Arsenic, Adultery, and an American on Trial

Summary

HISTORY This Week

Episode: Arsenic, Adultery, and an American on Trial
Date: August 3, 2026
Host: Sally Helm
Guest: Rick Hutto, lawyer and author (“A Poisoned Life: Florence Chandler Maybrick, the First American Woman Sentenced to Death in England”)

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Overview

This episode delves into the sensational Victorian-era trial of Florence Maybrick, an American socialite accused of murdering her husband James Maybrick in 1889, Liverpool. Blending scandal, infidelity, and drug addiction, her story exposes deep social divides, gender norms, and miscarriages of justice in the late Victorian age. The hosts explore how the Maybrick case forced Britain to reconsider women’s roles, the death penalty, and ultimately led to major changes in English law.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Background: Florence and James Maybrick

• Introduction to Florence: At age 17, Florence Chandler, raised on the social periphery of wealth, meets James Maybrick, an older, seemingly successful cotton merchant ([08:39]).
• Age Gap and Motives: “James was exactly the same age as the mother, not of Florence, but of Florence's mother” – Rick Hutto ([08:09]).
• Quick Engagement and Disappointments: After a short courtship, Florence marries James, only to discover his business is precarious, and his wealth exaggerated ("He was always just one step ahead of the lenders..." – Hutto, [09:23]).
• James' Addictions: James is addicted to arsenic (seen then as an aphrodisiac and cure-all) and strychnine ([10:16-10:59]). Florence learns and even aids in his drug habit.
• Double Standard: James maintains a secret family with a mistress and five children, while societal norms expect women to remain wholly chaste ([12:47-13:30]).

2. Marital Breakdown and Scandal

• Florence’s Affair: In 1888, Florence begins an affair with Alfred Brearley ([13:40]). Their relationship becomes public at the Grand National horse race, provoking James’ violent jealousy.
• Social Hypocrisy: “Now remember, this is a man with his own mistress... He was furious [Florence] is seen talking to this man.” – Rick Hutto ([15:01]).
• Increasing Tensions: Florence and James’s marriage deteriorates amidst financial strain, substance abuse, and growing hostilities within the household ([14:24-15:10]).

3. Death and Accusation

• James’s Decline and Death: By spring 1889, James’s health collapses, exacerbated by his substance abuse and stress ([16:10]).
• Michael Maybrick’s Intervention: James’s brother Michael, a composer, moves in, ostensibly to safeguard the family’s reputation rather than out of care for James’s health ([19:03-19:43]).
• Discovery of Florence’s Letter: A letter to Alfred, intercepted and revealed by the children's nurse, incites suspicion and seals Florence’s fate ([20:13]).
• Arrest and Public Spectacle: Within days of James's death, Florence is arrested and separated from her children forever ([22:32-22:41]).

4. The Trial of Florence Maybrick

• Courtroom Drama: The trial captures public attention, with crowds and journalists flocking to St. George’s Hall ([22:49-23:10]).
• Flimsy Evidence: Prosecution hinges on claims of Florence poisoning her husband for love, but evidence (like intercepted letters) is circumstantial. The defense highlights James’s own arsenic addiction and the lack of lethal arsenic found in his system ([23:25-24:15]).
• Gendered Morality: Societal attitudes, especially among upper/middle class Victorians, equate female infidelity with murder. Working classes sympathize with Florence ([09:00, 24:33]).
• Judicial Bias: Judge Sir James Fitzjames Stephen’s instructions swing wildly – initially favoring Florence, then reversing and insisting on her guilt after a sleepless night ([25:13-26:34, 25:44-25:55]).
  • “That night, though, the judge is heard walking up and down outside his bedroom... muttering to himself, that woman is guilty.” – Sally Helm ([25:55])
  • “The second day of summation, he does just the opposite, he says... she's guilty, you must find her guilty.” – Rick Hutto ([26:34])
  • Judge Stephen later enters a mental institution ([26:16]).
• Guilty Verdict: Florence is sentenced to death by hanging ([26:58, 27:18]).

