Mrs. Maybrick's Own Story: My 15 Lost Years

Mrs. Maybrick's Own Story: My Fifteen Lost Years

The jurys verdict of guilty was rendered on August 7, 1889. The evidence at the trial, as well as the learned judges summing up, was reported almost verbatim in the English press. The result was that, not only in Liverpool, but in almost every city, town, and village of the United Kingdom, men and women of every class and grade of society arrived at the conclusion that the verdict was erroneousas not founded upon evidence, but upon the biased and misleading summing up of the case by the mentally incompetent[226] judge. Within a few days my lawyers, the Messrs. Cleaver, of Liverpool, who had notified the press that they would supply forms of petition, were inundated with applications. For the first two days they issued one thousand a day, and I have been informed that no less than five thousand petitions for a reprieve, representing nearly half a million signatures, were sent to the Home Secretary within the following ten days. In response to these, the Home Office issued to the press the following decision: Thus it will be seen that the Home Secretary, Mr. Matthews, ignored the important statement of the judge at the trial, when, in giving emphasis to his remarks, he told the jury that: It is essential to this charge that the man died of arsenic. This question must be the foundation of a judgment unfavorable to the prisoner, that he died of arsenic. Then Mr. Matthews, on reviewing the evidence given at the trial, finding it impossible to justify the verdict, because the evidence does not wholly exclude a reasonable doubt whether his [James Maybricks] death was in fact caused by the administration of arsenic, which question was to be the foundation of a judgment unfavorable to me, instead of giving his prisoner the benefit of the reasonable[228] doubt, took it upon himself to apply the spirit of the law and of the constitution, by making use of a wrongful conviction for one offense charged in order to punish me for a different offense for which I had never been tried, but with which he, without any public trial, charged me, viz., administering and attempting to administer arsenic to my husband. These charges, made by Mr. Matthews in 1889, have never been defined; nor has any statement been submitted to me or my legal advisers of the evidence relied on to prove them; nor have I been afforded an opportunity of being heard by counsel in answer to them, nor of pleading anything in reply to them. Had a second trial been granted me, I should have seen the evidence upon which the new charges were made against me, and in open court I could [229]have confronted the witnesses. But Mr. Matthews sentenced me to penal servitude for life (without giving me a chance to defend myself against the charges) which involved nine months solitary confinement in my casein itself a most excessive punishment for the untried and, consequently, unproven charges. He sent me to suffer fourteen and one-half years on suspiciona suspicion not warranted by any evidence given at the trial. The new evidence, which has been obtained since my conviction, is admitted by all fair-minded persons to be of such a nature that it would satisfy any intelligent jury that I was not only wrongfully found guilty of murder, but was most wrongfully treated by Mr. Matthews. It completely exonerates me from the charge of murder as well as administering and attempting to administer arsenic. Since this evidence was published, no one has attempted to justify the conviction or the sentence passed upon me. ......Buy Now (To Read More)

Product details

Ebook Number: 55773
Author: Maybrick, Florence Elizabeth
Release Date: Oct 18, 2017
Format: eBook
Language: English