“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.”
Lord Russell’s Conviction of Mrs. Maybrick’s Innocence
This statement of Mr. Lucy is of great value as an answer to the assault made on Lord Russell’s memory after his death, on his firm belief in my innocence.
Lord Hugh Cecil wrote to a constituent: