Absence of Concealment by Prisoner
Another remarkable circumstance is the absence of any attempt at concealment on the prisoner’s part. The fly-papers were purchased openly from chemists who knew the Maybricks well, and they were left soaking in such a manner as at once to refute any suggestion of secrecy; and her voluntary statement about the white powder which she placed in the meat juice, as to which there was absolutely no evidence to connect her with its presence there, seems inconsistent with the theory the prosecution attempted to build upon a number of assumptions of which the accuracy was not proved.
The question of the prisoner’s guilt was not capable of being reduced to any issue upon which the prosecution could bring to bear direct evidence; the most they were capable of doing was to show that the prisoner had opportunities of administering poison, which she shared with every individual in the house; further, that she had arsenic in her possession (and this was an open secret, as we have already explained with reference to the fly-papers); and, lastly, that she had the possibility of extracting arsenic in sufficient quantities to cause death, which was, however, extremely doubtful; and then the prosecution tried to complete this indirect evidence by proving that Mr. Maybrick died from arsenic poisoning, which they signally failed to do. The strong point of the prosecution, as they alleged, was that a bottle of Valentine’s meat juice had been seen in her hands on the night of Thursday, the 9th of May, and she replaced it in the bedroom, where it was afterward found by Michael Maybrick, and analyzed by Mr. Davis, who found half a grain of “arsenic in solution”; but there was no direct proof, such as is absolutely necessary to a conviction in a criminal case, of the identity of the bottle seen in Mrs. Maybrick’s hands and that given to the analyst, and there was evidence that it had remained in the bedroom within reach of anybody, Mr. Maybrick himself included, for eighteen hours, and did not until the next day reach the hands of the analyst. These bottles are all alike in appearance, of similar turnip-like shape as the bovril bottles now sold, and it is clear there was more than one, because Dr. Humphreys says in his evidence that on visiting his patient on the 6th of May he found some of the Valentine’s meat extract had made Mr. Maybrick sick, which he was not surprised at, as it often made people sick; while Nurse Gore, speaking of the bottle seen in the hands of Mrs. Maybrick, said it was a fresh, unused bottle, which she had herself opened only an hour before.
No evidence was given of what became of the opened bottle, and the presence of the arsenic having already been accounted for, and the fact recorded that the meat juice was not given to Mr. Maybrick, there is nothing to add to what has already been said, except that the account exactly dovetails with the prisoner’s own voluntary statement.
Can any one, closely following the evidence throughout, fail to be impressed with the inconsistency of Mrs. Maybrick’s conduct in relation to her husband’s illness with a desire to murder him? In all recorded cases of poisoning, the utmost precautions to screen the victim from observation have been observed. In the present instance it would seem as if just the reverse object had been aimed at. We find the prisoner first giving the alarm about the attack of illness; first sending for the doctors, brothers, and friends; first suggesting that something taken by her husband, some drug or medicine, was at the bottom of the mischief. We find the very first thing she does is to administer a mustard emetic—the last thing one would have expected if there had been a desire to poison him. If the prisoner had wished to put everybody in the house, and the doctors themselves, on the scent of poison, she could not have acted differently.
[See also “Mrs. Maybrick’s Own Analysis of the Meat-Juice Incident,” page [366].]