Petitions for a Reprieve

The jury’s verdict of guilty was rendered on August 7, 1889. The evidence at the trial, as well as the learned judge’s “summing up,” was reported almost verbatim in the English press. The result was that, not only in Liverpool, but in almost every city, town, and village of the United Kingdom, men and women of every class and grade of society arrived at the conclusion that the verdict was erroneous—as not founded upon evidence, but upon the biased and misleading summing up of the case by the mentally incompetent[226] judge. Within a few days my lawyers, the Messrs. Cleaver, of Liverpool, who had notified the press that they would supply forms of petition, were inundated with applications. For the first two days they issued one thousand a day, and I have been informed that no less than five thousand petitions for a reprieve, representing nearly half a million signatures, were sent to the Home Secretary within the following ten days. In response to these, the Home Office issued to the press the following decision:

“After the fullest consideration, and after taking the best medical and legal advice that could be obtained, the Home Secretary advised Her Majesty to respite the capital punishment of Florence Elizabeth Maybrick and to commute the punishment to penal servitude for life; inasmuch as, although the evidence leads to the conclusion that the prisoner administered and attempted to administer arsenic to her husband with intent to murder him, yet it does[227] not wholly exclude a reasonable doubt whether his death was in fact caused by the administration of arsenic.”
Illogical Position of Home Secretary

Thus it will be seen that the Home Secretary, Mr. Matthews, ignored the important statement of the judge at the trial, when, in giving emphasis to his remarks, he told the jury that: “It is essential to this charge that the man died of arsenic. This question must be the foundation of a judgment unfavorable to the prisoner, that he died of arsenic.” Then Mr. Matthews, on reviewing the evidence given at the trial, finding it impossible to justify the verdict, because the evidence “does not wholly exclude a reasonable doubt whether his [James Maybrick’s] death was in fact caused by the administration of arsenic,” which question was to be the foundation of a judgment unfavorable to me, instead of giving his prisoner the benefit of the reasonable[228] doubt, took it upon himself to apply the spirit of the law and of the constitution, by making use of a wrongful conviction for one offense charged in order to punish me for a different offense for which I had never been tried, but with which he, without any public trial, charged me, viz., “administering and attempting to administer arsenic” to my husband.
New Evidence of Innocence Ignored

These charges, made by Mr. Matthews in 1889, have never been defined; nor has any statement been submitted to me or my legal advisers of the evidence relied on to prove them; nor have I been afforded an opportunity of being heard by counsel in answer to them, nor of pleading anything in reply to them. Had a second trial been granted me, I should have seen the evidence upon which the new charges were made against me, and in open court I could [229]have confronted the witnesses. But Mr. Matthews sentenced me to penal servitude for life (without giving me a chance to defend myself against the charges) which involved nine months’ solitary confinement in my case—in itself a most excessive punishment for the untried and, consequently, unproven charges. He sent me to suffer fourteen and one-half years on suspicion—a suspicion not warranted by any evidence given at the trial. The new evidence, which has been obtained since my conviction, is admitted by all fair-minded persons to be of such a nature that it would satisfy any intelligent jury that I was not only wrongfully found guilty of murder, but was most wrongfully treated by Mr. Matthews. It completely exonerates me from the charge of murder as well as “administering and attempting to administer arsenic.” Since this evidence was published, no one has attempted to justify the conviction or the sentence passed upon me.

Had the jury, instead of finding a verdict of “guilty” of murder, returned a verdict[230] in the same terms as the finding of Mr. Matthews, the judge must have entered it as “not guilty” and discharged me.
Lord Russell’s Letter

Well might the Lord Chief Justice Russell of Killowen write me, as he did on the 27th of June, 1895, telling me that he had never relaxed his efforts to urge my release, and saying:

Royal Court, 27th June, 1895.

Mrs. Maybrick,

Dear Madam: I have been absent on circuit; hence my delay in answering your letter.

I beg to assure you that I have never relaxed my efforts where any suitable opportunity offered to urge that your release ought to be granted. I feel as strongly as I have felt from the first that you ought never to have been convicted, and this opinion I have very clearly expressed to Mr. Asquith, but I am sorry to say hitherto without effect.

Rest assured that I shall renew my representations to the incoming Home Secretary, whoever he may be, as soon as the Government is formed and the Home Secretary is in a position to deal with such matters.

I am,
Faithfully,
Russell of Killowen.

