The Question of Mrs Maybrick

I doubt you've ever heard of Florence Maybrick, but she was the name on everyone's lips in 1889. On trial for murder, on trial for her life, Florence was accused of killing her husband.

Florence Chandler was a girl from Alabama, young and naïve. She married James Maybrick, a cotton trader, and together they lived in Liverpool. James was almost twenty years her senior. This was a fashionable marriage - American high-society girls marrying into 'old world' money. It was a marriage that soon ran into trouble - within a few years there were arguments and the spectre of divorce (attainable, though expensive, difficult to obtain, and socially shameful.) Florence's husband, a drug addict with a fascination for all things tonic and medicinal, was having an affair, was acting somewhat irrationally, and on at least one occasion had hit his wife (something that was socially and legally acceptable so long as the 'punishment' the husband dealt out was in proportion to the alleged misdoing by his wife.)

James, never in good health, became severely ill and died not long after. So, why would it be suspected that his dear wife - his dear 'bunny' - had killed him? Firstly, a few circumstances that may have been innocent - soaking flypapers in water (to extract arsenic for cosmetic purposes,) adding something to a bottle of meat juice (common invalid food) which may or may not have been on the behest of her husband, moving medicine from one bottle to another to prevent sediment from forming at the bottom, being accused by a, frankly delusional, ill husband, etc. etc. The second, and more damning in the Victorian mind frame, was that Florence Maybrick had had an affair with a man named Alfred Brierley - had stayed in a hotel with him over several nights - anyone capable of infidelity must be capable of murder. The fact that her husband kept a mistress seemed to nobody to bare any importance.

And so, the odds were stacked against poor Florence. In her favour was slowly rising public support - with a notable female faction, and the poor scientific evidence against her. Toxicology was in its infancy, with the fallibility of medical knowledge and early tests for poison. The scientific experts and doctors could not agree on the cause of death - many argued for arsenic poisoning while others said it was more likely that James had been killed by a bad infection or gastroenteritis. Certainly, there was not sufficient arsenic found in James' remains or excreta to kill (and, for those of you more scientifically minded, the remains decayed at the normal rate, instead of being partially preserved by arsenic.) Florence had also been the victim of that most heinous of Victorian class-crimes - insubordination. Her children's nurse had made accusations against her (her mistress! oh, the scandal!) and had even read her personal correspondence (to her lover, Alfred Brierley.)

Arsenic was commonly found in almost everything in the Victorian period - food, medicine, cooking utensils, wallpaper, clothes; it wasn't as if it was difficult to purchase or find in the average house. In the Maybrick's home for example, amongst the sources of arsenic found was a packet of the stuff designed specifically, according to the label, for poisoning cats. It was in a great deal of James' medicines (along with some other, equally tasty ingredients,) and when he became ill the doctors prescribed a series of medicines and tonics, any of which could have reacted with one another, and included such substances as nitro-glycerine and cocaine.

But Florence was faced with a biased judge who, it seems, did his utmost to prejudice the jury against her, a jury made up entirely of men, and a national press that had reported so many details of her life and trial that many had already made up their minds as to her guilt or otherwise.

The case raised many issues with the justice system: all male juries, the impermissibility of defendants to give evidence in cases which may result in capital punishment, and the lack of a criminal appeal system - as well as society: the place of women, the responsibilities of servants, the morbid fascination that such trials created, and the sense that moral impurity created criminal tendencies.

To find out more about the Maybrick case (including what happened to Mrs Maybrick,) I highly recommend Kate Colquhoun's book Did She Kill Him?: A Victorian tale of Deception, Adultery, and Arsenic - a very informative and descriptive book, though perhaps a little flowery and imaginative in places. The case is well discussed, though sometimes the tone falls more towards fiction than non-fiction. This is the book in which I found a great deal of the information for this post.

And, just to prove the fallibility of the press (even then,) I found that the Pembrokeshire Herald and General Advertiser on 24 May 1889 repeated the general misreporting that Florence was 'a French Canadian, the daughter of a baron.' Florence was from Alabama, not Canada, and her mother - an eccentric and colourful lady - was indeed the Baroness von Roques, but Baron von Roques (who had by this point abandoned her mother,) was not her father - that honour belonged to one of the Baroness' previous husbands, Mr. Chandler.