The Ripper's Wife (34 page)

I had for my defending counsel the flamboyant Irishman Sir Charles Russell, an inveterate gambler with the air of exhaustion clinging to him like a wet cloak despite all his bluff and bluster after mounting a grueling defense of Parnell, the Irish Nationalist fighting a charge of sedition. Russell came at great cost, a retainer of five hundred pounds and an additional one hundred pounds a day, but Mama said he was worth it. He was a most gallant gentleman who from the start viewed me as innocent and the case against me as a house of cards he was determined to topple. “Don’t worry, Mrs. Maybrick; the English have ever loved an underdog,” he said. “The tide may seem against you now, but it
will
turn in your favor.” He always referred to me as “that friendless lady” and told the jury that it was all very simple; there were just
two
key points they must consider: (1) Was James Maybrick’s death due to arsenic poisoning? and (2) If so, was that poison administered by his wife?

The gallant Sir Charles did his best to demolish the prosecution’s case and produced several solid, unshakable witnesses who testified in detail to my husband’s hypochondriacal tendencies and long-standing habit of casually taking dangerous medicines, namely strychnine and arsenic. Some witnesses even came all the way from America in the interest of seeing justice done. Sir Charles summoned the black valet who had attended Jim in Virginia and a madam, Mrs. Hogwood, whose brothel Jim had frequented, both of whom testified that they’d been scared to death he would suddenly drop dead on account of the white powder he was always taking and that they might in some way be held accountable. He also had the druggist, Mr. Eaton, whose shop Jim was accustomed to frequenting several times a day for his “pick-me-up” tonic, take the stand and give a detailed account of Jim’s steadily increasing dosages and visits. The druggist even told how once when Jim had gone away on a business trip he had
insisted
that Mr. Eaton prepare
sixteen
vials of this tonic for him to take with him just in case he couldn’t find an obliging druggist to cater to his special needs. Sir Charles brought in other doctors to counter the prosecution’s parade of learned medicos, all stating firmly that Jim had most likely died of gastroenteritis, insisting that in reviewing the case as well as the postmortem findings they had found no solid proof of arsenical poisoning, though years of abuse had most certainly taken a toll on his constitution.

Gradually what Sir Charles had promised began to happen; public opinion began to swing round to my side. I was becoming a cause célèbre on both sides of the Atlantic and the “friendless lady” was not so friendless anymore. People were actually getting into fistfights over the subject of my innocence or guilt and just how Jim had died. The papers were full of us; there was even a daily column in one of the local papers called “Maybrick Mania.”

But Judge Stephen simply could not let the matter of my adultery rest. He kept harping on it incessantly, worrying it like a bad tooth his tongue couldn’t keep away from, and it was the jury’s opinion and not the public’s that mattered. He dismissed the contradictory twaddle of complex medical opinions and repeatedly stressed that my “adulterous intrigue with Mr. Brierley” was a “very strong motive why Mrs. Maybrick should wish to get rid of her husband. It is easy enough to conceive how a horrible woman, in so terrible a position, might be assailed by some terrible temptation.”

It took the jury only thirty-eight minutes to convict me.

When they came back and the judge asked me to rise, I knew I was going to die. Not one man sitting in that jury box could look at me; they all turned their faces away.

“Guilty!”
the foreman pronounced, and I tottered back as though I had been struck a physical blow.

Judge Stephen asked me if I had anything to say. This would be my first and most likely last chance to speak, since the law at that time denied accused murderers the right to take the stand in their own defense, so I forced myself to stand up straight and look him square in the eye.

“My lord,” I said, “everything has been against me. Although evidence has been given as to a great many circumstances in connection to Mr. Brierley,
much
has been withheld which might have influenced the jury in my favor had it been told. I am
not
guilty of this crime!”

Judge Stephen’s eyes were smiling as he put the black silk cap on over his white wig and sternly spoke the following words to me: “Prisoner at the bar, I am no longer able to treat you as being innocent of the dreadful crime laid to your charge. The jury has convicted you, and the Law leaves me no discretion, and I must pass this sentence upon you: The court doth order you to be taken from hence to the place from whence you came, and from thence to the place of execution, and that you be hanged by the neck until you are dead. May the Lord have mercy upon your soul!”

