in which 
 you must rely on your knowledge of human nat- 
 ure ; " that it is a great grief and scandal that a 
 question of life and death, too intricate to be de- 
 cided by the knowledge of those who know all 
 that is known on the subject, should be remitted 
 to the ignorance of those who know nothing; 
 that it is an unheard-of grief and scandal, and a 
 menace to life and liberty, that a jury of three 
 plumbers, two farmers, one wood-turner, one 
 provision dealer, one grocer, one ironmonger, 
 one milliner, one painter, and one baker, who, 
 however honest and intelligent, are necessarily 
 not experts in metaphysics, should be instructed 
 by the judge to turn away from the evidence 
 which acquits the prisoner, and to turn inward 
 to their own metaphysics for a verdict that con- 
 victs to death. 
 
 That the subsequently and speedily developed 
 mental disease, resulting in the forced resigna- 
 tion of the judge, removes from him respon- 
 sibility and therefore blame for his action, and 
 makes the reversal, so far as possible, of its dis- 
 astrous result the most honorable tribute to his 
 niemory and in some sense imperative for the 
 vindication of his integrity. 
 
 That Mrs. Maybrick is an American, born in 
 the Republic of the United States ; that all her 
 family connections are Americans;, that li^r 
 
DECREES OF COURT LIABLE TO MRROR. 93 
 
 nationality, forfeited by her marriage, she re- 
 sumes by her widowhood; and that these facts 
 furnish ground for the widespread interest and 
 the interposition of the United States, expressed 
 by petitions for her relief and release, from all 
 classes in official and in private life — but leave 
 no ground for just charge against the petitioners 
 of interference with another nation. 
 
 That the common institutions of America and 
 England require public trial ; that this public trial 
 can be for no other purpose than to secure popular 
 access to and popular supervision of the trial, in 
 the interests of justice ; and that this public trial 
 makes it not only the inalienable right bu*- the 
 sacred duty of all citizens to watch the courts of 
 justice, to protect against all wrong-doing, and to 
 enforce the rights of even the weakest — of the 
 woman and of the stranger within the gates. 
 
 That the institutions of justice, being the cre- 
 ation of man, cannot be permanently insured 
 against error, and are not disgraced, but honored, 
 by reparation of error; that error persisted in 
 against light and after discovery is infamy; and 
 that no discredit or shame can be brought against 
 courts of law so great and deep as the perpetra- 
 tion and perpetuation of wrong under the forms 
 and the shield of law. 
 
 First, therefore, in the name of justice, whose 
 institutions are the common trust of both nations ; 
 second, in the name of international friendship 
 between great and kindred and friendly nations ; 
 third, in the name of humanity and of God who is 
 the source of humanity, of justice, and of peace, 
 
 I pray you, in whom the power lies and with 
 whom the responsibility rests, for the immediate 
 release of Mrs. Maybrick from Woking prison. 
 
 October 3, 1892. Gail Hamilton. 
 
94 A LUCID AND LOGICAL STATEMENT. 
 
 On the twelfth page we publish the full text of 
 "Gail Hamilton's" eloquent plea to the British 
 Home Office for the release of Mrs. Maybrick 
 from Woking Prison. It involves a lucid re- 
 view of the evidence upon which the prisoner 
 was convicted of poisoning her husband, and 
 marshals the facts in favour of her innocence with 
 such cumulative force as to warrant the conclu- 
 sion that the Home Secretary will be justified in 
 reopening the case. If the evidence had been 
 summed up by the defence in court with equal 
 clearness and cogency, we doubt very much 
 whether a verdict of ' ' guilty " would have been 
 rendered. Some of our most accomplished and 
 experienced lawyers will be ready to bear their 
 testimony to the skill and argumentative force 
 with which this plea has been prepared. — New 
 York Tribune. 
 
FURTHER CORRESPONDENCE. 
 
 The following letters explain themselves ; the 
 first is taken from the New York World, October 
 22, and that from Gail Hamilton was published 
 in that paper November 13, 1892. 
 
 To the Editor of The World : 
 
 My attention has been called to two interviews 
 in your issue of the i8th. One with Miss Frances 
 Willard, the most prominent exponent of the 
 temperance movement in this country, and one 
 with Lady Henry Somerset, the most prominent 
 exponent of the same cause in England. I am 
 amazed and pained beyond expression at the atti- 
 tude of these two women, one an Englishwoman 
 and the other an American, in regard to the 
 Maybrick case. ■ Miss Frances Willard says, " I 
 have read volumes and talked days about the 
 case ; I am just balanced between her innocence 
 and guilt. I don't know; I can't say; I can 
 only weep for her." I can quite well understand 
 that anyone who has not taken the pains to read 
 and inform himself upon this subject might have 
 no decided opinions upon it — who ' ' would not 
 know," and " who could not say " what they did 
 think, but for one who has "read volumes and 
 talked days " about the case — ye gods! 
 
 Lady Henry Somerset says : "At the time I 
 read all the evidence and followed the case with 
 studious attention, and I thought that she was 
 given a fair and honest trial and that her guilt 
 
96 VIEWS OF LADY SOMERSET. 
 
 was proved. I thought the Home Secretary did 
 all that could be done ; that they spared neither 
 time nor care in their work, because of the 
 nationality of the accused. They might not have 
 done less under other conditions, but they could 
 not have done more." 
 
 Three of the most eminent of Queen's Counsel 
 in England, including Sir Charles Russell, have 
 recently reviewed the entire case, and they are 
 on record that in their judgment the evidence did 
 not justify the verdict. The judge was so partisan 
 in his summing up that his address to the jury 
 was quite generally regarded in England as a 
 plea for the prosecution ; and he has since been 
 retired from the bench on the ground of insanity. 
 There is every evidence that his mind was 
 affected at the time of the trial. If Lady Somer- 
 set, after reading all the evidence and following 
 the case with studious attention, came to the con- 
 clusion that Mrs. Maybrick had a fair and honest 
 trial and that her guilt was proved, she certainly 
 differed very widely from hundreds, yea, thou- 
 sands of earnest, able-minded men and women 
 who followed the case as closely as she could have 
 done through all its woful course, and I am told 
 by a gentleman who was present in the court- 
 room, that when the jury, after an absence of 
 only thirty-six minutes, brought in a verdict of 
 guilty, there was a murmur of surprise and sup- 
 pressed indignation from the assembled multitude 
 that sounded like the murmur of the wind through a 
 forest, which feeling found vent in such a demon- 
 stration against the judge when he made his 
 appearance outside the court-room that it was 
 with diflficulty he reached his carriage. And this 
 was not from friends of Mrs. Maybrick, for she 
 had none. When the trial first commenced, the 
 
PREJUDICE AT THE START. 97 
 
 prejudice and hatred against her was so great, 
 created by the daily misrepresentations of the 
 press, that she was received daily with the execra- 
 tions of the multitude as she passed to and from 
 the court. All this was changed in Liverpool by 
 the careful reading of the evidence day by day, 
 which was so .convincing of her guilt to Lady 
 Somerset ; and it is not strange that this conclu- 
 sion was reached by the reading and thinking 
 public when we consider these three salient 
 points : First, there was not the twentieth part of 
 a fatal dose of arsenic found in James Maybrick's 
 body ; second, that Mr. Maybrick was proved by 
 several witnesses to have been a confirmed arsenic 
 eater; third, that there was not a particle of 
 arsenic traced to Mrs. Maybrick in any shape or 
 form. And these are not disputed points ; they 
 are conceded. The whole case was built on a 
 superstructure of suspicion and conspiracy. There 
 was not a scintilla of evidence to prove her guilt, 
 and if tried to-day by a sane judge and an intelli- 
 gent jury, with all the additional power that the 
 malignancy of her persecutors could have gained 
 in the intervening three years, she could not 
 be convicted of either attempt to murder or of 
 adultery. The last count, adultery, was the crime 
 for which she was really tried and convicted, and 
 because of a belief in which Miss Francis Willard 
 can only weep for her and Lady Henry Somerset 
 is so fearfully befogged. 
 
 It is more than a year since I became actively in- 
 terested in Mrs. Maybrick's case through Gail Ham- 
 ilton's able exposition of it. I have investigated it 
 in every possible direction. I have read a record of 
 the trial from day to day as it was published in 
 the Liverpool Post, and have worked indefatigably 
 in season and out of season to get the facts before 
 
gS GAIL HAMILTON TO LADY SOMERSET. 
 
 the British public, which was at first closed as 
 fast as a door at midnight against its introduc- 
 tion. But the light has begun to penetrate 
 its darkened recesses, and it is not so hard now to 
 get a kindly word said for her. So when I read 
 these two interviews, golden opportunities when 
 a word might have been said for her which would 
 have reached the public ear from valuable 
 sources, and both from women, I was bitterly 
 pained and rebellious that they should have been 
 said against her rather than for her, and when 
 silence rather than such speech would have been 
 golden. Helen Densmore. 
 
 Lady Henry Somerset. 
 
 Madame: In The World oi October 22, 1892, 
 Mrs. Helen Densmore quotes you as saying : 
 
 ' ' At the time I read all the evidence and fol- 
 lowed the case [Maybrick] with studious attention, 
 and I thought that she was given a fair and 
 honest trial and that her guilt was proved." 
 
 The charge against Mrs. Maybrick was ' ' mur- 
 der," the verdict was "guilty," the sentence was 
 death. If the verdict was just, if she were guilty, 
 it was of a crime so great that the judge was 
 shocked by its "awful nature." He charged the 
 jury that it was ' ' as dreadful a crime as ever any 
 poor wretch who stood in the dock was accused 
 of ; that the person who could do such a thing as 
 that must indeed be destitute of the least trace of 
 human feeling; " that the thought of it was 
 "horrible and incredible," except that the pris- 
 oner had " propensities" which " do kill all the 
 more womanly feelings of the human mind," and 
 he alluded to her as a "horrible woman." 
 
 The late Prime Minister, Lord Salisbury, and 
 the late Home Secretary, Mr. Matthews, after 
 
LADY SOMERSET CffALLEAtGED. 9^ 
 
 three years of presumably " studious attention" 
 to the case, found that "the most lenient view " 
 in which they could present Mrs. Maybrick to 
 her own countrymen was as a criminal commit- 
 ting her crime ' ' under the most cruel circum- 
 stances." 
 
 As you think all this guilt was proved in a fair 
 and honest trial, will you kindly inform Mrs. 
 Maybrick's American friends on what ground 
 you justify the Home Secretary's interference 
 with the execution of the sentence ? You say he 
 " did all that could be done." I should think he 
 did a great deal more than he ought to have 
 done. No single extenuating or mitigating cir- 
 cumstance was pleaded by Mrs. Maybrick, or by 
 any friend, or by her counsel. If she was guilty 
 she was guilty of this "dreadful crime." A 
 "horrible and incredible" crime. If she is 
 guilty she is "destitute," in the opinion of the 
 judge, "of the least trace of womanly and even 
 of human feeling." What excuse then has the 
 Home Secretary for claiming the royal mercy 
 upon this abandoned wretch, this unrepentant 
 criminal — a criminal who not only has not re- 
 pented of her crime, but who persistently declares 
 that she never committed it, who even upbraids 
 the government for inflicting upon her an unjust 
 penalty. 
 
 Mr. Herbert Spencer, an Englishman, tells us 
 that men, Englishmen, ' ' sit down apathetically 
 under the present corrupt administration of jus- 
 tice [in England]. We, the independent, self- 
 ruling English, daily behold the abominations of 
 our judicial system, and yet do nothing to rectify 
 them. The dangers of law are proverbial. The 
 names of its officers are used as synonyms for 
 trickery and greediness. The decisions of its 
 
loo MR. STEAD COMFIRMS MR. SPENCER. 
 
 courts are typical of cliance. In all companies 
 you hear but one opinion. On all sides you are 
 told of trickery and oppression and revenge, 
 committed in the name of justice, yet these 
 iniquities continue unchecked." 
 
