Mrs. Maybrick'S Own Story: My Fifteen Lost Years by Chandler Maybrick, first published in 1905, is a rare manuscript, the original residing in one of the great libraries of the world. This book is a reproduction of that original, which has been scanned and cleaned by state-of-the-art publishing tools for better readability and enhanced appreciation. Restoration Editors' mission is to bring long out of print manuscripts back to life. Some smudges, annotations or unclear text may still exist, due to permanent damage to the original work. We believe the literary significance of the text justifies offering this reproduction, allowing a new generation to appreciate it.

“An intriguing story told in the style of Thomas Hardy or George Eliot, if they traded in true crime” (Kirkus Reviews). In the summer of 1889, young Southern belle Florence Maybrick stood trial for the alleged arsenic poisoning of her much older husband, Liverpool cotton merchant James Maybrick. The “Maybrick Mystery” had all the makings of a sensation: a pretty, flirtatious woman; resentful, gossiping servants; rumors of gambling and debt; and scandalous mutual infidelity. The case cracked the varnish of Victorian respectability, shocking and exciting the public in equal measure as they clamored to read the latest revelations of Florence’s past and glimpse her likeness in Madame Tussaud’s. Florence’s fate was fiercely debated in the courtroom, on the front pages of the newspapers, and in parlors and backyards across the country. Did she poison her husband? Was her previous infidelity proof of murderous intentions? Was James’s own habit of self-medicating to blame for his demise? In this book, historian and CWA Gold Dagger Award nominee Kate Colquhoun recounts an utterly absorbing tale of addiction, deception, and adultery that keeps you asking to the very last page: Did she kill him?

Florence Maybrick was a 19-year-old Alabama belle when she married cotton-broker James Maybrick in 1881. She was convicted of his murder in 1889 after arsenic was found in his corpse. However, it was never established whether she administered the poison, or whether Maybrick himself, a hypochondriac who used arsenic and other tonics, took the fatal dose. Her death sentence was commuted to imprisonment and she served 15 years before her reprieve in 1903. This 'bloody history' tells the compelling tale of a ruined marriage and its infidelities, examining the murder, trial and controversy through Home Office files held at the National Archives and features new photographs of Mrs. Maybrick. It concludes with a bizarre twist: James Maybrick became a Jack the Ripper suspect in 1992.