They All Love Jack

by Bruce Robinson

  The doctors concurred, agreeing it was quite right that he had told them. But what he told them betrays what he was really thinking. It was all accusation, and no cure. Any sincere actor would have put the patient first, or at least included him. If James was dying of arsenic, where was the antidote? At no time during his protracted journey to the grave did Michael raise the question of an antidote, and none was ever given.

  ‘We heard all there was to say,’ wrote Carter, ‘that only so late as the middle of April the patient had been able to eat ordinary food at his [Michael’s] house; that he had soon been subject to sick attacks after returning home; that this contrast between the condition of health while at and away from home, had been the subject of remark, and had been noticed before; that there had been a most serious estrangement between husband and wife; that the wife was known to have been unfaithful, and that just before the commencement of his illness, she was known to have procured many fly papers.’72

  Not a word about ‘the London Medicine’, the ‘Blucher’ letter or the ‘white powders’ that had caused Florence to write to Michael in March. The bastard was laying his pipe. I think this deceitful conference affords an accurate template for something similar in respect of James. I don’t know what words were whispered in London, any more than I know what was whispered between Michael and Yapp; but I know that similar covert accusations were made against James into equally receptive ears. Michael must have believed he was some sort of criminal genius. His plan had become the authorities’ plan, and that was to shut Florence Maybrick up – he for his reasons, they for theirs: HATE and fear respectively. To be told (as he was forced to reveal with an unbearable sense of duty) that James was Jack, and that she knew, was all that was necessary.

  The Whitechapel side of this scenario was of course kept secret at Battlecrease House, while the other was robustly promoted. Every move Florence made was watched by unfriendly eyes, and those so predisposed could see what Michael had told them to see. Even walking into another room had acquired connotations. As soon as you begin to spy on anyone they will begin to fulfil your expectations. If there’s nothing to see, you will think you have missed it, and as with any paranoid state beguiled by its own propaganda, broaden your surveillance to spy more intently. Michael was whispering ‘arsenic’ into every ear but the most important of them all. To his beloved brother he said nothing. No way could he infect that ear with rubbish about flypapers, because if James had had the strength he would have laughed in his face. Such idiocy was left to the physicians to discount, and that’s precisely what Dr Carter did. On the evening of 9 May he returned to his surgery with samples of James’s excrement and urine. Both were subjected to scrutiny by means of a process known as the ‘Marsh test’.

  For those who knew how, it was simple and 100 per cent accurate. Had the slightest trace of metallic poison been present in either sample, a residual trace would have shown up on a piece of copper foil. Carter ran the test twice, and both times the results were negative. There was no arsenic in James’s body, so the only certainty is that Florence wasn’t killing him with incremental doses of it. Had this conclusive evidence – most vital to the proof of her innocence – been promoted in her defence, there would have been no case for the Crown to cook up. But evidence was incidental to the trial’s nefarious intention, and most unfortunately Michael had made Florence the poisonous star of the so-called ‘Maybrick Mystery’.

  It was either the Irish Judas or Carter himself who caused this testimony to be suppressed at the ‘trial’. Somebody must have treated Carter to a whisper. Writing of him seventy years later, the historian Nigel Morland pre-empts my suspicion: ‘Nothing is quite so peculiar in the Maybrick case as the behaviour of Dr Carter.’73 He questioned why the physician kept his trap shut over the negative results of the excrement test, yet opened it wide in court over a positive show of arsenic in a bottle of meat juice. The bottle in question came out of Michael Maybrick’s pocket, and it is interesting that both he and Mrs Hughes (Matilda Briggs’s sister) knew it had been adulterated with arsenic before Carter or anyone else had even put it to the test.

  ADDISON: Do you recollect that arsenic was traced and had been found in a bottle of Valentine’s meat juice?

  HUGHES: Yes.

  ADDISON: When did you learn about the Valentine’s meat juice? Was it from Doctor Carter you heard it?

  HUGHES: No.

  ADDISON: From whom?

