It was been a few months since I last updated this website. There have been some very good reasons for this, not least the sad and untimely deaths of my father, Noel Jones, and Mike Stuart, the man who helped me put together this website. They have both gone to that great website in the sky, but they will always be remembered by those who had the privilege of knowing them. Those of you, who attended the Trial of James Maybrick that I organised in Liverpool in 2007, will probably have met both men. My father, who managed to arrive late for every session at the trial, was a major source of inspiration to me. Like myself, he was fascinated by the Maybrick story, though he was very sceptical about the alleged link between James and Jack the Ripper. At least now he will know the answer to the mystery. I dedicate this month's update to the memory of my father and Mike.

The map shown above is Mawdsley’s Map of Liverpool of 1889. I have marked on it some of the main places connected with the Maybrick story. The Knowsley Buildings, on the corner of Tithebarn and Bixteth Streets, is clearly visible. You can also see Silkhouse Lane, the narrow passageway that ran between the Knowsley Buildings and the Grovenor Buildings. On the other side of Tithebarn Street is Exchange Street East where Heaton ran his drugstore. Heaton claimed that he regularly sold a ‘pick-me-up’ solution containing arsenic to James Maybrick.

The picture below is taken of the cell in Lark Lane Police Station in Liverpool, where Florence Maybrick was briefly held in 1889 when James' inquest was being held in nearby Garston. The Police Station, which is now a local community centre, has recently undergone a major face-lift after receiving a sizeable grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund. Within the building there is a small Maybrick exhibition in one of the original police cells that has been renovated.

Florence was first held there the night of the 5th/6th June, 1889 during the Coroner’s inquest held in the Reading Room in nearby Garston. Later in her autobiography she described the experience: ‘I passed the night in a cell which contained only a plank board for a bed. It was dark, damp, dirty and horrible. A policeman taking pity on me brought me a blanket to lie on. In an adjoining cell, in a state of intoxication two men were raving and cursing throughout the night.’ She spent further nights in the police cells at Lark Lane following the return of the guilty verdict at the Inquest while she waited for the magisterial hearing.

I would strongly recommend a visit to Lark Lane Police Station. You can visit the cell shown in the picture and view some Maybrick-related items. There are also two interesting leaflets that you can collect: one on the Maybricks and one on a local heritage trail. In February 2010, I had the honour and privilege of giving a talk on James and Florence in the Centre and I would like to thank everyone there, but especially Jimmy Cullen, for their kindness and hospitality. You can go to their website www.larklane.com/smllca for further information.

This month I have added several new items to the archive section. Two of them are concerned with Dr. Carter who was one of the doctors who treated James Maybrick during his final illness and later refused to sign James’ death certificate. He was also present at James' post-mortem. He first visited Battlecrease on the 7th May 1889, accompanied by Dr Humphreys; prior to that visit he had never before seen or treated James. It was Dr Carter who tested the bottle of Valentine’s meat juice (the one that Nurse Gore had seen Florence move). Dr Carter was in Battlecrease when James died, though he was not in the room with him. Dr Carter was a witness for the prosecution at Florence Maybrick's trial. He told the court that James had died after being given a series of relatively small doses of arsenic spread over a period of time. The first of the two 'Carter' items is his evidence at Florence's trial. The second item is the article he wrote six months after the trial that was published in a Liverpool medical journal. In the article he justified the evidence he gave at Florence's trial and repeated his view that James Maybrick had died of arsenical poisoning. Although the article is full of detailed medical terminology, it is well worth studying and it is a useful source of primary evidence on the Maybrick case.

I have still kept the link provided for us by Professor David Canter as it is still attracting a lot attention and positive comment. If you haven’t read his book, Mapping Murder, I would strongly recommend that you obtain a copy. The book contains a section on the Jack the Ripper killings. Professor Canter fed the known details of the murders into a special computer programme developed under his guidance at Liverpool University and this suggested that the murderer lived somewhere between Mitre Square and Miller's Court in the vicinity of Middlesex Street. This is significant as the author of the Ripper Diary wrote that he had taken a ‘small room in Middlesex Street.’ As Professor Canter puts it, if the Diary is a fraud, then the diarist made a ‘remarkably good guest.’
Click on the following link to view the video:
http://www.youtube.com/v/QCdskRH-B6s

