Depositions as to Mr. Maybrick’s Arsenic Habit
On August 10, Henry Bliss, former proprietor of Sefton Club and Chambers, Liverpool, made a sworn deposition, in which he said:
“Mr. Maybrick lived in the chambers on and off several months, and was in the habit of dosing himself. On one occasion he asked me to leave a prescription at a well-known Liverpool chemist’s to be made up by the time he left ‘Change. The chemist remarked: ‘He ought to be very careful and not take an overdose of it.’”
On March 31, 1891, Franklin George Bancroft, artist and writer, of Columbia, S. C., made a sworn deposition, in which he said:
“1. Between the years 1874 and 1876 I was personally acquainted with James Maybrick, late of Battlecrease House, Aigburth, near Liverpool, merchant, deceased, who was then living in Norfolk, Va. I was frequently in his company, and from time to time I have seen him take from his vest pocket a case resembling a cigarette case, which contained a packet of white powders, and place the contents of one such powder on several occasions into the glass of wine (usually Chablis, claret, or champagne) he was at the time drinking, and swallow the same.
“2. Seeing him take this powder, I did, on one occasion, ask him what it was, and the said James Maybrick replied, ‘Longevity and fair complexion, my boy!’ and he subsequently informed me that the said white powders were composed of arsenic among other ingredients.”
Justice Stephen’s Retirement
There are also facts in relation to the judge who tried the case which, had they been anticipated at the time of the trial, could not have failed to have had some weight, directly or indirectly, on the minds of the jury; that is to say, his retirement from the Bench not long afterward, in April, 1891, when, to quote his own words in addressing the Bar, of whom he was taking leave, “he had been made acquainted with the fact that he was regarded by some as no longer physically capable of discharging his duties”; and it will be no matter of surprise, to those who have read critically the summing-up of Mr. Justice Stephen on this trial, to notice the entire change from a favorable bias between his address to the jury on the first days of the trial to the violent hostility shown at its conclusion.
This change of front can be in a manner accounted for, as it had been suggested to the prisoner’s friends, by a conversation on the case between Mr. Justice Stephen and another member of the Bench, Mr. Justice Grantham, at a social meeting of an entirely private character.