 In the Review of Reviews, October 15, Mr. 
 William T. Stead, also an Englishman, gives us 
 a specific example of what seems to be an illustra- 
 tion of the truth of Mr. Spencer's general state- 
 ment. His attention was called to the course of 
 the law in the case of Mrs. Maybrick, and he pro- 
 nounced it "so scandalous an illustration of the 
 very worst sides of the British character, that, if 
 only to give us a chance of burying the matter in 
 oblivion, Mrs. Maybrick should be released . . . 
 No Englishman can feel otherwise than ashamed 
 of having to defend the manner in which she has 
 been dealt with by our courts and our govern- 
 ment. . . . We shall not be able to escape 
 a gibbeting that is little short of a national 
 humiliation. A sorrier exhibition of all that is 
 worst in the blundering, wrong-headed, illogical 
 side of John Bull has seldom or never given 
 occasion for his enemies to exult and his friends 
 to wince." 
 
 Sir Charles Russell, also an Englishman, now 
 Attorney- General, thus memorialized the Home 
 Office under the late Home Secretary, Mr. 
 Matthews : " It is submitted that, looking to all 
 the facts . . . the verdict cannot be regarded 
 as satisfactory." 
 
 Mr. Addison, Q. C, M. P., the leading coun- 
 sel for the prosecution, persisted in saying, up to 
 the very last moment, even after the judge's 
 summing up, " that the jury could not, especially 
 in view of the medical evidence, find a verdict of 
 " guilty." 
 
CLIMAX OF ABSURDITY. 
 
 They did find a verdict of guilty, but the Hoirf^ 
 Secretary, Mr. Matthews, was constrained to re- 
 view the case, which seemed to the English peo- 
 ple so unrighteously adjudged that a cry of horror 
 arose on every side. As a result of this review 
 he decided that not even any murder was proved, 
 and on that ground and on that ground alone he 
 declined to inflict the penalty. 
 
 You, madame, agree with the twelve jury- 
 men — a baker, a wood-turner, a painter, a milli- 
 ner, a provision dealer, a grocer, an ironmonger, 
 two farmers and three plumbers — that her guilt 
 was proved, and you disagree with the counsel 
 for the prosecution, with the counsel for the de- 
 fence, with the present Attorney-General, with 
 the late Home Secretary — all trained lawyers — 
 and with Mr. Stead and Mr. Spencer — as you 
 have a perfect right to do. No one can make up 
 our minds for us. You think the " trial was fair 
 and honest and her guilt proved." 
 
 The crime "proved" was murder. In the 
 records of Woking prison the charge is ' ' mur- 
 der." Before me lies a grisly paper from that 
 Cave of the Giant Despair : 
 
 "Date, 29 July, 1892. Register No., P. 29. 
 Name, Florence E. Maybrick. Present age, 29 
 years. Crime, murder. Sentence, penal servi- 
 tude for life. Conduct, very good. Convicted 
 25 July, 1889." 
 
 The verdict "guilty" was of murder. The 
 record at Woking is of murder. You ' ' read all 
 the evidence, and followed the case with studious 
 attention," and you "thought her guilt was 
 proved." 
 
 I too have read the evidence, and followed the 
 case with an attention as studious as I could com- 
 mand, but my conclusion is other than yours. I, 
 
102 A WASTED OPPORTUNITY. 
 
 too, find a "horrible and incredible crime" — ^the 
 crime of murder ' ' under the most cruel circum- 
 stances " — but it is not murder by Mrs. Maybrick. 
 It is murder of Mrs. Maybrick by the British Gov- 
 ernment. It is murder committed by one of the 
 most powerful organizations in the world upon 
 one of the weakest — an innocent and helpless 
 young mother of infant children. It is what 
 Mr. Herbert Spencer phrases ' ' trickery and op- 
 pression committed in the name of justice." It 
 is lawlessness rampant under the disguise of law. 
 It is wilful and continuous tyranny torturing an 
 unresisting woman, and attended by a senseless, 
 vulgar and brutal insolence towards a friendly 
 republican nation pleading for its own citizens. 
 We should, I think, search the country in vain 
 to find its parallel. 
 
 Difference of opinion between you and me is 
 of small account. But if you held my opinion 
 you would have immeasurable influence to open 
 her prison doors. America is aware of your 
 beauty, your goodness, grace and winsomeness. 
 We can bear witness also of your philanthropy, 
 your Christian devotion, your intellect and your 
 eloquence. Heaven has given you power over 
 the hearts of men and women. This great wick- 
 edness and sin against God is committed by your 
 own order. It is committed upon one of your 
 own order. Though it was the honor of your 
 people that snatched her from the gallows, her 
 fate touches the masses less nearly because it is 
 not committed upon them, but by the classes 
 upon one of their class. By birth the prisoner 
 belongs to generations of the educated and 
 refined. What demoralization may have been 
 wrought in her by her baleful marriage when 
 a mere girl, scarcely eighteen, into a coarse. 
 
MRS. MAVERICK'S MOTHER. 103 
 
 cruel and vicious family I do not know. I only- 
 know what glimpses of her character are allowed 
 to appear through the thick walls of her Woking 
 cell. But if she has inherited her mother's soul 
 as well as her mother's blood she may safely be 
 taken on trust. That heroic mother, whom not 
 having seen I revere, has worn the horrors of 
 her situation equably as if they had been honors. 
 She was summoned from the very table of social 
 festivity to the degradation and ruin of her 
 daughter by the British Government. By the 
 continuous pillage of that government she was 
 led from a condition of life-long independence, 
 competency and comfort down the bitter path of 
 poverty, penury, almost pauperism. She has 
 been assailed by every form and spirit of slan- 
 der — slanders which have trailed their venomous 
 length to this, her own country, where they are 
 known to be slanders, and could emit but a 
 stifled hiss. Bidding farewell forever to peace 
 of mind and joy of life she has personally and 
 unceasingly penetrated, for her daughter's life, 
 liberty, honor, into every court and office and 
 hall and haunt of men where the smallest hope 
 seemed to lead — subject to the rudeness of the 
 rude and to the cold politeness of the unsympa- 
 thetic — she, with the sub-consciousness of her 
 past, most acutely conscious of her present ; and 
 through it all she has borne her unfailing dig- 
 nity, her unwavering constancy. No queen ever 
 confronted the angry mob of the streets with a 
 loftier self-command than the mother of your 
 victim has brought to the equally unreasoning 
 mob of your governing class, which has plun- 
 dered her of her only child. 
 
 strong 
 In the endurance that outwearies wrong, 
 
 she stands to me for the ideal type and statue 
 
I04 THE BURDEN OF PROOF. 
 
 of motherliood, the Mater Dolorosa of our time. 
 
 I cannot convert you to my opinion because I 
 have no opinion regarding Mrs. Maybrick's guilt 
 except such as is founded on her trial, all of the 
 evidence in which you read and found therein 
 proof of her guilt. But you may convert us to 
 your opinion and thereby at least give Mrs. May- 
 brick's American friends the relief of feeling that 
 she is not wantonly and wickedly locked in her 
 awful tomb. Moreover, your opinion is positive. 
 Ours is negative. We simply say there is no 
 proof, absolutely none, that Mrs. Maybrick com- 
 mitted murder, or even that crime which Mr. 
 Matthews selected from the calendar and fas- 
 tened upon her, though she was never charged 
 with it, or tried for it, or convicted of it, and 
 though it is not recorded against her at Woking 
 or anywhere else save in the moral consciousness 
 of the late Home Secretary — "attempt to mur- 
 der/' But we cannot produce " no proof." You 
 can produce "proof." You read all the evi- 
 dence. You discerned proof of guilt. 
 
 By the mother's heart you bear, by the 
 mother's name you wear, I pray you to cull 
 from the evidence and present to your American 
 friends, co-workers with you for righteousness, 
 worshiping the same God. believing in the same 
 Christ, the facts in evidence which prove to your 
 mind that this young American mother murdered 
 the father of her children. 
 
 I need not bespeak for you the hospitality of 
 The World. It has been munificently generous 
 to Mrs. Maybrick's cause, but I am sure it 
 would welcome you for your own sake to its 
 ample and bountiful as ample columns. 
 
 November lo. Gail Hamilton. 
 
A DEMAND FOR JUSTICE. 105 
 
 It is said that if Mrs. Maybrick was really 
 thouglit to be incurably ill, the government 
 would, of course, release her. I do not see why. 
 If she really be an adulteress who murdered her 
 husband while pretending to nurse him — and 
 this was the extraordinary reply of the Home 
 Secretary to the American petition for her re- 
 lease — I see no reason that she should be released 
 on account of illness. It is not because she is a 
 woman, young, fair, helpless, fatherless, and 
 brotherless, that her release is demanded; not 
 because she is an American in England, a 
 stranger in a strange land; not because her 
 relatives are in high repute among us; not 
 because her granduncle is a judge of the 
 Supreme Court; not. because she is a young 
 mother separated from her children, ill in body 
 and mind, pining behind prison bars. It is be- 
 cause she was tried for murdering her husband 
 by the administration of arsenic, and the opinion 
 of medical experts at the trial was that James 
 Maybrick's death was not caused by that drug ; 
 and because the judge. Sir Fitzjames Stephen, 
 threw the whole weight of his influence against 
 her. In the language of Mr. Stead, ' ' he paced 
 his room the night before the verdict as in a 
 frenzy, came into court and charged, horse, foot 
 and artillery, upon the wretched, forlorn woman 
 in the dock." As Sir Charles Russell, the British 
 Attorney-General, says, ' ' he passionately in- 
 vited the jury to find a verdict of guilty." It is 
 because there was not a scintilla of evidence that 
 she poisoned her husband — not a particle of 
 
io6 SUSPICION CREATED BY CONSPIRACY. 
 
 arsenic was traced to her in any form or shape. 
 It is because the whole business was built upon 
 a superstructure of suspicion, now plainly seen 
 to have been the work of prejudice and con- 
 spiracy. 
 
ADDENDA. 
 
 While the foregoing pages, which were in- 
 tended to close this pamphlet, were in press, my 
 attention was called to the London Hawk of the 
 13th and 20th of December. In the issue of the 
 13th the editor of that journal says : 
 
 Since opening these columns to the discussion 
 of the merits of the " Maybrick case," I have re- 
 ceived a mass of correspondence bearing upon the 
 subject, but from among the many long letters 
 in my possession, none, it appears to me, bears 
 such weighty importance as the further commu- 
 nication which I publish below, as emanating 
 from Mr. Alexander MacDougall. In again giv- 
 ing precedence to the able counsel's letter, I am 
 actuated in so doing by the fact that my corre- 
 spondent was one of the barristers engaged some 
 few months since with Sir Charles Russell, Messrs. 
 Fletcher Moulton, Q.C., and Mr. Poland, Q.C., 
 in determining whether the evidence against 
 Florence Maybrick justified the verdict. The de- 
 cision arrived at by those gentlemen was in favour 
 absolutely of the unhappy woman at Woking 
 Prison. I need not here go into the merits of 
 the facts which induced such a formidable array 
 of English counsel to condemn the action of both 
 the judge and the jury who sent Florence Maybrick 
 to a living tomb, which, while I am writing may 
 prove to be this day — for she is dying — her grave. 
 
lo8 CRITICISMS OF THE PRESS. 
 
 Mr. MacDougall on some future occasion may, in 
 this journal, expose in full the grounds upon 
 which such an opinion has been arrived at. That 
 which, however, concerns me most in the line of 
 action which I have adopted is the exception 
 which the learned gentleman takes to the expres- 
 sion ' ' enshrouded in mystery, " used in the last 
 issue of The Hawk. Surely Mr. MacDougall will 
 acknowledge that a greater "mystery" than ever 
 exists, if, after the information which he gives 
 me that four or five of the ablest counsel in the 
 United Kingdom have decided that the ' ' evidence 
 did not justify the verdict," no one was decided, 
 even amongthosevery able counsel, disinterested 
 or interested enough in the poor woman to take 
 up her case without fees, and fight it out to the 
 end in our courts of justice. Surely the days of 
 chivalry — even among the gentlemen of the wig 
 and gown — cannot be quite extinct ! A young, 
 handsome woman at death's door, lingering in 
 gaol among felons of the worst types, is surely a 
 victim worth sacrificing a few fees for. And is 
 it not a "mystery" that none of these great men 
 has attempted the task ? 
 
