Verdict in Dispute, by Edgar Marcus Lustgarten
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VERDICT IN DISPUTE 1 By the same author: A CASE TO ANSWER BLONDIE 1SCARIOT VERDICT in DISPUTE EDGAR LUSTGARTEN 526633 ALLAN WINGATE LONDON AND NEW YORK First published mcmxlix by Allan Wingate (Publishers) Limited 12 Beauchamp Place London S W 3 122 East th Street New Set in Linotype Granjon and printed in Great Britain by Billing and Sons Ltd Guildford and Esher PREFACE Six famous murder trials are examined in this book. All six verdicts are open to dispute. Three, in my belief, are demon- strably bad. I have tried not only to analyse the facts but to recreate the atmosphere in which these trials were fought, so that the reader can determine the dominating influences that led to result their unsatisfactory shortcomings of counsel, inepti- tude of judge, prejudice of jury, or any other weakness to which the human race is constitutionally prone. There is reason to suppose that, in British and American courts, miscarriages of justice are relatively rare. But how- ever infrequent, they still affront the conscience, and study of will not if those that disfigure the past be profitless the know- of ledge thereby gained lessens the chance repetition. For ANNE SINNETT CONTENTS FLORENCE MAYBRICK Page 9 STEINIEMORRISON 43 NORMANTHORNE 88 EDITH THOMPSON 127 WILLIAM HERBERT WALLACE 163 LIZZIE BORDEN 2O6 APPENDIX 251 FLORENCE MAYBRICK PLANNED, deliberate killing is no drawing-room accomplish- ment. It needs callousness of heart, insensitivity of mind, in- difference to suffering and contempt for human life. These are grim qualities; repulsive in a man, in a woman against nature. The calculating murderer is vile but comprehensible; the calculating murderess is an enigmatic paradox. Hence the compelling fascination of those cases where a woman stands charged with a premeditated murder. Reason- ing and logic no longer seem sufficient. The onlooker is swayed by imponderable factors : imagination, instinct, the gulf of incongruity between the crime and the accused. He gazes on the figure in the dock; he notes the slight form, the gentle manner, the appealing face. Is it possible, he asks himself, that the Crown case is well-founded? Did Edith Thompson really instigate that crime and lead her victim, unsuspecting, to the appointed place of death? Did Lizzie Borden really slay her stepmother with a hatchet and then calmly wait her chance to slay her father likewise? Was Florence Maybrick really a systematic poisoner who did her beastly work for weeks and watched her husband die? Mrs Thompson, Miss Borden, Mrs Maybrick : in the same dread setting, for the same dread reason, their names have achieved unenviable immortality. And indeed, though widely separated by both time and space, the three women have many things in common. Up to a point, their stories coincide : the charge of murder, the long dramatic trial, a verdict ever after in to a their back- dispute. Up point, grounds coincide : the quiet home, the decent upbringing, VERDICT IN DISPUTE the routine. orderly, respectable Up to a point, their very natures coincide : each a had strong and forceful personality, determined to its preserve independence, and rebelling, in one form or another, against the bondage of domestic life. Only in the last analysis do the three part company, but this final break is radical and sharp. Edith Thompson had passion but no breeding. Lizzie Borden had breeding but no passion. Florence Maybrick had both and therein lies her own peculiar and poignant tragedy. The its Maybrick story, with disastrous denouement, opens in America in 1881. In that year Mr James Maybrick, a Liverpool cotton broker, paid a business visit to the United States. He was in his early forties; a well-to-do bachelor of vigorous physique and sporting inclinations. In the course of his travels he met Miss Florence Chandler, the daughter of a substantial Alabama banker. Florence Chandler was then only eighteen; vivacious, handsome and sexually magnetic. James Maybrick promptly lost his heart and when he returned to England she came with him as his wife. The couple ultimately settled down at Aigburth, where they lived in conditions of considerable affluence. They had a fine large house; they maintained several servants; nothing was wanting for their two children or themselves. On the surface, at any rate, the union seemed happy and the May- brick menage, like a million others, firmly based upon mutual content. Then, in the early part of 1889, Mrs Maybrick embarked on an intrigue. 