Was Harper Lee’s ‘lady poisoner’ the wife of Jack the Ripper?

Florence Maybrick

Did Monroeville author Harper Lee make a veiled reference to the wife of a Jack the Ripper suspect in her 2015 novel, “Go Set a Watchman.”

In Chapter 5 of the novel, 26-year-old Jean Louise Finch and her childhood friend Henry “Hank” Clinton are driving to Finch’s Landing. She says that Finch’s Landing consisted of 366 steps going down a high bluff and ending in a wide jetty jutting out into the Alabama River. A dirt road leads to the landing and at the end of the road is a two-story white house with upstairs and downstairs porches around all four sides of the house.

This old family home was “in an excellent state of repair,” having been bought by a Mobile businessman, who turned it into a hunting club. Jean Louise goes on to say that the house had been bought by Atticus Finch’s grandfather from the uncle of a “renowned lady poisoner who operated on both sides of the Atlantic, but who came from a fine old Alabama family.”

This sentence struck a chord with me and caused me to wonder if this was a reference to Florence Maybrick, an Alabama native who was convicted in England of poisoning her husband, James Maybrick in 1889. Florence was born in Mobile in 1862, the daughter of former Mobile mayor, William George Chandler. While traveling to England by ship, 17-year-old Florence met James Maybrick, a 40-year-old cotton merchant from Liverpool.

Maybrick died on May 11, 1889 and family members accused Florence of poisoning him to death with arsenic. At trial, Florence was accused of extracting arsenic from flypaper that she bought from a local chemist. Florence was found guilty, and the case was widely publicized by the newspapers of the time. She went on to spend 14 years in prison before returning to the United States, where she died in 1941.

Many in the reading audience will remember that the notorious Jack the Ripper killed five women in London in 1888. This killer was never brought to justice, and many sleuths have tried to understand why the killings inexplicably stopped in 1888. Over the years, many have been suspected of being Jack the Ripper, including James Maybrick.

Maybrick became a suspect when his purported diary surfaced in 1992, claiming that he was the famous killer. This diary eventually became the basis for the 1993 book, “The Diary of Jack the Ripper” by Shirley Harrison. Over the years, many experts have examined the diary with some saying they can’t rule out that it’s the real thing with others saying it’s a fake.

Another item that purportedly connects Maybrick to the Ripper crimes is an old pocket watch that came to public light in 1993. Inside the cover was scratched “J. Maybrick” and “I am Jack.” Like the diary, many experts have examined this watch over the years, and it’s authenticity is hotly debated.

In the end, it would be interesting to know if Florence Maybrick’s uncle or any other relatives once owned land in Monroe County, which is the basis for fictional Maycomb County. If anyone in the reading audience has more information about this subject, please let me know because it would be interesting to make this connection to the “renowned lady poisoner” of the 1880s.