According to the law, since three Sundays must pass before a condemned person could mount the gallows, I had eighteen days left to live. There being no Court of Appeal in England at that time, my only hope was a royal pardon.

A great crowd had assembled outside and there was much outrage expressed about the verdict, so much so that Judge Stephen, being hissed as “Mr.
In
justice,” required a police escort home and had rocks thrown through his windows.

Surrounded by a quartet of constables and a prison matron, I was taken out a side door to the prison van, the infamous Black Maria. But, of course, the crowd found me. Though many hissed, spit, shook their fists, and hurled insults at me, there were a great many who shouted, “God go with you, Mrs. Maybrick!” and in the crush and press of the crowd someone snatched my veil away, as a souvenir I suppose.

The Black Maria was like a coffin on wheels, stultifying and terrifying. The taps and knocks the populace gave to the vehicle’s sides meant, no doubt, by most, I’m sure, as a show of support, to let me know I wasn’t really alone, were like clods of earth crashing down upon my coffin’s lid, only I wasn’t dead yet. I was still alive, trapped and sealed inside, waiting tensely to draw my last breath.

As the van drew away, I saw, through the barred window, a gentleman I recognized as one of my countrymen, come from America to show his support—Mama said he had been most assiduous raising funds to aid my defense—lift his hat to me. Then, holding it over his heart, he began to sing in a fine baritone voice that brought the crowd to a sudden awed silence:

As the last notes of his song died away, the world through that little window seemed to shrink to the size of a postage stamp; then everything went black. The last thing I remember thinking, as the prison van swayed and shook over the cobbles, was that Death was rocking me to sleep.

H
oled up in that dank, dark, icy-walled little cell, sitting huddled, shivering on the floor, with only the clothes on my back—the same black mourning gown I had worn to my trial—I felt like I had already been buried, walled up alive, behind stones so thick no one could hear me scream. Even Sleep had forsaken me. Whenever I lay down, longing for him to come and take me in his comforting arms, I imagined, so vividly I thought my sanity had deserted me too, a sword hanging by a fraying rope dangling over my head. I could not close my eyes and lay there all night tense and alert, every part of my body stiff and aching.

But I was
not
dead, though I lived every moment in the shadow of death, marking the ever-dwindling eighteen days that stood between me and the gallows. Even for the half hour each afternoon when I was let out to walk in the high-walled prison courtyard, though the sky above me was light and sometimes the sun even shone down on me, I walked in darkness and I walked alone. “My God, why have you forsaken me?” I used to whisper, straining my ears, listening, and hoping for an answer that never came.

My counsel, Sir Charles Russell, the only one who was allowed in to visit me during those dark days, assured me that the world had not forgotten me. He took my hand and said most gallantly, “The friendless lady has more friends than she knows.” There were petitions circulating on both sides of the Atlantic—why, one in London alone had already garnered half a million signatures—beseeching Queen Victoria to spare my life. Every edition of every newspaper was full of vigorous arguments in my favor from doctors and lawyers and just ordinary people who thought my conviction a travesty and grave miscarriage of justice. Pictures appeared depicting me as a frightened and penitent Magdalene, cowering against a wall, with Jesus Christ standing between me and an angry mob led by Judge Stephen, who were ready to stone me, with a caption reading: “He who is without sin amongst you, let him cast the first stone.”

But the days dwindled and passed. I laid out little bits of stone I chipped from the wall to mark their passage—18, 17, 16, 15, 14, 13, 12, 11, 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3 . . .

And every day I kept thinking about that diary, hidden away behind the smiling face of a candy box beauty, tucked safely inside my tapestried trunk. It was now safe with Mama. She’d managed to save it, as I knew she would, even when Michael ordered Battlecrease House stripped and everything—all the furnishings, books, and bric-a-brac, my personal possessions, and even the children’s toys and clothes, so that nothing need ever again touch them that would remind them of me—be sold at public auction.

