“Prisoners are permitted to receive and to write a letter at

intervals, which depends on the rules of the stage they attain by

industry and good conduct; but matters of special importance to a

prisoner may be communicated at any time by letter (prepaid) to the

governor, who will inform the prisoner thereof, if expedient.

“In case of misconduct the privilege of receiving and writing a letter

may be forfeited for a time.

“Money, books, postage-stamps, food, tobacco, clothes, etc., should

not be sent to prisoners for their use in prison, as nothing is

allowed to be received at the prison for that purpose.

“Persons attempting to clandestinely communicate with, or to introduce

any article to or for prisoners, are liable to fine or imprisonment,

and any prisoner concerned in such practises is liable to be severely

punished.

“Prisoners’ friends are sometimes applied to by unauthorized persons

to send money, etc., to them privately, under pretense that they can

apply it for the benefit of the prisoners, and under such fraudulent

pretense such persons endeavor to obtain money for themselves. Any

letter containing such an application received by the friends of a

prisoner should be at once forwarded by them to the governor.

“Prisoners are allowed to receive visits from their friends, according

to rules, at intervals which depend on their stage.

“When visits are due to prisoners notification will be sent to the

friends whom they desire to visit them.”

While in Woking Prison, under the privilege of these rules, I wrote the

following letter to the late Miss Mary A. Dodge (“Gail Hamilton”)--she

who was my most eloquent and steadfast champion in America:

P 29, June 24, 1892.

DEAR MISS DODGE:

I feel that I owe you such a debt of gratitude for the truly noble,

beautiful, and womanly manner in which you have used that glorious

gift of God--your genius--in the cause of a helpless and sorely

afflicted sister, whose claim to your compassion was but that of a

common humanity and nationality, that I feel I must send you a few

lines, if only to disabuse your mind of any lingering doubts of my

gratitude that my silence may have caused to arise. My dear mother

has, I believe, explained to you the almost insurmountable difficulty

I find in writing to friends abroad, with only one letter every two

months at my disposal, and which I do not feel justified in depriving

her of. I can, therefore, only express through her from time to time

my heartfelt thanks for all that has been and is still being done

in my behalf. I utterly despair, however, of finding words that

shall convey to you even the faintest idea of the fulness of a heart

completely overwhelmed by the sympathy, kindness, and generosity of my

friends. My feelings of love, however, and admiration for you and them

is simply beyond all power of expression.

The world may and does bemoan the gradual extinction in this

generation of those finer and nobler traits of character which

our forefathers so beautifully exemplified; lays at the door of a

higher civilization the terrible increase of selfishness, pride, and

indifference to all the higher duties of Christianity. But, I ask,

where can a grander exception be found to such apparent degeneration

than that displayed by the conduct of those truly noble men and women,

who, without a thought of self or of the trouble involved, have stood

forth to plead the cause of their countrywoman? Could man do more

than he is doing? Could woman do more for her nearest and dearest than

the ladies of America are doing for me? No! a thousand times, no!

Some day, my health and purse permitting, I shall hope to tell them

face to face, if mere words can tell, how greatly their faithful,

unwearying efforts, their undaunted energy, their sympathy and

kindness and generosity have helped me to rise above the depressing

influences of the injustice I am suffering under, to endure patiently,

to bear bravely the hardships of this life, and to feel through all

that the hope and comfort afforded me by their help is but a beautiful

example of the way in which God answers the prayers of his people.

I would now fain beg of you, dear friend, to express my deepest and

most heartfelt gratitude to President Harrison, Mr. Blaine, and the

other members of the Cabinet. Also to all the distinguished gentlemen

who so generously attached their signatures to the splendid petition

sent lately from Washington to the Hon. Henry Matthews, Secretary

of State, London, and to assure them of my great appreciation of the

honor and justice they have done me in thus espousing my cause. Oh,

how wretchedly I have expressed what I really feel and would like to

say! But you, too, have a woman’s heart, and you can therefore realize

the feelings I find it so hard to express. It would be a still more

hopeless task to try to tell you what I think of you--noblest and

truest of women; that must wait until we meet. Until that glad day,

believe me,

Yours gratefully and sincerely,

FLORENCE E. MAYBRICK.

P.S. My next date for receiving letters is 19th July.

TO MISS DODGE,

Washington, D. C., U. S. A.

A VISIT FROM LORD RUSSELL

I was sitting in my cell one day feeling very weak and ill. I was

recovering from an attack of influenza, and the cold comfort of

my surroundings increased the physical and mental depression which

accompanies this complaint. I wondered vaguely why my life was spared,

why I was permitted to suffer this terrible injustice, when my sad

thoughts were distracted by the sounds of approaching voices. I arose

from my seat--which is a compulsory attitude of submission when an

authority approaches a prisoner--and stood waiting for I knew not

what. Presently I heard the tones of a voice which I can never forget

while memory lasts, though that voice is now hushed in death; a voice

which, through the darkest days of my life, ever spoke words of trust,

comfort, and encouragement. Surely I must be dreaming, I thought, or my

mind is growing weak and I am becoming fanciful; for how should this

voice reach me within these prison walls? I looked up, startled, and

once more thought my mind was wandering, for there stood the noblest,

truest friend that woman ever had: the champion of the weak and

the oppressed; the brave upholder of justice and law in the face of

prejudice and public hostility--Lord Russell of Killowen, Lord Chief

Justice of England. He stepped into my cell with a kindly smile on his

face, and sat down on my stool, while the governor waited outside. He

talked to me for half an hour, and I can never forget the beauty and

grandeur of that presence. As he rose to leave he turned toward me,

and, seeing unshed tears in my eyes, he took my hand in his, and in his

strong, emphatic way said: “Be brave, be strong; I believe you to be an

innocent woman. I have done and will continue to do all I can for you.”

It has been denied in England that Lord Russell took any interest in me

other than he might in any client he was paid to defend; but the letter

which I have already given, written to me at Woking, as well as various

statements made by him, and quoted elsewhere, must set that aspersion

at rest.

[Illustration: MISS MARY A. DODGE (“Gail Hamilton”), An American

advocate of Mrs. Maybrick’s innocence.]

CHAPTER SEVEN

A Petition for Release

DENIED BY THE SECRETARY OF STATE

I had been at Aylesbury about eight months when I petitioned the

Secretary of State for a reconsideration of my case, with a view to my

release. To this I received the usual official reply, “Not sufficient

grounds.”

A prisoner may petition the Secretary of State every three months. In

my opinion, the privilege of petitioning on a case should be reduced

from four times a year to once a year, with the provision that if

anything of importance to a prisoner transpires within that period

it may be duly submitted to the Secretary of State on recommendation

of the governor or director; that all complaints regarding food,

treatment, or medical attention should be referred to the visiting

director in the first instance, instead of the Secretary of State,

who under the present system passes it back to the directors for the

necessary investigation. This would do away with the continual daily

distress and irritation and disappointment created in the prison

on receipt of unfavorable replies from the Home Office. A prisoner

petitions. A private inquiry is held, to which the prisoner is not a

party, and of which she has no information, nor does she receive any

during its progress or after its conclusion, save that the result,

which is nearly always negative, is communicated to her. In this

inquiry any one who is opposed to the prisoner may seek to influence

the official mind. I will state a case in point. A friend asked the

Secretary of State for the United States, the Hon. John Hay, to

interest himself in my case. Mr. Hay replied that he had been informed

by the Home Office that I had been “a disobedient and troublesome

prisoner.”

REPORT OF MY MISCONDUCT REFUTED

When I was told this at a visit I had my name entered to see the

governor. I insisted that the governor should inform me when, and after

what breach of the rules, such a report had been sent to the Home

Office. After carefully looking through my penal record he could find

no entry to that effect, and concluded by saying that I must have been

misinformed. He said that my conduct was good, and that he had never

made any report to the contrary. Obviously, therefore, this report from

the Home Office to Mr. Hay was due to an adverse influence, of which I

have still no knowledge. Statements are made against a prisoner, of the

nature of which she is entirely ignorant. Being ignorant, she has no

way of refuting them. Worse still, they are retained in the Home Office

to her dying day, and the unfortunate woman knows nothing of them or

their effect. The only thing certain is that she is further condemned.

NEED OF A COURT OF CRIMINAL APPEAL

The Home Office, while exercising a private function of reconsideration

grounded on the royal prerogative of mercy, emphatically disclaims

being a court of appeal or a judicial tribunal in any sense of

the word. Yet the consideration of a convict’s case rests alone

with the Secretary of State. It is a matter of unwritten law that

the Home Secretary shall act individually and solely upon his own

responsibility, and none of his colleagues are to assume or take part

therein.

There are numerous instances where judges, witnesses, and juries have

gone wrong. Indeed, it will be found that even in cases which have

seemed the clearest and least complicated in the trial grievous

mistakes have been made. But in England the blame rests on the public

and the bar in that no means are provided to set the wrong right.

What a difference it would have made in my life if I had been granted

a second trial! I could have called other witnesses, submitted

fresh evidence, and refuted false testimony. Is it not the climax

of injustice that men and women, if sued for money, even for a few

shillings, can appeal from court to court--even to the House of Lords,

the English court of last resort; but when character, all that life

holds dear, and life itself, are in jeopardy, a prisoner’s fate may

depend upon the incompetent construction of one man, and there is no

appeal?

A hard-worked Secretary of State, whose time, night and day, is

crowded with every kind of duty, correspondence, and labor, in the

House of Commons or in the Home Office, has to consider a vast number

of petitions, complaints, and miscarriages of justice, or too severe

sentences, any one of which might require hours and sometimes days to

investigate. He is assisted by several officers, but, strange to say,

it is no part of their qualifications (or that of the Home Secretary

himself), that they should be familiar with the criminal law or the

prosecution or defense of prisoners. These permanent officials are,

besides, occupied with hundreds of other matters which come before

the Home Office, on which they have to guide their chief. Think of

the untold sufferings of individuals and families, the shame and

degradation which they would be spared, if England had a court of

criminal appeal.

HISTORIC EXAMPLES OF BRITISH INJUSTICE

The Home Office detects and corrects a larger number of erroneous

verdicts than the public is aware. This arises from the secret and

partial methods of remedying miscarriages of justice frequently

adopted. The first object is to maintain the public belief in the

infallibility of judges and juries. If an innocent person could slip

out quietly, without shaking this belief, he might be permitted to

do so. The Home Secretary is, in fact, a politician, who has little

time to spare for the consideration of criminal cases, and furthermore

must see to it that his conduct does not injure his party. Thus he is

often deterred from interfering with verdicts and sentences by sheer

timidity. When he affirms a sentence he can throw the greater part

of the blame on others if he is afterward proved to be wrong; but

when he reverses either verdict or sentence, he must take the whole

responsibility upon himself. This is, I believe, the true explanation

of the secret and partial reversals which are not unusual at the

Home Office. The Home Secretary, as well as his subordinates, must

frequently let “dare not wait upon I would.”

If a crime is committed and no one is brought to justice, the police

are blamed; but if a person is convicted the police are praised,

without regard as to whether the right person has been convicted.

Hence there is usually a strong effort to beat up evidence against the

person suspected, as in my case and that of Adolf Beck (see page 155),

and to keep back anything in favor of the prisoner that comes to the

knowledge of the police. When an appeal is made from the verdict to

the Home Secretary, the first step is to consult the very judge who is

responsible, in nine cases out of ten, for the erroneous verdict. It

is easy to see that, where such reference is made, the judge is liable

to be biased in support of his own rulings. How much more the ends of

justice would be furthered by having the case retried!

God only knows how many men and women have been innocent of the charges

brought against them, and for which they have been unjustly punished. I

will mention a few only of many cases on record.