 Again Mr. Alexander MacDougall joins issue 
 with me on the subject of "Trial by the Press," 
 an expression I made use of. He prefers to en- 
 title the present strictures passed by myself on 
 Florence Maybrick's case as ' ' Criticisms of the 
 Press." I regret that I cannot agree with him 
 there, as criticisms by the press on the verdict 
 have hitherto been unanimously against the pris- 
 oner, and by now they are practically exhausted, 
 besides which the press is only in possession so 
 far of what has transpired, and can therefore only 
 criticise that which the whole world knows. Any 
 and every reference made to the conduct of the 
 
THE "HAWK" APPEALS FOR AID. 109 
 
 judge and the jury can only be held as a " Trial 
 by the Press" of that judge and jury. No criti- 
 cism of their action in the case can be viewed in 
 any other light than that of impugning their jus- 
 tice in rendering a verdict adverse to the prisoner. 
 I leave it to Mr. MacDougall to determine whether 
 axiy fresh, tangible material that he may bring for- 
 ward in a newspaper could constitute any other 
 interpretation placed upon it than ' ' Trial by the 
 Press," in view of his and his co-believers' desire 
 to force upon the Government a re-trial of the 
 "May brick case." 
 
 Mr. MacDougall contends that after three years 
 no good can come of any discussion of the case 
 in the press. Again I must disagree with him, 
 for unless the subject had been taken up in The 
 Hawk, the able counsel would probably never 
 have enlightened the British public with that 
 evidence which causes them, as well as myself, 
 seriously to ponder and ask ourselves whether an 
 effort should not be made to give the unfortunate 
 creature at Woking — if she lives — a chance for 
 her life. The Hawk has not pondered long, and I 
 have come to the conclusion that the effort shall he 
 made. I therefore appeal to my readers and beg 
 them after reading Mr. MacDougall's letter seri- 
 ously to consider the evidence which he adduces. 
 If they are then in the same charitable spirit 
 of mind as myself, let them at once open their 
 cheque-books and send me on whatever amount 
 they will join to my own to give Florence May- 
 brick a chance for her life. Naturally it is diffi- 
 cult — in view of no such precedent in cases of 
 felony existing in the English law — to determine 
 whether a fresh trial will be granted. We can- 
 not, however, but try to create that precedent. 
 Here is Mr. MacDougall's letter : 
 
110 MR. MACDOUGALVS LETTER. 
 
 Sir, — As I have said in my letter in your issue 
 of December 6th, I do not perceive how any 
 practical good can result from a newspaper dis- 
 cussion of Mrs. Maybrick's trial now that (it hav- 
 ing taken place three years ago) the facts are 
 obliterated from public memory, unless indeed 
 such a discussion calls public attention to the 
 desolate, penniless condition of this woman, and 
 incites some charitably-minded person to rise to 
 the occasion and provide her with necessary 
 means to obtain legal assistance, and employ one 
 of our leading counsel to apply to the courts for 
 a new trial at which an opportunity would be 
 afforded her of being vindicated. 
 
 But as you say that you propose to keep your 
 columns ' ' open for some time to come for the 
 possible elucidation or what is unquestionably 
 shrouded in mystery," may I suggest that in any 
 such discussion the distinction between ' ' Trial 
 by Newspaper" and ' ' Press Criticism of a Trial " 
 should be kept clearly in view ? You say in one 
 breath that you have ' ' a deep-rooted aversion to 
 interfering with the verdict of a British jury," 
 and also of constituting yourself ' ' an advocate of 
 Trial by the Press" — your connecting these two 
 entirely different things might lead to confusion. 
 "Trial by Newspaper," which I take to mean a 
 discussion in the press of any case prior to or 
 during the trial, is a baneful interference with 
 the very institution of "Trial by Jury;" and 
 I take it that no person, whether journalist or 
 not, would avow himself an advocate of a trial 
 of accused persons in the privacy of an editor's 
 room. 
 
 But "Press Criticism of a Trial" after the jury 
 have returned their verdict, is not an interference 
 with the jury. There is, on the contrary, a duty 
 
CRITICISM A SAFEGUARD. iii 
 
 cast Upon the press to vigilantly watch and criti- 
 cise proceedings in our courts. 
 
 For what other purpose are our courts open but 
 that the public may see and hear for themselves 
 that accused persons have their trials properly 
 conducted by judges and juries, and that verdicts 
 and judgments are in accordance with the evi- 
 dence ? Again, for what other purpose is a spe- 
 cial immunity granted to the press to report and 
 fairly comment on all that passes in our courts, 
 but that the walls of our courts may be enlarged 
 so that a greater number of people than the 
 courts could find room for may have a knowledge 
 of what passes in them ? It would be an evil 
 day if any restriction were placed either on or 
 by the press which interfered with this public 
 right of criticism, for, as Lord Cairns said : 
 
 "All judicial proceedings are open to criticism, 
 however sharp, though it is for the public to 
 judge whether such criticism is decorous or de- 
 served." 
 
 If, then, you do propose to keep your columns 
 open for some time to come for a discussion on 
 Mrs. Maybrick's trial, it appears to me to be de- 
 sirable that there should be no confusion of ideas 
 among those who take part in it between ' ' Trial 
 by Newspaper" and " Press Criticism of a Trial," 
 because any discussion which may now take place 
 about Mrs. Maybrick's trial is an entirely differ- 
 ent thing to "Trial by Newspaper." For my- 
 self, as I have said, I do not perceive how such a 
 discussion (now three years after the trial) can 
 result in any practical good, because the facts of 
 it have become obliterated from the public mind. 
 Three years ago it was very different, because 
 Mrs. Maybrick's trial was a conspicuous example 
 of baneful interference with trial by jury. No 
 
112 THE VITAL QUESTIONS. 
 
 person who would take the trouble to refer back 
 to the files of the Liverpool papers for months 
 before and during the trial — or to the speeches 
 of Coroner Brighouse and Mr. Justice Stephen 
 both to the Grand Jury and to the jury, could 
 possibly describe Mrs. Maybrick's trial as a trial 
 by jury. Some would describe it as a " Trial by 
 Newspaper," others as a " Trial by Judge, " but I 
 venture to think that no intelligent person would 
 describe it as a "Trial by Jury." 
 
 You say that your object in keeping your 
 columns open to the subject is the "possible 
 elucidation of what is unquestionably shrouded" 
 in mystery." 
 
 But why mystery ? 
 
 This word "mystery" was affixed to the case 
 by the Liverpool press when it was conducting a 
 "Trial by Newspaper" in the midst of the local 
 excitement prevailing at the time about the 
 cause of James Maybrick's death ; but surely now 
 that people are no longer in a state of hysterical 
 excitement, now that three years have passed by, 
 there can be no reason why this word "mystery " 
 should cling like a limpet to it. The charge 
 against Mrs. Maybrick was that she caused the 
 death of her husband by administering arsenic to 
 him with felonious intent, and the questions of 
 fact which the jury were called upon to decide by 
 their verdict were : 
 
 (i) Did James Maybrick die of arsenic ? 
 
 (2) If so, did Mrs. Maybrick administer with 
 felonious intent the arsenic of which he died ? 
 
 Mr. Justice Stephen directed the jury that ' ' it 
 is essential to a verdict unfavourable to the pris- 
 oner that the man died of arsenic," and the jury 
 found her guilty. 
 
UNDUE INFLUENCE— '^ MYSTERY." 113 
 
 If there is to be any discussion of this May- 
 brick trial, surely the only matters for discussion 
 are whether the jury did return their verdict ac- 
 cording to evidence, and whether the trial was 
 properly conducted by the judge and jury. Why 
 confuse any discussion of these questions by intro- 
 ducing the exciting element of mystery ? 
 
 At the time, indeed from the day when the 
 Liverpool papers announced James Maybrick's 
 death as ' ' The suspicious death of a Liverpool 
 merchant," the local" press made effective use of 
 this word "mystery" to whip up an hysterical 
 excitement in Liverpool; and long before any 
 evidence was given the future jurymen of that 
 locality had the words "The Maybrick Mystery" 
 beaten into their brains by the newsboys, and by 
 sensational paragraphs headed in large type let- 
 ters, THE MAYBRICK MYSTERY, and no 
 Liverpool common juryman (if, indeed, any Liv- 
 erpool man at all) could possibly have gone into 
 the jury-box without this word " mystery" buzz- 
 ing through his brain, and without feeling that 
 he was called upon to elucidate a mystery ; and 
 in their elucidation of it, which is called their 
 verdict, they looked to the promptings of the 
 newspapers, which were regularly supplied to 
 them during the trial, and to the promptings of 
 the judge, and some of them, too, listened to the 
 conversations of the public in the public billiard- 
 room of an hotel where some of them, separated 
 from the others, were allowed to pass the even- 
 ing by the complacent officer in charge of this 
 jury. That the local press, prior to the trial, by 
 manufacturing a mystery out of this case, inter- 
 fered with this jury of plumbers and farmers, 
 may be a matter for present discussion — but why 
 encumber any such discussion by introducing 
 
114 EXPERTS VS. "UNPRIENDLY PERSONS." 
 
 into it the exciting occupation of ' ' elucidating a 
 mystery"? 
 
 Why not leave the word "mystery" out, and 
 confine any discussion which may take place to 
 the hard, dry facts raised by the questions : 
 
 (i) Did James May brick die of arsenic? 
 
 (2) If so, was the arsenic of which he died ad- 
 ministered to, him by Mrs. Maybrick with felo- 
 nious intent? 
 
 There are many intelligent people who have 
 carefully and conscientiously studied the evi- 
 dence free from the local excitement which pre- 
 vailed around and among the Liverpool jury, 
 who have come to the conclusion as to (i) that 
 the man did not die of arsenic at all, and as to 
 (2) that Mrs. Maybrick never administered any 
 arsenic to him at all, either with or without felo- 
 nious intention, and who think that the verdict of 
 the jury was wrong, and that there is an innocent 
 woman in an English prison. As regards (i) 
 there is no getting over the fact that four of the 
 most experienced experts in arsenical poisoning 
 in this country, viz., Dr. Tidy, Dr. Macnamara, 
 Professor Paul, and Dr. Barron — gave as their 
 evidence that the cause of this man's death was 
 not arsenic at all. 
 
 As regards (2) there is no getting over the fact 
 that though arsenic was found in the house after 
 the man's death by the five unfriendly persons 
 who put the charge of murdering her husband 
 upon Mrs. Maybrick, viz., Michael Maybrick, 
 Edwin Maybrick, Alice Yapp, Mrs. Briggs, and 
 Mrs. Hughes — neither the procuring nor the pos- 
 session of this arsenic was traced (as the judge 
 pointed out to the jury) to Mrs. Maybrick, and 
 there is no getting over the other fact, which the 
 judge also pointed out to the jury, that there was • 
 
A REAL TRIAL— A REAL VERDICT. 115 
 
 no evidence of any act of administration of 
 arsenic by Mrs. Maybrick. The exact words of 
 Mr. Justice Stephen were : ' ' The theory of the 
 prosecution is that there was poisoning by suc- 
 cessive doses, but I do not know that there was 
 any effort made to point out the precise times at 
 which such doses may have been administered." 
 
 Of course in a "Trial by Newspaper," or in 
 the exciting occupation of ' ' elucidating a mys- 
 tery," such things as "theories of prosecution" 
 were very effective with the Liverpool common 
 jury of plumbers and farmers, but I do not think 
 they would have been effective on a metropolitan 
 mind, and if an opportunity is found or made for 
 a new trial of this woman at the Old Bailey, a 
 real " trial by jury " will take place, and a real 
 "verdict" will be returned. 
 
