A Poisoned Life: Florence Chandler Maybrick, the First American Woman Sentenced to Death in England

Florence Maybrick was the first American woman to be sentenced to death in England—for murdering her husband, a crime she almost certainly did not commit. Her 1889 trial was presided over by an openly misogynist judge who was later declared incompetent and died in an asylum. Hours before Maybrick was to be hanged, Queen Victoria reluctantly commuted her sentence to life in prison—in her opinion a woman who would commit adultery, as Maybrick had admitted, would also kill her husband.

Her chil...