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 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 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.”