Did She Kill Him?

A Torrid True Story of Adultery, Arsenic, and Murder in Victorian England

Kate Colquhoun

• Publisher: ABRAMS Press
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781468310344
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Modern British History
• Index: History

"An intriguing story told in the style of Thomas Hardy or George Eliot, if they traded in true crime" ( Kirkus Reviews ). In the summer of 1889, young Southern belle Florence Maybrick stood trial for the alleged arsenic poisoning of her much older husband, Liverpool cotton merchant James Maybrick. The "Maybrick Mystery" had all the makings of a sensation: a pretty, flirtatious woman; resentful, gossiping servants; rumors of gambling and debt; and scandalous mutual infidelity. The case cracked the varnish of Victorian respectability, shocking and exciting the public in equal measure as they clamored to read the latest revelations of Florence's past and glimpse her likeness in Madame Tussaud's. Florence's fate was fiercely debated in the courtroom, on the front pages of the newspapers, and in parlors and backyards across the country. Did she poison her husband? Was her previous infidelity proof of murderous intentions? Was James's own habit of self-medicating to blame for his demise? In this book, historian and CWA Gold Dagger Award nominee Kate Colquhoun recounts an utterly absorbing tale of addiction, deception, and adultery that keeps you asking to the very last page: Did she kill him?

Notes

CHAPTER 1: MARCH 1889

7 When Jim comes: The original of this letter of October 1887 is lost but is quoted in full in Christie, Etched in Arsenic, p. 36.

8 Description of Florence Maybrick: Aunspaugh letters, Christie Papers.

8 protective instincts: Ibid. See also Graham and Emmas, The Last Victim, p. xvii.

7 Description of Battlecrease: Taken from Aunspaugh letters in the Christie Papers; from description of the sale of the contents, Garston and Woolton Reporter, 13 July 1889, p. 4; from my visit, 2012.

9 assertion of their conformity: Flanders, The Victorian House, p. xxxivff.

9 Madame Merle: Henry James, Portrait of a Lady (1881), Chapter 19.

10 businesses on Aigburth Road: Kelly, Kelly’s Directory of Liverpool and Birkenhead, 1894.

10 a fine view: Now Otterspool Park.

10 penny seat: Jones, The Maybrick A to Z, p. 59.

10 two hundred horse-drawn trams: Flanders, Consuming Passions, p. 99.

10 five railway termini: Kelly, op. cit.

11 great caravansaray: Liverpool Review, 26 January 1889.

11 a third of all the country’s business: Christie, op. cit., p. 4.

11 collieries: Kelly, op. cit.

12 Cotton was the king: See, e.g., ‘Latest American Cotton Advices’, Liverpool Mercury, 11 June 1889, for total bales imported.

12 Lancashire cotton mills: Morland, This Friendless Lady, p. 7.

12 I had seen wealth: Armstrong, The Deadly Shame of Liverpool. In 1889 a series of articles entitled ‘Liverpool Slum Life’ appeared weekly in the Liverpool Review, the first running on 1 July (p. 11).

13 poked fun: From the sale catalogue for the contents of Battlecrease, a pair of engravings entitled ‘When a man’s single he lives at his ease’ and ‘When a man’s married, his trouble begins’. There is no proof to substantiate my decision to furnish James Maybrick’s study with these pictures.

14 a man’s life: Oscar Wilde, An Ideal Husband (1895), Act 4.

CHAPTER 2: EXPECTATIONS

15 a monstrous leap: Anthony Trollope, Phineas Redux (1873), quoted in Glendinning, Trollope, p. 140.

16 coats were admirably fitted: Aunspaugh letters, Christie Papers.

17 sudden friendships: Anthony Trollope, Can You Forgive Her? (1864–5), chapter 73.

17 partying and flirtation: For a description of journeys on board ships of the White Star Line (which James Maybrick generally favoured), see Frances Wilson, How to Survive the Titanic: or, The Sinking of J. Bruce Ismay (London: Bloomsbury, 2011), p. 66ff.

17 Time Reveals All: Documents in the archives of the Royal College of Arms, London.

17 fast-talking: Hartman, Victorian Murderesses, p. 51.

17 Was she coaxed: Suggested by Whorton, The Arsenic Century, p. 278ff.

18 blond and distinguished: Kansas Newspaper, 31 July 1889.

18 organist: Shirley Harrison, The Diary of Jack the Ripper: The Chilling Confession of James Maybrick (London: John Blake, 2010).

18 arrogant: Aunspaugh letters, Christie Papers: he was a snob … my father used to scoff that he’d already booked himself a tomb in Westminster Abbey.

18 best looking: Ibid.

19 dropped his knife: Ibid.

19 Sefton Park: James Maybrick junior’s birth certificate shows he was born here. The Briggs children are listed as living at that address in the 1881 census; Matilda was visiting her parents.

20 building its post-Civil War recovery: Christie, Etched in Arsenic, p. 23.

20 Renting: Flanders, The Victorian House, p. xxxix.

20 phaeton, groom and riding: Aunspaugh letters, Christie Papers.

21 financial prop: The litigation records are in a tin box in the Virginia Archives, USA, according to Trevor Christie’s notes (op. cit.). The Baroness’s financial past is evoked in his handwritten notes: she was, I am sorry to say, a ruthless, grasping old harridan who violated her pledged word time and again. See also New York Times reports, e.g. 12 March 1897.

21 exasperated: Christie Papers, typed notes of relationsh...