 If the effect of opening a discussion on Mrs. 
 Maybrick's trial in your columns be that some 
 public-spirited person will rise to the occasion, 
 and provide this desolate, penniless, imprisoned 
 woman with means to obtain legal assistance to 
 apply to the courts for a new trial, the usefulness 
 of the press will be conspicuously demonstrated. 
 Your obedient servant, 
 
 Alexander W. MacDougall. 
 
 Hanney, Wantage. 
 
 The reader is urged carefully to scrutinize the 
 foregoing remarks. They are outspoken and to 
 the point. The editor of The Hawk had had a 
 press of communications regarding the Maybrick 
 case, and had given preference to that from Mr. 
 MacDougall because that gentleman ' ' was one of 
 the barristers employed some few months since 
 
ii6 THE "HAWK'S" CONCLUSION. 
 
 with Sir Charles Russell, Messrs. Fletcher Moul- 
 ton, Q. C, and Mr. Poland, Q. C, in determin- 
 ing whether the evidence against Florence May- 
 briek justified the verdict. The decision arrived 
 at by those gentlemen was in favour absolutely (the 
 italics are mine) of the unhappy woman at Woking 
 prison." The editor of The Hawk was so much 
 impressed with the fact that ' ' such a formidable 
 array of English counsel had condemned the action of 
 both the judge and jury who sent Florence Maybrick 
 to a living tomb" that he regards it a mystery 
 that no one was found ' ' even among those four 
 or five of the ablest counsel in the United King- 
 dom, who had decided that the evidence did not jus- 
 tify the verdict ," who " was disinterested enough 
 in the poor woman to take up her case ze/e^^^^w^/if^." 
 The italics in the latter quotation are by the editor 
 of The Hawk. The editor was also so much im- 
 pressed by these facts that he concluded to appeal 
 to the public in Mrs. Maybrick's behalf. I quote 
 his words : "I therefore appeal to my readers, 
 and beg them after reading Mr. MacDougall's 
 letter seriously to consider the evidence which he 
 adduces. If then they are in the same charitable 
 spirit of mind as myself, let them at once open 
 their cheque-books and send me on whatever 
 amount they will join to my own to give Florence 
 Maybrick a chance for her life." 
 
 Again the emphasis of italics is needed for all 
 the words of this last sentence ; and when the 
 reader has duly noted their import, let me invite 
 close attention to the following, quoted from The 
 Hawk of December 20th : 
 
EXTRAORDINARY CRAWFISHING. 117 
 
 The period has now been reached — after sev- 
 eral weeks' publication of letters relating to 
 the Florence Maybrick case — 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 United States, and Mr. Alexan- 
 der MacDougall, her counsel and staunch de- 
 fender in England. In a former issue I appealed 
 to the Messrs. Maybrick 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" resumd of the 
 case, as well as in Mr. MacDougall's letters. I 
 intentionally italicised those allusions in order 
 that their importance might not escape the atten- 
 tion of those gentlemen. 
 
 They did not deem it fit — or shall I say worthy 
 of their consideration? — 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. Since Friday night, 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. 
 
 I accept unreservedly the Messrs. Maybrick's 
 unqualified statement, and have no hesitation in 
 saying now, that any future reference to the 
 Maybrick case will only appear in these columns 
 
n8 MR. MACDOUGALVS SECOND LETTER. 
 
 when accompanied by indisputable fresh ma- 
 terial. 
 
 In publishing the following further communi- 
 cation from Mr. MacDougall I would state that 
 in so doing I practically close any further discus- 
 sion until hypothesis and conviction have given 
 place to facts. Mr. MacDougall is an eloquent 
 pleader, but I fear that the ' ' fresh tangible 
 material" of which he speaks is not quite as 
 satisfactory to my mind as he fondly imagines. 
 "What might have been " is neither here nor 
 there in a matter of such grave issues. The 
 question is, "What can be " if the materials are 
 there to make it be. Mr. MacDougall is welcome 
 to all the space and publicity that The Hawk 
 affords but before we risk substantial monetary 
 assistance I must ask him to show me that there 
 is "fresh tangible material" to go upon for 
 petitioning the courts for a revision of the case. 
 
 Sir, — Without going so far as Lord Esher 
 did in a recent case, when he, in his characteris- 
 tic way, sought to maintain the dignity of the 
 Bench by asking, " Who cares for the press, and 
 why should anyone seek to justify himself in the 
 press? " I cannot myself conceive what practical 
 good can result from the discussion of this trial, 
 which you have opened in your columns, now 
 that three years have elapsed, because the facts 
 have become obliterated from public memory; 
 but as so many think otherwise, and as the 
 woman cannot justify herself in the press, and as 
 such a discussion, if it can do no other good, will 
 at all events help to direct public attention to the 
 desolate, penniless condition of this imprisoned 
 woman, I accept your challenge to the extent of 
 suggesting the lines upon which I think such a 
 discussion would most usefully proceed. 
 
NO NECESSITY FOR NEW EVIDENCE. 119 
 
 I can but repeat that any discussion which is 
 confined to a criticism of the trial is legitimate, 
 and that such a discussion should be addressed 
 to a consideration whether the verdict of the jury- 
 was justified by the evidence, and whether this 
 woman's trial was properly conducted ; in other 
 words, were the constitutional safeguards of life 
 and liberty provided for her. 
 
 The questions upon which the jury were called 
 to give their verdict were : 
 
 1 . Did James Maybrick die of arsenic ? 
 
 2. If so, was the arsenic of which he died ad- 
 ministered by Mrs. Maybrick with intent to mur- 
 der? 
 
 Any discussion which takes place as to whether 
 the verdict of guilty was justified by the evidence 
 should be confined to the evidence which was 
 adduced at the trial, and which is available for 
 public reference in a verbatim form. I, for one, 
 having carefully and conscientiously considered 
 that evidence, can find none which justifies a 
 verdict that James Maybrick died of arsenic, or 
 that Mrs. Maybrick administered any to him. 
 Those who take a different view can quote the 
 evidence upon which they rely in support of their 
 opinion. Until that issue is disposed of, I do not 
 perceive the necessity for explaining away any 
 such evidence (if it can be quoted), by introduc- 
 ing the consideration of any reference to what 
 you call " fresh, tangible material, " which I take 
 to mean facts which did not transpire at the trial, 
 and which throw light upon the facts elicited at 
 the trial. 
 
 With regard, however, to the question whether 
 the constitutional safeguards of life and liberty 
 were provided for this woman, I may call the 
 attention of your readers to a fact which did not 
 
120 DESERTION AND CONSPIRACY. 
 
 transpire at the trial, as it affords an illustration 
 of what will, I think, strike everyone who under- 
 takes to reconsider this case, viz. , the desertion 
 of this woman by her own and her husband's 
 friends directly she was suspected of the crime 
 imputed to her. The fact is, I hope, phenomenal 
 in any rank of life in England ; but it is a fact 
 that, from the moment she was suspected of hav- 
 ing compassed and having caused her husband's 
 death , the whole circle of her own and her husband's 
 friends and acquaintances in Liverpool forsook 
 her and fled, and left her deserted and alone. 
 It is a fact, however, that before even his medi- 
 cal attendant had arrived at any conclusion as to 
 the origin of his illness, or the cause of his death, 
 and while her husband was lying unburied, and 
 before any inquest was held, she, lying in bed in 
 a very prostrate condition, was arrested in her 
 bed, on the vague charge of having caused the 
 death of her husband ; and it is a fact that her 
 accusers, Michael and Edwin Maybrick, usurped 
 authority in her house, and she, being penniless, 
 and without money even to pay for a telegram, that 
 they sent Mr. Cleaver to act as her solicitor, but 
 refused to provide for his costs, on the ground, 
 alleged by Michael Maybrick, that he was ' ' a 
 witness for the prosecution. " It is a fact that, on 
 Mr. Cleaver's arrival at the house, the police re- 
 fused to permit him to see her, and that he had 
 to obtain an order before he could do so. It is a 
 fact that, as soon as the doctors could say that she 
 was sufficiently well to be removed, a magistrate. 
 Colonel Bidwell, opened a so-called court at her 
 bedside, and she was taken from her bed to 
 gaol without any evidence having been given 
 in her presence, and that all this occurred before 
 either any inquest had been held and before 
 
"FIVE UNFRIENDLY PERSONS." 121 
 
 James Maybrick's medical attendant had arrived 
 at any conclusion as to the actual cause of death. 
 It is also a fact that, during all this time, five un- 
 friendly persons, Michael and Edwin Maybrick, 
 Mrs. Briggs, Mrs. Hughes, and Alice Yapp, were 
 permitted by the police to roam over her house, 
 and assist them in search of materials for putting 
 a charge of murdering her husband upon her. 
 In considering the question whether the constitu- 
 tional safeguards of life and liberty were provided 
 for this woman, it will, no doubt, occur to many 
 that they would not desire their own daughters 
 to find their homes amid such surroundings. 
 
 Sir Charles Russell accurately represented this 
 state of things when he told the jury : 
 
 ' ' Mr. Cleaver took up the defence of this lady 
 when she was practically forsaken and alone." 
 
 I venture to think that the desertion and treat- 
 ment of this woman is phenomenal as applied to 
 any English community. What chance had she 
 of defending herself ? Was it fair play? 
 
 And now I will illustrate the desertion of this 
 woman by mentioning a fact which did not tran- 
 spire at the trial, and I select this particular one 
 because it bears strongly upon the question of the 
 origin and cause of James Maybrick's illness. 
 
 Mr. Justice Stephen, when summing up the evi- 
 dence at the trial to the jury, used these words 
 as to the origin and cause of this man's illness : 
 
 ' ' The theory of the prosecution was that there 
 was poisoning by successive doses, but I do not 
 know that there was any effort made to point out 
 the precise times at which such doses may have 
 been administered." 
 
 This "theory of the prosecution" was pro- 
 pounded by the Crown counsel, Mr. Addison, Q. 
 C, in these words: 
 
122 DISCREPANCY IN TESTIMONY. 
 
 " It was on the 27th of April that the first ill- 
 ness occurred, which we say was caused by- 
 arsenic. On April 27 theWirral races were run, 
 and in the morning, as Mr. Maybrick went down- 
 stairs, he seems to have complained of numbness 
 of his limbs, and Humphreys, the cook, to whom 
 he spoke, said he was sick before he went to busi- 
 ness that morning. On that morning, between 
 ten and eleven o'clock, Mrs. Maybrick said to the 
 nurse, Alice Yapp, that the deceased had taken 
 an overdose of some medicine which was per- 
 scribed by the doctor in London, and that he had 
 been sick and in great pain." 
 
 And in support of this statement Mr. Addison 
 called Alice Yapp, who gave as her evidence : 
 
 "TheWirral races were on April 27. I saw 
 master on that day when he left the office. Mrs. 
 Maybrick did not go to the races. On that morn- 
 ing she spoke to me about the condition of the 
 master. It was somewhere about ten o'clock in 
 the morning she said Mr. Maybrick had taken an 
 overdose of medicine. I asked her what kind of 
 medicine, and she said some ordered by a doc- 
 tor in London. He was very sick and in great 
 pain." 
 
 " Was that all ? " 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 I will now call the attention of your readers 
 (for a reason which will presently appear) to a 
 discrepancy between Alice Yapp's evidence as to 
 this incident as given at the trial, and as given 
 by her when the case was before the magistrates. 
 On that occasion her evidence was : 
 
 ' ' I remember Mr. Maybrick going to the Wirral 
 races on April 27th, and after he had gone, be- 
 tween ten o'clock and eleven o'clock, Mrs. May- 
 brick came to me and said, ' Master has been 
 
''■THE STRYCHNINE THEORY." 123 
 
 taking an overdose of medicine. It is stryclinine, 
 and is very dangerous. He is very ill.' I said, 
 ' What medicine is it ? ' and she said, ' Some 
 which has been prescribed by a doctor in Lon- 
 don.' She further added that he seemed in great 
 pain." 
 
