Word: maybrick
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...month later, early in May, James Maybrick took to his bed, complaining of nausea and pains in his legs. Daily he grew worse. On the morning of the 8th, the children's nurse decided that something sinister was afoot. She confided in a friend of the Maybricks, who telegraphed to Brother Michael Maybrick, a London songwriter: "COME AT ONCE; STRANGE THINGS GOING ON HERE." The nurse's suspicions had been aroused by the sight of Florrie Maybrick soaking flypapers in water. The flypapers contained arsenic. Through the servants' quarters crept the horrified conviction that Florrie was poisoning...
...Maybrick took his small, lovely bride to Liverpool, to live at Battlecrease, the Maybrick family home in suburban Aigburth, remote from the gaslit streets and noisy docks of the port. Florrie entered vivaciously into Aigburth's fashionable life. Only apparent flaw in her happiness was the antagonism her husband's brothers showed her. She bore two children. It looked like a happy marriage. But in those days all marriages were trademarked "Heaven." James Maybrick turned into a hypochondriac, morbidly dosed himself with drugs. Worse, Florrie suspected that he was unfaithful. She herself found a lover, went to meet...
When she came back she ordered the nurse to get some ice, and placed the bottle on a washstand. (When chemists later analyzed the meat juice, they found that it contained half a grain of arsenic.) Two nights later Maybrick died. Florrie was arrested. In gloomy Walton Gaol, Florrie sank to the stone floor, crying, "Oh, my God, help me," and fainted...
...became the ward of her kindly neighbors, who knew her only as Mrs. Chandler. Clothes unkempt, face like a withered apple, "Mrs. Chandler" wandered over the Berkshire foothills, visited the village store, chatted amiably with neighbors. Boys at nearby South Kent School, who had never heard of Florrie Maybrick, carried Mrs. Chandler's bundles for her, occasionally chopped her firewood. Her closest friend was the late Miss Clara C. Dulon, housemother at the school. When Miss Dulon died, Mrs. Chandler lost her only confidante...
Among her few pathetic effects, neighbors last week found a scrapbook of yellowed clippings-the strange newspaper story of her life. After a brief service in the South Kent School chapel, Florrie Maybrick was buried on the hill, next to her friend, Miss Dulon. Up to her deserted cottage rolled an A.S.P.C.A. car, to take away the cats...