This is Kate Colquhoun’s long awaited “next” book. It will
be out in bookstores and available on line this Thursday October 16th.
Long time readers here will remember her 2011 smash “Murder in the First Class
Carriage”, an account of a true life crime which I compared to an Agatha
Christie whodunit. Well, get ready to enjoy her latest release “Did She Kill
Him”.
This is the story of the case which has become known as the
“Maybrick Mystery”. Although the action is set in Liverpool, the Maybrick
Mystery was as widely celebrated (an odd term for a possible murder) at the
time as the infamous Jack the Ripper case was in London. Both events occurred
around the same time; in 1889. But there all similarity between the two ceases.
Not only location, but social circumstances made the two
episodes vastly different in nature; each with its own set of characters. The
problem for Florence Maybrick was that the characters in her drama were so
familiar to most people in Britain at the time, that it was easy for the public
to conjure up a villain in her. Class and privilege; and the attendant gulf
between the servants and the served; these were just part of the reason why
Mrs. Maybrick was found guilty of killing her husband, James Maybrick; a
well-known cotton trader from Liverpool; by slowly poisoning him with arsenic.
Mr. Maybrick was about 20 years older than his American born
wife; the two met while aboard a ship bound for Britain from America.
Encouraged by Florence’s social climbing mother, the Baroness von Roques, the
two are soon wed. They were both looking for financial security; he with a
seemingly financially stable American; her with a seemingly successful merchant.
They were both wrong in their assessment of the other.
Florence was a slightly spoiled young woman; think along the
lines of Scarlett O’Hara in “Gone with the Wind” and you wouldn’t be too far
off target. She was a spendthrift and soon accumulated a good bit of debt which
she kept hidden from her husband. He had life insurance which would have left
her well off if he died.
For his part he was not the well to do merchant he appeared
to be. A failing crop in America and a bad investment in what amounted to today’s
“futures” trading left him strapped for ready cash. And keeping up appearances
with a large house and staff only drove him further behind financially. But
appearances in Victorian England were important; important enough that to not
keep them up could mean financial ruin in business. And, he was also addicted
to eating arsenic.
Arsenic eating dates back centuries. Ms. Colquhoun uses the
Styrian peoples of what is present day Austria to illustrate the history of
this odd; and deadly; practice. Introduced at a young age to arsenic the body
will adapt to it; although with some discomfort; but then the problem really
first begins. In order to not die from the arsenic already ingested, the user
needs more and more to stay alive. To stop would be death. And yet, to continue
will eventually do the same.
The servants in the Maybrick home offer a window into the
lower end of the social strata at a time when England; along with the rest of
the world; was changing. Domestics, who used to have only one way to make a
living, now had opportunities in factories, with jobs made available by the Industrial Revolution;
and in trade, at jobs which had been previously been off limits to them by custom.
Their loyalty towards their employers was not as solid as it had been in former
times. The class system was crumbling.
When James Maybrick took ill his doctors were baffled; yet in
spite of knowing about his propensity to take various poisons they did nothing.
As a matter of fact they gave him more in the form of the insidious concoctions
they prescribed. In essence they were only making things worse.
When Mr. Maybrick dies from his illness, a series of
seemingly innocent actions on the part of Florence Maybrick become the basis
for the theory that she killed him by poisoning him with arsenic. A bottle of
medicine innocently moved from one place to another becomes just one of many
apparent “clues” which were all missed until her husband had died and an
explanation was needed. After all, it couldn’t have been the doctors fault.
In this atmosphere a love note from Florence to another
cotton trader; who was an acquaintance of her husband’s; becomes a log thrown
on the fire as Florence finds herself the victim of circumstances that
ultimately lead to her being sentenced to prison for her husband’s death. The
only real evidence is circumstantial, and yet she is found guilty.
But the real question brought forth by Ms. Colquhoun is
this; what was really on trial here? An outmoded society in which respectable
women were relegated to lives like Nora’s in Ibsen’s “A Doll’s House”? Or was
it the “New Woman” which Florence may have represented to some?
In the end all the medical evidence pointed against James
Maybrick having even died from an overdose of arsenic; accidental or otherwise;
in the first place. There simply was not enough arsenic in his body to explain
his death. That is, unless someone withheld the drug from him. And even that
explanation then leads to the question of whether that deprivation was done by
design, or out of caution.
A good mystery is one which can’t be solved. And in this
book Ms. Colquhoun has presented us with a timeless parlor game; one which can
be played for decades and never be truly solved. It is extensively annotated
with a Bibliography and chapter by chapter notes on the sources. There is also
a very helpful list of People that serves as a cast of characters. In short,
this book was all I expected it to be and more.
And, with her steady style and keen sense of history, Ms.
Colquhoun has done a superb job of both chronicling the Maybrick Case; keeping
the mystery alive for future generations; while also addressing the social
inequities which may have played a part in the whole sordid affair. This is the mark of a truly gifted writer.
For the Rooftop Review of Ms. Colquhoun’s previous book,
“Murder in First Class Carriage”, use this link;
And for more information on the release of "Did She Kill Him" see
this link;
And to order any of Ms. Colquhoun’s previous books, go to;
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