It had been the unhappy task of Sir Charles to inform me while I was awaiting trial that everything—
almost
everything—was already gone. Sensation seekers had even gone into a bidding frenzy over my frilly, ribbon-trimmed drawers. But Mama had not failed me; she was the one person I could always count on, and she had managed to save the one thing that mattered—the tapestried trunk. She had even succeeded in saving my Bible, the one I’d had all my life, by sending her own clever maidservant to view the goods prior to auction. She’d substituted another Bible of the same size and color in its stead while another of Mama’s servants created a diversion by falling down in a fit. “I hope the ghoul who would bid upon a falsely condemned woman’s Bible pays two hundred pounds for it!” Mama told me afterward. It actually sold for £225. I wonder what Michael spent the money on. Did any of it go to my poor children? Did he spend one penny to provide them with new toys?

Sir Charles told me by the terms of Jim’s will, the one he had written in a fit of anger after tearing his old one up, I was completely cut off and, although I technically remained the beneficiary of Jim’s insurance policies, he had defaulted on the premiums. Now all the power was in Michael’s hands. He could do anything he liked with money or goods and my children’s bodies and souls; he could turn Bobo out to work as a chimney sweep and send Gladys out to skivvy if he wished and no one could stop him. I had no power except . . . if I dared . . . the diary. . . . It was my trump card if I only dared play it. Murder would become execution. The truth would set me free; I had only to tell it.

But would it make any difference to my children’s lives or would it only be packing and piling on the sins, crushing their dear little shoulders beneath the weight of shame? They would grow up with Michael poisoning their minds against me—no doubt he’d already begun, believing that I had killed their father—but if they knew their father was Jack the Ripper . . . But the world would also know, and once the truth was told it could never be untold. It would
never
be forgotten; they would live out their lives as Jack the Ripper’s children, endlessly pursued by journalists and curiosity seekers, pointed and stared at everywhere they went, never knowing a moment’s peace. The father they had loved, the man who used to read them stories and get down on the floor and play with them, would be lost forever; horror would steal all those sweet memories away.

Every time I got so frightened of the hangman’s noose that I was tempted to hammer on my cell door and beg them to send for Sir Charles I imagined my son and daughter grown to beautiful man-and womanhood, falling in love with someone wonderful they wanted to spend the rest of their lives with, only to be denied, cheated of that love, maybe even having it turned to hate and disgust, because their father was Jack the Ripper and, if that were not bad enough, their shameful, wanton adulteress mother had been convicted of murdering him. Such evil, people were sure to believe, must run in the blood, and they would stare at my children, scrutinizing their every move, suspiciously citing their every human foible and mistake as proof that bad blood tells. They would
never
be free! I couldn’t take the chance, I just
couldn’t
do that to them! Sometimes the greatest love of all demands a sacrifice, and mine would be my silence, and my life.

To further guard against weakness and temptation, I made Mama promise to lock that trunk away in a very safe bank vault in London and bring me the key. I would hide it away, drop it in a crack or crevice somewhere so that it would never be found until they tore this prison down and maybe not even then, and if it was . . . would anyone
really
care about an old key? I would do that, I promised myself, before they led me out to die. I would leave it to Chance, the Fool’s name for Fate, and the eternal curiosity of mankind to find that key and where it fit and reveal the truth long after anyone it could hurt was dead.
Tempus Omnia Revelat,
Time Reveals All—my husband had indeed chosen a most fitting motto. God, Who knows all, past, present, and future, must have been guiding his hand that day.

Until then I kept that key close to me, hidden in a seam in my dress, feeling it burn like temptation through the black cloth every time the fear threatened to overwhelm me. But each time I would fight it back down, like a mother lion defending her cubs, by thinking of Bobo and Gladys and the
one
thing it was still in my power to give them. I couldn’t save them from being my children, but I could save them from being Jack the Ripper’s. The world would only pity them for being mine—a weak and foolish woman who had thought a pinch of white powder was the path to passion’s fulfillment. It was better this way.

The morning I laid the seventeenth stone down, Mama was allowed to see me. They led me into a little room where she was already waiting, with two sharp-eyed, stiff-backed matrons standing sentry to make sure she didn’t slip me any poison or a razor to help me cheat the hangman. Wordlessly I fell to my knees before her, burying my face in her black taffeta skirts. Both of us were so overcome by emotion the words stuck in our throats. We clung to each other and cried the whole half hour allotted to us to say good-bye.

When the matron said it was time to go back to my cell, I clung to Mama like a frightened child, even as the matron reached to pull me away. Mama clasped my face between her two hands and smiled through her tears and kissed me; then she gently put me from her.

