Villains or Victims

Smethurst and Maybrick became instant and enduring controversies. Had they been guilty of murder? The professions of medicine and law were divided on the question. Did the evidence in each of the cases pass the test of reasonable doubt? The personalities and characters of Smethurst & Maybrick, and those of the variety of officials who played significant roles in their individual crises is carefully examined. Did the judges act fairly towards these defendants or did they instruct the juries to convict on the basis of moral crimes, bigamy and adultery, they being simpler to understand than complex scientific evidence about which even experts could not agree? Popular opinion was shaped by a press which reported the trials in astonishing detail, and the mushrooming literate public considered themselves qualified to act as judges. One anomaly of English criminal justice was the absence of a court of criminal appeal to reverse unsound convictions, but this void press and public willingly filled. Clamours against convictions and executions were not new, but the crusades on behalf first of Smethurst and thirty years later of Maybrick were highly organized and powerful. Petitions, some carrying signatures collected at the underground stations of London's expanding underground railway, flooded in, and letters of criticism of the verdicts were addressed to editors of newspapers and published.
Class raised its head, the lower orders resenting what they saw as the gentler treatment of middle class Maybrick before her trial but they were still found among those protesting her sentence to death. Commutations and pardons were handled by a politician, the Home Secretary. That Maybrick was more harshly treated than Smethurst probably reflected the gender discrimination of men appalled by her violations of the patriarchy by engaging in adultery and perhaps murdering her husband. Fortunately, her American birth led to American intervention.