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 Liverpool _Daily Post_, as I am told, had been hostile rather than
favorable toward me, but, on the death of Lord Chief Justice Russell,
that journal, in articles of August 13 and 14, 1900, showed that it
fully appreciated the unfairness of my trial, for it stated that no
human being ought to be handed over to be tried by a “mad judge.” The
following is taken from _The Post_ of August 13, 1900:
“The death of the Lord Chief Justice may have recalled to the minds
of some Liverpool folk a sad and sordid tragedy enacted among them
eleven years ago, in which he was a principal performer. To those
who were there, a vivid recollection still persists of that bright
July morning when a thronged court, hushed in expectancy, awaited
the beginning of the Maybrick trial. In fancy one still hears the
distant fanfare of the trumpets as the judges with quaint pageantry
passed down the hall, and still with the mind’s eye sees the stately
crimson-clad figure of the great mad judge as he sat down to try his
last case. A tragedy, indeed, was played upon the bench no less than
in the dock.
“Few who looked upon the strong, square head can have suspected that
the light of reason was burning very low within; yet as the days of
the trial dragged by--days that must have been as terrible to the
judge as to the prisoner--men began to nod at him, to wonder, and to
whisper. Nothing more painful was ever seen in court than the proud
old man’s desperate struggle to control his failing faculties. But the
struggle was unavailing. It was clear that the growing volume of facts
was unassorted, undigested in his mind; that his judgment swayed
backward and forward in the conflict of testimony; that his memory
failed to grip the most salient features of the case for many minutes
together. It was shocking to think that a human life depended upon the
direction of this wreck of what was once a great judge.”
JUSTICE STEPHEN’S BIASED CHARGE
The charge of Mr. Justice Stephen to the jury positively teemed with
misstatements as to the evidence given during the trial. I quote a
statement from the same journal in its issue of August 17, 1900:
“I should be very sorry to think that the same number of errors as to
the matters of fact given in the evidence had ever been made in any
judge’s charge. It simply swarms with them, and as the jury at the end
of a long trial is likely to prefer the judge’s résumé to their own
recollection, I doubt if the verdict in the Maybrick case was founded
on the evidence at all. And if I am right in thinking that the jurors
founded their verdict on the judge’s recapitulation of the evidence
rather than on the evidence itself, I do not see how any counsel could
have saved the prisoner.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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