A man, Hebron by name, was convicted at Manchester, of murder. He

was sentenced to death, but fortunately this was commuted to penal

servitude for life. After serving two years the real murderer, a man

named Peace, was discovered, and Hebron was “graciously pardoned.”

Another cruel case was that of John Kensall, who was convicted of

murder, but, through action taken by the late Lord Chief Justice

Russell, was shown to be innocent. The Home Office could not at first

“see its way to interfere,” and had it not been for Lord Russell’s

clear head and splendid generalship, by which the authorities at the

Home Office were outwitted, he would not have been released so soon.

The case of the man Hay, wrongly convicted, was of a serious nature,

showing that he was the victim of a conspiracy; yet had it not been for

Sir William Harcourt’s instituting an investigation independent of the

Home Office, it is very doubtful whether Hay would have been able to

establish his innocence. But he did so, and a pardon was granted him.

It looks almost as if justice in England were growing of late more than

ordinarily blind. Thrice, within three years, has the Home Secretary’s

“pardon” been granted to men found to have been wrongfully convicted.

The average man takes it for granted that these hideous mistakes must,

of necessity, be few and far between; but the criminologist knows

better. He, at all events, is well aware that every year a number

of innocent people are sentenced to suffer either an ignominious

death upon the scaffold, or the long-drawn-out living death of penal

servitude.

Many of these judicial miscarriages never come to light at all. Others

are purposely glossed over by the powers that be. But occasionally one

occurs of so appalling a nature that it rivets the attention and shocks

the conscience of the entire civilized world, as in the case of Adolf

Beck.

THE CASE OF ADOLF BECK

Adolf Beck was twice convicted for crimes committed by a man who

somewhat resembled him. He served his first sentence and had been

convicted for a second crime on “misrepresented identity” when his

innocence was providentially established. The case is too lengthy for

detailed account in these pages, and I shall content myself in giving

the summing-up of Mr. George R. Sims in the pamphlet reprinted from his

presentation of the case in the columns of _The Daily Mail_ of London:

“I have told in plain words the story of a foul wrong done to an

innocent man.

“I have proved beyond all question that Adolf Beck was in 1896, by the

Common Sergeant, Sir Forrest Fulton, at the Old Bailey, sentenced to

seven years’ penal servitude for being an ex-convict named John Smith.

“I have proved that he was _not_ found guilty of being John Smith by

the jury.

“The former conviction for which Mr. Adolf Beck was sentenced and

punished was not only never submitted to the jury, but they were

warned by the judge that they were not to take the issue of Beck being

Smith into consideration in arriving at their verdict. They were to

dismiss it completely from their minds.

“I have proved that if this issue had been left for the jury to

consider they must have acquitted Mr. Beck, who showed by an

indisputable alibi that he could not be Smith, the man convicted in

1877.

“I have proved that this terrible mockery of justice, the conviction

of an innocent man for a series of crimes that it was quite impossible

he could have committed, was brought about by the action of the

leading counsel for the Treasury, which action was supported by the

Common Sergeant, Sir Forrest Fulton.

“I have proved that the evidence of the policeman, Eliss Spurrell,

which was used at the police-court to assist in getting Beck committed

for trial, was kept out at the Old Bailey, where it would have insured

Beck’s acquittal.

“I have proved that at the police-court in 1896 Mr. Gurrin, the

Treasury expert, reported that all the documents connected with the

1896 frauds were in the handwriting of John Smith of 1877.

“I have proved that at the 1896 trial at the Old Bailey Mr. Gurrin

swore that, to the best of his belief, all the documents were in the

disguised handwriting of Mr. Beck.

“I have proved that no one in his senses could at the trial have

accepted the theory that Adolf Beck was John Smith after listening to

the evidence of Major Lindholm, Gentleman of the Chamber to the King

of Denmark, Col. Josiah Harris, and the Consul-General for Peru at

Liverpool.

“The Common Sergeant accepted as true their evidence of a complete

alibi for Mr. Beck, so far as 1877 and the years Smith was in prison

were concerned, or he would, it is to be presumed, have taken measures

to have those gentlemen prosecuted for committing wilful and corrupt

perjury in order to defeat the ends of justice.

“I have proved that Beck, after his imprisonment, compelled the Home

Office authorities to acknowledge that he was not Smith, and to admit

the physical impossibility of his being Smith--Smith was a Jew, and

he, Beck, was not--and that therefore, by the evidence of the Treasury

witnesses, he had been wrongfully committed.

“I have proved that Beck was stripped and officially examined for body

marks before his trial, in order that such marks might be compared

with those on the record in the possession of the authorities as the

body marks of John Smith.

“I have proved that Adolf Beck had none of the body marks of John

Smith, the man in whose handwriting Mr. Gurrin had declared the

incriminating documents of 1896 to be.

“I have proved that all the petitions setting forth these facts

and others, which fully established Beck’s innocence, met with no

consideration.

“I have proved that when the frauds of 1877 and 1896 were repeated

in 1904, and the incriminating documents were found to be in the

handwriting of 1877, stroke for stroke, peculiarity for peculiarity,

almost word for word, the fact that the authorities had admitted

that Mr. Beck _could not be_ the author of the 1877 frauds or the

writer of the 1877 documents was utterly ignored, and the responsible

authorities, with every proof of Mr. Beck’s innocence in their

possession, allowed him to be arrested, charged, tried, and convicted

again.

“I have proved that the identification of Mr. Beck by the female

witnesses as the man who robbed them was a monstrous farce.

“I have proved that, so far from Mr. Beck being the ‘double’ of

John Smith, he was utterly unlike him, except that each had a gray

mustache. Beck had neither the noticeable scar at the point of the

jaw nor the noticeable wart over one eye that are striking marks of

identity in John Smith--marks which would not escape the most casual

observer.

“I have proved that Beck’s conviction in 1896 was secured by a device

which was utterly unworthy of a British court of justice--a device

so unfair and unjust that an innocent and inoffensive foreigner, a

Norwegian who had sought the hospitality of our shores, was by its

employment sent into penal servitude for seven years for the crimes of

another man.

“I have proved that Mr. Beck was in 1904 convicted of repeating letter

for letter, word for word, trick for trick, check for check, false

address for false address, false name for false name, the frauds of

1877 and 1896, of which the authorities had absolute proof that he was

innocent, and of which, though they had never remitted one day of his

sentence, they had _admitted_ that he was innocent.

“I have been careful to keep to the main issue, and have refrained

from examining the side issues, some of which reveal most lamentable

features in connection with our criminal procedure.

“I will prove one thing more, and leave the facts I have established

to the judgment of the public.

“At the end of the report of the second trial of Adolf Beck, which

took place at the Old Bailey on June 27, 1904 (Sessions Paper CXL.,

Part 837), are these words, printed as I give them below:

“‘GUILTY. _He then PLEADED GUILTY to a conviction of obtaining goods

by false pretenses at this Court on February 26, 1896. Judgment

respited._’

“Pleaded guilty to a former conviction! Adolf Beck pleaded guilty to

nothing. How could he plead guilty, being an innocent man! He cried

aloud when the charge of the first conviction was read aloud to him,

‘As God is my witness, I was innocent then as I am innocent now.’

“The epilogue to the tragedy of our English Dreyfus is written in

those damning words in the Sessions Paper, the official minutes of

evidence in Central Criminal Court trials.

“Beck’s last hope had perished. Once more a merciless fate had blinded

the eyes and closed the ears of Justice to his innocence. He was to

be immured in a convict cell for ten, perhaps for fourteen, years; he

was to pass the closing years of his life a branded felon amid all the

horrors of a convict prison. In all human probability he would die

without ever seeing the light of freedom again, for he could not have

borne this second torture.

“His voice, crying aloud for freedom, would be heard no more.

Petitions for a reinvestigation of his case would be hopeless. He had

been robbed of his last earthly chance of proving his innocence.

“Those words, ‘The prisoner pleaded guilty to a former conviction,’

would have damned him to the last day of his life.

“My painful task is ended.

“A foreigner, a stranger within our gates, a man of kindly heart and

gentle ways, has been foully wronged. There is but one reparation we

can make him. The people of this country owe him a testimonial of

sympathy that shall endure and remain. On the site of his martyrdom

there should rise a national monument. Let that monument take the

form of a Court of Criminal Appeal. That is the one reparation that

the English people can make to Adolf Beck for the foul wrong he has

suffered in their midst.”

In a sense the innocent man who is hanged may be regarded as better

off than he who is called upon to endure lifelong imprisonment. There

are plenty of examples of these judicial murders. Over a score of

undoubted cases occurred in the first two decades of the last century,

and since then there have been twice as many more. A notorious and

awful case was that of Eliza Fenning, who, at eighteen years of age,

was sent to the gallows upon the perjured evidence of an accomplice of

the real murderer. The latter afterward confessed.

Another similar case occurred in 1850, when a man named Ross was

executed for poisoning his young wife by mixing arsenic with her food.

A few years later certain facts came to light, proving conclusively

that the real criminal was a female acquaintance and confidante of the

dead woman.

Thomas Perryman, again, was found guilty in 1879 of the murder of

his aged mother on the very flimsiest of evidence. His sentence was

commuted to penal servitude for life, and in the ordinary course

of events he should now be free. More than 100,000 people have, at

different times, petitioned for the release of this convict, and the

highest judicial authorities have expressed their belief in his entire

innocence of the crime imputed to him. Yet he has been compelled to

drink his terrible cup to the bitter dregs.

In 1844 a gentleman named Barker was sentenced to penal servitude

for life for a forgery of which he was afterward proved to have been

wholly innocent. He served four years, and was then released and

readmitted to practise as an attorney. In 1859, eleven years after

having been “pardoned,” he was, upon the recommendation of a Select

Committee of the House of Commons, voted a sum of £5,000, “as a

national acknowledgment of the wrong he had suffered from an erroneous

prosecution.”

The famous Edlingham case will doubtless be fresh in the minds of

most people. In February, 1879, the village vicarage was entered

by burglars, and a determined attempt was made to murder the aged

incumbent. For this outrage two men, Brannagham and Murphy, were

sentenced to lifelong imprisonment. After a lapse of nine years the

crime was confessed to by two well-known criminals named Richardson and

Edgell, the result being that the innocent convicts were released, with

an honorarium of £800 apiece.

The eminent King’s Counsel, Sir George Lewis, has openly said that he

will not allow himself to speak of the way in which the “Edalji” trial

was conducted, and he further adds: “I have it on undoubted authority

that every ‘M.P.’ connected with the legal profession believes as I do

that that man is innocent. And yet a declaration from such a source is

allowed by the public to pass unnoticed. As I have before stated, ‘it

is not the business of the public, nor of individual citizens, to prove

the innocence of any unhappy person whom the process of law selects

for punishment; but it is the business of every citizen to see that

the courts incontestably prove the guilt of any person accused of a

crime before sentence is passed.’ Neither condition was fulfilled in

the case of the prisoner. I have studied the evidence, and say, from

knowledge gained by fifteen years’ association with criminals, that

this unfortunate young man is _innocent_.” Surely after the disclosures

of the Adolf Beck case this one, on the word of Sir George Lewis, ought

to receive unbiased consideration from the Home Office.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Religion in Prison Life

DEDICATION OF NEW CHAPEL

On our arrival at Aylesbury Prison there was no chapel. Divine service

was held in one of the halls, in which the prisoners assembled each

morning for twenty minutes of service. This arrangement had many

disadvantages, and one of the ladies on the Board of Visitors came

nobly to our relief with an offer to provide the prison with a chapel.

The Home Office “graciously” accepted this generous proposition, and

twelve months later it was completed and dedicated by the Lord Bishop

of Reading. (It was burned to the ground since my departure from

Aylesbury.)

