The Trial of Mrs Maybrick - 1889

Edgar Lustgarten used to open his hugely popular True Crime BBC programme in the 1950s with the words "Have you ever murdered anyone? Perhaps you'd rather not say". Up to six million listeners tuned in every week to hear Lustgarten drily recount the details of major trials. It is probably fair to say that he invented the True Crime audio genre.

The Chiron True Crime series was recorded by Lustgarten in a London studio in Dolby quality in 1976. Lustgarten's voice is austere but not without wit, gripping yet somehow addictive. The voice of a top Barrister presenting the facts of the case with the hangman's noose waiting silently in the shadows.

"When I was a kid in the north of England, just after the First World War", says Edgar Lustgarten, "people still used to talk of Mrs. Maybrick-thirty years or so after her trial. But they generally stopped when they noticed a kid was in the room".
Why they stopped; what scandalous element in the Maybrick story could not be properly discussed before a child; why that young woman was possibly the most tragic figure, and her trial probably the most unsatisfactory in our forensic annals-all these facets of a noted cause célèbre are explored with appropriate gravitas.
Connoisseurs of advocacy may care to be reminded that Mrs. Maybrick was defended by Charles Russell (afterwards Lord Chief Justice as Lord Russell of Killowen), regarded by informed professional opinion as the greatest personality who has ever adorned the Bar."