On Sunday morning the children’s doctor, Dr Humphreys, was sent for. Mr Maybrick was in bed, complaining about pains in his chest and his heart, caused, he said, by a strong cup of tea. He was afraid of becoming paralyzed. The doctor prescribed some diluted prussic acid, and forbade him to drink anything other than soda water and milk. Mrs Maybrick told the doctor that her husband had taken an overdose of strychnine. Two months earlier she had spoken to him about her husband’s habit of dosing himself with strychnine and had written in some concern to his brother, Michael, saying she had found a certain white powder which her husband habitually took. When Michael obliquely asked his brother about this, James Maybrick expostulated: ‘Whoever told you that? It’s a damned lie!’
Dr Humphreys saw his patient again on 29 and 30 April. He concluded that Maybrick was a chronic dyspeptic and put him on a diet. On the night of 30 April, Florence Maybrick went to a fancy-dress ball with her brother-in-law, Edwin, a bachelor cotton merchant, who was staying in Battlecrease House after a recent visit to America.
James Maybrick was back in his office on Wednesday, 1 May. Said brother Edwin: ‘Mrs Maybrick gave me a parcel to take to his office … It contained a brown jug in which there was some farinaceous food in liquid form [Barry’s Revalenta]. My brother poured the liquid into a saucepan and heated it over the fire, and he then poured it into a basin and partook of it. He remarked: “The cook has put some of that damned sherry in it, and she knows I don’t like it!”’
By Friday, Maybrick was ill again and Dr Humphreys was summoned about 10 am. He later stated: ‘I found Mr Maybrick in the morning-room on the ground floor. He said he had not been so well since the day before, and he added that he did not think my medicine agreed with him. Mrs Maybrick was present and said: “You always say the same thing about anybody’s medicine after two or three days.”’ Dr Humphreys’s advice was ‘to go on the same for two or three weeks’. He went away and was called back at midnight. In the interim Mr Maybrick had gone out and had a Turkish bath. He was now in bed; he had been sick twice and complained of gnawing pains in his legs.
On Saturday, his hands felt numb, and he was constantly sick. The doctor told Maybrick he should ‘abate his thirst by washing out with water or by sucking ice or a damp cloth’. On Sunday, his sore throat and foul tongue troubled him; Valentine’s meat juice was prescribed as well as the prussic acid solution. Mrs Maybrick then thought that a second opinion was unnecessary. She said: ‘He has seen so many [doctors] and they have done him so little good.’ She was in constant attendance on him day and night, sleeping in the dressing-room adjacent to the Maybricks’ bedroom.
At 8.30 am on Monday, 6 May, Dr Humphreys was back. ‘I told [him] to stop the Valentine’s beef juice … I was not surprised at it making Mr Maybrick sick, as it made many people sick.’ Humphreys now prescribed some arsenic, Fowler’s solution, which contained in all 1/25th of a grain, and that evening the patient was fed with Brand’s beef tea, some chicken broth, Neave’s food, and some milk and water. He continued to vomit, and a blister was applied to his stomach. On Tuesday morning he seemed better and told Dr Humphreys: ‘I am quite a different man today.’ Nonetheless, a second opinion was now sought by Edwin Maybrick. His choice, Dr Carter, arrived about 5 pm. Carter’s conclusion was that the patient was suffering from acute dyspepsia, resulting from ‘indiscretion of food, or drink, or both’. He prescribed a careful diet and small doses of sedatives. Both Carter and Humphreys thought Maybrick would be well in a few days.
But on Wednesday, 8 May, there was a general turn for the worse. Two of the invalid’s friends, Mrs Matilda Briggs and Mrs Martha Hughes (they were sisters), called at the house in the morning and were told by Nanny Yapp about the soaking flypapers and other suspicious matters. Mrs Briggs took immediate action. She told the exhausted wife to send for a trained nurse. She spoke to Edwin. She also telegraphed Michael Maybrick in London – ‘Come at once. Strange things going on here.’