This also seems to be the opinion of the leading counsel for the prosecution, Mr. Addison, Q.C., M.P. (now Judge Addison, of the Southwark County Courts), who is reported to have said, after the summing up, that “the jury could not, especially in view of the medical evidence, find a verdict of guilty.” This statement will be found in Sir Charles Russell’s protest to Mr. Matthews.
Efforts for Release

The public are not probably fully aware how much intensity of feeling and earnest work has been expended on my case during[232] the fourteen and one-half years of my imprisonment. The Home Office knows. Men in high positions in both political parties in England have often united in demanding a new trial. The almost invariable reply has been that the best means to effect my release was to obtain new facts or evidence, and submit these to the Home Secretary for his consideration. Those well-meaning advisers seemed to forget that the half million of petitioners for my reprieve or free pardon in England—not to count those in America—were not moved thereto by new facts or evidence, but by the absence of facts or evidence sufficient to prove that the alleged crime had been committed by any one, or that either guilt or complicity in that crime, if crime it were, attached to me. Surely it is not the business of the public nor of individual citizens to prove the innocence of any unhappy person whom process of law selects for punishment, while it is the business of every citizen to see that the courts incontestably[233] prove the guilt of any person accused of a crime before sentence is passed, in the following manner:

1. It must be proved that a crime has been committed.

2. It must be proved beyond a reasonable doubt that the accused person is the one who committed it.
Even New Evidence Superfluous

Neither condition has yet been fulfilled in my case. The evidence on which a half million petitioners said and say I was unjustly condemned is sufficient in itself. While it is true if a new trial had been granted me I could have produced new evidence that overwhelmingly demonstrated my innocence, it is also true that more facts or new evidence were not requisite to enable justice to be done.

The Doctors’ Doubt

The doctors who gave evidence in favor of death by arsenical poisoning all stated that they would not have felt certain on the subject if the one-tenth of a grain of arsenic had not been found in the body. Therefore, since the presence of that arsenic could be otherwise accounted for, I was entitled to an acquittal even on the evidence of the Crown medical witnesses. Moreover, the symptom on which two or three doctors for the prosecution laid most stress—continuous vomiting—was referred by the third to morphia administered by himself. All three were examined before any evidence of Mr. Maybrick’s habit of arsenic taking was given. Had they believed him to be an arsenic eater, they might have arrived at a different conclusion. The doctors for the defense, who declared that Mr. Maybrick’s symptoms were not those of arsenical poisoning, were men of far more experience as regards poisons[235] than the Crown medical witnesses. The quantity of arsenic found in the body was, in their opinion, quite consistent with administration in medicinal doses, and might have been introduced a considerable time before.

The proved administration of poison with intent to kill is punishable by penal servitude, but not necessarily for life—sometimes for only three years; but the charge must be proved in open court to be a felonious attempt by some means actually used to effectuate the intent, and it remains with the prosecution to produce the necessary evidence that the means used were sufficient for the accomplishment of the effect.

The medical evidence proved that the quantity of arsenic—one-tenth of a grain—found in Mr. Maybrick’s body was not sufficient to have produced death.

Public Surprise at Verdict

The Times of August 8, 1889, declared that, of the hundreds of thousands of persons who followed the case with eager interest and attention, not one in three was prepared for the verdict. The large majority had believed that, in the presence of such contradictory evidence, the jury would give the prisoner the benefit of the doubt and bring in a verdict as much like the Scotch “not proven” as is permitted by English law.
Character of Jury

There was strong prejudice against me, due to the numerous false and sensational reports circulated by the press during the interval between the arrest and the trial. The jury belonged to a class of men who were not competent to weigh technical evidence,[5] and no doubt attached great[237] weight to the opinions of the local physicians, one of whom was somewhat of a celebrity. But the main element in the conviction was Justice Stephen, whose mind, undoubtedly owing to incipient insanity (he died insane a year later), was incapable of dealing with so intricate a case.
The “Mad Judge”

The Liverpool Daily Post, as I am told, had been hostile rather than favorable toward me, but, on the death of Lord Chief Justice Russell, that journal, in articles of August 13 and 14, 1900, showed that it fully appreciated the unfairness of my trial, for it stated that no human being ought to be handed over to be tried by a “mad judge.” The following is taken from The Post of August 13, 1900:

“The death of the Lord Chief Justice may have recalled to the minds of some Liverpool folk a sad and sordid tragedy[238] enacted among them eleven years ago, in which he was a principal performer. To those who were there, a vivid recollection still persists of that bright July morning when a thronged court, hushed in expectancy, awaited the beginning of the Maybrick trial. In fancy one still hears the distant fanfare of the trumpets as the judges with quaint pageantry passed down the hall, and still with the mind’s eye sees the stately crimson-clad figure of the great mad judge as he sat down to try his last case. A tragedy, indeed, was played upon the bench no less than in the dock.