5. Public Outcry and Aftermath

• Mass Protest: Huge public campaigns, including petitions and mass rallies, demand clemency ([31:00, 31:42]).
  • “It was only because so many people were on her side... that finally the government said, okay, we're going to change it to a life sentence because of attempted murder.” – Rick Hutto ([31:42])
• Queen Victoria’s Involvement: Queen Victoria herself insists Florence not be further pardoned, maintaining the harsh sentence ([31:00, 32:11]).
• Imprisonment: Florence spends 15 years in solitary, released only after Victoria’s death in 1901. She never sees her children again ([33:20, 33:54]).
• Advocacy: On release, Florence returns to the U.S., becoming an outspoken critic of the death penalty and advocating for prisoners’ rights and judicial appeals ([33:20-33:41]).
  • “She said, if a judge or jury gets it wrong, there's nowhere to go to rectify that mistake.” – Rick Hutto ([33:41])
  • Her case contributes directly to the creation of a Court of Criminal Appeal in 1907 ([33:54-34:09]).

6. Legacy and Jack the Ripper Twist

• Florence’s Later Life: Florence lives out her days in poverty and isolation in Connecticut ([34:16-34:54]).
• Jack the Ripper Theory: In the 1990s, a fraudulent diary is discovered suggesting James Maybrick was Jack the Ripper. The diary is later admitted as a hoax, but the theory lingers ([34:54-36:39]).
  • “I think there's a stronger case that Michael Maybrick, the brother who did all this, might have been Jack the Ripper.” – Rick Hutto ([36:39])
  • Ultimately, the true identity of the Ripper remains unknown; the Maybrick saga ends in tragedy and injustice.

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Memorable Quotes and Moments

• “People assumed he was interested in the mother. She’s the one with the fortune back in the States.” – Rick Hutto ([08:20])
• “No man would have ... voluntarily said to this woman, ‘I’m addicted to arsenic.’” – Rick Hutto ([09:53])
• “She did not murder him. You can’t find her guilty of murder if there was no murder.” – Rick Hutto ([24:15])
• “Queen Victoria said any woman who would be unfaithful to her husband would certainly kill him. In other words, it was one and the same.” – Rick Hutto ([31:00])
• “You have a judge who literally is going insane, there has to be some way to rectify that, someplace to appeal.” – Rick Hutto ([33:54])
• “Whether or not it was either of the Maybrick brothers [who was Jack the Ripper], they did leave at least one victim behind.” – Sally Helm ([37:19])

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• Florence’s Marriage and Discovery of James’s Double Life: [08:09] – [13:30]
• Florence’s Affair and Scandal: [13:40] – [15:10]
• James’s Decline and Michael’s Intervention: [16:10] – [20:13]
• Discovery of Florence’s Letter and Arrest: [20:13] – [22:41]
• Trial and Public Reaction: [22:49] – [27:31]
• Sentencing, Public Outcry, and Commutation: [27:31] – [32:18]
• Prison, Release, and Later Life: [33:20] – [34:54]
• Jack the Ripper Diary and Theories: [34:54] – [36:47]

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Conclusion

The Florence Maybrick trial is a haunting tale of gender, class, justice, and public opinion in Victorian England, showing how one woman’s dramatized downfall permanently altered the course of British legal history. Her ordeal spotlights the dangers of societal hypocrisy, the paucity of legal protection for women, and the urgent need for judicial reform—an enduring legacy born from scandal and tragedy.

Transcript

[Host/Announcer]

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[Host/Announcer]

History Channel Original Podcast

[Sally Helm]