 Now, it had so happened that just before Alice 
 Yapp gave this evidence at the magisterial in- 
 quiry, the Liverpool Courier, in the "trial by 
 newspaper" which it was carrying on about "The 
 May brick Mystery," had propounded what, in 
 large type letters, it described as "The Strych- 
 nine Theory," and it is certainly a matter of ob- 
 servation that while before the magistrates Alice 
 Yapp said that Mrs. Maybrick had told her that 
 it was strychnine which her husband had taken 
 that morning, she, after Mr. Addison, Q. C, at 
 the trial propounded the ' ' theory of the prosecu- 
 tion " that it was arsenic, dropped all mention of 
 the word strychnine, and, having done so, replied 
 to Mr. Addison's question : 
 
 "Is that all?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 It is a matter of surprise to me that this dis- 
 crepancy of Alice Yapp's evidence escaped the 
 notice of the judge, the counsel and the scientific 
 witnesses engaged at the trial in considering the 
 "theory of the prosecution" — that the cause of 
 this man's death was arsenic administered in suc- 
 cessive doses — because the origin of his illness 
 was the most important element of that ' ' theory 
 of prosecution " ; but I think it will be a matter 
 not only of surprise but of amazement to your 
 readers when I throw upon it the light of James 
 Maybrick's own explanation of the origin and 
 cause of his illness, by way of gfiving an illus- 
 tration of that phenomenon of English Society 
 
J24 MR. AND MRS. RIGG. 
 
 — the desertion of this -woman by those in whose 
 circle she and her husband had passed their lives. 
 
 Among the most intimate social friends they 
 had were Mr. and Mrs. Morden Rigg. Mr. Mor- 
 den Rigg was more than a mere social friend, 
 for, although not a partner, he often assisted, in 
 financial ways, James Maybrick in his business as 
 a cotton merchant, and in a time of such trouble 
 to his widow it is, to me at all events, inconceiv- 
 able that he should have deserted her, and should 
 not have insisted that until, at all events, her 
 guilt of the crime imputed to her had been proved 
 she should have fair play, both at the hands of 
 Mr. Maybrick's brothers and of the police. 
 
 The constitutional safeguards of life and lib- 
 erty provide a tribunal (the coroner's inquest) at 
 which it is the duty of every person who can give 
 any evidence touching the death of any person 
 to come forward voluntarily and give it; but 
 neither Mr. nor Mrs. Morden Rigg availed them- 
 selves of that opportunity of securing fair play 
 for their friend's widow. I will tell what Mr. 
 Morden Rigg could have told the coroner's jury 
 about James Maybrick's own account of the origin 
 and cause of his illness. Mr. Morden Rigg is a 
 cotton merchant of Liverpool, and resides at a 
 house in the suburbs. I will tell this in his own 
 words : 
 
 "I knew James Maybrick well. I was at Nor- 
 folk, Virginia, for several cotton seasons, ex- 
 tending before and after his marriage, when Mr. 
 Maybrick was there. He went to Norfolk cer- 
 tainly for two seasons after his marriage, the 
 first, to my knowledge, with his wife, and I met 
 them frequently. I have known him well the 
 last three or four years in England. My general 
 opinion of him, derived from his conversation, 
 
MR. RIGG'S TESTIMONY. 125 
 
 was that he was a man with a tendency to talk 
 about his ailments or his fancied ailments, and to 
 take various supposed specifics for them, though 
 I cannot quote the exact language he used. We 
 stayed with the Maybricks at Grassendale, and 
 also on one occasion for two nights at Battle- 
 crease, and they stayed with us at Bromborough. 
 I never had any reason to think there was any 
 domestic unhappiness between them. On the 
 day before the Wirral races he inquired whether 
 my wife and I were going, and if so whether 
 Mrs. Rigg and Mrs. Maybrick had made any ar- 
 rangement to go with me to the races. He 
 seemed to wish that his wife might have an op- 
 portunity of going. Eventually I excused my- 
 self, saying the weather was uncertain, and if we 
 went at all it would only be in a cab. I saw him 
 on the course, and he asked me if I had sent any 
 message to his wife about going. I replied I had 
 not, as it was understood I would not do so. He 
 said he was glad, as she was not well enough that 
 day. He turned round to my wife's carriage, 
 and told her he had taken an overdose of strych- 
 nine that morning, and his limbs were quite 
 rigid. She is prepared to testify to this if neces- 
 sary." 
 
 Now I think that this will satisfy your request 
 for what you call " fresh tangible material," be- 
 cause I venture to think if Mr. and Mrs. Morden 
 Rigg had stood up at the coroner's inquest and 
 given Mr. James Maybrick's own account of the 
 origin and cause of his illness, i.e., that he had 
 administered to himself an overdose of strych- 
 nine, there would have been no " Trial by News- 
 paper," and no "Trial at Assizes," or "theories 
 of the prosecution " for you to open your columns 
 to a discussion about. 
 
126 ASTONISHING CONVERSION. 
 
 This is one of the many facts which will have 
 to be considered if a new trial is obtained for this 
 desolate, penniless woman by means of the inter- 
 vention of the public. 
 
 Yours faithfully, 
 Alexander W. MacDougall. 
 Hanney, Wantage. 
 
 December 15, 1892. 
 
 • This is, to say the least, a most surprising de- 
 nouement. The Messrs. May brick have after many 
 weeks' delay deigned to give the information 
 ' ' that all and every statement which refers to 
 themselves and which has appeared in print is 
 absolutely without foundation." And the editor 
 of The Hawk accepts unreservedly these gentle- 
 men's statement. He seems oblivious to the 
 fact that the Messrs. Maybrick are not disinter- 
 ested parties ; that they are of the ' ' five un- 
 friendly persons " whom Mr. MacDougall says 
 were ' ' permitted by the police to roam over the 
 house, and assist them in search of material for 
 putting a charge of murdering her husband upon 
 Mrs. Maybrick;" indeed, the editor ignores the 
 fact that, before the public, the Maybrick brothers 
 are quite as much on trial as Mrs. Maybrick. 
 These facts have strangely escaped the editor's 
 attention, and he has no hesitation in closing the 
 discussion so generously opened in The Hawk's 
 columns. Closed until "hypothesis and convic- 
 tion have given place to facts." How logical! 
 How chivalric! This is only another example 
 of the unfairness that has been meted out to this 
 unfortunate woman by the courts and press of 
 
"fRESH MATERIAL." 137 
 
 England from first to last. If this be a pattern of 
 English "Trial by the Press," Heaven protect 
 us from a press trial. A trial by any jury, even 
 if composed, as Mrs. Maybrick's was, of the most 
 incompetent men, is preferable. 
 
 This press judge must have indisputable fresh 
 material in the future, before further press hos- 
 pitality can be afforded. This has been the cry 
 of the Home Office; "give us fresh material," 
 while their records are plethoric with material 
 and facts that have never been considered, and 
 which before any tribunal in any civilized nation 
 on earth, if considered, would undoubtedly bring 
 an acquittal. 
 
 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 ac- 
 cepts the unsupported denial of these gentlemen. 
 
 And even if the word of these gentlemen — 
 who are in reality on trial themselves — is to be 
 taken, what has this to do with the fact, in the 
 language of the editor of The Hawk, that several 
 of the "ablest counsel in the United Kingdom 
 have decided ' that the evidence did not justify 
 the verdict ' " ? What has the denial of the May- 
 brick brothers, supported or unsupported, to do 
 with the editor's statement, in his issue of the 
 13th, as to "that evidence which causes the Brit- 
 ish public as well as myself seriously to ponder 
 and ask ourselves whether an effort should not 
 
128 THE ■■'■HAWK'S" SOMERSAULT. 
 
 be made to give the unfortunate creature at 
 Woking a chance for her life " ? 
 
 On December 13th the editor of The Hawk had 
 come to the conclusion, influenced by the rep- 
 resentations of Mr. MacDougall, to give ' ' Mrs. 
 Maybrick a chance for her life." He proposed 
 to put his own shoulder to the wheel, and called 
 upon others to open their cheque-books and con- 
 tribute for the purpose of giving a trial to Mr. 
 MacDougall's scheme of going directly to the 
 courts for a rehearing. In the same article he 
 characterizes the failure of the gentlemen of the 
 English bar to offer their services without fees 
 to this woman as a great "mystery," declaring 
 that the days of chivalry are not extinct. 
 
 The following week, on the unsupported word 
 of the Maybrick brothers, who certainly are not 
 in the position of disinterested parties in the 
 case, he loses all interest, and stops the discus- 
 sion. It is not sufificient that Mr. MacDougall 
 shows that this woman was not fairly tried ; that 
 the constitutional safeguards of life and liberty 
 were not thrown around her ; but he must show 
 by some indisputable fresh material, forsooth, 
 that she is positively innocent ; in fact, it must 
 be shown who did administer ' ' successive doses 
 of poison " to Mr. Maybrick, for this is in reality 
 what the demands of the Home Office and The 
 Hawk really come to. This would be very satis- 
 factory, no doubt, and prove the ' ' theory of the 
 prosecution " right. 
 
 Why has The Hawk lost interest? Why no 
 longer willing to give Mrs. Maybrick a chance 
 
THE TRAIL OF THE SERPENT. 129 
 
 for her life? A new trial would not necessarily- 
 free her. If she is guilty, there would be the 
 same chance for punishing her, and the additional 
 benefit of throwing confusion upon those who so 
 strenuously assert her innocence. There is seen 
 in all this the trail of the same serpent that has 
 followed this case from the first. The conspiracy 
 commenced before Mr. Maybrick was dead. It 
 followed Mrs. Maybrick to prison, where she was 
 remanded before there was even any well- 
 grounded suspicion of her guilt. The police 
 were called in, and shown by the inmates the 
 arsenic scattered throughout the Maybrick house. 
 These inmates knew all the places where it was 
 to be found, and there exists not a particle of evi- 
 dence to show that it was in the house before Mr. 
 Maybrick died. The serpent's trail followed her 
 into the dock. It pursued her after the sentence. 
 It was active while the Home Secretary was con- 
 sidering the subject of a reprieve ; and it has con- 
 tinued to wind its slimy folds along her path dur- 
 ing the past three years of her fateful life, wher- 
 ever and whenever an effort is made for her release. 
 It has so clouded the atmosphere of the American 
 Legation that it has become well-nigh as murky 
 as that of the Home Office itself. During her 
 late illness, when a natural interest in her suffer- 
 ings began to appear in words of sympathy, and 
 the possible mercy of the government toward her 
 was discussed, stories were at once set afloat that 
 her illness was feigned. When this did not tally 
 with the summons sent to her mother, and the 
 declaration of the prison physician that she was 
 
I30 SUCCESS OF CONSPIRACY. 
 
 dying, ready for the emergency, another foul 
 slander was sent over the wires that she was 
 suffering from self-inflicted wounds made by a 
 tin knife. When this fairy tale did not do its 
 work, it was gravely cabled to the United States 
 that it had been discovered that Mrs. Maybrick 
 had swallowed a lot of needles, which had caused 
 the bleeding charged to pulmonary disease. Again 
 its fateful influence appears, and the editor of 
 The Hawk, the first English publication that has 
 opened its columns to a discussion of the facts of 
 this case, succumbs to its charm. Who is it that 
 is thus alert with sleepless vigilance to checkmate 
 every move made by the friends of this unhappy 
 woman ? What power is it that steps in just at 
 the time when there is a prospect of arousing 
 attention, and giving to the public the facts in the 
 case, and closes the door with a bang against the 
 introduction of these facts ? From her tomb at 
 Woking no voice of denial is permitted to issue. 
 Her mother's reports are branded as false before 
 the printer's ink is dry, and she is accused of 
 complicity in the daughter's unnatural attempt 
 to inflict injuries upon herself for the purpose of 
 arousing sympathy. To a normal imagination, 
 the bare, indisputable situation is quite enough to 
 rouse to tenderest pity the stoutest heart that is 
 not panoplied in prejudice, created and kept alive 
 by the ghoulish machinations of secret enemies. 
 A woman only 29 years of age, reared in refine- 
 ment and possessed of a sensitive nature, branded 
 as a wanton and murderess, compelled to wear 
 the coarse garb of a convict, confined in a cheer- 
 
CHRISTMAS REJOICINGS. 131 
 
 less stone room, without the companionship of 
 books or human beings, with no word of hope 
 from without to sustain her ; her mother within 
 call, and not permitted to nurse her : sick in body 
 and more ill in mind, she languishes in this terri- 
 ble place, while the outside world is celebrating 
 the season devoted to rejoicings over the victory 
 of Him who came to do away with the old law, 
 "an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth," 
 and put in its place the new code, ' ' Resist not 
 evil," and who said to His disciples, "Inasmuch 
 as ye did it not unto one of the least of these, ye 
 did it not unto me." Civilization teems with re- 
 joicings. The pulpits of Christendom are elo- 
 quent with His praises, the music from choir and 
 organ sounds His goodness. Matin and vesper are 
 redolent with the perfume of flowers, and all the 
 Christian world is merry with greetings received 
 and given. If the teachings of Him to whom all 
 these offerings are made were applied to this 
 poor woman's situation, if one word for justice, 
 not even for love or mercy, were spoken by the 
 representatives of Christ in London at this sea- 
 son, asking for a rehearing of her case, a way 
 for a new trial would be speedily found by the 
 government of the greatest, the most Christian 
 nation on earth. 
 