“You must be very brave,” she said. “Because you are innocent, you must be strong and carry yourself without reproach, with all the confidence, grace, an’ pride of a queen. I will be there, right beside you, darlin’, walkin’ with you every step o’ the way, an’ God will be on the other side o’ you, bearin’ you up, givin’ you strength. Whenever you feel yourself about to falter, you can lean on us, lean on Him. We’ll see you through to the end.”

“Yes, Mama.” I nodded through my tears, gazing back at her longingly as they led me away. The rest of the day I spent weeping with the silver-haired and spectacled prison chaplain, clinging to him, groveling, and swearing my innocence upon my very soul, until he began to cry too because, though he was fully convinced of my innocence, it was not within his power to grant me earthly salvation.

The next morning, as I sat and watched the sky of my last morning lighten to buttery gray between the bars of my tiny window, I laid down the eighteenth stone. I knew it was only a matter of hours that stood between me and the great mystery of death.

I steeled myself, pacing the floor, praying God to help me be brave. I thought of Marie Antoinette on her last morning in the Conciergerie, golden hair bleached white by sorrow, her once beautiful face haggard and careworn, still regal and proud even when stripped of all her grandeur, preparing to face the guillotine, making her peace with God and man. She had mounted the scaffold with her head held high, every inch the queen she had been in life. No matter how much they degraded and insulted her, they could not take away her dignity and grace. That was the woman I wanted to be during the last precious moments of my life. “It takes courage to live, not to die,” she said as they led her out to the tumbril. I repeated those words like a prayer until they were engraved upon my heart.

I stood in the center of my little cell, hugging myself tight with my own arms, since there was no one else to hold me. I shut my eyes and hummed a waltz. And in that moment I was in Jim’s arms again, in my blue linen suit, whirling through the vanished splendor of Versailles. He was smiling down into my face, and I was gazing up at him, a young bride, her heart in her eyes, and it was so good to be alive! Soon, I knew, we would be dancing together again, in Heaven where we would never hurt, dishonor, or disappoint each other ever again.

“I didn’t lie,” I whispered to his shade. He felt so near me now, like he was waiting for me just on the other side of a veil. I could almost reach out and touch him. “All really is forgiven.”

When the door of my cell opened and the prison governor and the chaplain came toward me, all my courage disappeared. I cried out in terror and fell fainting to the floor.

When I next opened my eyes I was lying on a cot in the infirmary, a matron holding a vial of vinegary smelling salts under my nose. I saw the governor and the chaplain hovering over me, and only their hands, raised in a staying motion, and the smiles lighting up their faces stopped me from fainting again.

No, no!” they cried. “It is
good
news!”

It wasn’t a pardon; Queen Victoria was of the same mind as Judge Stephen and firmly convinced that I was a wicked woman who truly deserved death. But Sir Henry Matthews, the Home Secretary, had become convinced that the medical evidence was insufficient to condemn me without lingering doubt. The end result was that I was reprieved from the gallows and my sentence commuted to life imprisonment. Even as I was sitting up groggily, gingerly touching my bandaged temple, the Black Maria was waiting to take me to the train station, to begin the journey to Aylesbury Prison, where I was to spend the rest of my life.

“God help me,” I whispered as they assisted me, weak kneed and shivering, into the black van. “I am only twenty-seven!”

As I sat on the hard, swaying seat, my handcuffed hands folded primly in my lap, I saw myself growing old and gray, wrinkled, stooping with a dowager’s hump, my sight dimming, my steps slowing, and my hands gnarled with rheumatism, as the weeks became months, and the months became years, and the years stretched into decades. My children would grow up without me, and I would never know love, maternal or carnal, ever again. I was alive and I knew I should be grateful and fall on my knees and thank God that I had been spared, but a life devoid of warmth, comfort, and love was scarcely a life at all.

I felt the key burning me through my gown. I felt so weak and frightened then I wanted to scream out the truth, but I thought of Bobo and Gladys and bit my lips until they bled. At Aylesbury Prison they would take my clothes away and that temptation, the key that could set me free, would go with them to be locked in a storage box until the day I died. If it was found then . . . Chance is the Fool’s name for Fate and I’ve been a gambler all my life.