I do not assume that I can solve a problem that has puzzled so many able minds, but I trust I shall make clear that the prosecution can not acquit itself of the inference of “cooking” up a case against me with reference to this meat-juice incident:
1. At the inquest, only a few days after the occurrence, Nurse Gore testified, “I could and did see clearly what Mrs. Maybrick did with the bottle,” though she failed to tell what she saw; and it is remarkable she was not further questioned on this point. At the magisterial inquiry and trial, per contra, she testified that “she [I] pushed the door to conceal (note the animus) her [my] movements”; but on cross-examination she so far corrected herself as to say: “Mrs. Maybrick did not shut the dressing-room door.”
2. When I returned with the bottle to the sick-room, she testified that I placed it on the table in a “surreptitious manner,” though this action, according to her own testimony, happened while “she [I] raised her right hand and replaced the bottle on the table, while she [I] was talking to me [her].”
If one wanted to do such an act “surreptitiously,” would one choose the moment of all others when by conversation one is calling attention to oneself? Do not the two things involve a direct contradiction?
3. It is in evidence that an hour after I had placed the bottle on a little table in the window, I returned to the room and removed it from the table to the washstand (where it remained during most of the next day), lest the sight of it should renew Mr. Maybrick’s desire for it, as he had just awakened. Note how this bottle is juggled with by the witnesses for the prosecution.
Michael Maybrick, at the inquest, in answer to the question, “Where did you find the Valentine’s meat juice?” replied: “I found it on a little table mixed up with several other bottles.” Note the particularity of this bottle being mixed up with several other bottles. Obviously he at this time, only a few days after the event, had a clear picture of the situation in his mind. In corroboration of this testimony that the bottle he took was on the table and not on the washstand, there is the testimony of Nurse Callery, who at the inquest stated: “My attention was called by her [Nurse Gore] to a bottle of Valentine’s meat juice, which was on a table in Mr. Maybrick’s room. I took a sample. I don’t know what became of the bottle of meat juice. I saw Mr. Michael Maybrick in the room before going off duty at 4.50 P.M. on Friday, but did not see him take the meat juice away.”
Nurse Gore gave her testimony at the inquest after the two others, and deposed that Mr. Michael Maybrick took the bottle from the washstand where I had placed it, thus contradicting Michael Maybrick, and in a way also Nurse Callery, who testified that Nurse Gore called her attention to a bottle on the small table. Obviously this difference introduces two bottles; but this would never answer the prosecution, and accordingly Mr. Michael Maybrick at the trial dropped the table sworn to at the inquest and fell in line with Nurse Gore in so far as to say: “It was standing on the washstand, and it was among some other bottles.” Note that, while he substitutes the washstand for the table, he still clings to the bottles—a most important circumstance—as it was indubitably shown that there were on the washstand only the “ordinary basins and jugs” (water pitchers). Obviously Mr. Michael Maybrick had not fully comprehended the purpose of the prosecution in “harmonizing” the testimony with that of Nurse Gore; the “bottles” were too clearly in his mind to be dropped without a distinct effort, and he naturally introduced them again; and, to fit in with the Nurse Gore and the amended Mr. Michael Maybrick evidence, Nurse Callery also changed front at the trial, and the table of her inquest testimony is also turned into a washstand. It is in evidence that as late as the 6th of May my husband took meat juice out of a bottle then in the room, the contents of which, however, did not agree with him, and upon the order of Dr. Humphreys its giving was discontinued, he adding that he was “not surprised,” as it was known not to agree with some people.
Although this was the doctor’s order, Mr. Edwin Maybrick took it upon himself to procure a fresh bottle, and, distinctly against the same order, Nurse Gore set about to administer its contents. Subsequently a bottle of meat juice, half full, was found in a small wooden box with other bottles (one of them containing arsenic in solution) in my husband’s hat-box.
Nevertheless, though we are here undeniably dealing with three meat-juice bottles, only two were accounted for at the trial. What became of the third bottle? And which of the three was missing? Now, furthermore, it is in evidence that Nurse Callery handled one of these bottles (between the time that I placed one on the washstand and the time when Mr. Michael Maybrick, more than twelve hours later, took one either from the table or the washstand for analysis), for she took a sample of it, which she afterward threw away.