 These reflections will quite likely be charac- 
 terized by the press of England and a few feeble 
 imitators in the United States as hysterical 
 sentimentalism ; and we shall be told such ap- 
 peals to the emotions do more harm than good ; 
 that if the friends of Mrs. Maybrick desire to 
 
132 A JVSTICE.LOVING PEOPLE. 
 
 help her they should stop this agitation. We are 
 told that we irritate the British lion ; that but for 
 this mistake undoubtedly the government would 
 have given the prisoner more humane treatment 
 before this. But no attempt is made to explain 
 why nothing was done during the two years in 
 which there was no agitation; when, so far as 
 the public was concerned, Mrs. Maybrick and 
 her case rested in oblivion. 
 
 Whatever may be true of the government, I 
 am persuaded that the English people are at 
 heart most kind and justice-loving; that once 
 let the truth of this case be fairly put before 
 them, — let the facts just as they stand once pen- 
 etrate the minds of the people, — and we will see 
 whether or not England sustains the reputation 
 of being pre-eminently a justice-loving nation. 
 
 In a recent issue of Sala's Journal, the editor 
 said that if Mrs. Maybrick be, innocent, her con- 
 tinued incarceration is the most unthinkable of 
 crimes, and that if she be innocent the knowledge 
 of it would be most pleasant to the English 
 people. 
 
 Since we have failed in moving the govern- 
 ment; since private influence, usually most po- 
 tent, seems unable in this case to effect anything ; 
 since there is no court of criminal appeal, we 
 must go to the only court open to us — the court 
 of public opinion. And since the press is under 
 the trail of the serpent which seeks Mrs. May- 
 brick's destruction at every turn, we must look 
 for other avenues to our court; and for this 
 purpose will our millionaires open their cheque- 
 
CONTRIBUTIONS SOLICITED. 133 
 
 books, our business men make contributions 
 from their abundance, and the widow and chil- 
 dren offer their mites to spread the truth regard- 
 ing this great injustice ? 
 
 It is proposed to begin a series of free lectures 
 in the principal cities and towns of Great Britain, 
 and for this purpose money is needed to pay for 
 the halls, for advertising the meetings, and for 
 defraying the expenses of lecturers who may be 
 found to give their time to this work. It is be- 
 lieved that in this way the people will become 
 assured of Mrs. Maybrick's innocence, and be 
 made acquainted with the foul conspiracy that 
 has wrought her ruin, and that the press, which 
 has been so slow to discuss the merits of the 
 case, will become interested in and print reports 
 of these meetings. 
 
GAIL HAMILTON TO MR. GLADSTONE. 
 
 Since the foregoing was written Gail Hamilton 
 has published the following letter to Mr. Glad- 
 stone : 
 Mr. Gladstone : 
 
 Sir, — You have informed us that the congratu- 
 lations sent you on your last birthday from all 
 parts of the world are so numerous that you are 
 unable to acknowledge them separately, and you 
 therefore beg to use the public press as a medium 
 of returning thanks once for all. 
 
 I regret to contribute to this harmony a note 
 of discord, but humanity is a more sacred thing 
 than harmony. Justice is more exacting than 
 congratulation. 
 
 I therefore, in the name of God, arraign you, 
 the head of the British Government, for the mur- 
 der of Florence Elizabeth Maybrick, now dying 
 in the convict prison at Woking. 
 
 In the kingdom of the devil, which is the 
 kingdom of evil, nothing can be more weak and 
 helpless than a woman crushed in the grip of a 
 great power like the British Government ; and 
 nothing more grotesquely hopeless than the re- 
 sistance which any individual person can pre- 
 sent to such tyranny. 
 
 In the kingdom of God, one innocent, wronged 
 and tortured woman is stronger than all the 
 army of her torturers — courts, cabinets, parlia- 
 ments, princes, sovereigns. 
 
HIGH OFFICIALS CHARGED WITH MURDER. 135 
 
 The Home Secretary of the late Government, 
 who began the torture, the late Prime Minister 
 who sustained him in it, the present Home Sec- 
 retary who continues it, — these are all as guilty 
 as you ; but I do not know whether they believe 
 in a God. You believe in God. You publicly 
 assist in conducting His worship. You write 
 essays to defend His book. You announced 
 from the platform in your last struggle for Par- 
 liamentary power that you were responsible to 
 Almighty God for the understanding with which 
 He had endowed you. 
 
 It is therefore because you believe in God 
 that I invoke the witness of Almighty God 
 while I charge you with the murder of the inno- 
 cent woman who is perishing in Woking Prison. 
 
 We have been asking justice in the name of 
 mercy. I ask it no more. I ask for justice, and 
 for justice only, and I ask it in her own stern 
 and sacred name. 
 
 You have been personally appealed to and 
 you have passed by on the other side. You have 
 said it was the business of the Home Ofl&ce, 
 which would of course do its duty. 
 
 It is the old, old pretext of Cain : Am I my 
 brother's keeper? The pretext availed nothing 
 to Cain with the God whom you profess to wor- 
 ship. If God is the same, yesterday, to-day, and 
 forever, it will avail nothing to you. 
 
 What ground have you for assuming that the 
 Home Office does its duty? We appeal to the 
 Home Of&ce and the Home Office asks for ' ' new 
 evidence." New evidence of what? Not of giiilt, 
 for the Home Office assumes her guilt and in- 
 flicts the penalty of guilt. It must then be new 
 evidence of her innocence. This is a violation of 
 Magfna Charta, of the common law of England, 
 
136 SLANDER AS WELL AS MURDER. 
 
 of the common sense of justice among her people. 
 That there is no evidence of her guilt is the 
 ground on which we ask her discharge from 
 prison, and we are met with a demand for new 
 evidence of her innocence. This cry of new 
 evidence of innocence it used to disguise the ter- 
 rible fact that there is no evidence of guilt ; and 
 it is unjust, illegal, odious. With all the wealth 
 of the Government at your disposal, with all the 
 machinery of the courts and the malice of your 
 prisoner's foes, you could furnish no proof of her 
 guilt ; and then you bind her hand and foot in a 
 living tomb and demand that she shall produce 
 evidence of her innocence. 
 
 The British Government not only murders her 
 but slanders her. The late Prime Minister and 
 the late Home Secretary joined hand in hand to 
 brand her before America as an adulteress. She 
 was never convicted of adultery, tried for adul- 
 tery, charged with adultery. It was just as much 
 a slander for Lord Salisbury to say that she was 
 an adulteress as it would be a slander for Secre- 
 tary Foster to say that Lord Salisbury was an 
 adulterer who had corrupted his father's wife. It 
 was just as much a slander for Mr. Matthews to 
 say that she was an adulteress as it would be slan- 
 der for Secretary Foster to say that Mr. Matthews 
 was a cur who had corrupted the youthful wife 
 of his friend. It is a far viler slander, for Lord 
 Salisbury and Mr. Matthews are free men, and 
 could meet Secretary Foster on his own ground 
 and defend and vindicate themselves. But Mrs. 
 May brick is an enslaved woman . The great power 
 of England seals her to eternal silence before 
 it slanders her. 
 
 The Home Office of your own Government 
 seems to be following in the same ignoble track, 
 
INFAMOUS RUMOURS. 137 
 
 more meanly because more indirectly. Rumours 
 are rife of evidence suppressed at her trial, but 
 retained in the Home Office against her. This 
 is infamy. It is violation of Magna Charta, of 
 common law, that one Should be deprived of life 
 and liberty without the opportunity to hear accu- 
 sation, to confront accusers, to answer evidence 
 in open court. 
 
 Rumours are rife that her late dangerous ill- 
 ness was of her own procuring. This also is 
 infamy. The secrets of her prison house I do 
 not know, and it does not affect the question of 
 your guilt. Whether she is dying of the slow 
 disease, despair, or whether despair assumed 
 the acute phase of paroxysm and drove her to 
 self-slaughter, it is the British Government 
 that wrought her ruin, and of that Government 
 you are the head. But by what token does the 
 Home Office make her dumb to all the world, 
 yet circulate, or permit to be circulated, or create 
 or permit to be created, the most grievous ru- 
 mours, from the inmost prison, to her detriment? 
 
 It is deliberate murder. For more than three 
 years your own countrymen — ^lawyer, doctors, 
 learned and simple — have held up her innocence 
 in the strongest light, have iterated and reiter- 
 ated the damning fact that she is condemned 
 without evidence, against evidence, under the 
 lead of a judge whose mind is diseased. 
 Either his mind was diseased at the time of 
 the trial, or it was not. If it was, then his 
 charge against her should go for naught. If it 
 was not, then the principle of law which he laid 
 down in his charge to the jury should be 
 respected — that if any doubt existed whether 
 her husband came to his death by arsenic no 
 verdict could be found against her. 
 
138 THE MENACE OF ETERNAL JUSTICE. 
 
 The Home Secretary, reviewing the case, dis- 
 tinctly avowed that there is "a reasonable doubt" 
 whether her husband died of arsenic. Thus by 
 the highest judicial and executive authority the 
 premises are established whose only legal and logi- 
 cal conclusion is release. Yet she remains in rigid, 
 degrading, soul-and-body-destroying slavery. 
 
 Rumours are rife that it is resentment of Amer- 
 ican intervention which keeps her prison doors 
 locked. That is a false pretext. Her prison 
 doors had been fast locked for two years before 
 American agitation began. There are rumors 
 that it is a tone of menace in American inter- 
 vention which acts against her. That also is a 
 false pretext. American intervention has always 
 had the tone of petition, never of menace. 
 Did Mrs. Harrison menace? Did the Vice-Presi- 
 dent, the Cabinet, the clergy menace ? Did 
 Secretary of State Foster menace ? The only 
 menace is in the voice of eternal justice speaking 
 through the British conscience, and that still, 
 small voice will speak louder and louder till the 
 Judgment Day. 
 
 Go on your path of blood. We, lovers of 
 justice, shall continue to the end every efifort 
 for her release, but do not expect to release 
 her. We expect the fragile creature to die in 
 your cruel clutch. We hoped to secure for her a 
 little earthly peace after her unutterable pain. 
 We expect now that she will die under torture. 
 We expect that every word and movement in 
 her favor will be used as a pretext to give 
 another wrench to the instrument of her tor- 
 ture or another lull that may prolong her life 
 for further torture. 
 
