Whether or not her husband James Maybrick was Jack the Ripper, Florence (or Florie as she preferred) herself already went down in history for supposedly murdering him herself with arsenic. The ironic twist to the story would be that James was actually a drug addict, he took large quantities of arsenic and strychnine, enough to kill anyone. The first reasoning would be that James just accidentally took too much one day (although no traces of arsenic were found in his feces and urine or even in his food and water around the time that he lay dying) or most probably that his body simply had given up after years of serious addiction.
Florence Chandler, a typical Southern Belle, met James Maybrick in America in 1891 and they married when he was forty-two years old and she eighteen. The marriage was not a happy one, she was too fond of luxuries and this proved destructive towards James' pocket. In 1887 James admitted to his wife that they were in grave financial trouble, yet later on that year Florence discovered what proved to be the final blow. James was allotting the sum of over one hundred pounds per year to a mistress he had been keeping for the past twenty or so years and when she confronted him with this he hardly reacted and didn't seem to care. Their son also contracted scarlet fever and barely survived in that same year and all the strain on the marriage took its final toll - they took to sleeping in separate bedrooms until the day James died.
It can't be said that if Florence planned her own revenge on James that she did it the best way possible; in the autumn of 1888 she began an affair with Alfred Brierly, a younger fellow cotton broker. It was easily discovered, as Florence herself didn't exactly bother to cover up the affair and it is said that James knew about it from as early as December 1888. In March 1889 James's knowledge of the entire affair became quite apparent to all. At a gathering at the Grand National steeplechase, Maybrick made a scene when Florie walked off for a moment with Brierly and later that day, back home in their house so aptly named Battlecrease, the couple had a huge argument which ended with James ripping Florence's dress and blackening her eye when she threatened to leave the house. The servants intervened and with the help of of a family friend and doctor, the couple reconciled their differences. James promised to pay off all of her debts and Florence promised to break off her relationship with Alfred.
Neither of them lived up to their promises as soon afterwards James became severly ill. He complained of headaches and of a coldness in the limbs, and in the weeks of late April and early May abdominal and gastrointestinal problems began to arise. Doctors were called in from all over London, prescribing countless drugs and tonics in order to ail his condition. Earlier in April Florence had purchased several flypapers and had proceeded to soak them in a sink. She claimed she needed the extracted arsenic, popular in those times as a remedy for skin problems, for an eruption of her skin which she wanted to make disappear in time for a grand ball she would be attending in April. She made no attempt to hide the flypapers away from the entire staff and indeed everyone noticed what she was doing. Suspicion began to arise amongst the nurse, Alice Yapp, that Florence was in fact poisoning him, especially after his condition worsened throughout the first couple of days of May. Yapp informed a friend of the family, Mrs. Briggs, and in turn she telegraphed both brothers of James, Michael and Edwin, telling them to come at once as strange things were going on in the household. That same day Yapp intercepted a letter from Florence addressed to Alfred and she immediately gave the information to Michael who ordered that no one but the nurses were to wait upon his brother. Finally Florence began to realize the rising suspicion growing around her.
The next day (May 9th) Florence was seen handling the bottle of meat juice that Edwin had brought as a pharmaceutical and which was given to James by the nurses. When the content of bottle was examined it was found to contain half a grain of arsenic. On May the 10th Michael noticed Florence moving medicine from one small bottle to a larger one, but when the bottle was later analyzed no traces of arsenic were found. That same night the brothers and some of the staff searched the house and found a sealed envelope labelled "Arsenic -- poison for cats," which contained a large amount of arsenic and several bottles, a container of Valentine's meat juice, a rag, a glass, and a handkerchief. Apparently enough arsenic was found in the house to kill 50 people, two grains being enough to kill one man.
James Maybrick died on May 12th and a post-mortem concluded that death was "due to inflammation of the stomach and bowels set up by some irritant poison." On the 14th Florence, who had fallen in a swoon on the 11th and had not recovered before her husband died and was still bed-ridden, was informed that she was in custody under suspicion of murder. On the 18th she was formally taken to jail and her trial began several months afterwards. Her trial has since become the subject of many volumes of work, mostly about the allegations of gross incompetence and negligence displayed throughout the trial by the presiding judge Stephen - who was confined to an asylum as a result of his mental incapacities just a few years after the trial. He seems to have been more shocked about her adultery than the fact that she may have killed her own husband. He found her guilty and sentenced her to death. Only a few days before her execution was the sentence changed to life imprisonment and she was released after spending 15 years locked away - an innocent woman in my most humble opinion.
She moved back to America and died there several years later, a broken woman who had lost contact with both of her beloved children. Rumour has it that she might have had a third child early on in prison, but who or where this child was living is not known.