NEARLY HANGED MOTHER.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 324, 10 June 1911, Page 9

NEARLY HANGED MOTHER.

DEATH ENDS " 8080 " MAYBKICK'S TRAGEDY. FAMOUS LETTER PRODUCED BY CHILD. Death has put an end to as poignant a tragedy as ever life resolved itself into. The man to whom this relief has come bore the name of Maybrick, and while yet a mere child it was his dark fate to have done something which very nearly helped to hang his mother, Florence Maybrick. His case has passed into history. The announcement of the death was published in the London Times as follows: — Maybrick.—On April 10, at Rossland, 8.C., James Chandler Maybrick, only son of the late' James Maybrick, of Liverpool; aged 2D. James Maybrick was the Liverpool cotton merchant who died of arsenical poisoning at Battlecrease House, Garston, Liverpool, on May 11, 1889, and whose wife, Florence Maybrick, was tried and sentenced to death for poisoning him. As everybody recollectß, Mrs. Maybriclj's death sentence was commuted to penal servitude for life. In February, 1904, she was released from Aylesbury Convict Prison, and proceeded to her home in America. Mr. James Maybrick made business visits to America, where he met his wife. He married her in London in 1881, and their son, James Chandler Maybrick, was born in 1882. The little boy's connection with the case was curious. Mrs. Maybrick and her husband had had frequent quarrels, and after the Grand National of 1889 Mr. Maybrick gave his wife a black eye. She had met in London a man named Brierley, and it was alleged by.the prosecution that she gave her husband—who suffered from liver and nerve troubles—minute doses of arsenic, in order to be able to marry Brierley. One of the sensational features of the case wa3 the production of

A LETTER WRITTEN BY MRS. MAYBRICK to Brierley, in which she said:— Since mv return I have been nursing M. day and night. HE IS SICK UNTO DEATH. The doctors held a consultation yesterday, and now all depends upon how long his strength will hold out. Both my brothers-in-law are here, and we are terribly anxious. I cannot answer your letter fully to-day, by darling, but relieve your mind of all fear of discovery now and for the future. That letter was given by Mrs. Maybrick to her children's nurse to post. The nurse took little Gladys Maybrick, aged three, out in the perambulator, and James Chandler Maybrick—"Bobo" was his pet name—used to walk with theni. The nurse gave "Bobo" this particular letter to post, but he dropped it in the. mud by the pillar-box. According to her own account, the nurse went into the post-office and asked for a clean envelope in order to re-address the letter, which was dirty. She opened it, and, finding its nature, gave it to Mr. Michael Maybrick, her mistress's brother-in-law. On the other hand, Sir C. Russell (Mrs. Mavbrick's counsel), at the trial, suggested that this story of a mudstain was an invention in order to ex euse the opening of her mistress's letters. The little boy's name came up again in 1891, when Mr. Alexander Macdougall. barrister-at-law, who was a strong advocate of the innocence of Mrs. Maybrick, wrote a work on "The Maybrick Case." On the fly-leaf there appeared this dedication:—

This work is dedicated to James Chandler Maybrick, aged 8 years, and Gladys Evelyn Maybrick, aged 4 years, By the Author, With the sincere hope that it will enable tliem to feel during their lives that the word Mother Is not "a sound unfit to be heard or uttered" by them, and That when they are old enough to be able to understand This record of facts and circumstances Connected with the charge put upon, And the trial of Florence Elizabeth Maybrick, aged 27, Her children May have throughout their lives the comfort of feeling that their mo., er was not proved to be guilty of The murder of their father. James Maybrick.

After the arrest of Mrs. Maybrick, her children were taken charge of by her husband's relatives. She spent seven years at Woking and eight years at Aylesbury. On her release in *1904 she was asked whether there would be a reconciliation with the children. "It is too early to say," she replied, "lucre are so many, many things to be considered before that can be decided." And now "Bobo" has died on the other side of the "Rockies," and his life's tragedy is over.