history this week, August 7, 1889 I'm Sally Helm, Liverpool, England St George's hall it is kind of a strange building. Half concert venue, half courthouse. There are organ concerts here every Saturday. A famous organist plays fugues for the masses. But today, at the southern end of the building, the courthouse function is playing out pretty brutally. A woman named Florence Maybrick stands in an iron barred structure inside the courtroom. It looks like she's being held in a half built cage. She's 5 foot 3 and looks fragile standing behind those bars. She's wearing a black veil, a dark skirt and black gloves because she is in mourning for the very person that she is accused of killing. Maybrick is on trial for the murder of her husband, James Maybrick. But as that trial has unfolded, it's become clear that a lot of people are almost equally concerned about another kind of wrongdoing. Florence had an affair which simply was not done, certainly not publicly, by women in polite Victorian society. Conservative Victorians who tended to be in the upper and middle classes, they on the whole make basically no distinction between Florence's ease infidelity and the capital crime of murder. They're like that moral transgression proves she's capable of murder. But working class Victorians, by and large, they are not on the same page. They believe that Florence's affair is excusable and that, you know, it's not the same thing as murder. Today, those two versions of Victorian social norms will go up against each other and help to determine Florence Maybrick's fate. The judge in this trial is Sir James Fitzjames Stephen. He's wearing a wig that goes all the way down to his shoulders. And he takes his seat at the bench directly across from Florence. Then he turns to the jury. 12 men in black robes. Men drawn from ordinary British society. They're set to deliberate today. He gives them their instructions. But those instructions are more like a rant. Judge Stevens says that Florence Maybrick is a horrible woman who succumbed to terrible temptation. Consider the horrible and incredible thought that a woman should be plotting the death of her husband in order that she might be left at liberty to follow her own degrading viol. At 3pm Judge Stevens sends the 12 men of the jury off to deliberate. Florence's fate is in their hands today. The life and trial of Florence Maybrick. How did an American socialite get swept up in a Victorian era scandal of infidelity, addiction and murder? And how did her fate change England's system of justice? Springtime, 1880. Nine years before. Florence will be standing in the courtroom in that cage. She is 17 years old, on a ship in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. She's traveling with her mother from their current home in England back to their ancestral home, the United States. That's where Florence was born and where her mother claims to be connected to a vague and elusive family fortune. She is heading off on one of her many fruitless quests to get her hands on it. And on this voyage, she reencounters an old acquaintance who introduces her and her daughter to one of his friends. An English cotton merchant, James Maybrick.

[Rick Hutto]

Interestingly enough, James was exactly the same age as the mother, not of Florence, but of Florence's mother.

[Sally Helm]

That is Rick Hutto, lawyer and author of a book outlining this whole story.

[Rick Hutto]

People assumed he was interested in the mother. She's the one with the fortune back in the States.

[Sally Helm]

But it soon becomes clear to the society types on board the ship that James Maybrick is placing his focus elsewhere.

[Rick Hutto]

There was quite a bit of gossip on board about the fact that the daughter was spending so much time with this much older man.

[Sally Helm]

Florence, 17 years old, is enamored with James, who is at least 23 years her senior. He has a worldly air and elegant manners, he tells her. He's this prominent industrialist, a cotton trader with a rock solid career and reputation. Florence herself grew up on the margins of wealth and influence. And she's now met a man who seems to be at the center of that world.

[Rick Hutto]

It's appealing Two weeks later, he proposes, they get married and that sort of sets up her life.

[Sally Helm]

But it is not long before things begin to fall apart. Florence gradually discovers that James's business is not as good as he'd made it out to be.

[Rick Hutto]

He was always just one step ahead of the lenders. Money was always, always a problem, a

[Sally Helm]

problem that he now hopes his marriage will solve.

[Rick Hutto]

He kept depending on the fact that his wife was going to inherit this huge fortune back in the us.

[Sally Helm]

The fortune, unfortunately, remains just out of reach. Florence's mother was likely exaggerating it anyway. And James has another problem, one he'd also hidden from Florence.

[Rick Hutto]

I mean, no man would have, you know, voluntarily said to this woman, you know, I'm addicted to arsenic.

[Sally Helm]

Arsenic, you may be thinking, isn't arsenic a poison? How could you be addicted to arsenic? And it was known in Victorian England that arsenic could kill. But in small amounts it was thought to have benefits.

[Rick Hutto]

Arsenic at the time was considered an aphrodisiac. It was said to increase, sort of like Viagra. It was said to increase your stamina, your possibility, making you more loquacious, more interesting.

[Sally Helm]

James believes that he has all of these ailments that arsenic can treat.

[Rick Hutto]

He always talked about, oh, I've got this problem or that problem, but I'm going to go get another dose and I'll be good.

[Sally Helm]

So he went to pick up his prescribed dose of arsenic every day at the pharmacy. And at the same time, he is also addicted to another powerful drug, strychnine. Today it is used to kill rats. But back then it's typically used for cosmetic purposes by Victorian women.

[Rick Hutto]

It was said to make women's complexion very clear and white.

[Sally Helm]

But it could also be prescribed as a general pick me up. And for malaria. That is how James first started taking it, but then he kept taking it. And both of these drugs are toxic, especially when you take them in large quantities for years and years.

