MRS. MAYBRICK.

Manawatu Herald, Volume L, Issue 3914, 5 March 1929, Page 1

MRS. MAYBRICK.

CENTRE OF FAMOUS TRIAL. WAS THERE A ■MISCARRIAGE OF JUSTICE. One of the romances of English justice was the Mayhriek murder trial of 1889, in which a wife was accused of having .poisoned her husband, a wealths' Liverpool cotton merchant, by administering arsenic, in order that she might be free to marry a lover. Florence Maybrick was found guilty, in spite of the fact that her husband was shown to be a confuted drug-taker and of some evdience that he had not died of arsenic poisoning at all. So doubtful did the verdict seem that the Home Secretary decided to reprieve the wife, and she was eventually released after having served a “life sentence.” To this day the world has never made up its mind whether Florence Maybriclk was innocent or guilty, and readers turned with interest to the Earl of Birkenhead's new volume of “Famous Trials” for his comments, iwrites the London correspondent of the Melbourne “Argus.” Lord Birkenhead's chief contribution to knowledge was his assertion that Lord Russell of Killowen (Sir Charles Russell), Who defended Mrs. Majibrick, was “convinced .that, whatever the evidence might indicate, she was in truth and in fact an innocent woman.” This statement of Lord Russell's belief was immediately challenged. Sir Herbert Stephen, a son of the Judge who tried Mrs. Maybrick, knew Russell well, and discussed the case with him when Lord Russell ■was trying to persuade Mr. Asquith to release Mrs. Maybrick in 1894. Sir Herbert Stephen asked Lord Russell: “Do you really mean to tell me that you think she didn’t do it?” Russell after a pause said, “X don’t think she ought to have been convicted on that evidence.” Sir Herbert Stephen’s testimony to Lord Russell’s opinion has been confirmed from several sources. Sir Alfred Tobin, a County Court Judge, states that at the time of the trial he was a young barrister on the northern circuit. With four other young barristers lie was standing in St. George’s Hah, Liverpool, discussing the verdict after the trial, when Sir Charles Russell came in, his face ashen. He said: “My boys, what is your view of this verdict?” There was no reply, and Russell went on,' in a voice Med with emotion: “Mark what I say. It is the (most dangerous verdict that has ever been recorded in my experience.” But, says Sir Alfred Tobin, Russell never stated that he believed in 1 * Mrs. Maybrick’s innocence—(merely that, in his view, the evidence was insufficient to prove guilt. Mr. Cyril Asquith added his testimony to that of Sir Herbert Stephen. He said that he had often heard his father, Lord Oxford, say that he' asked Lord Russell in 1894 whether he believed in Mrs. Maybrick’s evidence, and that the most Lord Russell would say was that “she was improperly convicted.” Lord Justice Frank Russell has stated that lie had more than one conversation with his father upon the Maybrick case, and that Lord Russell never expressed his .belief that the wife was innocent. “Wthat he said to me was this,” he says, “that in view of the conflict of medical evidence upon the point whether the death was in fact caused by arsenical poisoning, the verdict should have been one of ‘Not guilty.’ I reteniber his saying to me that the grounds of her reprieve showed that Mrs. MaybicUk was being punished for a suggested attempt to murder; and that, if she had been charged with that offence, the defence would necessarily have been conducted on different lines.” Lord Birkenhead himself has been convinced by the weight of testimony that his original statement was incorrect, and he has promised to modify it in the next edition of “Famous Trials.” The controversy throws an interesting sidelight upon the duties of counsel to clients and the .ethics of advocacy after sentence is delivered. It suggests that in the Maybrick case, at any rate, substantial justice was done, even if Mrs. Maybrick was forced to serve her “life sentence.” The letter which she wrote to her lover, Brierley, saying of her husband : “He is sick unto death,” ensured her conviction (by the jury, and it probably will persuade most people that, even if there was a miscarriage of justice, Mi’s. Maybrick did not suffer more than she deserved.