  HUGHES: Mr Michael Maybrick.74

  Sir Charles Russell let this pass, but not so Alexander Macdougall. ‘Now,’ he asked, ‘how came Michael Maybrick to know that arsenic had been found in the meat juice on Saturday? Doctor Carter had certainly not told him so. He had taken the bottle back with him on Saturday to test. He could not have told Michael Maybrick arsenic had been found in the meat juice because he didn’t know it himself.’ In reality, it wasn’t until fourteen days later that the City Analyst confirmed it.75

  So how did Michael Maybrick know there was arsenic in the meat juice? It’s either a handy adjunct to the ‘mystery’, or the more cynical amongst us might think he put it in there himself. He and Edwin were constantly in and out of the sickroom, with as much opportunity to poison James as anyone else. The only difference is that they weren’t suspected, and Florence Maybrick was. On Friday, 10 May, Michael walked into James’s room and converted a perfectly blameless activity into a melodrama of the murderess caught in the act. Nurse Gore had been relieved by Nurse Callery, and had asked Florence to pour medicine from one bottle into another so it might be shaken. ‘Florie!’ Michael roared, doubtless barging in to snatch it, ‘how dare you tamper with the medicine!’76 Much was made of this incident at the ‘trial’, although her defence neglected to mention that Callery had asked Florence to do it to rid the bottle of sediment.77

  Florence was utterly crushed, and downstairs in the kitchen she wept, her wretchedness compounded with the exhaustion of nursing James. ‘I am blamed for all of this,’ she said, in an agony to understand why. Comfort came from the cook, Mrs Humphreys, one of the few she could rely on for a sympathetic ear. ‘She said her position was not worth anything in the house,’ said Humphreys in evidence, ‘that she was not even allowed to go into the master’s bedroom to give him his medicine.’

  Crying ‘very bitterly for a quarter of an hour’, Florence accused Michael of being the engine of it all: ‘This is all through Mr Michael Maybrick,’ she wept. ‘He had always had a spite against her since her marriage.’78

  ADDISON: Did it seem to you that she was attending to her husband?

  HUMPHREYS: She seemed very kind to him and spent all her time with him.

  ADDISON: And when she told you she had been blamed, you took her part?

  HUMPHREYS: Yes I did, because I thought she was doing her best under the circumstances. She was very much grieved over it, and was very sorry. She was crying.

  ADDISON: You knew she was set aside by her brothers and these nurses?

  HUMPHREYS: Yes, she was set aside.

  Neither Humphreys nor the parlourmaid Mary Cadwallader, ‘had the slightest doubt over Florence’s innocence’, wrote Macdougall after interviewing both, ‘and do not believe and never did believe for one moment that Mrs Maybrick had a thought of compassing her husband’s death’.79

  As to the flypapers, Humphreys said, ‘There had been joking in the kitchen about the fly-papers when Bessie Brierley came down and said there were some soaking in the bedroom, and joking going on between Alice Yapp and Alice Grant, the gardener’s wife, about the Flannagan case,80 but they thought nothing about it except as a joke.’

  Here was the provenance, under Michael’s tutelage, for the transformation of flypapers from banter into a means of murder. It was a kitchen nonsense. ‘It was all done so openly,’ continued Humphreys, ‘and certainly no thought entered their minds of suspecting Mrs Maybrick till Michael Maybrick came to the house on the 8th of May and took control in the way he did.’81

  That night Michael and Ed
win went into James’s bedroom and tried to bully him into signing some papers. Although near to death, James found the air to raise a shout that was heard all over the house. ‘Oh Lord! If I am to die, why am I to be worried like this? Let me die properly.’ His protests were ‘very violent’ and ‘very loud’. Both Humphreys and Cadwallader saw Edwin come out of the room with a paper in his hand, and they said that Alice Yapp, ‘knowing and hearing everything’, told them that the brothers had been trying to get James to sign a new will.82 Maybe this is correct, but I think it more likely they were after a sign-over of the company shares. Notwithstanding that, Michael was having difficulties finding the original will. Their other brother, Thomas Maybrick, had arrived from Manchester, and he told Humphreys that the ‘Will had been left very awkward’ – awkward that is, for the murderous duo who were in the business of creating another one.

  We shall be two lucky fellows ha ha.

