Dr. Barron did not see the patient, but assisted at the post-mortem examination, and stated that, judging by the appearances and apart from what he had heard, he was unable to identify arsenic as the particular poison which had set up the inflammation.
Now, assuming for a moment that this issue as to the cause of death rested entirely upon the uncontradicted testimony of these three doctors called for the prosecution, Humphreys, Carter, and Barron, the jury would not have been justified in coming to the conclusion that there was no reasonable doubt that arsenic poisoning was the cause of death. The doctors themselves had admitted that they were unable to arrive at that conclusion, apart from the evidence that arsenic was found in the body. The idea of arsenical poisoning never occurred to them from the symptoms, until the use of arsenic was first suggested.
The doctors could not say that death resulted from arsenic poisoning, and yet the jury have actually found that it did, in the face of the opinions of three eminent medical experts, who say it did not.
Even if these doctors had never been called at all for the defense, the jury were yet not justified in taking the evidence of Drs. Humphreys, Carter, and Barron, in the terms which they themselves never intended to pledge themselves to, namely, to exclude a reasonable doubt that death was due to arsenic.
Let us consider the position of the medical men called for the defense: Drs. Tidy, Macnamara, and Paul are the highest authorities on medical and chemical jurisprudence in Great Britain. No sort of hesitation or doubt attached to the opinions of any of them, and their experience of post-mortem examinations was referred to, as including in the practise of Dr. Tidy, the Crown analyst, some forty cases of arsenic poisoning alone. Dr. Macnamara indorsed the opinion of Dr. Tidy. In addition to that, there was on the same side the evidence of Dr. Paul, professor of medical jurisprudence and toxicology at University College, Liverpool, with an experience of three or four thousand post-mortem examinations. It is impossible to conjecture by what process of reasoning the jury could have come to the conclusion, upon the evidence before them, that it was beyond a reasonable doubt that Mr. Maybrick had met his death by arsenical poisoning.
This volume of evidence before the jury pointed not only to a doubt as to the cause of death, but to a reasonable conclusion that it was not due to arsenical poisoning. It is inconceivable that the jury should have found as they did, except under the mandatory direction of the judge, which left them apparently no alternative but to substitute his opinions and judgment for their own, so that on that issue the finding was not so much the finding of the jury, to which the prisoner was by law entitled, but the finding of the judge, of whom the jury, abrogating their own functions, became the mere mouthpieces.
The Administration Of Arsenic
The consideration of the facts as given in evidence also covers the second issue which the jury had to determine, namely, whether, if arsenic poisoning was the cause of death, it was the prisoner who administered it with criminal intent. The evidence on this point was most inconclusive.
No one saw the prisoner administer arsenic to her husband.
She had no opportunity of giving her husband anything since one or two o’clock on Wednesday afternoon (8th of May), after which she was closely watched by the nurses. It was not shown that any food or drink administered to the deceased by the prisoner contained arsenic. It was not shown that the prisoner had placed arsenic in any food or drink intended for her husband’s use. Nor, in fact, was any found, although searched for, in any food or medicine of which Mr. Maybrick partook during his illness, except the arsenic in Fowler’s solution, prescribed and administered by Dr. Humphreys himself.