The nurse arrived at 2.15 pm. About three o’clock, Mrs Maybrick came to the garden gate and gave Alice Yapp a letter to post. The young nanny was minding the Maybricks’ three-year-old daughter and walked to the post office with the child. On the way there the letter, according to Alice, was dropped in the dirt, and needed a new envelope. At any rate, she read the letter, failed to post it and handed it over to Edwin about half-past five. The letter was addressed to A. Brierley and had been written in reply to a somewhat frosty missive from him suggesting that he and Florence did not meet again until the autumn. Mrs Maybrick had written:
Dearest – Since my return I have been nursing M day and night – he is sick unto death! … And now all depends upon how his strength will hold out … We are terribly anxious … But relieve your mind of all fear of discovery now and in the future. M has been delirious since Sunday and I know now he is perfectly ignorant of everything … and also that he has not been making any enquiries whatever!
This was reported to Michael when he arrived from London that night. Edwin instructed the nurses to let no one else attend his sick brother, while Michael discussed the family’s suspicions with Dr Humphreys.
The following day the patient was weaker, complaining of much pain in his rectum: he now had diarrhoea. His faeces and urine, a bottle of brandy and a bottle of Neave’s food were all examined for arsenic. None was found.
That evening the cook (also called Humphreys) was followed downstairs by Mrs Maybrick, who said: ‘I am blamed for all this.’ ‘In what way?’ asked the cook. ‘In not getting other nurses and doctors,’ Mrs Maybrick replied. She went into the servants’ hall and began to cry. She said her position in the house was not worth anything, that Michael Maybrick, who had always had a spite against her, had turned her out of the master’s bedroom. The cook, who thought her mistress had been ‘very kind’ to Mr Maybrick and ‘was doing her best under the circumstances’, was much moved and said: ‘I would rather be in my own shoes than yours.’
Nurse Gore came on duty at 11 pm and gave her charge some Valentine’s meat juice, and noticed how Mrs Maybrick removed the bottle (which had been provided by Edwin) and took it into the dressing room. She closed the door; a few minutes later she returned, placed the bottle in a ‘surreptitious manner’ on a bedside table, and sent the nurse to fetch some ice. Mrs Maybrick later explained:
After Nurse Gore had given my husband beef tea, I went and sat on the bed beside him. He complained to me of being very sick and very depressed and he implored me then to give him this powder, which he had referred to early in the evening, and which I had declined to give him. I was overwrought, terribly anxious, miserably unhappy, and his evident distress utterly unnerved me. He had told me that the powder would not harm him, and that I could put it in his food. I then consented.’ But, she said, he didn’t take any of the powder, as he was asleep when she returned to the bedroom; later he was sick. The bottle was later found to contain half a grain of arsenic.
On Friday, 10 May, James Maybrick was much weaker, with a very faint but rapid pulse; he was very restless and his tongue was foul. He was given sulphonal, nitro-glycerine, cocaine (for his throat) and some phosphoric acid (for his mouth). In the afternoon, Michael Maybrick caught Mrs Maybrick changing medicine from one bottle to another. ‘Florrie! How dare you tamper with the medicine!’ he cried. No arsenic was later found in the bottle that he removed.
Later on that day, the duty nurse, Nurse Gallery, was administering some medicine, assisted by Florrie, when the patient said: ‘Don’t give me the wrong medicine again!’ That evening, according to Nurse Wilson, Mr Maybrick, who was now delirious, said to his wife: ‘Oh, Bunny, Bunny, how could you do it? I did not think it of you.’ ‘You silly old darling,’ said Mrs Maybrick. ‘Don’t trouble your head about things.’ Later, Mrs Maybrick said her husband had been referring to a whispered conversation she had had with him, confessing to her affair with Brierley, assuring him it was over, and asking for his forgiveness.
On Saturday, 11 May, the doctors had a consultation after midday and concluded that their patient would never recover: his