On the day preceding the ceremony I was asked to assist in decorating

the chapel with flowers kindly sent by Lady Rothschild. It was a

delicate expression of sympathy for the prisoners, which she repeated

on all high festival days. She was deeply affected when I told her how

profoundly the women appreciated her recognition of a common humanity.

On the appointed day all work was suspended to enable the prisoners to

be present. In the galleries were seated the families of the governor,

chaplain, and doctor; at the right of the altar the generous donor of

the chapel, Adeline, Duchess of Bedford, was seated with her friends.

The organist played a prelude, and then the bishop, accompanied by the

chaplain and the clergymen of the diocese, entered the chapel. After

a hymn had been sung, a short service followed, and then the bishop

stepped forward and, facing the altar, read the “dedication service.”

It was most impressive. Then followed a prayer and a hymn, and the

service was over. The prisoners filed back to their respective cells

and the visitors made the tour of the prison.

I was a patient in the infirmary at the time, but had received

permission to attend the chapel. Before the Bishop of Reading left the

prison he visited the sick, and as he passed my cell he stopped and

spoke to me words of hope and encouragement, adding his blessing.

INFLUENCE OF RELIGION UPON PRISONERS

Another occasion on which the Bishop of Reading visited the prison was

the holding of a confirmation service. Many women of earnest minds in

prison sought in this manner to prove the sincerity of their repentance

and their resolution to live godly lives; and, with one exception, all

those confirmed that day have remained true to their profession.

Penal servitude is a fiery test of one’s religious convictions. One’s

faith is either strengthened and deepened or else it goes under

altogether. I have witnessed many a sad spiritual shipwreck within

those walls.

On a dark, gloomy day in October the rain pattered against the window

of my cell and the wind howled dismally around that huge “house of

sorrow.” Now and then the sound of weeping broke upon the stillness,

and I prayed in my heart for the poor souls in travail whose pains

had broken through the enforced rule of silence. There is no sound in

all the world so utterly unnerving as the hopeless sob of the woman

in physical isolation who may not be spiritually comforted. Separated

from loved ones, beyond the reach of tender hands and voices, she has

no one, as in former years, to share her sufferings or minister to her

pain. Alone, one of a mass, with no one to care but the good God above;

for “to suffer” thus is the punishment that man has decreed.

The humanizing influences, in my opinion, can be brought to bear

upon prisoners with beneficial results only when supported by the

advantages of religious teachings. During the early part of my sentence

there were Scripture readers, laymen and laywomen, in all convict

prisons, to assist the chaplain in his arduous duties; but, on the

ground of expense, these have been dispensed with, thus practically

removing the only means of administering the moral medicine which is

essential to the cure of the habitual prisoner’s mental disease.

A large amount of crime is due to physical and mental degeneration.

Nevertheless, crime is also the result of lovelessness, when it is not

a disease, and the true curative system should give birth to love in

human souls. There is not a man or woman living so low but we can do

something to better him or her, if we give love and sympathy in the

service and have an all-embracing affection for both God and man.

If the future system is to treat the criminal in a curative or

reformative way, rather than by punitive methods, the means to

this end must certainly be increased. Even the worst woman can be

approached through the emotional side of her nature. A kind word, a

sympathetic look, a smile, a little commendation now and then, given

by the officers in charge, would soon gain the respect and confidence

of the prisoner, and thereby render her the more amenable to rules

and regulations. A prisoner with whom I worked, and whose inner life

by near association was revealed to me, had got into a very morbid,

depressed state of mind. She was under close observation by the

doctor’s orders. Her penal record was not a good one; her hasty temper

was continually getting her into trouble, and when she was punished she

would brood over it.

SUICIDE OF A PRISONER

One day she asked for permission to see me; the permission was refused.

She made the request a second time, and, the fact coming to the

knowledge of the chaplain, he advised that it be granted, believing,

from his personal knowledge of my influence in the prison, that it

would have a beneficial effect. I was allowed to see her, and after a

few minutes’ conversation she appeared brighter. I told her that the

people of God have a promise of a Comforter from heaven to come to them

and abide with them, even in tribulation and in prison. She promised

me she would try to be more submissive and accept her punishment in

a better spirit. For several days after she seemed to improve. But

one afternoon she once more made the request to be allowed to see me.

As none of the authorities were in the building at the time, and the

chief matron could not take upon herself the responsibility of granting

the request, it was refused. I felt rather anxious about it, but was

helpless. At five o’clock that evening, just before supper was served,

the woman was found dead in her cell; she had hanged herself to the

window. She was only twenty-four years of age, and was serving a five

years’ sentence for shooting her betrayer under great provocation.

The tragedy was naturally kept quiet; none of the prisoners knew of

it until the following morning. How the truth got abroad I do not

know, but when the doors were unlocked after breakfast, instead of

the women passing out of their cells in the usual orderly way, they

rushed out, shouting excitedly at the top of their voices: “M---- has

hanged herself; ... she was driven to it!” In vain the officers tried

to pacify them or to explain the true state of things; they would not

listen, and continued to scream: “Don’t talk to us--you are paid to say

that! If you did not say that it was all right you would be turned out

of the gates!” And the uproar increased. As I have already stated, the

“Star Class” was sandwiched between two wards of habitual criminals,

and we had the benefit of every disturbance. During the excitement one

of the ringleaders caught sight of me and shouted: “Mrs. Maybrick, is

it true that M---- was driven to it?” The tumult was increasing and

was growing beyond the control of the warder, when the chief matron,

becoming alarmed, sent up word that I might explain to the women.

Accompanied by an officer, I did so, and in a few minutes the uproar

calmed down and the women returned quietly to their cells. I have

reason to believe that I always had the full confidence of my fellow

prisoners; they were quick to know and appreciate that I had their

welfare at heart, and that I never countenanced any disobedience or

breach of the rules. A first offender, under sentence for many years,

will suffer from the punishment according as she maintains or damages

her self-respect.

TRAGEDIES IN PRISON

Above others there are four tragic prison episodes which, once

witnessed, can never be forgotten:

1. Breaking bad news to a prisoner--telling her that a dear one in

the outside world is dying, and that she may not go to him; that she

must wait in terrible suspense until the last message is sent, no

communication in the mean time being permitted.

2. Receiving an intimation of the death of a beloved father, mother,

brother or sister, husband or child, whose visits and letters have been

the sole comfort and support of that prisoner’s hard lot.

3. The loss of reason by a prisoner who was not strong enough to endure

the punishment decreed by Act of Parliament.

4. The suicide, who prefers to trust to the mercy of God rather than

suffer at the hands of man.

Why should a woman be considered less loving, less capable of

suffering, because she is branded with the name of “convict?” She may

be informed that her nearest and dearest are dying, but the rules will

permit no departure to relieve the heart-breaking suspense. In the

world at large telegrams may be sent and daily bulletins received, but

not in the convict’s world.

Death is a solemn event under any circumstances, and reverence for the

dead is inculcated by our religion, but to die in prison is a thing

that every inmate dreads with inexpressible horror. When a prisoner is

at the point of death, she is put into a cell alone, or into a ward,

if there is one vacant. There she lies alone. The nurse and infirmary

officers come and go; her fellow prisoners gladly minister to her;

the doctor and chaplain are assiduous in their attentions; but she is

nevertheless alone, cut off from her kin, tended by the servants of the

law instead of the servants of love, and it is only at the very last

that her loved ones may come and say their farewell. Oh! the pathos,

the anguish of such partings--who shall describe them? And when all

is over, and the law has no longer any power over the body it has

tortured, it may be claimed and taken away.

The case of the prisoner who becomes insane is no less harrowing. She

is kept in the infirmary with the other patients for three months. If

she does not recover her reason within that period, she is certified

by three doctors as insane and then removed to the criminal lunatic

asylum. In the mean time the peace and rest of the other sick persons

in the infirmary are disturbed by her ravings, and their feelings

wrought upon by the daily sight of a demented fellow creature.

And the suicide! To see the ghastly and distorted features of a fellow

prisoner, with whom one has worked and suffered, killed by her own

hands--such scenes as these haunted me for weeks; and it needed all my

reliance on God to throw off the depression that inevitably followed.

MORAL EFFECT OF HARSH PRISON REGIME

Have you ever tried to realize what kind of life that must be in which

the sight of a child’s face and the sound of a child’s voice are ever

absent; in which there are none of the sweet influences of the home;

the daily intercourse with those we love; the many trifling little

happenings, so unimportant in themselves, but which go so far to make

up the sum of human happiness? It commences with the clangor of bells

and the jingling of keys, and closes with the banging of hundreds

of doors, while the after silence is broken only by shrieks and

blasphemies, the trampling of many feet, and the orders of warders.

In the winter the prisoners get up in the dark, and breakfast in the

dark, to save the expense of gas. The sense of touch becomes very

acute, as so much has to be done without light. Until I had served

three years of my sentence I had not been allowed to see my own face.

Then a looking-glass, three inches long, was placed in my cell. I

have often wondered how this deprivation could be harmonized with a

purpose to enforce tidiness or cleanliness in a prisoner. The obvious

object in depriving prisoners of the only means through which they

can reasonably be expected to conform to the official standard of

facial cleanliness is to eradicate woman’s assumed innate sense of

vanity; but whether or no it succeeds in this, certain it is that

cleanliness becomes a result of compulsion rather than of a natural

womanly impulse. Also she must maintain the cleanliness of her prison

cell on an ounce of soap per week. After I left Aylesbury I heard that

the steward had received orders from the Home Office to reduce this

enormous quantity. If true it will leave the unfortunate prisoners with

three-quarters of an ounce of soap weekly wherewith to maintain that

cleanliness which is said to be next to godliness. The prisoners are

allowed a hot bath once a week, but in the interval they may not have a

drop of hot water, except by the doctor’s orders.

ATTACKS OF LEVITY

All human instincts can not be crushed, even by an act of Parliament,

and sometimes the prisoners indulge in a flight of levity, which

is, however, promptly stopped by the officer in charge. But even

wilfulness and levity are to some a relief from the perpetual silence.

A young girl, fifteen years of age, came in on a conviction of penal

servitude for life. In a fit of passion she had strangled a child of

which she had charge. In consideration of her youth and the medical

evidence adduced at her trial, sentence of death was commuted. She

was in the “Star Class,” and it aroused my indignation to witness her

sufferings. A mature woman may submit to the inevitable patiently, as

an act of faith or as a proof of her philosophy; but a child of that

age has neither faith nor philosophy sufficient to support her against

this repressive system of torture. At times, however, the girl had

attacks of levity which manifested themselves in most amusing ways.

One day she was put out to work in the officers’ quarters and told to

black-lead a grate. With a serious face she set to work. Presently the

officer asked whether she had finished her task, to which she meekly

replied “Yes,” at the same time lifting her face, which, to the utter

amazement of the female warder, had been transformed from a white to a

brightly polished black one.

On another occasion she was told that she would be wanted in the

infirmary. She was suffering great pain at the time, and had begged the

doctor to extract a tooth. When the infirmary nurse unlocked her door

she was found in bed. This is strictly against the rules, unless the

prisoner has special permission from the doctor to lie down during the

day. Of course, the officer ordered her to get up at once, to which she

replied, “I can’t.” “Why not?” asked the officer. “Because I can’t,”

the girl repeated. Whereupon the officer lifted off the bed covering to

see what was amiss. To her astonishment she saw that the child had got

inside the mattress (which I described in the beginning as a long sack

stuffed with the fiber of the coconut), and had drawn the end of it on

a string around her neck, so that nothing but her head was visible.