 Go on your cruel way, because you can. She 
 is alone and poor and weak, and a foreigner. 
 
BETTER A YOUNG WIFE IN PRISON. 159 
 
 She can lose you no votes in England, for 
 she has no friends, no family. Make the sac- 
 rifice complete. Cherish your crime against 
 humanity, against justice, against law, against 
 decency, as a sweet morsel under your tongue, 
 and pretend that the unwisdom or the im- 
 prudence of her friends is the justification of 
 your crime. If there is no God it may be 
 that you are safe enough. If there is no God, 
 there is no guarantee of justice beyond the 
 grave. If there is no eternal principle of 
 good running through the universe, there may 
 be an eternal principle of evil, and thus right 
 be forever on the scaffold, wrong forever on 
 the throne. 
 
 But if there be a God, who marks and notes 
 the ways of this world, who hears the voice of 
 innocent blood crying unto Him from the 
 ground, it is better to be the young wife and 
 mother perishing in Woking Prison than the 
 Prime Minister of the Government which works 
 her torture and her slaughter. 
 
 January 4, 1893. Gail Hamilton. 
 
 I have no quarrel with Mr. Gladstone or 
 with any member of the English Government. 
 I have long believed that hope for Mrs. Maybrick 
 lies in another direction. When the herculean 
 efforts that were made both by the people of 
 America and by influential private parties to ob- 
 tain either a rehearing or a release failed ; when 
 the semi-official petition from the members of 
 the Cabinet of the United States that was sent to 
 Lord Salisbury was scornfully rejected; when 
 the letter of the late Mrs. Harrison, wife of our 
 
140 MR. GLADSTONE'S LIABILITY TO CHANGE. 
 
 President, to the Queen was not even answered ; 
 and Mr. Asquith refused to reconsider his pre- 
 decessor's decision, I became satisfied of the 
 hopelessness of appeal to these officials. Besides, 
 I am fully aware of the difficulties that environ 
 the members of the present government, and I 
 realize what a difficult task Mr. Gladstone has 
 before him to keep the various factions of his 
 heterogeneous followers together, and to accom- 
 plish the work to which he has pledged himself, 
 without espousing so unpopular a cause as con- 
 spiracy has made that of Mrs. Maybrick. Fur- 
 thermore, a survey of Mr. Gladstone's course for 
 the last fifty years abundantly proves that no 
 one will espouse this or any other cause with 
 more alacrity than he will, when the people pro- 
 nounce in its favour. 
 
 Neither do I agree with Miss Dodge when she 
 says she does not expect Mrs. Maybrick's release, 
 that she expects her to die in her cruel prison. I 
 confidently look forward to her liberation and 
 complete vindication. She is young, and the 
 vigour of youth is generally able to withstand 
 great strain; and besides, I cannot forget that 
 an unseen power always furnishes support ac- 
 cording to our needs. 
 
 If Miss Dodge's arraignment may seem to the 
 friends of Mr. Gladstone unnecessarily bitter and 
 impassioned, I must ask them to consider how 
 they would view it if a sister or daughter inno- 
 cent of any crime was thus immolated ; if such 
 sister or daughter was in penal servitude, subject 
 to all the horrors of surroundings bad enough for 
 
INFAMOUS INSINUATIONS. 141 
 
 a hardened criminal, and revolting and unbear- 
 able to a sensitive nature innocent of crime. 
 Gail Hamilton has given this subject many months 
 of laborious investigation, and has become con- 
 vinced of Mrs. Maybrick's innocence. She has 
 nothing to gain by this espousal ; her fame is es- 
 tablished, and she was no doubt well aware from 
 the beginning that shis would receive nothing 
 for her work but contumely and vituperation 
 from a large proportion of the press and public. 
 
 I have given space to her letter, not, as before 
 said, because I sympathize with any personal 
 condemnation, but to ask my readers earnestly 
 to meditate upon the points which she so clearly 
 brings out. 
 
 It is very plain that the rumours that are put in 
 circulation as to evidence not forthcoming at Mrs. 
 Maybrick's trial, but retained in the Home Office 
 against her, are infamous. They are of a kind 
 with the insinuations of the Maybrick brothers, 
 as promulgated by the editor of The Hawk, that 
 they have documents of a damaging nature which 
 have not been made public. As Gail Hamilton 
 says : ' ' This is infamy. It is a violation of Magna 
 Charta, of common law, that one should be de- 
 prived of life and liberty without opportunity 
 to hear accusations, to confront accusers, to an- 
 swer evidence in open court." 
 
A FINAL WORD. 
 
 I have recently received the following note- 
 worthy article from the Scottish Leader, a promi- 
 nent Ministerial organ, calling for the immediate 
 pardon and release of Mrs. Maybrick : 
 
 The case of Mrs. Maybrick, which has never 
 been forgotten nor condoned by the thousands 
 who are familiar with its facts as presented in 
 evidence, has again become notorious these last 
 two weeks by the authoritative reports of her 
 serious and almost inevitably fatal illness. Her 
 present condition has been described by her 
 mother, the Baroness de Roques, in these columns 
 a few days ago. But probably it is not known to 
 many of our readers what it means to be " sick 
 and in prison," or how in this Christian land 
 every possible obstacle is thrown in the way of 
 even the nearest and dearest relative who seeks 
 to fulfil the command of the Christian's Lord and 
 Master, in the spirit as well as in the letter, to 
 "visit" and to comfort her who is both "sick 
 and in prison," heartbroken under a sense of 
 wrong and the mercilessness of ignorance or stu- 
 pidity. Yet the facts are, that so long as our law 
 holds Mrs. Maybrick to be a " convict " under 
 sentence, the prison rules can only be relaxed so 
 far as to allow her mother to see her at stated 
 times by special permit. The most humane of 
 prison governors, the most considerate of ward- 
 ers, or nurses — and we have no reason to doubt 
 
INHUMANE REGULATIONS. 143 
 
 the terms aptly describe the custodians of Mrs. 
 Maybrick at Woking — cannot so far relax prison 
 regulations as to allow Mrs. Maybrick's mother 
 to take her any little delicacies to tempt her appe- 
 tite, nor to be with her constantly to nurse her. 
 Nor even yet, after all the Baroness de Roques' 
 repeated applications to the Home Office for 
 months past, has she received permission to send 
 her own doctor, a specialist, to visit Mrs. May- 
 brick and consult with the estimable, kindly and 
 most devoted prison doctor. Nay, even the prison 
 doctor is not allowed by the regulations to see 
 or talk with Mrs. Maybrick's mother or plainly 
 state Mrs. Maybrick's condition. His reports are 
 not for her ear, but only for his superiors at the 
 Home Office. That is the position, not exagger- 
 ated, with nought set down in malice, which we 
 have wrought out by law and so-called "justice" 
 for Mrs. Maybrick and her mother. It plays into 
 the hands of those who advocate capital punish- 
 ment. It would have been more merciful by far 
 to have hung Mrs. Maybrick on August 27, 1889, 
 and probably even her mother, had she known 
 what was in store for her, would have preferred 
 to die on the scaffold along with her daughter, 
 and appear with her before that Lord who is in- 
 finitely more merciful than those human laws 
 which have the presumption to call themselves by 
 His name. 
 
 These are bitter words; but, unhappily, none 
 other are applicable. It is simply beyond a doubt 
 that not one man in ten throughout Britain con- 
 siders that the evidence had at Mrs. Maybrick's 
 trial conclusively proved her guilt either of mur- 
 der or of attempt to murder. That she is in jail 
 as a convict to-day is due to the setting up of two 
 new principles in British jurisprudence. First, 
 
144 NEW ENGLISH LAWS. 
 
 that it is not necessary to prove incontestably the 
 guilt of an accused person before condemnation 
 shall follow, but that it shall be incumbent upon 
 such accused person to prove incontestably his or 
 her entire innocence ere he or she can be set 
 free. Second, that the mercy of the Crown is 
 not to be exercised at the will or request of the 
 people — of a vast section of the people — who hold 
 grave doubts as to the justice of the trial and 
 sentence, so that their trust and confidence 
 in the just and merciful administration of their 
 laws may be restored ; but that such mercy is to 
 wait, to shuffle, to pretend it is impossible human 
 fallible law can err, until circumstances arise,, or 
 some confession of the true criminal renders the 
 exercise of such mercy not mercy at all, but an 
 unavoidable necessity. To these two new prin- 
 ciples may be added a third, for which the Right 
 Hon. Henry Matthews, Q. C., the former Home 
 Secretary, is alone responsible, that in Christian 
 England (we will not say Britain) a prisoner can 
 be condemned for a crime on which she has nei- 
 ther been arraigned nor openly tried. Nor does 
 this end the new principles in British law of 
 which this Maybrick case has been the revelation. 
 It has remained for the Liberal Home Secretary 
 of a Liberal Government to inform us that he 
 cannot review or interfere with the previous de- 
 cisions of the bureau over which the people have 
 elected him to preside. He, forsooth, cannot re- 
 view the decisions of his predecessor upon the 
 old evidence. He can only "consider" new evi- 
 dence, and he calls upon the people afresh to 
 prove to him, at their own cost and expense, 
 Mrs. Maybrick's absolute innocence of murder — 
 a task impossible, because even his predecessor 
 admits a reasonable doubt whether the deceased 
 
MR. ASQUITH'S ABSURD RULING. 145 
 
 James Maybrick was murdered by anybody. 
 Such doctrine as this is a practical lesson to every 
 voter that it is utterly useless for him to concern 
 himself with the turning out of one government 
 and the putting in of another so far as justice- is 
 concerned. That is not a wholesome lesson. It 
 will be an ill day for Liberalism, and for its influ- 
 ence over the heart, mind and imagination of the 
 people, when it can be said, and said with truth, 
 that Liberalism is as indifferent to justice and 
 equity as Conservatism . Nor is it by a headstrong 
 insistence upon the infallibility of law and its ad- 
 ministration that confidence in legal equity will 
 be either maintained or restored, but rather by 
 an open confession that all human law is neces- 
 sarily fallible, and by the ready constitutional 
 use of those safeguards against error provided by 
 the prerogative of mercy exercised by the Crown 
 at the will of the people. 
 
 Mrs. Maybrick should be pardoned and released 
 — should have been pardoned and released three 
 years ago. It may be too late to save her life. 
 It is not too late even yet to remove at least the 
 stain which the whole proceedings at her trial, 
 and subsequently, have inflicted upon the ermine 
 of British justice. That her American fellow- 
 countrymen and countrywomen have pleaded to 
 us for this justice is no reason for its delay or re- 
 fusal. It is creditable to them to ask. It is 
 creditable to us to comply readily. They could 
 hardly do otherwise, in obedience to the dictates 
 of common humanity and the instinct of common 
 nationhood, when four or five of our own most 
 eminent Qiieen's Counsel, after a careful exam- 
 ination of the evidence, old and new, had de- 
 clared in legal phraseology that the evidence at 
 her trial did not justify the verdict of the jury. 
 
