Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 13.pdf/28

 The Psychology of Poisoning.

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF POISONING. BY J. H. BEAI.E, JR.

FLORENCE MAYBRICK was tried at The jury convicted Mrs. Maybrick; but Liverpool in the summer of 1889 tor the Home Secretary commuted the deaththe murder of her husband. The deceased sentence to imprisonment for life, on the died after a six-days' illness following earlier ground that, though she undoubtedly ad ill turns; the symptoms were claimed to be ministered poison intending to kill, the evi those of arsenical poisoning, though in some dence left it more than doubtful whether respects more like those of disease naturally Maybrick died of the poison. caused. A small amount of arsenic was Probably no one accustomed to weighing found in the body, not enough of itself to facts could carefully examine the evidence cause death, but indicating the administra introduced in the case without coming to the tion of an amount possibly sufficient to cause conclusion that it does not prove beyond death. There was strong evidence that Mr. a reasonable doubt either that Maybrick Maybrick had taken arsenic more or less died of arsenical poisoning or that Mrs. regularly for several years. Maybrick administered poison to him. Mr. Mrs. Maybrick had nursed her husband Justice Stephen, however, in his charge laid before the jury another sort of evidence, and tenderly through the early stages of his ill ness, had sent seasonably for physicians and practically advised them to find their verdict nurses, and had manifested great grief at his on that. "You must not consider the case death. She had been seen changing medi as a mere medical case in which you are to cine from one phial to another; but no arsenic decide whether the man did or did not die was found in it. She had, however, been of arsenic according to the medical evidence. discovered putting arsenic into a bottle of . . . You must decide it as a great and highly beef extract intended fo'r him; her explana important case, involving in itself not only tion was that she did it (not knowing it to medical and chemical questions, but involv be arsenic) at his earnest request. Another ing in itself a most highly important moral bottle of medicine was found in his chamber, question. And by that term moral question after death, containing arsenic; and enor I do not mean questions of what is right and mous quantities of the drug were found in wrong in a moral point of view, but ques his dressing room. She had openly bought tions into which human nature enters, and small quantities of arsenic at about the time on which you must rely on your knowledge of her husband's death, to use (as she ex of human nature in determining on the reso plained) in a cosmetic lotion; her husband lution you arrive at." had opportunities of getting arsenic in large The considerations laid before the jury in quantities. this rather ambiguous language were, of Though her husband did not know the course, inferences drawn from experience fact, Mrs. Maybrick was an adulteress, and of human actions in similar cases in the past. feared discovery by him; three days before Mr. Justice Stephen did not mean to tell the his death, she wrote to her paramour that jury that because Mrs. Maybrick was im Maybrick was "sick unto death" and that be moral they should presume against her, might relieve his mind of "all fear of dis though the jury may well so have under covery now and in the future." This letter stood his intemperate charge. Rut takine was intercepted, and first led to her being the language as it was meant, how far is it suspected of her husband's death. safe for a jury to consider the probable work