It has been said that no apples are so sweet as those that are

stolen, and the great pleasure the women in prison derive from their

surreptitious levity is because it can so rarely be indulged in, and

the opportunities for its expression must always be stolen.

There is an axiom in prison, “The worse the woman, the better the

prisoner.” As one goes about the prison, and observes those women who

are permitted little privileged tasks, such as tidying the garden,

cleaning the chapel, or any of the light and semi-responsible tasks

which convicts like, one will notice the privileged are not, as a rule,

the young or respectably brought up, but old, professional criminals.

They know the rules of the prison, they spend the greater part of

their lives there, and they know exactly how to behave so as to earn

the maximum of marks; their object is to get out in the shortest

possible time, and to have as light work as possible while they are

in. The officers like them because they know their work without having

to be taught. “There is no servant like an old thief,” I have heard it

said. “They do good work.” This is quite typical of a certain kind of

prisoner who is the mainstay of the prisons.

The conviction of young girls to penal servitude is shocking, for it

destroys the chief power of prevention that prisons are supposed to

possess, and accustoms the young criminal to a reality which has far

less terror for her than the idea of it had. Prison life is entirely

demoralizing to any girl under twenty years of age, and it is to

prevent such demoralizing influence upon young girls that some more

humane system of punishment should be enacted.

SELF-DISCIPLINE

In saying a word on what is, perhaps, best described as “prison

self-discipline,” I trust the reader will acquit me of any motive

other than a desire that it may result in some sister in misfortune

deriving benefit from a similar course. That the state of mind in

which one enters upon the life of a convict has some influence on

conduct--whether she does so with a consciousness of innocence or

otherwise--should, perhaps, go without saying. Nevertheless, innocent

or guilty, a proper self-respect can not fail to be helpful, be the

circumstances what they may; and from the moment I crossed Woking’s

grim threshold until the last day when I passed from the shadow and the

gloom of Aylesbury into God’s free sunlight, I adhered strictly to a

determination that I would come out of the ordeal--if ever--precisely

as I had entered upon it; that no loving eyes of mother or friends

should detect in my habits, manners, or modes of thought or expression

the slightest deterioration.

Accordingly I set about from the very start to busy myself--and this

was no small helpfulness in filling the dreary hours of the seemingly

endless days of solitary confinement--keeping my cell in order and

ever making the most of such scant material for adornment as the rules

permitted. Little enough in this way, it may be imagined, falls to a

convict’s lot. Indeed, the sad admission is forced that nearly every

semblance of refinement is maintained at one’s peril, for “motives”

receive small consideration in the interpretation of prison rules,

however portentously they may have loomed in the process that placed an

innocent woman under the shadow of the scaffold, and only by grace of a

commutation turned her into a “life” convict.

Come what would, I was determined not to lose my hold on the amenities

of my former social position, and, though I had only a wooden stool and

table, they were always spotless, my floor was ever brightly polished,

while my tin pannikins went far to foster the delusion that I was in

possession of a service of silver.

Confinement in a cell is naturally productive of slothful habits and

indifference to personal appearance. I felt it would be a humiliation

to have it assumed that I could or would deteriorate because of my

environment. I therefore made it a point never to yield to that feeling

of indifference which is the almost universal outcome of prison life.

I soon found that this self-imposed regimen acted as a wholesome

moral tonic, and so, instead of falling under the naturally baneful

influences of my surroundings, I strove, with ever-renewed spiritual

strength, to rise above them. At first the difference that marked me

from so many of my fellow prisoners aroused in them something like

a feeling of resentment; but when they came to know me this soon

wore off, and I have reason to believe that my example of unvarying

neatness and civility did not fail in influencing others to look a bit

more after their personal appearance and to modify their speech. At

any rate, it had this effect: Aylesbury Prison is the training-school

for female warders for all county prisons. Having served a month’s

probation here, they are recommended, if efficient in enforcing the

prison “discipline,” for transference to analogous establishments in

the counties. It happened not infrequently, therefore, that new-comers

were taken to my cell as the model on which all others should be

patterned.

I partook of my meals, coarse and unappetizing as the food might be,

after the manner I had been wont in the dining-room of my own home;

and, though unseen, I never permitted myself to use my fingers (as

most prisoners invariably did) where a knife, fork, or spoon would be

demanded by good manners. Neither did I permit myself, either at table

(though alone) or elsewhere, to fall into slouchy attitudes, even

when, because of sickness, it was nearly impossible for me to hold up

my head.

I speak of this because of the almost universal tendency among

prisoners to mere animality. “What matters it?” is the general retort.

Accordingly, the average convict keeps herself no cleaner than the

discipline strenuously exacts, while all their attitudes express

hopeless indifference, callous carelessness, to a degree that often

lowers them to the behavior of the brutes of the field. The repressive

system can neither reform nor raise the nature or habits of prisoners.

NEED OF WOMEN DOCTORS AND INSPECTORS

Women doctors and inspectors should be appointed in all female prisons.

Otherwise what can be expected of a woman of small mental resources,

shut in on herself, often unable to read or write with any readiness;

of bad habits; with a craving for low excitement; whose chief pleasure

has been in the grosser kind of animal delight? The mind turns morbidly

inward; the nerves are shattered. Although the dark cell is no longer

used, mental light is still excluded. Recidivation is more frequent

with women than with men. The jail taint seems to sink deeper into

woman’s nature, and at Aylesbury numbers of the more abandoned ones are

seldom for long out of the male warders’ hands.

CHASTENING EFFECT OF IMPRISONMENT ON THE SPIRIT

For a considerable period I was given work in the officers’ mess. Their

quarters are in a detached building within the prison precincts, and

are reached by crossing a small grass-plot which separates it from

the prison. Each officer has a small bedroom, in which she sleeps and

passes her time when off duty. All meals are served in the mess-room,

and consist of breakfast at seven o’clock, lunch on turn between nine

and eleven, dinner at twelve-thirty, tea at five, and supper whenever

they are off duty. The cooking is excellent and varied. A matron is in

charge of the commissariat department, and has four prisoners of the

“Star Class” working under her. I did scullery work, which consisted

of washing up all the crockery, glass, knives, forks, and spoons used

at these five meals, besides all the pots and pans required in their

preparation. As a staff of twenty-five sat down to these frequent meals

daily, the work was very hard and quite beyond my strength. The “Star

Class” of workers should not be kept at it more than six months at a

time. Some of the life women have been in the kitchen and mess-room as

long as three and four years, and, as neither the culinary arrangements

nor the ventilation are modern, the consequent physical and mental

depression arising from these defects, and the monotony of the work, is

only too apparent.

I was not feeling well at the time, and soon after I had a long

illness--a nervous breakdown, due partly to insomnia and partly to the

unrelieved strain and stress of years of hard labor. My recovery was

very slow. I was in the infirmary about eighteen months, and was glad

when finally discharged, as the intervals between my letters and visits

were shorter when I was in discipline quarters and could earn more

marks. During the long years of my imprisonment I learned many lessons

I needed, perhaps, to have learned during my earlier life; but, thank

God, I was no criminal! I was being punished for that of which I was

innocent. I believe it is God’s task to judge and ours to endure, but I

could not understand what his plans and his purposes were. I believed

they were good, although I could not see how eternity itself could make

up for my sufferings. Perhaps they were intended to work out some good

to others, by ways I should never know, until I saw with the clear

eyes of another world. Still, the external conditions of life acted

on my body and mind, and I scarcely knew at times how to bear them.

I could not have endured them without God’s sustaining grace. I used

often to repeat these lines:

“With patience, then, the course of duty run;

God never does nor suffers to be done

But that which you would do if you could see

The end of all events as well as he.”

A DEATH-BED INCIDENT

A woman lay dying in a near-by cell. Of the sixty years of her life she

had spent forty within prison walls. What that life had been I will not

say, but when she was in the agony of death she called to me: “I don’t

know anything about your God, but if he has made you tender and loving

to a bad lot like me, I know he will not be hard on a poor soul who

never had a chance. Give me a kiss, dear lass, before I go. No one has

kissed me since my mother died.

CHAPTER NINE

My Last Years in Prison

I AM SET TO WORK IN THE LIBRARY

When I recovered from my nervous breakdown, by medical order I was

given lighter employment, and went into the library. I was now the only

prisoner in the building who had suffered under the hardships of the

old system at Woking Prison, all the rest of those who came with me

having in the interim returned to the world. In fact, I was the only

one who had served over ten years.

My task in the library was to assist the schoolmistress and to change

the library books twice a week. They were carried from cell to cell,

and this represented the handling of over two hundred and fifty books.

In addition to this, I had to be “literary nurse,” whose duties were

to attend to worn-out books, binding up their wounds and prolonging

their days of usefulness; doing cataloguing and entry work; to print

the name of each prisoner on a card placed over her cell door; to copy

hymns, and to make scrap-books for the illiterate prisoners, besides

other miscellaneous duties.

The library was a very good one and contained not only the latest

novels, but philosophical works and books for study; also a limited

number in French and German. To these were added religious works,

especially poetry, and sermons for Sunday reading. I found a choice

collection to help me support the Sabbath day, for the suspended

animation makes a day of misery of the “day of rest.” One could not

read all day without tiring, and the absence of week-day work usually

made it a day of heavy, creeping depression. There are two periods of

exercise, and chapel morning and afternoon. The remainder of the time

the prisoners are locked in their cells. Reading was my only solace;

from first to last I read every moment that I could call my own. The

best index of the quality of the books was that every volume was read

or examined by the chaplain and his staff before it was admitted to

the library. If it contained any articles on prison life or matters

relating to prisoners, these were always carefully cut out.

From my observations I consider that prison schoolmasters and

schoolmistresses are overburdened with miscellaneous and incompatible

duties. No one needs to be told that the average prisoner is a slow

learner, and that even a dull boy or girl is a better pupil than a

grown man or woman plodding along in the first steps of knowledge, and

who is taught, not in a class, but in a cell. Yet the schoolmaster

or schoolmistress has to devote hours daily to teaching, to help in

letter-writing, in the office work, in the distribution of library

books, in the library work; and now that their number is likewise

reduced on the ground of expense, the pressure of their work is out of

all proportion to the hours within which it can be reasonably performed.

I have always been fond of reading, and during my leisure hours I got

through a large number of books. This was between noon and half-past

one, and seven and eight in the evening, when my light had to be put

out.

NEWSPAPERS FORBIDDEN

The rules forbid that any public news be conveyed to the prisoners,

either at visits or by letters. This seems to be a very short-sighted

view to take of the matter. To allow newspapers in the prison might, of

course, lead to cipher communications to prisoners from their friends;

but no harm can possibly come of allowing information regarding public

affairs of national interest to be conveyed through the legitimate

channels of letters and visits. It would give the prisoners fresh food

for thought, and tend greatly to relieve that vacuity of mind which

is the outcome of lack of knowledge of external things, and of the

monotony of their lives; it would also make a pause in their broodings

over their cases, which is the sole subject of their thoughts and

conversations when permitted to converse at all.

HOW PRISONERS LEARN OF GREAT EVENTS

The lowering of the prison flag told us of the death of Queen Victoria,

although we had heard several days before that she was sinking. When

King Edward was dangerously ill it was talked of among the officers,

and the prisoners, through me, asked that special prayers might be said

in the chapel.

When Mafeking was relieved and when peace with the Boers was declared,

flags were hoisted. Jubilee and Coronation days were the only occasions

I remember when we had any relaxation of prison rules, and then

there was much disappointment, since in lieu of a mitigation of our

sentences, as was the case in India, they gave us extra meat and plum

pudding.

