“Deep in the heart of the American Heritage Center lies a small but rich series of archival puzzle pieces that tell the story of Mrs. Florence Maybrick, the American lady found guilty of murdering her husband in 1889 Victorian England.” So begins Andrea Hastings-Arrollo’s award-winning analysis of one of the most controversial murder trials in Victorian history—a case that reveals how gender ideologies could literally determine life or death.

Using materials from the Trevor Christie papers at the AHC, archives assembled by journalist Trevor Christie for his 1969 book Etched in Arsenic, Andrea uncovered a story that goes far beyond a simple murder trial. Her research reveals how “the doctrine of true womanhood had been hammered into the societal psyche, which made fairness virtually impossible” for women like Florence Maybrick.

The Impossible Position of Victorian Women

Andrea’s analysis centers on a fundamental contradiction in Victorian society. As she explains, women “had to cope with the irreconcilable perceptions of women as domestic angels and seductive whores.”

Florence Maybrick, an eighteen-year-old American who married forty-two-year-old English cotton merchant James Maybrick in 1881, found herself trapped by these contradictions. While James openly maintained mistresses and fathered children with them, Florence’s own romantic attachments outside her troubled marriage became the foundation for a murder charge.

Andrea discovered through AHC archives that the household staff at Battlecrease House “endured her because she was Mr. Maybrick’s wife,” and that “her multiple affairs were common knowledge in the household and discussed regularly with condemnation between the servants, and the double standards of the period guarded her spouse from the same brutal judgement.”

When Morality Overrode Evidence

What makes Andrea’s research particularly compelling is her analysis of how gender bias shaped the actual legal proceedings. When James Maybrick died in May 1889 after a brief illness, the evidence against Florence was remarkably thin—his body contained only slight traces of arsenic, not enough to cause death. Yet as Andrea notes, “Morality carried more weight than tangible proof before empirical science had been fully developed and incorporated into law.”

Most damning was Judge Sir James Fitzjames Stephen’s explicit statement that Florence’s adultery proved she was capable of murder. Andrea writes: “He told the grand jury that her adulterous intrigue supplied motive, and he obsessed over this point throughout the trial.” The judge literally argued that sexual transgression equaled murderous intent.

Andrea’s archival research revealed an even more troubling detail: the death certificate was altered after Dr. Humphrey spoke with James’s brother Michael, who was convinced of Florence’s guilt after reading her love letter. Originally listing “acute inflammation of the stomach,” the certificate was changed to suggest “arsenical poisoning”—medical evidence rewritten to match moral assumptions.

The Double Bind of Victorian Womanhood

Andrea’s analysis illuminates the impossible position Victorian women faced: “Women were caught between the expectations that they are both incapable of sin and also most susceptible to it because of the unwitting quality projected onto them by a patriarchal system.”

This contradiction played out dramatically in Florence’s case. As Andrea explains, “Maybrick was perceived by the public as both a distressed damsel in need of rescuing and an abomination in need of cleansing.” The same gender ideologies that condemned her as morally corrupt also protected her from execution, leading to her death sentence being commuted to life imprisonment.

“It was precisely the true woman credo which compelled some to condemn the execution of any woman ever,” Andrea notes, while Queen Victoria opposed Florence’s release “primarily because of her moral lapses since no true woman could betray her family as she had.”

Memory and the Construction of History

One of Andrea’s most sophisticated insights involves her analysis of how the Maybrick case was remembered and retold decades later. Using Christie’s interviews from the 1940s, she examined how the journalist gathered memories from people like Florence Aunspaugh, who had spent time at the Maybrick house as a child.

Andrea astutely observes that these memories were “culturally and historically conditioned.” She writes: “The subjects and author Christie all brought their own preconditioned beliefs into the project in terms of gender values. Pre-suffrage events had to be reconciled with a post-suffrage culture, one that had been through World War I and was going through World War II as Christie gathered his research.”

This insight reveals Andrea’s sophisticated understanding of how historical memory works: “Miss Aunspaugh was eight years old when she spent a summer at the Maybrick house, and she recalled, or reconstructed, those childhood memories as a woman of sixty-five. Surely the combination of that singular childhood summer in England, the significant passage of time, and the overwhelming media coverage absorbed by society as a whole had some creative power over the memories she contributed.”

A Tragic Aftermath

Florence served fifteen years in British prisons under brutal conditions, including nine months in solitary confinement. After her release in 1904, she initially lectured about prison reform and her experiences, but eventually became a recluse in Connecticut, living under her maiden name. She died alone and penniless in 1941, never having seen her children again.

The Lasting Significance

Andrea’s conclusion powerfully synthesizes her analysis: “What we do know for certain based on a widely studied dual definition of women is that Victorian gender ideologies damned Florence Maybrick to prison and a life of struggle, but they also saved her from the immediate finality of a noose.”

Her research demonstrates how the Maybrick case became “a lightning rod for wide social and gender anxieties” as “traditional gender notions were under tension in the late nineteenth century.” Through careful analysis of AHC archival materials, Andrea shows how this single case illuminates the broader contradictions and impossible expectations placed on Victorian women.

Perhaps most importantly, Andrea’s work reveals how these historical patterns continue to resonate: “The Trevor Christie Collection exposes an intimate, lesser-known side of Florence Maybrick, but it also tells us a great deal about those who did the remembering in Trevor Christie’s research, including Christie himself.”

Discovering History Through Archives

Andrea’s award-winning research exemplifies the kind of original scholarship possible through careful work with primary sources. The Trevor Christie’s papers at the AHC contains the materials he gathered for his biography of Florence Maybrick: correspondence with Florence Aunspaugh and other witnesses, newspaper clippings spanning decades, photographs, research files on the trial and prison term, and even Christie’s original manuscript. These materials allowed Andrea to reconstruct not just what happened to Florence, but how that story was understood, retold, and reinterpreted across decades of changing social attitudes. As Andrea demonstrates, understanding how memory and gender ideology intersect can reveal profound truths about both past and present.

This post is adapted from Andrea Hastings-Arrollo’s award-winning paper “Gender Ideologies and Memory: A Case Study of the Murder Trial of Florence Maybrick,”written for Dr. Peter Walker’s HIST 3020: Historical Methods course. Andrea received the 2025 American Heritage Center Award for Graduate Student Research for this exceptional work.

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About the AHC Graduate Student Research Award

The AHC annually awards $500 to recognize excellence in graduate student research using the Center’s primary sources. Open to University of Wyoming graduate students in any discipline, the award accepts projects in various forms—research papers, creative writing, exhibits, podcasts, websites—as long as they’re based substantially on AHC materials.

The next deadline for nominations is May 17, 2026. For more information, contact AHC Toppan Rare Book Curator Dr. Mary Beth Brown at Mary.Brown@uwyo.edu.