Did she kill him? Addiction, adultery and arsenic in Victorian Britain

Florence Chandler was in her early 20s when she married much
older James Maybrick, a Liverpool cotton broker, in 1881. Eight
years later, tensions seethed. James was addicted to arsenic.
Both were unfaithful. When James died suddenly, Florence was
arrested for his murder. Was Florence victim or aggressor? Was
she tried for her morality? Relying primarily on records from The
National Archives, Kate Colquhoun re-examines the case dubbed by
many as the greatest miscarriage of English justice and she asks
what light it sheds on late Victorian society.


Kate Colquhoun has written a biography of Joseph Paxton and a
history of Britain through its food. She also wrote the
non-fiction bestseller Mr Briggs' Hat, about the first murder on
a British train.