STRICT DISCIPLINE OF PRISON OFFICERS

I have served under three governors, each of whom was an intelligent

and conspicuously humane man. They knew their prisoners and tried to

understand them, but there is not much a governor can do for them of

his own initiative. I consider that he who holds this responsible

position should have more of a free hand, and be allowed to use his

discretion in all ordinary matters pertaining to the prison discipline

and welfare of the prisoners.

They were all advanced disciplinarians. The routine reeled itself off

with mechanical precision. The rules were enforced and carried out to

the letter. The deadly monotony never varied; all days are alike;

weeks, months, years slowly accumulate, and, in the mean time, the

mental rust is eating into the weary brain, and the outspoken cry rises

up daily--“How long, O Lord! how long?”

The officers are almost as keen as the governor in their efforts to

keep things up to the mark. It is seldom they allow prisoners under

their observation or supervision any slight relaxation which nature may

demand, but the rules forbid. They dislike to punish a woman, and in

their hearts make many excuses for the black sheep.

THEIR HIGH CHARACTER

As a class, with few exceptions, the prison staff is worthy of respect

and confidence, and might be trusted with any task. The patience,

civility, and self-control which the officers exhibit under the most

trying circumstances, as a rule, mark them as men and women possessing

a high sense of duty, not only as civil servants, but as Christians.

NERVOUS STRAIN OF THEIR DUTIES

The hours of work are long, the nervous strain is incessant. I could

wish that those in high places showed a little more appreciation of

what these faithful servants do, and were not so sparing of their

praise and commendation. The small remuneration they receive can not

make up for the deprivation of the amenities of life which the prison

service entails. Two writers on prison life have expressed themselves

in widely different ways regarding the warders and officers. One writer

compares them to slave-and cattle-drivers; another expresses surprise

that they are as good as they are. As, I trust, an impartial observer,

I agree with the latter opinion. Experience has taught me that, in most

cases, if the prisoner is amiable and willing, the officer on her part

is ready to meet the prisoner fully half way--at all events, as far as

circumstances and duty will permit, for the continual daily changes of

duty, from ward to ward and hall to hall, make it nearly impossible

for any officer to acquire a true knowledge of the character of those

under her charge.

It would be interesting if a trained psychologist could watch

and report upon the insidious effect of the repressive rules and

regulations of a prison on the more impressionable officers and

prisoners. When such officers first enter this service they are natural

women with a natural demeanor and expression of countenance. After a

time, however, the molding effects of “standing orders” become apparent

in the sternness of their expression, the harsh tones of their voices,

and the abruptness of their manner.

STANDING ORDERS FOR WARDERS

These “standing orders” may be paraphrased as follows:

“You must not do this or say that, or look sympathetic or friendly, or

converse with prisoners in any way. You must always suspect them of

wishing to do something underhand, sly, and contrary to orders. You

must never let them for a moment out of your sight, or permit them to

suppose that you have either trust or confidence in them. It is your

duty to see that the means of punishment devised by the Penal Code

are faithfully carried out. You are not to trouble yourself about the

result upon the prisoner--that is the affair of the Government.”

Any familiarity on the part of an officer with a prisoner is

strictly forbidden by the rules of prison service, and the slightest

manifestation of the sort would entail serious punishment on the

officer. Surely this is not as it should be; on the contrary, greater

discretionary power should be permitted to officers in their relations

with prisoners, for the influence for good which a kind, well-disposed

officer could exert upon a prisoner is incalculable. But all this

possible influence for good is denied expression by the spirit of

mistrust and suspicion which pervades the entire prison administration.

This is one of the most regrettable features of the system. No officer

is trusted by her superior, and no prisoner, however exemplary her

conduct, may be trusted by any one officially connected with the

institution.

An officer who commits a breach of any rule laid down for her may be

fined a sum varying from one to ten shillings, and if the offense is a

grave one she may be discharged.

CRIME A MENTAL DISEASE

When will those connected with prisons awake to the fact that the

criminal is mentally diseased? Ninety-nine out of a hundred criminals,

when not such by accident, through poverty, or environment, come

to their lot through inherited, malformed brains. It ought to be

the sacred duty of earnest men to deal kindly, intelligently, and

patiently with them. The prison, which is now a dreadful place of

punishment and humiliation, ought to be made a home of regeneration and

reformation, in which intelligent effort is made to raise the prisoner

to a higher level; and this surely is not done by withdrawing all the

refining influences.

I hope the time is not far off when men and women will take more of

a heart interest in prisoners, and when, no matter how low they may

have sunk, an opportunity to live honestly will be given them on their

release; when the society against which they have sinned will treat

them so kindly that for very shame they will seek to do better, and

repentance shall enter into the most darkened soul. The “eye for an

eye and tooth for a tooth” doctrine is not a part of the Christian

dispensation. Our Lord Jesus Christ gave his last supreme lesson, as he

turned toward the thief at his side on the cross, and there put an end

to that old law forever.

SOMETHING GOOD IN THE WORST CRIMINAL

There is some good to be found in the worst criminal, which, if

nourished by patience and sympathy, will grow into more good. I speak

from a large, intimate personal experience, for during my imprisonment

it was my happy fortune to evoke kindly reciprocations from some of the

worst and most degraded characters. I will cite an instance.

One day I was crossing the hall when a fight occurred. I can not

describe it--it was too horrible. The crowd surged toward me, and I was

being drawn in among the combatants, when one of them, catching sight

of me, stepped out with a face streaming with blood, and pushed me into

an open cell, closing the door after me. When I thanked her the next

day she replied:

“Why, bless your heart, Mrs. Maybrick, did you think I would let them

hurt a hair of your head?”

I believe I had the sympathy and respect of all my fellow prisoners,

and when I left Aylesbury, my feelings were those of mingled relief

and regret. I could not but feel attached to those with whom I had

lived and suffered and worked for so many weary years. I knew, perhaps,

more of the life history of these poor women, their inner thoughts and

feelings, than any one else in the prison. In suffering, in sympathy,

in pity, we were all akin. In the association hour they would bring me

their letters from home to read, and show me the photographs of their

children or other dear ones, while tears would course down their cheeks

at the memory of happier days.

NEED OF FURTHER PRISON REFORM

Many opinions have been written regarding prisons, but with few

exceptions they are the observations of outsiders, which means, they

must of necessity be to a certain extent superficial.

I have touched only a few spots of the great diseased system of prison

management, but what public opinion did to ameliorate past abuses,

public opinion can still do to improve the treatment of to-day’s

criminal. A little over a hundred years ago there were thirty-four

offenses in England punishable by capital punishment. To-day there is

only one. Charles Dickens did more than any agency toward doing away

with imprisonment for debt, yet last year there were no less than

eleven thousand prisoners in confinement for debt in English prisons.

How many of these have since joined the ranks of the criminals through

loss of self-respect? What has been the effect upon their wives and

families? Why is a man imprisoned for debt? Certainly not to enable him

to pay it. He can earn nothing while in prison, where he is supported

at the expense of the state; and if he has a wife or family, they

either become dependent on the rates, or incur debts which he will

have to pay on his release. Again, he may not improbably lose his

employment, and have to look out for another when liberated, and his

imprisonment does not make it more easy, either to procure work or

to perform it efficiently. The ground of imprisonment is dishonesty.

But is not actual dishonesty sufficiently met by the criminal law?

In what sense is the debtor dishonest? Is it meant that he has money

in his pocket and refuses to pay his debts? Is it not rather that he

ought to have had money? It is proved perhaps that he is earning so

much per week, possibly, but how long had he been earning and how long

was he out of employment before that? Has he had sickness? There have

been many instances where a man was in the hospital when the committal

order was made, and was seized and carried off to prison immediately

on discharge. If non-payment of a debt is not a crime, why is he in

prison for it? If it is a crime, why has he not the benefit of a trial

by jury on the ability or inability of paying his debts? And why

should not the Home Office or other appellate tribunal have the power

of revising his sentence? If the debtor has goods that can be seized,

let them be seized; if there is money coming to him, let the creditor

attach it; if it comes within the scope of the bankruptcy law, let

him be adjudicated and examined on oath to every shilling that he has

received or spent. But why, in the name of justice and humanity, treat

him as a criminal, prevent him from earning his bread, and make him

an incumbrance on the State, exposing his wife and daughter to ruin,

degrading him, lowering his self-respect, and subjecting him to the

taint of the prison atmosphere, without satisfactory evidence of his

ability to pay at the time of committal? Several prisoners that I came

in contact with were made criminals because their husbands had left

their families destitute because imprisoned for debt.

CHAPTER TEN

My Release

I LEARN THE TIME WHEN MY SENTENCE WILL TERMINATE

After I had been incarcerated for a few years I found out that it was

usual in the case of a life convict who has earned good marks to have

her sentence brought up for consideration after she has served fifteen

years. A life sentence usually means twenty years, and three months is

taken off each year as a reward for good conduct. In February, 1903, I

was definitely informed that my case would follow the ordinary course.

I have been accused of obtaining my release by “trickery,” but these

facts speak for themselves.

The impression has also been given by the press that great leniency

was shown in my case, and that through the intervention of friends

the Home Office released me before the expiration of my sentence. No

exceptional leniency whatever was shown in my case. It depends upon the

prisoner herself whether she is released at an earlier period or serves

the full term of her sentence. By an unbroken record of good conduct I

reduced my life sentence, which is twenty years, to fifteen years; this

expired on the 25th of July, 1904.

THE DAWN OF LIBERTY

As a giant refreshed by sleep, the prison awakens to life, and the

voices of officers, the clang of doors, the ringing of bells echo

throughout the halls. What does it portend? Is it the arrival of some

distinguished visitor from the Home Office? Then I hear the sound of

approaching footsteps, as they come nearer and nearer and then stop at

my cell door. The governor ushers in three gentlemen--one tall and

dark and handsome, but with a stern face; another short, with a white

beard and blue eyes which looked at me somewhat coldly; of the third I

have no distinct recollection. The tall gentleman conversed pleasantly

for several minutes about my work and myself, then passed out on his

tour of inspection. I did not know at the time who these visitors were,

but learned later that the gentleman who spoke to me was the Secretary

of State, Sir Matthew White-Ridley; one of his companions was Sir

Kenelm Digby, and the other Sir Evelyn Ruggles-Brise, the chairman of

the Prison Committee, who takes a really humane interest in the welfare

of the convicts.

One morning, a week later, I was summoned to appear before the

governor. It is an ordeal to be dreaded by any one who has broken the

rules, but I knew I had not, and therefore concluded that I was wanted

in connection with my work. When I entered the office he looked up with

a kindly smile, which was also reflected in the face of the chief

matron. My attention was arrested. I stood silently waiting for him to

speak. After searching among some papers on the table, he picked up

one and read something to the following effect: “The prisoner, P 29,

Florence E. Maybrick, is to be informed that the Secretary of State

has decided to grant her discharge from prison when she has completed

fifteen years of her sentence, conditional upon her conduct.”

For a moment I failed to grasp the full meaning of these words, but

when I did--how shall I describe the mingled feelings of joy and

thankfulness, of relief and hope, with which I was overwhelmed! I

returned to my cell dazed by the unexpected message for which for so

many long, weary years I had hoped and prayed.

How anxiously I waited for those last few months to pass!

THE RELEASE

It was Christmas Eve of 1903. I had helped to decorate the chapel with

evergreens, which is the only way in which the greatest festival of

the church’s year is kept in prison. There is no rejoicing allowed

prisoners; no festival meal of roast beef and plum pudding, only the

usual prison diet; and the sad memories of happier days are emphasized

by our bare cells with their maximum of cleanliness and minimum of

comfort. But to me it was the last Christmas in that “house of sorrow,”

and my heart felt the dawning of a brighter day. Only four weeks more

and I would have passed out of its grim gates forever! How I counted

those days, and yet how I shrank from going once more into the world

that had been so cruel, so hostile, so unmerciful, in spite of the fact

that there was no proof that I was the guilty woman they assumed me to

be! But kind friends and loving hearts were waiting to greet me, to

give me refuge and comfort.

