Florence Maybrick |
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.
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