Mrs. Maybrick's Own Story: My Fifteen Lost YearsMaybrick, Florence Elizabeth
History
Mrs. Maybrick's Own Story: My Fifteen Lost Years
Maybrick, Florence Elizabeth
Maybrick, Florence Elizabeth, 1862-1941; Trials (Murder) -- England; Women prisoners -- England
“The former conviction for which Mr. Adolf Beck was sentenced and
punished was not only never submitted to the jury, but they were
warned by the judge that they were not to take the issue of Beck being
Smith into consideration in arriving at their verdict. They were to
dismiss it completely from their minds.
“I have proved that if this issue had been left for the jury to
consider they must have acquitted Mr. Beck, who showed by an
indisputable alibi that he could not be Smith, the man convicted in
1877.
“I have proved that this terrible mockery of justice, the conviction
of an innocent man for a series of crimes that it was quite impossible
he could have committed, was brought about by the action of the
leading counsel for the Treasury, which action was supported by the
Common Sergeant, Sir Forrest Fulton.
“I have proved that the evidence of the policeman, Eliss Spurrell,
which was used at the police-court to assist in getting Beck committed
for trial, was kept out at the Old Bailey, where it would have insured
Beck’s acquittal.
“I have proved that at the police-court in 1896 Mr. Gurrin, the
Treasury expert, reported that all the documents connected with the
1896 frauds were in the handwriting of John Smith of 1877.
“I have proved that at the 1896 trial at the Old Bailey Mr. Gurrin
swore that, to the best of his belief, all the documents were in the
disguised handwriting of Mr. Beck.
“I have proved that no one in his senses could at the trial have
accepted the theory that Adolf Beck was John Smith after listening to
the evidence of Major Lindholm, Gentleman of the Chamber to the King
of Denmark, Col. Josiah Harris, and the Consul-General for Peru at
Liverpool.
“The Common Sergeant accepted as true their evidence of a complete
alibi for Mr. Beck, so far as 1877 and the years Smith was in prison
were concerned, or he would, it is to be presumed, have taken measures
to have those gentlemen prosecuted for committing wilful and corrupt
perjury in order to defeat the ends of justice.
“I have proved that Beck, after his imprisonment, compelled the Home
Office authorities to acknowledge that he was not Smith, and to admit
the physical impossibility of his being Smith--Smith was a Jew, and
he, Beck, was not--and that therefore, by the evidence of the Treasury
witnesses, he had been wrongfully committed.
“I have proved that Beck was stripped and officially examined for body
marks before his trial, in order that such marks might be compared
with those on the record in the possession of the authorities as the
body marks of John Smith.
“I have proved that Adolf Beck had none of the body marks of John
Smith, the man in whose handwriting Mr. Gurrin had declared the
incriminating documents of 1896 to be.
“I have proved that all the petitions setting forth these facts
and others, which fully established Beck’s innocence, met with no
consideration.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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