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Case Closed? Series 4: 1. Maybrick

Leading criminal barristers Sasha Wass QC and Jeremy Dein QC revisit their investigation of an infamous Victorian poisoning case, where a wife was convicted of the murder of her husband. \n\nLiverpool, 1889. On 11 May, cotton broker James Maybrick passed away after a two-week battle with illness. A post-mortem revealed his body contained traces of the deadly poison arsenic. Suspicion soon fell on his wife, Florence Maybrick, after servants saw her handing some poisons.\n\nAmerican-born Florence had met James, a man 23 years her senior, while travelling to Britain on an ocean liner. Their marriage was a picture of Victorian happiness and success, but behind closed doors James’s business was in trouble, the family faced financial difficulties, and rumours of extra-marital affairs swirled around the couple. \n\nDespite protesting her innocence, Florence was charged with the murder of James. And on 7 August 1889, after a week-long trial, Florence was found guilty and sentenced to death. But her story didn’t end there.\n\nOver 130 years later, Florence and James’s relative Dave Maybrick, who had known about the story since he was a child, sought to question the original conviction and called upon the barristers to explore questions around the cause of death and Victorian prejudice. Sasha and Jeremy attempted to find new evidence that Florence Maybrick was wrongly convicted.\n\nNow, a year on from that initial investigation, Jeremy and Sasha catch up with Dave to discover how several more infamous murders have been linked to the Maybrick family and that there were tragic consequences of the case for Florence's children.

Source: BBC 1