“You have, in the first place, to consider--far be it from me to exclude or try to get others to exclude from their own minds what I must feel myself vividly conscious of--the evidence in this matter. I think every human being in this case must feel vividly conscious of what you have to consider, but I had almost better say you ought not to consider, for fear you might consider it too much, the horrible nature of the inquiry in which you are engaged. I feel that it is a dreadful thing that you are deliberately considering whether you are to convict that woman of really as horribly dreadful a crime as ever any poor wretch who stood in the dock was accused of. If she is guilty--I am saying if my object is rather to heighten your feeling of the solemnity of the circumstances, and in no way to prevent you from feeling as you do feel, and as you ought to feel. I could say a good many other things about the awful nature of the charge, but I do not think it will be necessary to do any one thing. Your own hearts must tell you what it is for a person _to go on administering poison_ to a helpless, sick man, upon whom she has already inflicted a dreadful injury--an injury fatal to married life; the person who could do such a thing as that must be destitute of the least trace of human feeling.” And further on: “We have to consider this not in an unfeeling spirit--far from it--but in the spirit of people resolved to solve _by intellectual means an intellectual problem of great difficulty_.” [Illustration: Copyright by G. G. Rockwood, New York. HON. JOSEPH H. CHOATE, American Ambassador at the Court of St. James, 1899--] Mr. Justice Stephen, in short, instead of putting to the jury for separate answers each of the following three questions: 1. Did this man die of arsenic? 2. Did Mrs. Maybrick administer that arsenic? 3. Did she do it feloniously? invited them to return a verdict of “guilty” or “not guilty” upon a direction of law, wherein he told them that they were to decide it as _an intellectual problem_, on the question which, it is submitted, can be formulated thus: “Might this man have died of arsenic notwithstanding the opinion of the medical experts that he did _not_ die of arsenic?” And the jury answered “Yes.” It is submitted that this was _a gross misdirection_. It may be interesting and applicable to quote from a paper read by Sir Fitzjames Stephen himself at the Science Association in 1884: “It is not to be denied that, so long as great ignorance exists on matters of physical and medical science in all classes, physicians will occasionally have to submit to the mortification of seeing not only the jury, but the bar and bench itself, receive with scornful incredulity or with self-satisfied ignorance evidence which ought to be received with respect and attention.” How prophetic this was as exemplified by his own attitude in this trial need not be pointed out. MISRECEPTION OF EVIDENCE