146 A PLEA FOR JUSTICE. 
 
 As to the constitution of the court before which 
 she was tried we would prefer to say nothing. 
 The facts are well known. We refer our readers 
 to the Times editorial of March 6, 1891; to the 
 questions asked in the House of Commons by Mr. 
 H. P. Cobb, M.P., in February of that year, and 
 to several articles in the same month and the 
 month of March in the Law Times. For very 
 shame's sake let us hear no more of this May- 
 brick case. If there be guilt underlying it, it is 
 neither the kind nor degree of guilt for which 
 Mrs. May brick is now held prisoner. That is 
 certain. Let the prerogative of mercy be exer- 
 cised for Mrs. Maybrick's release on the advice of 
 a just and liberal government. Restore her to 
 her mother to die in peace, in hope that the Lord 
 we Christians worship may ' ' forgive us our tres- 
 passes as we forgive those who trespass against 
 us," and that future generations may not care to 
 remember too harshly the blundering, careless, 
 cruel and illogical administration of justice shown 
 in our application of the laws to the Maybrick 
 case. How can anyone suppose that the law is 
 magnified and made honourable in the eyes of the 
 people by stubborn support to a decision which 
 was never accepted by the people as anything 
 else but erroneous? The anomalies of the posi- 
 tion into which we have got ourselves are simply 
 appalling. The Home Office says Mrs. Maybrick 
 is now in prison on conviction for murder, and 
 with the same breath declares there is a reason- 
 able doubt whether a murder was committed; 
 and as if in excuse for refusal to give the unhappy 
 prisoner the full benefit of that doubt, accuses 
 her gratuitously of an attempt to murder her 
 husband, an offence for which she was not tried. 
 When our American cousins remonstrate with us 
 
JOHN BULL WITH HIS BACK UP. 147 
 
 courteously, point out the illogical nature of our 
 decision, and the peculiarity of the tribunal and 
 the methods of her trial, and ask that she be 
 given the full benefit of the doubt we have our- 
 selves officially expressed, our government re- 
 plies with a mere repetition of their decision, 
 justifying it by a rather libellous reiteration of 
 the untried and unproven new accusatiod; nor 
 do they courteously state any new grounds or 
 new evidence in support of it which may sup- 
 posedly be in their possession. Neither do they 
 tell the petitioners why they disregard not only 
 universal public opinion expressed in petitions at 
 the time and since, but also the opinion of legal 
 experts of the highest eminence. What can the 
 public think, except this, that John Bull has got 
 his back up, and would rather let an innocent 
 woman die in jail than acknowledge that his law 
 and his courts can make a mistake ? This is not 
 an admirable condition of mind, nor does it pre- 
 vail in Scotland. The Gordian tangle were best 
 cut by the immediate pardon and release of Mrs. 
 Maybrick. 
 
 Those who consider Miss Dodge's letter to Mr. 
 Gladstone too impassioned are asked to read 
 carefully this severe and logical statement. If the 
 positions taken by the Scottish Leader are true, 
 Gail Hamilton's arraignment of the Ministers of 
 the government is justified. 
 
 It is noteworthy also that this does not emanate 
 from an American (hysterical or otherwise), or 
 from an American publication. Neither is it 
 from a political enemy aiming to heap obloquy 
 upon Mr. Gladstone's government. It is written 
 by an enthusiastic friend of Mr. Gladstone, who 
 
148 A PLEA JFOR AID. 
 
 ■worked with untiring industry for his election, 
 and appears in a paper to which the present gov- 
 ernment owes much. 
 
 These facts emphasize the correctness of the 
 view that I have from the first maintained, 
 namely, that the English people are kind-hearted 
 and have a sterling sense of justice ; and that we 
 have only to make them acquainted with the 
 facts concerning Mrs. Maybrick to insure her 
 prompt vindication and release. 
 
 The editor of The Hawk appealed to his read- 
 ers, begging them, after reading and seriously 
 considering the evidence which has been adduced 
 in Mrs. Maybrick's favor, ' ' to open their cheque- 
 books and contribute to a fund to give her a 
 chance for her life." 
 
 To this end, as before stated, it is proposed to 
 hold a series of free lectures throughout the 
 principal cities and towns of Great Britain. Money 
 is needed to pay for the halls and for other nec- 
 essary expenses. I confidently appeal to the kind- 
 hearted and justice-loving everywhere to send in 
 their contributions. A full statement of what is 
 done with the money will be sent to each sub- 
 scriber. 
 
 Contributions in America may be sent to the 
 Rev. Chas. H. Eaton, D.D., 35 West 48th Street, 
 New York; and in Great Britain to Emmet 
 Dehsmore, M.D., 78, Elm Park Road, London, 
 S. W. 
 
GAIL HAMILTON. 
 
 She Writes Again of Gladstone.—" His Guilty Complicity," 
 She Asserts, Is Sure.— Sir Charles Russell and Mrs. 
 Maybrick's Case. 
 Following up the letter concerning Mr. Gladstone and the case 
 of Mrs. Maybrick, who now lies in an English prison under sen- 
 tence for the murder of her husband, Gail Hamilton writes the 
 yournal: 
 
 To the Editor of the Boston Journal: 
 
 It is not discreditable to the American people that they are 
 loath to charge murder upon one so admired and respected as 
 Mr. Gladstone. It is creditable to the American press that even 
 to defend Mr. Gladstone it does not deny the innocence of Mrs. 
 Maybrick. 
 
 May I be permitted to suggest to my countrymen that the 
 "amenities of protest" have been practiced for more than three 
 years by Americans in private and in official life, and that, with 
 a single exception, they have been met only with indifference 
 privately and with rudeness officially from the British Govern- 
 ment, and that Mrs. Maybrick, the innocent prisoner, has by 
 hardship, degradation and isolation been brought to the point of 
 death? 
 
 May I suggest, in the second place, that Mr. Gladstone's guilty 
 complicity is not a matter of opinion, either mine or another's, 
 but of undisputed record? Mr. Gladstone is Prime Minister. 
 Sir Charles Russell is his chosen and appointed Attorney-Gen- 
 eral, the authorized and authoritative law adviser of the Crown, 
 to whose legal voice it is Mr. Gladstone's duty to listen. Sir 
 Charles Russell, the Attorney-General of the present Govern- 
 ment, says, "Mrs. Maybrick ought to be set free. She ought 
 not to have been convicted." 
 
 More than this, it is not from Mr. Gladstone, the Protestant, 
 the orthodox, the church reader, the Bible expounder, but from 
 Sir Charles Russell, the hard-headed lawyer, the unpretending 
 Catholic, the official legal adviser of the Crown, that we get the 
 only ray of humanity which lights up the somber and sullen 
 cloud in which the British Government wraps itself. "There is 
 not a moment," says Sir Charles Russell, "her case is out of 
 my mind, nor do I cease to seek the best way to help her." 
 
 With this decision and this example from the highest legal ad- 
 viser of Great Britain, have we not passed beyond the mere 
 "amenities of protest? " 
 
 The Scribes and Pharisees of Judea could not touch a hair of 
 the head of Christ, or of the prophets, and acted only through 
 Roman officials, under the forms of Roman law which governed 
 them. Yet, "ye shall kill and crucify," He said who spoke as 
 never man spake, "that upon you may come all the righteous 
 blood shed upon the earth. Woe unto you. Scribes and Phari- 
 sees, hypocrites, that pay tithe of church worship and essays 
 upon Gadarene swine, and have omitted the weightier matters 
 of the law, judgment and mercy. Ye blind guides, ye whitec 
 sepulchres, ye serpents, ye generation of vipers, how can ye es- 
 cape the damnation of hell? " 
 
 January i6, 1893. Gail Hamilton. 
 
NATURAL FOOD. 
 
 A MONTHLY JOURNAL, devoted to Health and 
 the Higher Life. 
 
 Drs. EMMET and HELEN DENSMORE, Proprietors. 
 
 Publislied by L. N. Fowler, Ludgate Circus, London. 
 
 This magazine is the organ of the Natural Food So- 
 ciety. The following is taken from its statement of 
 principles : 
 
 The Natural Food Society is founded in the belief 
 that the food of primeval man consisted of fruit and 
 nuts of sub-tropical climes, spontaneously produced; 
 that on these foods man was (and may again become) at 
 least as free from disease as the animals are in a state of 
 nature. Physiologists unite in teaching that these foods 
 are adapted to digestion in the main stomach, where, it 
 is contended by this Society, the great bulk of our food 
 should be digested ; whereas cereals, pulses, bread and 
 in fact all starch foods are chiefly digested in the in- 
 testines, and hence, it is maintained, are unnatural and 
 disease-inducing foods, and the chief cause of the nervous 
 prostration and broken-down health that abound on all 
 sides. 
 
 Since nuts and fruits — especially the former — are 
 not always obtainable in right varieties and conditions 
 — and since most people have weakened powers of diges- 
 tion and assimilation, and are thus unable properly to 
 digest nuts, and are also obliged to perform more work 
 than is natural or healthful — it is recommended that 
 milk, curd or milk cheese and eggs be liberally used in- 
 stead, and as supplemental to the fruit diet. For all 
 those not vegetarians, and also for all those with whom 
 
milk and eggs do not agree, the usual diet of fish or 
 flesh is recommended instead. These animal products 
 and flesh foods are " natural " only in the sense that they 
 are suitable for digestion in the first stomach, and are 
 free from the objections made against bread and other 
 cereal and starch foods ; and are valuable and neces- 
 sary as long — and only as long — as men and women under 
 the exigencies and strain of modern life, are obliged to 
 perform more work than is natural or healthful. 
 
 We urge that all fruits in their season — including 
 figs, dates, bananas, prunes, raisins, and apples, etc., 
 fresh and dried, each of many varieties — be substituted 
 for bread and other grain foods and starch vegetables ; 
 and experience convinces us that this course will be 
 found by a brief experiment highly beneficial, alike to 
 the meat eater and to the vegetarian. 
 
 All persons about to experiment with the non-starch 
 food system are urged at first not to use nuts ; but to 
 use instead whatever animal food they have been ac- 
 customed to. The central feature of this system consists 
 in abstention from bread, cereals, and starchy vegetables, 
 and the liberal use of food-fruits. 
 
 NATURAL FOOD LITSIRATURE FOR DISTRIBUTION. 
 
 Fruit as Food. — Preparation of Food — Humane 
 Dietetics. Price Yzd., or \s. id. per lOD. 
 
 Also \c., or 30 cts. per 100. 
 
 The Food of Paradise. — Morality of Meat-eating 
 — Ethics of Diet — Practical Directions. 
 
 Price y^d., or is. ^d. per 100. 
 Also ic, or 30 cts, per 100. 
 
 Sample copies of above, with other leaflets, post free, id. , 
 from Editor NATURAL FoOD, y8 Elm Park Road, London, 
 S. W. 
 
 These leaflets are the latest expression and application of the non- 
 starch system ; and friends of the movement are earnestly invited to 
 assist in their widespread distribution. With this in view cost price only 
 is charged. 
 
How Nature Cures. 
 
 BY 
 
 EMMET DENSMORE, M. D. 
 
 PUBLISHED BY 
 
 SWAN SONNENSCHEIN & CO., 
 Paternoster Square, London. 
 
 A work of 41S pages, clear type, fine paper, well bound in 
 cloth, price $2.00. 
 
 "How Nature Cures" scientifically demonstrates that 
 bread, cereals, and all starch foods are unnatural and un- 
 wholesome. Scientists and laymen alike will find it 
 worth their while critically to examine this evidence. 
 
 Dr. Densmore, although a graduate of one of the old- 
 est of old-school medical colleges, is resolutely opposed 
 to drastic drugs and mineral medicines ; and enthusiast- 
 ically in favor of overcoming disease by diet and obedi- 
 ence to hygienic laws. The Saturday Review (London, 
 Sept. 20, 1890) editorially states: "Dr. Densmore is 
 one of the most open=mlnded men we have ever met 
 in print." Dr. Densmore is well known in England 
 as the founder of the Natural Food Society, and of its 
 organ, the Natural Food magazine ; and he has brought 
 consternation into the ranks of the vegetarians by the 
 new lights he has brought to bear upon their favorite 
 foods. 
 
 A pamphlet of 72 pages, with paper cover, containing 
 preface, table of contents, and some of the more impor- 
 tant chapters in the book, is published simultaneously 
 at 25 cents, and is an invaluable hand-book. Either 
 of these may be purchased at news-stands, or ordered 
 through any book-seller, or will be sent post free on 
 receipt of price. Address 
 
 STILLMAN & CO., 1398 Broadway, N. Y. 
 
HV 6555 G7 M35 c.l 
 
 
 Author 
 
 Densmore, Helen 
 
 Vol. 
 
 Title 
 
 The Majrbrick case; — - 
 
 Copy