  Humphreys was not alone in balancing her dislike of Michael Maybrick with distrust. ‘Michael, the son of a bitch should have his throat cut,’ was the view of James’s friend Charles Ratcliffe. In a letter to Florence Aunspaugh’s father John, he described the evolving nightmare, conjured in raw wickedness, that was soon to swallow Florence: ‘When Michael took possession and put Mrs Briggs in charge, she [Florence] was subjected to all kinds of insults and ill-treatment by Briggs and the servants. She was not allowed to have any visits from her friends. She was cursed and given impudent answers whenever she made a request of them.’83

  Florence was isolated in a house full of people. Apart from her children, her only friend whose love was unequivocal was James. ‘He wanted her with him always,’ said Cadwallader, ‘and asked for her when she was not.’ No one had nursed him with more humanity than his wife, sitting with him night after night; and though she may no longer have loved him, she brought him comfort. It was this solicitude that Michael converted into her cunning.

  By now there seemed no hope of recovery. Yet another uniform had arrived from the Liverpool Institute as a relief for Callery. Susan Wilson was perfect gas-lit casting, a carbolic presence, unpleasant as she was fat. Like her predecessor she would appear for the prosecution, but she had little to contribute, and I’d hardly trouble with her were it not for her name. Wilson had a brother called Harry, whose supposed death two years later is of interest to this narrative.

  Michael was in and out of the sickroom, shuffling medicines around and confiscating a bottle of brandy that he gave to Carter for testing. This suggests that brandy was still being given to James, otherwise why hand it over for analysis? I think it was brandy that Edwin used to disguise hotshots of laudanum.

  Having discovered nothing untoward in James’s bedpan, it seems the physicians had satisfied themselves that Michael was mistaken, and not bothering to look for anything but arsenic, compounded their ignorance by picking up where they had left off. Between 27 April, when ‘the London Medicine’ arrived, and the expiration of their patient, the two quacks Humphreys and Carter had prescribed everything but motor oil and Vim from under the sink. In fourteen days they poured enough crap into James’s gut to kill him, with or without the intercession of Michael and Edwin Maybrick.

  Here’s the menu: tincture of nux vomica (strychnine), Plummer’s Pills (antimony), cascara sagrada, hydrocyanic acid (prussic acid), bromide of potassium, tincture of henbane, Seymour’s papaine and iridan, morphia suppository, ipecacuanha (to stop sickness due to the morphia), Valentine’s meat juice, Condy’s Fluid, Fowler’s Solution (arsenic), Brand’s beef tea, Sanitas, antipyrine, tincture of jaborandi, chlorine water, bismuth, opium suppository, sulphonal, cocaine, nitro glycerine, phosphoric acid (and brandy and soda, given by Edwin).84

  Handing Carter the brandy was a bit of a masterstroke. It proved to be unadulterated, so its presence was established as benign. The quacks may have missed Edwin handing out the drinks, but why didn’t they suspect any other poison, even something as obvious as strychnine? ‘White powders’ had been the focus of Florence’s anxieties, and she’d discussed them with Humphreys in March. It’s notable that he confirmed such a conversation at the magisterial hearings, but said nothing of it at the ‘trial’.

  Nor was anything said of the will and James’s torment at the threshold of death, or about Florence saving his life. In court ‘the London Medicine’ was redacted in favour of strong tea. Nobody spoke on behalf of this innocent woman, accused by a psychopath and framed by Her Majesty’s men in wigs.

  On the morning of Saturday, 11 May, the day on which James was to die, Florence poured her desperation into a letter to Dr Hopper. It was he who had effected the reconciliation between herself and James after the Grand National débâcle, and he was one of the few people she felt she could trust. Her text makes it clear that the physician knew everything about her and James’s marital strife, including the adulterous liaison with Brierley at Flatman’s Hotel.