[Rick Hutto]

It does eventually sort of work on the brain, on the mind, and sort of make you delusional, and he certainly was that.

[Sally Helm]

Florence eventually learns about all this. She even helps him administer these drugs. They move into a massive mansion In Liverpool, a 20 room sprawling structure across from the Liverpool Cricket Club. They have two children, a son and a daughter. Florence is an active mother, even though they also have a household staff of five. But all is not well in the mansion. James addictions make him erratic and violent. Florence tells close friends about his physical abuse. And once again, money is a huge problem. The mansion, the staff, the Maybrooks, can't really afford it. But James is desperate for social status.

[Rick Hutto]

James and his family, he has several brothers. They were very interested in being socially upwardly mobile.

[Sally Helm]

They'd grown up middle class. Their father was an engraver. But now James wants to be a member of high society and his wife is a part of that.

[Rick Hutto]

To have this young woman on his arm, everybody knowing that this fortune, this family fortune is coming someday. That of course made them talked about a great deal. It also meant that eventually somebody told his wife about the mistress and her children.

[Sally Helm]

The mistress and her children. Perhaps the biggest secret of all is that James already has a family. He has a mistress of 20 years and five children. He already had three when he met Florence on that ship. And since their marriage, he's had two more. Florence finds out about this in December of 1887 after six years of marriage. 18. It might have been from a gossipy friend or some sources say she stumbled across a piece of incriminating mail. When Florence confronts James about the affair, he doesn't even deny it. He basically brushes her off. Makes a half hearted promise to end it at some point. In Victorian England, it's basically an open secret that men have affairs left and

[Rick Hutto]

right, but women were not supposed to do it. If a woman did it, then you know, she was fallen. She was permanently disgraced.

[Sally Helm]

But of course, some women still did. The following year, Florence strikes up a flirtation with one of James's associates in the cotton trade. A man named Alfred Brearley. He is much younger than James and he and Florence are getting closer and closer. People in the cotton business are taking notice. And in March of 1889, James. Unbeknownst to James, Florence and Alfred spend two nights together in London at the Flatman's Hotel. Just a few days later, it's the 50th running of the Grand National Horse Race in Liverpool. The Prince of Wales is in attendance and so are the Maybricks.

[Rick Hutto]

This was the biggest social thing in Liverpool. Everybody going and walking and being seen and wearing new clothes and who was there and who was not.

[Sally Helm]

James has arranged for an oversized horse drawn carriage to bring all of his friends to the horse race, including Alfred Greerley. And after they arrive, Alfred invites Florence and only Florence to come with him to meet the Prince of Wales. They leave arm in arm. James Maybrick is furious. He doesn't even know about the affair. But the public display of affection alone drives him into a rage.

[Rick Hutto]

Now remember, this is a man with his own mistress and children by his mistress. He was furious that, you know, she is seen talking to this man.

[Sally Helm]

When Florence returns to their box, James lashes out, railing at her in public. That night, in the privacy of their home, he goes ballistic. He hits his wife and threatens to throw her out on the street. The household staff intervenes and in the weeks that follow, things settle into a new routine. Florence keeps her distance from James, tending to the children, and James continues as before, taking tons of arsenic. James hasn't been feeling well. He's been increasingly experiencing headaches, constipation, numbness in his limbs. His doctor prescribes antimony sulfide, a chemical also used in matches and fireworks. He believes arsenic is the only cure for him, but it's also expensive and he's buying more and more with money that again, he doesn't really have. At this chaotic moment in the Maybricks lives, a new person enters their household. James brother Michael Maybrick. And with that, Florence has gained a powerful new enemy who will change the course of her life. The GLP1 pill you've been waiting for is now on ROE. Yep, it's finally here with the same clinically proven ingredient now in a pill. And now on Roe. It's the first FDA approved GLP1 pill for weight loss at the lowest price available. That's one daily GLP one pill for big results now on ro. Go to RO Listen to see if you qualify. RX only go to RO CO Safety for serious side effects and boxed warning associated with GLP1s.

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[Sally Helm]

Michael Maybrick was best known as a composer.

[Rick Hutto]

He wrote several songs that we still use, one called the Holy City. If you've ever been a Protestant and you've been in a church choir, you know that song.