On Saturday, the 23d of January, my mother visited me at Aylesbury

Prison for the last time. How many weary and sad hours we had passed in

that visiting-room! Our hearts were too full for much conversation, and

it was with broken voices that we discussed the arrangements made for

my departure on the following Monday.

The last Sunday I spent in prison I felt like one in a dream. I could

not realize that to-morrow, the glad to-morrow, would bring with it

freedom and life. In the evening I was sent for to say “Good-by” to

the governor. Besides the chief matron and the one who was to be my

escort to Truro, no one was aware of the day or hour of my departure

from Aylesbury. Not a word had been said to the other prisoners. I

should like to have said farewell to them, also to the officers whom

I had known for fourteen years (for several had come with us from

Woking Prison); but I thought it best to pass into my new life as

quietly as possible. At my earnest request the Home Office consented

to allow my place of destination to be kept a secret. I felt that I

should derive more benefit from the change of my new environment and

association with others, if my identity and place of retreat were not

known to the public.

[Illustration:

Copyright by the London Stereoscopic Co.

RIGHT HON. A. AKERS DOUGLAS, M.P., British Home Secretary at time of

Mrs. Maybrick’s release.]

On Monday, the 25th of January, I was awakened early, and after

laying aside, for the last time, the garments of shame and disgrace,

I was clothed once more in those that represent civilization and

respectability. I descended to the court below, and, accompanied by the

chief matron and my escort, passed silently through the great gates and

out of the prison. At half-past six a cab drove quietly up, and the

matron and I silently stepped in and were driven away to the Aylesbury

Station. On our arrival in London we proceeded at once to Paddington

Station. The noise and the crowds of people everywhere bewildered me.

IN RETREAT AT TRURO

After an uneventful journey we arrived at Truro at six P.M., and

drove at once to the Home of the Community of the Epiphany, where I

stayed during the remainder of my term of six months. I am told that

some comment has been made on the fact that the Home was a religious

retreat, and that I ought to have been sent to a secular one instead.

I went there entirely of my own desire. On our arrival there I bade a

last farewell to my kind companion--one of the sweetest women it has

been my privilege to meet. The Mother Superior, who had visited me

three months previously at Aylesbury Prison, received me tenderly, and

at once conducted me to my room. How pure and chaste everything looked

after the cold, bare walls of my prison cell! How the restful quiet

soothed my jarred and weakened nerves, and, above all, what comforting

balm the dear Mother Superior and the sweet sisters poured into the

wounds of my riven soul!

I look back upon the six months spent within those sacred walls as the

most peaceful and the happiest--in the true sense--of my life. The

life there is so calm, so holy, and yet so cheerful, that one becomes

infected, so that the sad thoughts flee away, the drooping hands are

once more uplifted, and the heart strengthened to perform the work that

a loving God may have ordained.

I passed several hours of each day working in the sewing-room with the

sisters. During my leisure time I read much, and when the weather was

fine delighted in taking long walks within the lovely grounds that

surround the Home. I did not go out in the country, nor attend the

services on Sunday at the Cathedral.

I left Truro on the 20th of July a free woman--with a ticket-of-leave,

it is true, but as I am exempt from police supervision even in

England, I have no need to consider it in America or elsewhere.

By the courtesy of the American Ambassador, the Hon. Joseph H. Choate,

I was provided with an escort to accompany me and my companion on our

journey from Truro to Rouen, France.

The Hon. John Hay, Secretary of State, Washington; the Hon. Joseph H.

Choate, Mr. Henry White, Chargé d’Affaires, and Mr. Carter, Secretary

of Embassy, at London, have always been most earnest in my cause. I

deeply appreciate their untiring efforts in my behalf.

I COME TO AMERICA

After staying with my mother for three weeks, on the advice of my

counselors, Messrs. Hayden & Yarrell, of Washington, District of

Columbia, I decided to return to America with Mr. Samuel V. Hayden and

his charming wife. I longed to be once more with my own people, and it

was only physical weakness and nervous prostration that prevented me

from doing so immediately upon my release. I met these good friends at

Antwerp, Belgium, and sailed from there on the Red Star Line steamship

_Vaderland_ for New York. My name was entered on the passenger list as

Rose Ingraham, that I might secure more quiet and privacy; but when

we were a few days out the fact of my identity became known, and with

few exceptions the greatest courtesy, consideration, and delicacy were

shown in the demeanor of the passengers toward me. If any of these

should read these lines I would herewith express to them my grateful

thanks and appreciation; while toward the captain and officers of the

_Vaderland_ I feel especially indebted for their unwearied courtesy and

consideration.

When I first caught sight of the Statue of Liberty, I, perhaps more

than any one on board, realized the full meaning of what it typifies,

and I felt my heart stirred to its depths at the memory of what all my

countrymen and countrywomen had done for me during the dark days of my

past, to prove that they still carried me in their hearts, though the

great ocean rolled between, and that I had not been robbed of the high

privilege of being an American citizen.

We arrived at New York on the 23d of August. It was a “red-letter” day.

Once more, after many years of suffering and when I had long despaired

of ever seeing the beloved faces of my friends again, my feet once

again pressed the sacred soil of my native land.

MY LOST YEARS

A time will come when the world will acknowledge that the verdict which

was passed upon me is absolutely untenable. But what then? Who shall

give back the years I have spent within prison walls; the friends by

whom I am forgotten; the children to whom I am dead;[4] the sunshine;

the winds of heaven; my woman’s life, and all I have lost by this

terrible injustice? Time may heal the deepest wounds when the balm of

love and sympathy is poured into them. It is well; for if mental wounds

proved as fatal as those of the body, the prison death-roll would

indeed be a long one.

FOOTNOTE:

[4] The innocents--my children--one a baby of three years, the other a

boy of seven, I had left behind in the world. They had been taught to

believe that their mother was guilty, and, like their father, was to

them dead. They have grown up to years of understanding under another

name. I know nothing about them. When the pathos of all this touches

the reader’s heart he will realize the tragedy of my case.

During the early years of my imprisonment I received my children’s

photographs once a year; also several friendly letters from Mr.

Thomas Maybrick, with information about them. But as time passed on,

these ceased altogether. When I could endure the silence no longer I

instructed Mr. R. S. Cleaver, of Liverpool--who had been the solicitor

in my case, and to whose unwavering faith and kindness I owe a debt I

can never hope to repay--to write to Mr. Michael Maybrick to forward

fresh photographs of my boy and girl. To this request Mr. Thomas

Maybrick replied that Mr. Michael Maybrick refused to permit it. When

the matter was further urged Mr. Michael Maybrick himself wrote to the

governor to inform me that my son, who had been made acquainted with

the history of the case, did not wish either his own or his sister’s

photograph to be sent to me.

PART TWO

ANALYSIS OF THE MAYBRICK CASE

Introduction

PETITIONS FOR A REPRIEVE

The jury’s verdict of guilty was rendered on August 7, 1889. The

evidence at the trial, as well as the learned judge’s “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 erroneous--as

not founded upon evidence, but upon the biased and misleading summing

up of the case by the mentally incompetent 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:

“After the fullest consideration, and after taking the best medical

and legal advice that could be obtained, the Home Secretary advised

Her Majesty to respite the capital punishment of Florence Elizabeth

Maybrick and to commute the punishment to penal servitude for life;

inasmuch as, although the evidence leads to the conclusion that the

prisoner administered and attempted to administer arsenic to her

husband with intent to murder him, yet it does not wholly exclude

a reasonable doubt _whether his death was in fact caused by the

administration of arsenic_.”

ILLOGICAL POSITION OF HOME SECRETARY

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

Maybrick’s] 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

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.

NEW EVIDENCE OF INNOCENCE IGNORED

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 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 case--in

itself a most excessive punishment for the untried and, consequently,

unproven charges. He sent me to suffer fourteen and one-half years

on suspicion--a 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.

Had the jury, instead of finding a verdict of “guilty” of murder,

returned a verdict in the same terms as the finding of Mr. Matthews,

the judge must have entered it as “not guilty” and discharged me.

LORD RUSSELL’S LETTER

Well might the Lord Chief Justice Russell of Killowen write me, as he

did on the 27th of June, 1895, telling me that he had never relaxed his

efforts to urge my release, and saying:

ROYAL COURT, 27th June, 1895.

MRS. MAYBRICK,

DEAR MADAM: I have been absent on circuit; hence my delay in answering

your letter.

I beg to assure you that I have never relaxed my efforts where any

suitable opportunity offered to urge that your release ought to be

granted. I feel as strongly as I have felt from the first that you

ought never to have been convicted, and this opinion I have very

clearly expressed to Mr. Asquith, but I am sorry to say hitherto

without effect.

Rest assured that I shall renew my representations to the incoming

Home Secretary, whoever he may be, as soon as the Government is formed

and the Home Secretary is in a position to deal with such matters.

I am,

Faithfully,

RUSSELL OF KILLOWEN.

This also seems to be the opinion of the leading counsel for the

prosecution, Mr. Addison, Q.C., M.P. (now Judge Addison, of the

Southwark County Courts), who is reported to have said, after the

summing up, that “the jury could not, especially in view of the medical

evidence, find a verdict of guilty.” This statement will be found in

Sir Charles Russell’s protest to Mr. Matthews.

EFFORTS FOR RELEASE

The public are not probably fully aware how much intensity of feeling

and earnest work has been expended on my case during the fourteen and

one-half years of my imprisonment. The Home Office knows. Men in high

positions in both political parties in England have often united in

demanding a new trial. The almost invariable reply has been that the

best means to effect my release was to obtain new facts or evidence,

and submit these to the Home Secretary for his consideration. Those

well-meaning advisers seemed to forget that the half million of

petitioners for my reprieve or free pardon in England--not to count

those in America--were not moved thereto by new facts or evidence,

but by the absence of facts or evidence sufficient to prove that the

alleged crime had been committed by any one, or that either guilt or

complicity in that crime, if crime it were, attached to me. Surely it

is not the business of the public nor of individual citizens to prove

the innocence of any unhappy person whom process of law selects for

punishment, while it _is_ the business of every citizen to see that the

courts incontestably prove the guilt of any person accused of a crime

before sentence is passed, in the following manner:

1. It must be proved that a crime has been committed.

2. It must be proved beyond a reasonable doubt that the accused person

is the one who committed it.

EVEN NEW EVIDENCE SUPERFLUOUS

Neither condition has yet been fulfilled in my case. The evidence on

which a half million petitioners said and say I was unjustly condemned

is sufficient in itself. While it is true if a new trial had been

granted me I could have produced new evidence that overwhelmingly

demonstrated my innocence, it is also true that more facts or new

evidence were not requisite to enable justice to be done.

THE DOCTORS’ DOUBT

The doctors who gave evidence in favor of death by arsenical poisoning

all stated that they would not have felt certain on the subject if

the one-tenth of a grain of arsenic had not been found in the body.

Therefore, since the presence of that arsenic could be otherwise

accounted for, I was entitled to an acquittal even on the evidence

of the Crown medical witnesses. Moreover, the symptom on which two

or three doctors for the prosecution laid most stress--continuous

vomiting--was referred by the third to morphia administered by himself.

All three were examined before any evidence of Mr. Maybrick’s habit

of arsenic taking was given. Had they believed him to be an arsenic

eater, they might have arrived at a different conclusion. The doctors

for the defense, who declared that Mr. Maybrick’s symptoms were not

those of arsenical poisoning, were men of far more experience as

regards poisons than the Crown medical witnesses. The quantity of

arsenic found in the body was, in their opinion, quite consistent with

administration in medicinal doses, and might have been introduced a

considerable time before.