  Dear Doctor Hopper,

  I am sure you must have heard of Jim’s dangerous illness, and no doubt feel that I ought to have called you in to see him. My misery is great and my position such a painful one that when I tell you that both my brothers-in-law are here and have taken the nursing of Jim and management of my house completely out of my hands, you will understand how powerless I am to assert myself. I am in great need of a friend! Michael, whom Jim informed of the unhappiness existing between us last month, now accuses me as being the primary cause of Jim’s present critical state, to which want of proper care from me as regards his nourishment and medical attention may be added. Michael hardly speaks to me. I am neither cheered nor told the worst. I am a mere cypher in my own house, ignored and overlooked. I am too utterly brokenhearted to struggle against myself or anyone else; all I want to do is die, too. I should like to see you – you as a medical attendant. Could you not call as a friend and ask to see me? I have not been to bed since Sunday, for although I may not nurse Jim, I will at least be near to him to see what is done. It is terrible. How shall I bear it? I have no one to turn to, and my husband’s brothers are cold hearted and brutal men. Because I have sinned once, must I be misjudged always? Yours distractedly,

  F.E. Maybrick.

  Although mentioned by Hopper in his deposition at the ‘trial’, this text wasn’t read into the record, and the letter itself disappeared for another forty years. It does nothing to support the veracity of Florence’s 8 May letter to Brierley that was supposedly intercepted by Yapp, but rather buries whatever putative credibility that letter ever had. How is it remotely possible for Florence to write that James had told Michael everything in April, and then to write that James ‘is perfectly ignorant of everything’ in May? ‘Because I have sinned once’ must have been old news to Hopper, and cannot refer to walking up a racecourse with Brierley, but to the night spent with him in a London hotel.

  Every anomaly in the Yapp letter is here explained. I don’t believe for a second that that letter was written on 8 May, but on or about 29 March, when ‘since my return’ makes sense. Florence returned from London on 28 March, and I think she wrote the letter on 29 March, after the Grand National altercation, but that because of the reconciliation engineered by Hopper on the following day, it was never sent. Michael didn’t mention it to Humphreys on 8 May, or to Carter on 9 May, when its impact would have enhanced the ‘motive’ he was trying to sell. He clearly didn’t have it yet. I don’t think it was found until Briggs & Company searched the house on 11 May, Mrs Briggs squatting to make her incriminating amendments before Michael handed it on to the police.

  The substance of this Brierley letter was a vicious compilation, designed to ensnare Mrs Maybrick. Its provenance was faked, its contents were faked, just as the accusation of intent to murder with arsenic out of flypapers was faked. These charges were put up in an English court, not to determine justice – far from it – but to counter a perceived threat to a ruling executive which included Freemasonry and its Boss Apron the Prince of Wales. It was upon these two false charges that the Crown o
f England sought to put Florence Maybrick to death.

  She never got the visit from Hopper. Later that day she fell into a ‘mysterious swoon’, and was carried into a bedroom by Edwin. A majority of authors, whether for or against her, believe something she had eaten or drunk was spiked with chloral hydrate, and I don’t demur from that, but would add that anything in this house with the word ‘mystery’ attached is a cast-iron euphemism for ‘deceit’.

  Michael wanted Florence silenced so he and the coppers could get about the task of concocting ‘evidence’. The trap had snapped, and she wouldn’t get out of it until she was forty-one years old.

  I’ve stayed away from the so-called ‘Diary of Jack the Ripper’. I don’t need it to make my case, and have purposely avoided it. My view of it remains the same as set out in an earlier chapter: don’t try to prove it, see what it might prove. The last few minutes of James Maybrick’s life present an opportunity for a brief reappraisal.

  The ‘Diary’ accuses James of being Jack, and reeks of hatred for his whore-wife. At its ridiculous dénouement – its third act, if you like – it claims that she ‘knows all’ of his homicidal rampage, and asks that she might find the courage to kill him. Like the ‘Blucher’ letter and the ‘Brierley’ letter, it is a forgery, and the only question worth asking is, who forged it?

  James Maybrick’s death gives us a choice of Rippers. The first is a man in ruins, with a gutful of worthless chemicals, gagging at the air while his wife lies unconscious in a mysterious swoon in an adjoining room. She is innocent of poisoning him with flypapers, and ignorant of the wicked charges made against him in this document. She knows nothing of it, and never will.

  And then we have a second Ripper, a commanding, handsome man, in total control of this house and everybody in it. He is my candidate, Michael Maybrick, watching his brother die with accusations of ‘murderess’ against Florence fresh on his lips.