Misdirection as to Mrs. Maybrick’s Access to Poisons
The purchase and soaking of fly-papers is the only direct evidence of the possession of arsenic in any form by Mrs. Maybrick, but the judge told the jury, and it is submitted it is a gross misdirection, that Mrs. Maybrick “undoubtedly had access to considerable quantities of arsenic in other forms,” inasmuch as the only evidence as to such access was that after the death of James Maybrick these two women, Mrs. Briggs and Alice Yapp, who exhibited the most unfriendly feeling toward her, said they had found in the house certain stores of arsenic.
It is submitted for the serious consideration of counsel that the circumstances under which these two women produced these stores of arsenic are so suspicious as to justify the suggestion that that arsenic was not there before his death, and that Mrs. Maybrick never did have any access to it or knowledge of it at all. There was no evidence as to where or by whom this arsenic was obtained, nor was there any evidence that the police had made any effort to discover where, when, or by whom that arsenic was procured.
[Note.—How and when this arsenic may have been procured by Mr. Maybrick himself will appear further on as a part of the new evidence.]
The places in which arsenic was found were open and accessible to every one in the house, and no person gave any evidence that he or she had ever seen it in the house before these two women found it after death.
As regards the black powder (arsenic mixed with charcoal) and the two solutions of arsenic produced by Mrs. Briggs and Alice Yapp, Mr. Davies, the analyst, gave evidence that, when analyzing the contents of the various bottles, he had searched diligently and microscopically for any traces, and could find no trace of charcoal having been introduced into any of them. So this circumstantial evidence may be eliminated.
As regards white arsenic, also produced by these women, it must be observed that not only was it not shown that Mrs. Maybrick had purchased any, but it is submitted that the judge ought to have pointed out to the jury, as the fact is, that it would have been almost impossible for her or any woman to have obtained any white arsenic at all. No shopkeeper dare sell it to any one except to a medical man, and even then under the stringent restrictions of the Sale of Poison Act.
At the trial a wholesale druggist (Thompson, of Liverpool) gave evidence that James Maybrick constantly visited his cousin, who had been in his employment at his stores, where he could have obtained white arsenic from him without any difficulty; and it will be observed that it was found in his hatbox.
It is a remarkable thing in this connection that, while Edwin Maybrick called the police in on Sunday night, and gave them the black solutions and white solutions which Mrs. Briggs had found on the Sunday morning, he did not give them the black powder which Alice Yapp had found on the-night before; and, in fact, that Michael Maybrick did not give it to the police until Tuesday, the 14th.
It is also a remarkable fact that, although these black solutions and that white solution of arsenic and that solid arsenic which Mrs. Briggs had found, were not handed by the police to the analyst until several days afterward, and were therefore not known to be arsenic by anybody, yet Mrs. Briggs was able to inform Mrs. Maybrick on Tuesday, the 14th, as was testified to, that these bottles contained arsenic.
It is submitted that Mrs. Briggs could not have known that without some other means of knowledge than looking at them.
The importance of this misdirection of the judge as to the question of possession of arsenic by Mrs. Maybrick can not be overstated. It was conclusively shown that no decoction of fly-papers or of the black powder was the source of the arsenic with which certain articles found in the house and office were said to be infected, because the analyst said he had searched for the fibers of the papers and for the charcoal, and could not find any traces of either. If Mrs. Maybrick knew of the pure arsenic, why should she have bought the fly-papers, either for a cosmetic purpose or murder, and what should she have wanted with “poison for cats?”