The proved administration of poison with intent to kill is punishable

by penal servitude, but not necessarily for life--sometimes for only

three years; but the charge must be proved in open court to be a

felonious attempt by some means actually used to effectuate the intent,

and it remains with the prosecution to produce the necessary evidence

that the means used were sufficient for the accomplishment of the

effect.

The medical evidence proved that the quantity of arsenic--one-tenth

of a grain--found in Mr. Maybrick’s body was not sufficient to have

produced death.

PUBLIC SURPRISE AT VERDICT

_The Times_ of August 8, 1889, declared that, of the hundreds of

thousands of persons who followed the case with eager interest and

attention, not one in three was prepared for the verdict. The large

majority had believed that, in the presence of such contradictory

evidence, the jury would give the prisoner the benefit of the doubt and

bring in a verdict as much like the Scotch “not proven” as is permitted

by English law.

CHARACTER OF JURY

There was strong prejudice against me, due to the numerous false and

sensational reports circulated by the press during the interval between

the arrest and the trial. The jury belonged to a class of men who were

not competent to weigh technical evidence,[5] and no doubt attached

great weight to the opinions of the local physicians, one of whom was

somewhat of a celebrity. But the main element in the conviction was

Justice Stephen, whose mind, undoubtedly owing to incipient insanity

(he died insane a year later), was incapable of dealing with so

intricate a case.

THE “MAD JUDGE”

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.”

That the jury “did not hear the whole of the evidence very distinctly”

is admitted by one of them in the Liverpool _Daily Post_ of August 10,

1889. Consequently they were likely to be unduly influenced by the

judge’s charge. There is no evidence that the jury detected the judge’s

misstatements, as a more intelligent jury certainly would have done.

Their minds were “taken captive” by the charge of Justice Stephen, and

they were as “clay in the hands of the potter.”

LORD RUSSELL’S MEMORANDUM QUASHED

The Lord Chief Justice sent the Home Secretary a memorandum consisting

of twenty folios, in which he stated the strong opinion that “Mrs.

Maybrick ought to be released at once.” The Lord Chief Justice also

requested that the contents of his memorandum be made public. Yet when

asked in the House of Commons to lay the document on the table of the

House in order that it might be accessible to the members, the Home

Secretary emphatically declined. The London _Daily Mail_, in a leader

on this incident, said:

“The only conceivable reasons for declining to give publicity to the

letter, which was actually intended for publication, are apparently

official red tape and the fear of giving new life to the agitation

in favor of Mrs. Maybrick’s release. This result will be almost as

effectually achieved by surrounding the case with further mystery and

leaving upon the public mind the grave suspicion that justice may not

have been done.”

REPEATED PROTESTS OF LORD RUSSELL

The following extracts are taken from the “Life of Lord Russell of

Killowen” by R. Barry O’Brien.

“In November, 1895, he [Lord Russell] wrote to Sir Matthew

White-Ridley (page 260), conveying his strong and emphatic opinion

that Florence Maybrick ought never to have been convicted; that her

continued imprisonment is an injustice which ought promptly to be

ended, and added: ‘I have never wavered in this opinion. After her

conviction I wrote and had printed a memorandum, which I presume

is preserved at the Home Office. Lest it should not be, I herewith

transmit a copy.’

“As is known, what happened was that Mr. Matthews, after consultation

with the present Lord Chancellor, Lord Salisbury, and Mr. Justice

Stephen, and after seeing Dr. Stephenson, the principal Crown witness,

and also the late Dr. Tidy, respited the capital sentence on the

expressed ground that there was sufficient doubt whether death had

been caused by arsenical poisoning to justify the respite.

“It will be seen (1) that such a doubt existed as to the commission

of the offense for which Florence Maybrick was tried as rendered it

improper, in the opinion of the Home Secretary and his advisers, that

the capital sentence should be carried out; and (2) that for more

than six years Florence Maybrick has been suffering imprisonment on

the assumption of Mr. Matthews that she committed an offense for which

she was never tried by the constitutional authority and of which she

has never been adjudged guilty.”

From page 261: “This is in itself a most serious state of things. It

is manifestly unjust that Florence Maybrick should suffer for a crime

in regard to which she has never been called upon to answer before any

lawful tribunal.

“Is it not obvious that if the attempt to murder had been the offense

for which she was arraigned, the course of the defense would have been

different? I speak as her counsel of what I know. Read the report

of the defense, and you will see that I devoted my whole strength

to and massed the evidence upon the point that the prosecution had

misconceived the facts, that the foundation on which the whole case

rested was rotten, for that, in fact, there was no murder; that, on the

contrary, the deceased had died from natural causes.

“It is true that incidental reference was made to certain alleged

acts of Florence Maybrick, but the references were incidental only;

the stress of my argument being, in fact, that _no murder had been

committed, because the evidence did not warrant the conclusion that the

deceased had died from arsenical poisoning_. On the other hand, had

the Crown counsel suggested the case of attempt to murder by poison,

it would have been the duty of counsel to address himself directly and

mainly to the alleged circumstances which, it was argued, pointed to

guilty intent. That these alleged circumstances were capable in part

of being explained, in part of being minimized, and in part of being

attacked as unreliably vouched, can not, I think, be doubted by any one

who has with a critical eye scanned the evidence. I do not deny that my

feelings are engaged in this case. It is impossible that they should

not be, but I have honestly tried to judge the case, and I now say that

_if I was called upon to advise in my character of head of the Criminal

Judicature of this country, I should advise you that Florence Maybrick

ought to be allowed to go free_.”

From page 262: “I think it my duty to renew my protest against the

continued imprisonment of Florence Maybrick. I consider the history of

the case reflects discredit on the administration of the criminal law.

I think my protest ought to be attended to at last. The prisoner has

already undergone punishment for a period four times as long, or more,

as the minimum punishment fixed by law for the commission of the crime,

of which she has never been convicted or for which she has never been

tried, but for which she has been adjudged guilty by your predecessor

in the office of Home Secretary.”

THE AMERICAN OFFICIAL PETITION

The following is quoted from the American Official Petition sent to the

Rt. Hon. Henry Matthews, Q.C., M.P., Her Majesty’s principal secretary

for the Home Department:

“As Florence Elizabeth Maybrick is an American woman, without father,

brother, husband, or kin in England, except two infant children,

enduring penal servitude for life in Woking Prison;

“As the conduct of her trial resulted in a profound impression of a

miscarriage of justice, in an earnest protest against the verdict, and

the execution of the sentence of death, and its commutation to penal

servitude for life on the ground of reasonable doubt whether a murder

had been committed;

“As a careful legal scrutiny of the evidence given at the trial

by eminent solicitors, barristers, queen’s counsel, and members

of Parliament, and the production of facts not in evidence at the

trial have resulted in a final decision of counsel that the case

is one proper for the grave consideration of a criminal appellate

tribunal--if such a tribunal existed;

“Therefore, we earnestly ask that the Rt. Hon. Henry Matthews,

Q.C., M.P., Her Majesty’s principal secretary of state for the Home

Department, will advise Her Majesty to order the pardon and release of

the prisoner, who has now suffered an imprisonment of three years.

“LEVI P. MORTON, Vice-President of the United States, President of

the Senate.

“CHARLES T. CRISP, Speaker of the House of Representatives.

“CHARLES FOSTER, Secretary of the Treasury.

“JAMES G. BLAINE, Secretary of State.

“S. B. ELKINS, Secretary of War.

“W. H. MILLER, Attorney-General.

“JOHN WANAMAKER, Postmaster-General.

“B. T. TRACY, Secretary of the Navy.

“JOHN B. NOBLE, Secretary of the Interior.

“G. M. RUSK, Secretary of Agriculture.

“J., CARDINAL GIBBONS.

“J. M. SCOFIELD, Major-General Commanding the Army.

“A. W. TRULY, Brigadier-General-in-Chief, Signal Office.

“THOMAS LINCOLN CASEY, Brigadier-General-in-Chief of Engineers.

“JOSEPH CABELL BRECKENRIDGE, Brigadier-General, Infantry-General.

“J. O. KELTON, Brigadier-General, Adjutant-General.

“WILLIAM SMITH, Paymaster-General.

“H. M. BATCHELDER, General-Quartermaster-General.

“B. DUBARRY, General and Commanding General Infantry.

“O. SUTHERLAND, General Infantry General.

“D. W. FLAGLER, Chief of Ordnance.

“J. NORMAN LISBER, Acting Judge-Advocate-General.

“THOMAS EWING, Brevet-Major-General, U. S. A., and many others.”

SECRETARY BLAINE’S LETTER TO MINISTER LINCOLN

I will conclude by quoting the letter of Secretary Blaine to Mr. Robert

Lincoln, then Minister to the Court of St. James. It will be seen that

Mr. Blaine was of opinion that I had lost my citizenship. Since this

letter was written it has been decided by the Supreme Court of the

United States that a woman married to a foreigner, on the death of her

husband can, on application, be reinstated to citizenship.

[Illustration: HON. JAMES G. BLAINE, American Secretary of State,

1889-1892.]

“DEPARTMENT OF STATE, WASHINGTON,

“March 7, 1892.

“MY DEAR MR. LINCOLN: As Mrs. Maybrick lost her American citizenship

by her English marriage, and as I fear she does not resume it by her

widowhood, I can not instruct you officially as to the course you

should pursue toward her.

“But her American and Southern birth, her connection with many

families of the highest respectability and even of prominence in the

country’s service, have attracted much attention to her fate.

“I have no other interest in her than an interest which you and

I share in common with all our countrymen--the desire to help an

American woman in distress. That she may have been influenced by the

foolish ambition of too many American girls for a foreign marriage,

and have descended from her own rank to that of her husband’s family,

which seems to have been somewhat vulgar, must be forgiven to her

youth, since she was only eighteen at the time of her marriage.

“There is a wide and widening belief in this country that she is

legally innocent and illegally imprisoned. The official charge of the

judge that murder must be proved and the official announcement of the

Home Secretary that the evidence leaves a ‘reasonable doubt’ of murder

are the premises of but one conclusion--the discharge of the prisoner.

“The fact that she was never indicted or tried by a jury of her peers

on a specific count of felonious attempt to administer arsenic, yet

is condemned to penal servitude for life on the Home Secretary’s

statement that she evidently made such an attempt, can never be

reconciled to the English principle that an accused person shall be

tried by a jury of his peers. Lawyers here are among the strongest

believers in the illegality of her imprisonment. Indeed, the sense of

injustice is developing and deepening into horror.

“Officially I could only instruct you on behalf of a multitude of

American citizens to investigate her case. Personally I beg to

express to you my deep interest in it, and pray you, if possible, to

communicate with Messrs. Lumley and Sir Charles Russell as to any

method of American cooperation which may seem to them desirable.

“Messrs. Lumley have made a very able brief, which I am sure would

interest you, and which seems to me unanswerable. Sir Charles Russell,

whose reputation you know, is her counsel. Consult with them what best

can be done, from an American point of view, to secure Mrs. Maybrick’s

release. And if you shall have read Lumley’s brief, I am sure that

conviction will lead you to personal activity in her behalf.

“You can communicate with me in strict confidence, as from one

American citizen to another, for the relief of an American woman

helplessly enduring a great wrong.

“Believe me, etc.,

“JAMES G. BLAINE.”

And yet it required the time from March 7, 1892, until July 20, 1904,

to attain my liberation; and then it was accomplished by time limit and

by no act of grace or concession on the part of the English Government.