10 FLORENCE MAYBRICK She had formed an attachment to a man named Brierley, and for a time there is no doubt she supposed herself in love. Brierley 's attractions are a matter for conjecture; he hovers in the of the shadows case, represented only by a chilly, frightened note written some weeks after his conquest was complete. ('We had perhaps better not meet until late in the autumn.') But the simple fact remains: having given her husband a plausible excuse an aunt, she said, was to under- go an operation on March 2ist Mrs Maybrick went to London, where she stayed with Brierley for three nights at an hotel. It should be recalled for enlightenment, not in extenua- tion that her she husband was now fifty and was twenty- six. There are strong grounds for believing that James May- brick had preceded her in a marital offence. But the eighties were the heyday of the sacred Single Standard and his lapse if lapse there was passed straight into oblivion. Hers, when it came to light, outraged the prim Victorian conscience and seriously prejudiced her chances when she came to be tried by a jury of her peers. Mrs Maybrick in due course returned from London and resumed her place as the lady of the house. Mr Maybrick still did not know of her daring escapade. It is doubtful whether he ever did, although Mrs Maybrick later said that, on the day before his death, she made 'full confession' and received 'entire forgiveness'. These expressions, however, are ambiguous. But if there were gaps in Mr Maybrick's knowledge, he was well aware that Brierley paid attention to his wife. Moreover he resented it, and on March 3ist he upbraided Mrs Maybrick in very bitter terms. A violent quarrel fol- lowed, in the course of which it seems he struck her more II VERDICT IN DISPUTE than once in- and gave her a black eye. Mrs Maybrick was dignant and distressed; she threatened to leave home, but there were the children to consider, and, through the family doctor's tactful mediation, the discord was resolved and the partners reconciled. Less than a month later on April 2yth Maybrick showed the first signs of an illness that proved fatal. From that point the scenes flicker like an early film, gather- stricken ing evil momentum as they pass. Maybrick with vomiting and pain; Maybrick better; Maybrick ill again; Mrs Maybrick nursing him herself; doctors; more doctors; an uncertain diagnosis; Maybrick worse; Maybrick better; Maybrick worse than he had ever been; trained nurses sum- moned; Maybrick's brother arriving down from London; Maybrick sinking; Maybrick dying; Maybrick dead. And then the searching of the house and the discovery of in in in in in arsenic; jars, packets, tumblers, pans, bottles, on garments, on rags, on pocket handkerchiefs. This sinister search assumed still graver significance when a quantity of arsenic was found in Maybrick's corpse. Maybrick had died on Saturday, May nth. The post- mortem took place on Monday, May i3th. On Tuesday, May 1 4th, Mrs Maybrick was arrested. 3 The accused's reaction to a charge of murder largely depends on the individual temperament. Some are goaded to hysteri- are are stunned. cal activity, some incredulous, some It makes no difference in a prison cell. There is nothing those outside. Relatives and friends you can do except rely on to must rally your cause; organising sympathy, combating rumour, giving reassurance and preparing your defence. 12 FLORENCE MAYBRICK Mrs Maybrick was devoid of such support. Her relatives were in a distant land, and those whom she had counted among her English friends were mostly nosing round in search of evidence against her. Sympathy was scant, rumour at to offer comfort raged unchecked, and no one was hand or advice. In her extremity Mrs Maybrick wrote to Brierley. 'I am assistance in writing to you', she said, 'to give me every your I in without power in my present fearful trouble. am custody any of my family with me and without money.' the This letter found its way not to Brierley but to police. Forsaken and alone Mrs Maybrick remained until Messrs Cleaver, a firm of Liverpool solicitors, took up the defence of the unhappy lady and briefed Sir Charles Russell to ap- pear on her behalf. Russell was, by common consent, the greatest advocate of de- his generation. One is tempted to go further and roundly clare that the Bar has never known his equal. But in advo- it is the of the cacy, as in acting, hard to measure giants past. is the You can read descriptions of a dead actor, but that not read the same as seeing him on the stage. You can speeches of a dead advocate, but that is not the same as hearing him in court. The force of a character, the magic of a presence, can- not be distilled at second hand. Irving or Garrick ? Russell or Erskine ? No reply can ever be conclusive. But of Russell at least this much may be said. There have been those who, as young men, saw Russell in action and who haunted the courts thereafter for another covered what I once heard fifty years.