Henry W. Lucy on Lord Russell
The Strand Magazine, London, in its November number, 1900, published an article by Henry W. Lucy, Esq., who, speaking of the late Lord Chief Justice Russell, says:
“The most remarkable episode in Charles Russell’s career at the bar undoubtedly was his defense of Mrs. Maybrick.
“I happened to find myself in the same hotel with him at Liverpool on the morning of the day set down for the opening of the trial. At breakfast he spoke in confident terms of his client’s innocence and of the surety of her acquittal. He did not take into account the passing mood of the judge who tried the case, and so found himself out of his reckoning; but the verdict of the jury, still less the summing-up of Fitz-James Stephen, did not shake his conviction. Sir Charles Russell was of all men least likely to be misled by appearances or deliberate deception; having probed the case to the bottom, having turned his piercing eyes on the woman in the dock, having talked to her in private and studied her in public, he was convinced of her innocence.
“Lord Landoff was a lawyer of high position at the English bar when, as Mr. Henry Matthews, he came into the Home Office.
“The verdict of the jury was ‘guilty,’ and her sentence was death, which was a real surprise, as was afterward learned, even to the judge, Sir Fitz-James Stephen. If Mr. Matthews believed her guilty, he should not have commuted her sentence upon the ground that he assigned. If she was guilty she well deserved death on the scaffold. The evidence, however, satisfied Mr. Matthews that there was reasonable doubt that the death of Mr. Maybrick was due to arsenic. In this view, as is well known, he was sustained by Justice Stephen. If such a doubt really came into Mr. Matthews’s mind, as was made the ground of the commutation of the sentence, under English law that doubt entitled the accused to acquittal.
“Why he lacked the courage of his convictions can only be surmised. At all events he did not dare to take the responsibility of allowing her to be executed.
“The intercession of the American Government through Mr. Blaine, Secretary of State, was urgent, strong, and most intense. It is incredible that Mr. Matthews desired any loophole to release her. The case was full of them.
“Sir Matthew White-Ridley was not a lawyer, and there is no probability that he ever read the evidence in the case, which was voluminous. He could not have read the papers in three days if he had attempted it. He simply followed his predecessor’s line and was not able to take up the case on its merits.”