[Sally Helm]

Michael moves into the house. Not really because he's worried about James's health. It's more because he's worried about the family reaction reputation. His brother is in this addled state, delirious, addicted to poison, and still maintaining a hidden second family. Plus there was this big kerfuffle at the racetrack. The cracks are starting to show.

[Rick Hutto]

He stepped in and took over their lives, decided who was going to come, who was not.

[Sally Helm]

Florence is now living under her brother in law's watchful, panicky, insecure eye and she writes a letter to Alfred Brearley. He had broken off their relationship after the racetrack outburst, worried that James would find them out. In her letter, Florence reassures him that James knows nothing about the relationship and anyway that he's very ill. It is not clear how much longer his strength will hold out. She passes a letter to her children's nurse to take to the post office.

[Rick Hutto]

Well, the nanny didn't like her, possibly

[Sally Helm]

because Florence was a different kind of mother and very involved in her children's lives, which was not the norm at the time. So you know, she was always poking her nose into the nurse's business and now the nurse returns the favor. She decides to open the letter, opened

[Rick Hutto]

it, saw that it was a letter to Alfred Brierley, and told Michael Maybrick immediately.

[Sally Helm]

Michael's paranoia about the family reputation goes into overdrive. Meanwhile, James continues to decline. Six weeks after the Outburst at the racetrack. He dies. Michael later tells the story that on his deathbed, James shouted out about his wife using her pet name. Oh, bunny, Bunny. How could you do it? I did not think it of you. Rick Hutto is not sure that this story is true.

[Rick Hutto]

I think that was all done by Michael because they had to lay blame on her. And if they said, oh, well, my brother on his deathbed said that his wife did this, that sounded great. That meant that, you know, the Maybricks were not at fault here. It was just this terrible American wife.

[Sally Helm]

This terrible American wife, who, don't forget, is still supposed to be coming into a big family fortune. If she were somehow to be out of the way, that that fortune would instead pass to her children. After James death, Michael essentially puts Florence under house arrest.

[Rick Hutto]

Basically put her in seclusion. She couldn't even see her children.

[Sally Helm]

He enlists the help of another Matrix brother, Edwin, and according to Rick, Hutto, tries to clear any evidence from the house that would make the family look bad. James, many caustic medications, love letters from his mistress. And a letter James had written blaming his doctor for his decline. And then Michael goes to the cops.

[Rick Hutto]

He made the case to local police. You know, we found arsenic, and she killed her husband. And even he said so in his deathbed.

[Sally Helm]

Three days after her husband's death, Florence is arrested.

[Rick Hutto]

When they came and took her children away, she wasn't even allowed to see them and say goodbye to them. And she, by the way, never saw them again in her entire life. Not once.

[Sally Helm]

After this, the trial of Florence Maybrick becomes one of the great spectacles of the Victorian era.

[Rick Hutto]

We know even today, if there's a celebrity trial, people line up for hours to get in to go see it. The same thing was there in Liverpool Pool.

[Sally Helm]

St. George's hall is mobbed by thousands of people every day. Plus the press.

[Rick Hutto]

There were daily reports that came from it. The reporters would go running outside to make sure they could get to their publishers first.

[Sally Helm]

At the start of the trial, the British public seems largely ready to watch the full force of the law come down on Florence Maybrick. But as the case proceeds, it becomes clear that the evidence is pretty weak.

[Rick Hutto]

Most of the trial was very favorable toward Flory.

[Sally Helm]

The prosecution claimed that Florence Maybrick poisoned James Maybrick with arsenic so that she could finally escape her marriage and be with her lover, Alfred. That letter that the nanny intercepted became a key piece of evidence. But the defense argues, okay, look, this man was literally an arsenic addiction. Florence's lawyer calls James pharmacist to testify. He says that James would sometimes come to his shop for arsenic five times per day. And not only that, there wasn't even arsenic found in his stomach at the time he died. So that's not what killed him, at least not in the moment. They argue this adds up to a picture of a person addicted to arsenic who died because of the damage that did to his body, Not a picture of a wife who poisoned her husband.

[Rick Hutto]

She did have a very good attorney saying she did not murder him. You can't find her guilty of murder if there was no murder.

[Sally Helm]

Outside the walls of St. George's hall, public sentiment starts to shift, especially among the people who are not part of the high flying elite.

