In those portions taken at the exhumation, the total result of the search for arsenic in the body was that Mr. Davies actually found unweighable arsenic, 2/100 of a grain, in the liver, and Dr. Stevenson 76/1000 of a grain in the liver and 15/1000 in the intestines, making, when all added together, the total amount as found by Mr. Davies and Dr. Stevenson about one-tenth of a grain, made up of minute fractional portions of one-hundredths and one-thousandths.
It was shown in evidence that the smallest fatal dose of arsenic ever recorded was two grains, which was in the case of a woman, and who presumably was not an arsenic-eater.
It was shown in evidence that in the year 1888 Mrs. Maybrick had asked Dr. Hopper (who was at that time, and had been for many years, their regular medical attendant) to speak to Mr. Maybrick and prevent him taking certain medicines, which were doing him harm; that early in March she made the same appeal to Dr. Humphreys, suggesting at the time that Mr. Maybrick was taking a white powder, which she thought was strychnin.
At the magisterial inquiry Dr. Humphreys stated that Mrs. Maybrick had, on the occasion of his being called in to the patient on the 28th of April, also spoken to him about her husband taking this white powder, and that in consequence of this he asked Mr. Maybrick about taking strychnin and nux vomica.
Counsel will find proof, in the evidence given at the trial by Dr. Hopper, Mr. Heaton, Nicholas Bateson, Esq., Capt. Richard Thompson, Thomas Stansell, and Sir James Poole, ex-Mayor of Liverpool, as to the arsenic habit of James Maybrick and his opportunities for obtaining the drug. [To which must now be added the statutory declaration of Valentine Charles Blake, son of the late Sir Valentine Blake, M.P., that he, about two months prior to Mr. Maybrick’s death, had procured him 150 grains of arsenic.] It may be stated here that from the appearance of the little bottles in which the white arsenic was found, they had been in use for a long time and were such as would be found as sample bottles in the offices of business houses to which it is unlikely Mrs. Maybrick would have access.
It is submitted that the discovery of such a tiny quantity of arsenic in the body of a man addicted to such extraordinary habits might reasonably be accounted for by those habits.
Conflict of Medical Opinion
The conflict of medical opinion which was exhibited on this trial arose upon the point as to whether arsenic had been the cause of the gastro-enteritis, of which it was admitted that the man died.
There was no conflict of medical opinion on the facts that the quantity found in the body was insufficient to cause death, nor that gastro-enteritis might be set up by a vast variety of things besides arsenic—in fact, by any impure food or by excessive alcohol or by getting wet through. It was shown in evidence that Mr. Maybrick got wet through at the Wirrall Races on the 27th of April, and that he afterward went in his wet clothes to dinner at a friend’s on the other side of the Mersey.
The conflict of medical opinion amounted to this, that the Crown called Drs. Carter and Humphreys, who both admitted that they had never previously attended a case of arsenical poisoning, nor had ever before attended a post-mortem examination of a person whose death had been attributed to arsenic—in short, that they had had no experience whatever. The Crown also called Dr. Stevenson (who had not attended the deceased, but had conducted the analysis of parts of the body) as an expert in poisoning, and he said, as to the symptoms during life: “There is no distinctive diagnostic symptom of arsenical poisoning. The diagnostic thing is finding the arsenic.”