GREAT POISON DRAMA.

Dunstan Times, Issue 3383, 18 July 1927, Page 7

GREAT POISON DRAMA.

Unknown Lo anyone save her solicitor and a low personal friends, Mrs Maybrick the central figure in one ot the most sensational poison dramas of the last decade of last century, now residing in America, recently concluded a brief visit lo England. The only interview sne gave during her stay is published in the “Sunday News.”

Sad-faced, gentle-voiced, with her hair turned to silver, the Mrs Maybrick ot to-day is but a shadow of the strikinglooking woman who made a lasting impression on those who saw her in the clock at Liverpool, 37 years ago, fighting for her life against the mass of circumstantial evidence linking her with the murder by arsenical poisoning of her husband, a wealthy Liverpool stockbroker.

“I feel death’s shadow over me, and I have come back with one object only, Lo effect a reconciliation with members of my family if that be possible. To that end 'l am trying to clear myself of the charge of murder of which I was convicted and sentenced to death.” This statement was made to the interviewer at his first” meeting with the once notorious woman.

Later, when Mrs Maybrick had made overtures through friends, she confessed sadly that her hopes of reconciliation wore dead. “It is a bitterness worse than death,” she said. “All the years that have passed since that terrible clay when I heard the verdict ‘guilty’ I have longed for my children, who were but babes at tfio time, and the mother hunger in my heart was so strong that I felt I must make this journey now in the hope of seeing them. “The knowledge that it has been in vain has almost broken rny heart. More than anything else I wanted this reconciliation to take with me as a precious memory to the other world where I shall soon go. It seems terrible to think that the children I risked my life to bring into the world should thiiik their mother guiltv of the crime that left them fatherless ". But that is the only construction I can put cm their attitude towards me now.”

Though disappointed in the main object of her visit to the scenes of her early life in England, Mis Maybrick is not disposed to give up readily. She was turning her attention to following up new points bearing on her innocence, and has arranged with a private inquiry agent to go over the ground in the hope of securing corroboration of several points which, it is contended, strongly suggest her innocence. She also secured expert opinion on the possibility of arsenic being taken into the system through inhaling deposits on the walls of Hie papered room. “The charge against me was that I had administered arsenic taken from flypapers to my husband, and much was made of the ‘fact that this was the only way in which the poison could have come into the house. At the Lime my mind was in such a torment that I could not think clearly, but thinking over the. case since, I have recalled facts that suggest mv husband was iu the habit of taking arsenic in fairly strong doses. “There is also the evidence of a Liverpool chemist who remembers having sold the poison to my husband some time before his death.’ I believe this evidence was brought forward after the trial, and had weight with the Home Secretary in advising a reprieve for me. “In addition,” Mrs Maybrick went on, “there is the new light that science can shed on the amount of arsenic, likely to bo found in a body after a natural death. I have been i old by one of the most respected lawyers in England that, had what science now states about arsenic being found in ipost bodies after death been known, I should have been acquitted by the jurymen instead of be.ng convicted on a presumption that science now declares to ho false.” Having given all the assistance she can for ' tins new investigation of the case, Mrs Maybrick has returned to her American home, where she lives the life of a recluse. “If the new inquiries bear fruit and produce the evidence necessary to establish my innocence, I shall return to England to make one last attempt at reconciliation, for death without the forgiveness of my children for all the unhappiness I have brought them through my folly would he terrible. There was a time when I thought death was the best thing that could "happen to me, but the longing for reconciliation is so strong in my ‘ heart that it makes mo dread death.” Pressed as to what she meant by her folly, .Mrs Maybrick said: “I mean the’ love affair which played such a big part iu the case against me. There were circumstances at home that drove me to the arms of another man, and I was foolish enough to think that I could find Imp!ness with the man who offered me the love my husband denied me. Bitterly have I repented ever since.” Airs Maybrick admitted that during the veur,s she was iu prison she was buoyed up with the hope that when release ciiine she would find the man in the case waiting to marry her in order to make up for what she had suffered. Bittei, hitter was my disappointment,” she said, her now frail figure trembling with suppressed emotion as she spoke. “The man for whom I had sacrificed everything had forgotten me during the years I had been trying to keep my heart young in prison for his sake. “In all my troubles I have had one local friend only —my mother. She beggared herself to defend mo when I was”arrested, and she has never lost faith in my innocence. When the shadow of the scaffold was over my head and it seemed certain that I should go to a shameful death, it was my mother who worked to tbc last minute and wrung a respite from the authorities for her unhappy child. When others who called themselves my friends cast stones at me, my mother was the true Christian who luid nothing hut love and pity for the sinner.” More 11 u-i ll ouco an offer lias been made to Airs AI ay brick that she should appear in a. film devoted to her case, but she has rejected these offers. “I have done so,” she says, “because 1 do not want to exploit a chapter in my life that I 1 would fain forget.”

During her stay in England Mrs Maybrick visited most of the scenes associated with the tragedy, not forgetting the, Grand National, which she had been to with her husband shortly before bis fatal illness. She also saw Walton Gaol w ]ioro she was detained until she was reprieved.

“Perhaps my most poignant memories were those associated with the places around Liverpool, where T used to walk with my children. Tears came thick and fast when I revisited those spots. 1 should have been the happiest of women could I have wafted myself back over the years to those happy days. It only [ could have foreseen what my illicit love would lead me to I should have acted differently.”