Did She Kill Him? A Victorian Tale of Deception, Adultery, and Arsenic / Kate Colquhoun. 4 stars

[LibraryCin]

In the late 1800s, Florence was an American who married James Maybrick from England, although he was 24 years older than she was. He was a hypochondriac who took a lot of “medicines”, including many with various poisons in them, including arsenic. Florence and James were having trouble in their marriage and both were cheating. He went through a time period where he was in all kinds of pain and he eventually died. Florence, along with servants and two brothers and various doctors were all trying to help him. But James’ brothers didn’t trust Florence and pointed a finger at Florence suggesting that she may have killed him with arsenic. A couple of the servants also reported things they found odd that Florence did, indicating a possible poisoning by James’ wife.

So, it seems Florence’s trial was… maybe not undertaken in the best way. The jury was (of course, due to the time frame) all men, but also all farmers and tradespeople. Not people who might easily understand a confusing array of medications and how much arsenic was or was not in each of many different bottles. Even the experts disagreed on whether or not arsenic was even what killed him. The judge seemed predisposed to find her guilty, but not because he necessarily thought she killed him, but because she was a middle class woman with loose morals – that is, he didn’t like that she had had an affair. The judge wasn’t the one to decide anything, but he did summarize for the jury… in a way that seemed somewhat biased. Anyway, this was interesting and frustrating to read about this case, well-known at the time. Fun fact: James Maybrick has been suggested as a possible Jack the Ripper (this wasn’t discussed much in the book, just mentioned, so I don’t know why he has been suspected – something about a diary… that has not been proved to be his or to be real?).