[Rick Hutto]

The people who were supporting Florence who came to her trial, they were not in that stratosphere. They were sort of relatively working class, they were middle class. And so they championed her because to them she looked like one of them. She's been cheated on. This brother in law is trying to destroy her life. And so she became sort of a cause celeb. There were sort of fan clubs, if you will, unofficial ones. People started writing about this wronged woman and how they're trying to make her the scapegoat. And all this and all that was fine until we get to the last two days of the summations of the jury.

[Sally Helm]

Both sides have now made their case. And the judge, Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, delivers his instructions to the jury

[Rick Hutto]

on the first day of summation. Everything he said was positive about Florence telling them, you know, it has to be real evidence. It can't just be supposed, it can't be circumstantial. And if it's not there, you must acquit her.

[Sally Helm]

He still has more to say, but court adjourns for the day. He'll finish his instructions the next morning.

[Rick Hutto]

That night, though, the judge is heard walking up and down outside his bedroom. There were other judges. They stayed sort of in an apartment, evidently walking up and down all night.

[Sally Helm]

We don't know exactly what went on in that room or in the judge's head, but according to another judge living in the apartment next door, you, Judge Stephen is heard pacing, muttering to himself, that woman is guilty.

[Host/Announcer]

Guilty.

[Sally Helm]

And we do know that he wasn't entirely stable at the time.

[Rick Hutto]

Judge Stephen, not long after this trial, went into a mental institution himself.

[Sally Helm]

The next morning, August 7, 1889, the court reconvenes and bizarrely, Judge Steven seems to have undergone a complete change of heart.

[Rick Hutto]

The second day of summation, he does just the Opposite, he says to the jury, in effect, she's guilty, you must find her guilty. Even though you were told that there was nothing that positively links her to anything in his body, and you were told that there's not enough arsenic in him to kill him, you still must find her guilty. And they. And they did. The jury did.

[Sally Helm]

The jury sides with the judge, the prosecution, and in a way, with those conservative Victorian social norms. After the verdict is read, Judge Stephen places a black cap on his wig to declare the sentence death by hanging.

[Rick Hutto]

There was a huge crack out in the courthouse and when the judge left later in his carriage, people were booing him and yelling at him as he was being driven away from the courthouse.

[Sally Helm]

At this time in England, there is no court of criminal appeal, no recourse. The verdict is the verdict and the sentence is the sentence. Florence Maybrick will be the first American born woman to be executed in the history of the United Kingdom, unless she can find some way out.

[Host/Announcer]

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[Rick Hutto]

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[Sally Helm]

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[Sally Helm]

Florence Maybrick is placed into solitary confinement in a prison setting southwest of London. She's allowed one hour of exercise a day, marching around the edges of a small courtyard. She is not permitted to speak, no

[Rick Hutto]

interaction with any living person. Even her food was just put through the door.

[Sally Helm]

Right outside her cell, prison workers are building the gallows where she will be hanged. She can hear them at their work. But further beyond the walls of her cell, across the UK and across the world, there is a public outcry. How could this woman be killed, essentially for having an affair? It's a reconsideration of those Victorian norms. And don't forget, Queen Victoria herself is in power at the time, and she is actually working directly to uphold those norms. By speaking out against Florence Maybrick.

[Rick Hutto]

Queen Victoria said any woman who would be unfaithful to her husband would certainly kill him. In other words, it was one and the same.

[Sally Helm]

But the public pressure continues. There are rallies, mass protests. The Victorian era is coming to an end. The women's movement is on the rise and Florence becomes one of their symbols. A woman trapped in an abusive marriage and, they believe, falsely accused of her husband's death and then judged in a legal process made up entirely of men. The British Home Office receives petitions to commute Florence's death sentence, totaling nearly half a million signatures.

[Rick Hutto]

It was only because so many people were on her side and they kept pushing and pushing and pushing, that finally the government said, okay, we're going to change it to a life sentence because of attempted murder.

[Sally Helm]

Florence had been convicted not of attempted murder, but of murder. But the Crown wants some way to back out of the death penalty with their dignity intact. Still, a life sentence also seems cruel to a lot of people.

[Rick Hutto]

Everybody knew that so long as Victoria was alive, there was not going to be any change. That woman was going to be in prison.