“Few who looked upon the strong, square head can have suspected that the light of reason was burning very low within; yet as the days of the trial dragged by—days that must have been as terrible to the judge as to the prisoner—men began to nod at him, to wonder, and to whisper. Nothing more painful was ever seen in court than the proud old man’s desperate struggle to control his failing faculties. But the struggle was unavailing. It was clear that the growing volume of facts was unassorted, undigested in his mind; that[239] his judgment swayed backward and forward in the conflict of testimony; that his memory failed to grip the most salient features of the case for many minutes together. It was shocking to think that a human life depended upon the direction of this wreck of what was once a great judge.”
Justice Stephen’s Biased Charge

The charge of Mr. Justice Stephen to the jury positively teemed with misstatements as to the evidence given during the trial. I quote a statement from the same journal in its issue of August 17, 1900:

“I should be very sorry to think that the same number of errors as to the matters of fact given in the evidence had ever been made in any judge’s charge. It simply swarms with them, and as the jury at the end of a long trial is likely to prefer the judge’s résumé to their own recollection, I doubt if the verdict in the Maybrick case was founded on the evidence at all. And if I am right in thinking that the jurors founded their verdict on the judge’s recapitulation[240] of the evidence rather than on the evidence itself, I do not see how any counsel could have saved the prisoner.”

That the jury “did not hear the whole of the evidence very distinctly” is admitted by one of them in the Liverpool Daily Post of August 10, 1889. Consequently they were likely to be unduly influenced by the judge’s charge. There is no evidence that the jury detected the judge’s misstatements, as a more intelligent jury certainly would have done. Their minds were “taken captive” by the charge of Justice Stephen, and they were as “clay in the hands of the potter.”
Lord Russell’s Memorandum Quashed

The Lord Chief Justice sent the Home Secretary a memorandum consisting of twenty folios, in which he stated the strong opinion that “Mrs. Maybrick ought to be released at once.” The Lord Chief Justice also requested that the contents of his[241] memorandum be made public. Yet when asked in the House of Commons to lay the document on the table of the House in order that it might be accessible to the members, the Home Secretary emphatically declined. The London Daily Mail, in a leader on this incident, said:

“The only conceivable reasons for declining to give publicity to the letter, which was actually intended for publication, are apparently official red tape and the fear of giving new life to the agitation in favor of Mrs. Maybrick’s release. This result will be almost as effectually achieved by surrounding the case with further mystery and leaving upon the public mind the grave suspicion that justice may not have been done.”
Repeated Protests of Lord Russell

The following extracts are taken from the “Life of Lord Russell of Killowen” by R. Barry O’Brien.

“In November, 1895, he [Lord Russell] wrote to Sir Matthew White-Ridley (page 260), conveying his strong and emphatic opinion that Florence Maybrick ought never to have been convicted; that her continued imprisonment is an injustice which ought promptly to be ended, and added: ‘I have never wavered in this opinion. After her conviction I wrote and had printed a memorandum, which I presume is preserved at the Home Office. Lest it should not be, I herewith transmit a copy.’

“As is known, what happened was that Mr. Matthews, after consultation with the present Lord Chancellor, Lord Salisbury, and Mr. Justice Stephen, and after seeing Dr. Stephenson, the principal Crown witness, and also the late Dr. Tidy, respited the capital sentence on the expressed ground that there was sufficient doubt whether death had been caused by arsenical poisoning to justify the respite.

“It will be seen (1) that such a doubt existed as to the commission of the offense for which Florence Maybrick was tried as rendered it improper, in the opinion of the Home Secretary and his advisers, that the capital sentence should be carried out; and[243] (2) that for more than six years Florence Maybrick has been suffering imprisonment on the assumption of Mr. Matthews that she committed an offense for which she was never tried by the constitutional authority and of which she has never been adjudged guilty.”

From page 261: “This is in itself a most serious state of things. It is manifestly unjust that Florence Maybrick should suffer for a crime in regard to which she has never been called upon to answer before any lawful tribunal.

“Is it not obvious that if the attempt to murder had been the offense for which she was arraigned, the course of the defense would have been different? I speak as her counsel of what I know. Read the report of the defense, and you will see that I devoted my whole strength to and massed the evidence upon the point that the prosecution had misconceived the facts, that the foundation on which the whole case rested was rotten, for that, in fact, there was no murder; that, on the contrary, the deceased had died from natural causes.

“It is true that incidental reference was[244] made to certain alleged acts of Florence Maybrick, but the references were incidental only; the stress of my ............