HENRY W. LUCY ON LORD RUSSELL

_The Strand Magazine_, London, in its November number, 1900, published

an article by Henry W. Lucy, Esq., who, speaking of the late Lord Chief

Justice Russell, says:

“The most remarkable episode in Charles Russell’s career at the bar

undoubtedly was his defense of Mrs. Maybrick.

“I happened to find myself in the same hotel with him at Liverpool

on the morning of the day set down for the opening of the trial. At

breakfast he spoke in confident terms of his client’s innocence and of

the surety of her acquittal. He did not take into account the passing

mood of the judge who tried the case, and so found himself out of his

reckoning; but the verdict of the jury, still less the summing-up of

Fitz-James Stephen, did not shake his conviction. Sir Charles Russell

was of all men least likely to be misled by appearances or deliberate

deception; having probed the case to the bottom, having turned his

piercing eyes on the woman in the dock, having talked to her in

private and studied her in public, he was convinced of her innocence.

“Lord Landoff was a lawyer of high position at the English bar when,

as Mr. Henry Matthews, he came into the Home Office.

“The verdict of the jury was ‘guilty,’ and her sentence was death,

which was a real surprise, as was afterward learned, even to the

judge, Sir Fitz-James Stephen. If Mr. Matthews believed her guilty,

he should not have commuted her sentence upon the ground that he

assigned. If she was guilty she well deserved death on the scaffold.

The evidence, however, satisfied Mr. Matthews that there was

reasonable doubt that the death of Mr. Maybrick was due to arsenic.

In this view, as is well known, he was sustained by Justice Stephen.

If such a doubt really came into Mr. Matthews’s mind, as was made the

ground of the commutation of the sentence, _under English law that

doubt entitled the accused to acquittal_.

“Why he lacked the courage of his convictions can only be surmised. At

all events he did not dare to take the responsibility of allowing her

to be executed.

“The intercession of the American Government through Mr. Blaine,

Secretary of State, was urgent, strong, and most intense. It is

incredible that Mr. Matthews desired any loophole to release her. The

case was full of them.

“Sir Matthew White-Ridley was not a lawyer, and there is no

probability that he ever read the evidence in the case, which was

voluminous. He could not have read the papers in three days if he had

attempted it. He simply followed his predecessor’s line and was not

able to take up the case on its merits.”

LORD RUSSELL’S CONVICTION OF MRS. MAYBRICK’S INNOCENCE

This statement of Mr. Lucy is of great value as an answer to the

assault made on Lord Russell’s memory after his death, on his firm

belief in my innocence.

Lord Hugh Cecil wrote to a constituent:

“I believe I am right in stating that he (Lord Russell) never said

that he believed Mrs. Maybrick to be innocent.”

When this was shown Lord Russell by Mr. A. W. McDougall, Esq., the

Chief Justice exclaimed:

“Does Lord Hugh Cecil suppose that I would abandon all the traditions

of the Bar and put forward publicly as an argument in such a case my

personal belief in this, that, or the other thing? Does he suppose

that I would have made all the efforts I have been making to obtain

her freedom if I believed her to be guilty?”

EXPLANATION OF ATTITUDE OF HOME SECRETARIES

“Personal Rights,” of November 15, in commenting on the statement of

Mr. Lucy in _The Strand Magazine_, says:

“We do not share the belief that Sir Fitz-James Stephen was insane in

any plenary sense at the time of the trial; but we are convinced that

he was not fully sane. His charge to the jury, the report of which

is reproduced in full in Mr. Levy’s book, is grotesquely inaccurate;

and if the jury took it to be a compendium of the evidence--as they

probably did--the result of their deliberation is fully accounted

for. Indeed, if the facts were such as the judge stated, the verdict

could hardly be impugned. How different they were may be seen by any

one who compares the evidence with the judge’s charge, in the book

already referred to. To take a single instance: the judge stated that,

according to the evidence of Alice Yapp, at the commencement of Mr.

Maybrick’s illness, he was very sick and in great pain immediately

after some medicine was given to him by his wife. Alice Yapp swore

nothing of the kind. She saw neither any administration of medicine

nor any sickness. We could give other instances of gross inaccuracy,

generally leading to the conclusion of the prisoner’s guilt; but, for

our present purpose, the above incident will suffice.

“If this was the character of the judge’s charge to the jury, what

confidence can be placed in his notes? Still upon those notes was

probably based the conclusions of successive Home Secretaries or of

the officials employed by them. When Mr. Lucy holds up his hands in

astonishment at the marvelous consensus of opinion of various Home

Secretaries, he seems to us to manifest remarkable blindness--for one

so long behind the Speaker’s chair--as to the vicarious nature of

that opinion. It is more than possible that the conclusions of Mr.

Matthews, Mr. Asquith, and Sir Matthew White-Ridley were all drawn

for them by the same gentleman, or, at least, that the same gentleman

helped these various Home Secretaries to come to the same conclusion.

“We hope that Mr. Ritchie, the new Home Secretary, will judge this

matter for himself. Let him read the salient portions, at least, of

Mr. Levy’s book, and, per contra, the article of X. Y. Z. in _The

Contemporary Review_ of September last. If he likes to make the

inquiry, he will find that X. Y. Z. is one of his new permanent

staff, and that the doctrines put forward in the article are the

embodiment of Home Office practise. This is a matter which does not

concern the Maybrick case alone. Scarcely a month passes without some

new manifestation of injustice brought about by adherence to the

traditions of the department over which Mr. Ritchie now presides. If

he will seek out this hydra and slay it, he will leave for himself

an immortal name among Secretaries of State, and--what he will hold

of more importance--he will cut off a permanent source of injustice,

give releasement and joy to the innocent pining in prison, and breathe

a new life into a department which is sadly in need of a renovating

spirit.”

[Illustration: HON. ROBERT T. LINCOLN, American Ambassador to Court of

St. James, 1889-1893.]

UPHOLDING THE JUSTICIARY

In the same number of this journal is an article from “Lex,” a

well-known writer in English journals, which we reproduce:

“SIR: May I call attention to the two articles in the Liverpool

_Post_ of August 13 and 14, in which the utter incompetence of the

judge at the Maybrick trial is strongly asserted? The writer is

distinctly hostile to the prisoner, and writes without any intention

of raising the question whether the trial was not null and void; but

as the English system consists of trial by judge and jury, the total

incompetence of either element should clearly vitiate it. Moreover,

Mr. Ruggles-Brise, on the occasion of a visit to America in 1897,

stated that the reason of the steadfast refusal of _the Home Secretary

to release the prisoner was his desire to uphold the wholesome

authority of the English justiciary_. That authority can not be

regarded as wholesome if the judge was insane. Lord Russell, who was

present throughout the trial, was of different opinion from that of

the judge. He was undoubtedly sane. If Sir J. F. Stephen was insane,

the public will, I think, be of opinion that the sane judge should

have had the most influence with the executive.”

NEED OF COURT OF CRIMINAL APPEAL

Lord Esher, in _The Times_ of August 17, 1889, strongly advocated

a court of criminal appeal, and _The Times_, in an article of the

same date, supported the views expressed by Lord Esher and by Lord

Fitzgerald, as follows:

“A court of appeal, as Lord Esher sketches it, would not be open

to the objections which can be fairly urged against our present

informal method of procedure. The Home Secretary, as a quasi court

of appeal, is, as Lord Fitzgerald remarks, not a judge and has not

the power of a judge.... The judgment pronounced by a strong court

of criminal appeal, such as Lord Esher’s letter suggests, would do

more to satisfy the public mind than the best efforts of the Home

Secretary could possibly do. The reform which Lord Esher advocates has

been long called for, and Lord Fitzgerald did well to press it on the

Government.... What the public feel is that they would rather have the

fallibility of trained judges than the fallibility of an individual

sitting without any of the apparatus with which a court of law is

enabled to detect truth from falsehood, and perhaps unconsciously

confusing the prerogative of mercy with justice.”

FOOTNOTE:

[5] The jury was composed of three plumbers, two farmers, one milliner,

one wood-turner, one provision dealer, one grocer, one ironmonger, one

house-painter, and one baker.

THE BRIEF OF MESSRS. LUMLEY & LUMLEY

This brief of Messrs. Lumley & Lumley, characterized in the preceding

letter of Secretary Blaine as “very able” and “unanswerable,” is

too long for reproduction in these pages in its entirety, and hence

only the main points are given. The document was prepared at the

instance of Lord Russell of Killowen for submission to himself and

three other Queen’s Counsel, with a view of obtaining a new trial. It

may interest the reader to know that the money required to make this

searching analysis by Messrs. Lumley & Lumley was raised by a popular

subscription in America, through the good offices of the New York

_World_. The eminent Queen’s counsel, after a full consideration of the

analysis of the case, submitted the following opinion:

OPINION--RE F. E. MAYBRICK

“Having carefully considered the facts stated in the elaborate case

submitted to us by Messrs. Lumley & Lumley, and the law applicable to

the matter, we are clearly of opinion that there is no mode by which

in this case a new trial or a ‘_venire de novo_’ can be obtained, nor

can the prisoner be brought up on a ‘habeas corpus,’ with the view to

retrying the issue of her innocence or guilt.

“We say this notwithstanding the case of Regina _vs._ Scarfe (17 Q. B.,

238, 5; Cox, C. C., 243; 2 Den., C. C., 281).

“We are of opinion that in English criminal procedure there is no

possibility of procuring a rehearing in the case of felony where

a verdict has been found by a properly constituted jury upon an

indictment which is correct in form. This rule is, in our opinion,

absolute, unless circumstances have transpired, and have been entered

upon the record, which, when there appearing, would invalidate the

tribunal and reduce the trial to a nullity by reason of its not having

been before a properly constituted tribunal. None of the matters

proposed to be proved go to this length.

“We think it right to add that there are many matters stated in the

case, not merely with reference to the evidence at and the incidents

of the trial, but suggesting new facts, which would be _matters proper

for the grave consideration of a Court of Criminal Appeal_, if such a

tribunal existed in this country.

(Signed) “CHARLES RUSSELL, Q.C.

“I. FLETCHER MOULTON, Q.C.

“HARRY BOOKIN POLAND, Q.C.

“REGINALD SMITH, Q.C.

“LINCOLN’S INN, 12th April, 1892.”

* * * * *

This opinion was based upon the following points, presented by Messrs.

Lumley & Lumley:

JUSTICE STEPHEN’S MISDIRECTIONS

The _misdirections_ which are selected for consideration may be

conveniently classed, among others, under these headings:

1. As to the facts disclosed in the evidence of the procuring and

possession of arsenic by Mrs. Maybrick and of her administering it.

2. As to the cause of death.

A perusal of the summing-up from beginning to end impresses the mind

with the feeling that, whenever Mr. Justice Stephen approached any fact

offered by the defense which threw light upon _the possession_ and _an

alleged_ administration of arsenic by Mrs. Maybrick, he drew the minds

of the jury away from it; he played, in fact, the part of the peewit,

which swoops and screams in another part of the field on purpose to

hide where its nest is, and to draw the attention of the passers-by

from the right spot.

Mr. Justice Stephen pointed out to the jury in his summing-up: “You

must begin the whole subject of poison with this, which is a remarkable

fact in the case and which it seems to me tells favorably rather than

otherwise for the prisoner. You must take notice of it and consider

what inference you draw from it. In the whole case, from first to

last, there is _no evidence_ at all of her having _bought_ any poison,

or definitely having had anything to do with procuring any, with the

exception of fly-papers. But there is evidence of a considerable

quantity having been found in various things, which were kept some here

and some there--kept principally, as I gather, in the inner room.[6]

... There is evidence about a considerable quantity of poison in this

house, and more particularly about one or two receptacles which were in

the inner room, Mr. Maybrick’s dressing-room, as it has been pointed

out.”