[Sally Helm]

The queen is 15. Furious about the lighter sentence, she writes to the Home Secretary, her sentence must never be further commuted. So Florence Maybrick remains in prison for the next 15 years. She spends much of it Doing hard labor. And then in 1901, Queen Victoria dies. This gives the government an out. Using normal, available legal channels, they shorten Florence's sentence. She gets some time off for good behavior. And finally, in 1905, they set her free. But the damage is done. Michael had taken custody of Florence's children and raised them to view their mother as evil. She never sees them again. Florence returns home, home, home to the United States and tries to make the best of a tragic situation.

[Rick Hutto]

She becomes a public advocate against the death penalty and also prison treatment. How solitary confinement was inhuman. How your mind starts to play on itself after hours and hours and hours of just sitting in a dark room by yourself.

[Sally Helm]

And she advocates for broader judicial reform, namely the chance to appeal.

[Rick Hutto]

She said, if a judge or jury gets it wrong, there's nowhere to go to rectify that mistake.

[Sally Helm]

In 1907, England does finally establish a court of criminal appeal.

[Rick Hutto]

We can draw a direct line to the creation of the Court of Appeals because there was a public outcry. There has to be some way that you can do something, you know, when you have a judge who literally is going insane, there has to be some way to rectify that, someplace to appeal.

[Sally Helm]

Florence spends the rest of her life living in a rundown house in a quiet Connecticut town.

[Rick Hutto]

There was a small boys school close by, and she became friends with one of the women who worked at the school who would occasionally help her. And they made sure that even after people found out who she was, because they didn't know that for the long time she, she used her maiden name, she did not use her married name even then, they protected her. They knew that she was this odd older woman who'd had a terrible life. And they knew that if they were to say who she was, you know, press would suddenly descend on her. And so to their credit, they protected her and didn't let that happen.

[Sally Helm]

Florence dies in 1941. Her case now isn't discussed nearly as much as other Victorian crimes. Which brings us to a strange wrinkle at the end of this story. In 1888, soon after Florence finds out about James affair and his secret family, London begins to experience a wave of terrifying crimes. A serial killer is murdering women in a neighborhood called Whitechapel. He becomes known as Jack the Ripper. Jack the Ripper is never caught and his identity is never uncovered. But in 1991, a scrap merchant in Liverpool comes forward saying that he knows who Jack the Ripper was. It was Florence's husband, James Maybrick. This scrap merchant is named Michael Barrett. And he claims to have discovered a diary that had been hidden in the Maybricks mansion in Liverpool. His story about how he found the diary is a little shaky, but it's a gripping read. It's signed by a man who calls himself Jack the Ripper. It contains details of the murders and details about the Maybricks mansion. All things that point back to James as the killer.

[Rick Hutto]

It is true that there were things in the diary that only he could have known. But the question is provenance, like what happened for decades that was hidden under the floorboard.

[Sally Helm]

The story doesn't really hold water. And Michael Barrett later admits admits that he and his wife faked the diary themselves. He says he did kind of think it was plausible that James Maybrick was Jack the Ripper. So he made up the story. Now Rick Hutto does not buy that theory.

[Rick Hutto]

I think there's a stronger case that Michael Maybrick, the brother who did all this, might have been Jack the Ripper.

[Sally Helm]

But he doesn't think that's likely either. Still, the diary hoax took on a life of its own and there are people out there who still believe that James Maybrick is Jack the Ripper. The truth is that we will probably never know who Jack was. But whether or not it was either of the Maybrick brothers, they did leave at least one victim behind.

[Rick Hutto]

Foreign

[Sally Helm]

thanks for listening to History this Week, a Back Pocket Studios production in partnership with the History Channel. To stay updated on all things History this week, sign [e-mail] and if you have any thoughts or questions, send us an [e-mail] Special thanks to our guest, Rick Hutto, attorney and author of A Poet Poisoned Life, Florence Chandler Maybrick, the first American woman sentenced to death in England. Also, we want to thank Andrea Hastings Arroyo, graduate student and library specialist at the University of Wyoming who helped out with our research. You can find additional sources we use for this episode and for this whole [e-mail] this episode was produced and sound designed by Ben Dickstein and also produced by me, Sally Helm for Back Pocket Studios. Ben is also our executive producer from the History Channel. Our executive producers are Eli Lehrer and Liv Fiddler. Don't forget to follow rate and review History this week wherever you get your podcasts and we'll see you next week.

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[Sally Helm]

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