I would again like to thank all those people who have ordered my book, ‘The Maybrick A to Z.’ As the title suggests, the book provides a comprehensive encyclopaedia-style guide to James and Florence Maybrick. There are also three introductory chapters that cover their life, Florence’s trial and the alleged connection between James and the Jack the Ripper murders. In total, the book has more than 300 pages, more than 100 pictures and photographs and in excess of 600 references. Most of the pictures in the book have never appeared in previous books on the Maybrick. I obviously rather like the book (bit biased, possibly); however, I have included a recent review of the book so that you can have an unbiased opinion of its merit. The book has a retail price in the shops of £14-95. However, books ordered through this website are available for sale at the reduced price of £12 (plus packing and postage). Please e-mail us at our contact address if you would like to order a signed copy of the book.

Maybrick A to Z - Book Review
By Chris George and published in Ripperologist 98, December 2008

No doubt a number of you are tired of hearing about the Maybricks because you don’t believe the alleged Diary of James Maybrick, in which the Liverpool cottonbroker ‘confesses’ to being the Whitechapel murderer, is the real McCoy. However even those of you who don’t think Maybrick was ‘Jack’ may be interested in this book by Liverpool history teacher Chris Jones. It is packed full of new information about the 1889 Maybrick case that will fascinate you, whether or not the Liverpool businessman was the Ripper. Here is everything you might want to know, or should that be more that you might ever wish to know, about James and Florence Maybrick. The author has been exhaustive in researching the lives of the Maybricks including the events and locales connected to the sordid demise of Mr Maybrick in May 1889 at Battlecrease House in Aigburth, Liverpool, and the subsequent trial and traumas of his widow, Alabama-born Florence Maybrick, accused of murdering her husband by arsenic poisoning.

Mr Jones is of course the man who arranged the controversial ‘Trial of James Maybrick’ at the Liverpool Cricket Club in May 2007. However, in this book, as on the Maybrick website (www.jamesmaybrick.org) that he recently began, Mr Jones takes a non-partisan view of Maybrick’s candidacy for the bloody mantle of the Ripper.

In his research, Mr Jones has discovered many nuggets of information about the Maybrick case, including information on lesser known individuals in the case, such as Fletcher Rodgers (1823–1891), foreman of the coroner’s jury that ruled against Mrs Maybrick, some think because of her evident adultery with cotton merchant Albert Brierley. Under Samuel Brighouse, coroner for Southwest Lancashire, Rogers and his fellow jurymen returned ‘a verdict of wilful murder’ against Mrs Maybrick. Mr Rogers, who, Jones notes, ‘played a relatively active role’ in the proceedings, was himself a cotton merchant and must have known the dead man well. Thus he was hardly an unbiased observer. Surely today such a far from disinterested person could not be appointed to a jury. Perhaps even more intriguing is the fact that after Florence Maybrick’s trial and conviction, he and his family moved into Battlecrease House, Rogers having taken up the remainder of the lease to the property. He died in December 1891 at the age of sixty-eight, having been married twice and fathering seventeen children. Some might think it suspicious that he went to live in the same house where the Maybricks lived, although as a local man and given the size of his family, the need for spacious quarters probably factored into his decision to take the lease.

The book begins with a rundown of the Maybrick and Ripper cases, with three chapters, respectively, on ‘James and Florence Maybrick’, ‘Trial of Florence Maybrick’, and ‘The Ripper Connection’. These are followed by chapter 4, the largest section, pages 55 to 300, which comprises the actual ‘Maybrick A to Z’ of the book’s title, followed by a useful chronology and bibliography. The book is full of rare illustrations, over 150 of them, a number of them contemporary newspaper illustrations and other graphics previously unpublished in any modern book. Also included are new photographs by Mr Jones, including a sad colour shot of Florence Maybrick’s lichen-festooned gravestone in Connecticut. It was in a shack on the grounds of South Kent School that Florie lived her final days after her release from prison in 1904. She died in 1941 in that house, accompanied by pet cats, an old soul by now unkempt and forgotten by a world which once considered her case a cause célèbre.

Finally, if you have any items that you would like to send me about James and Florence Maybrick or anything related to the alleged Ripper connection, I would be happy to receive it.

Chris Jones (Co-ordinator of jamesmaybrick.org)

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