The Mammoth Book of Unsolved Crimes

AND TO HELL WITH BURGUNDY by Dorothy Dunbar

One of the earliest puzzles of the Victorian age to earn the description of “mystery” was the death of Charles Bravo at Balham, south-west London. Bravo, possessed not only of a dashing name but also of an enviable position in polite society, was a bored barrister of thirty whose ambitions to stand for Parliament were abruptly dashed when he died of poison in the spring of 1876. The two main suspects were his beautiful wife Florence and her paid companion, the unprepossessing Mrs Jane Cox. A third candidate presented himself in the shape of Dr James Gully, a celebrated but elderly hydropathic doctor at Malvern, with whom Florence had conducted an affair between her brief first marriage and this, her second. The American writer Dorothy Dunbar (1923-76), whose mother was one of the first women crime reporters in the US, offered this unique perspective on the Bravo case in her 1964 survey of domestic murders Blood in the Parlor.

Some women attract men; some women attract trouble. Florence Bravo was a double-barreled magnet; she attracted both. Her small voluptuous figure, which no corset or bustle could distort, her coquettish chestnut hair, which no curling iron or crimpers could restrain, and an irresistible siren song of helplessness made up a small but potent package of sex appeal. It was just her luck to fatally fascinate an alcoholic, a married man, and a spoiled boy.

As for trouble, Florence was a feather, caught in every emotional downdraft that came along, and she got trapped in some cross-ventilation when she overstepped the unalterable code of Victorian womanhood. In an age when the sanctity of woman was as jealously institutionalized as chivalry had been in the days when knighthood was in flower, the pattern of Victorian dualism fell into inflexible categories. A woman was either “pure” or “fallen”. She had to be one or the other, and there was no room for a twilight zone, such as our current popular myth of the “prostitute with the heart of gold”. A pure woman was a virgin with chaste thoughts and sexual rigor mortis, a woman who granted her husband bleak conjugal submission and periodic heirs, or a spinster who lightened the heavy load of her days with the subliminal sop of John Ruskin’s Italian-art criticism or pure-thinking literature like Sesame and Lilies.

A fallen woman encompassed everything from the dashing, feather-boaed belles, who toyed with champagne and men in private dining rooms, to gin-logged slatterns. But Florence Bravo didn’t realize that never the twain shall meet. If she had followed the rigidly mapped course of either a good or bad woman, there would have been no nineteenth-century shocker known as the “Balham Mystery”, but because she wanted to have her cake and eat it, too-Florence Bravo was just plain murder!

Florence Campbell was the daughter of Robert Campbell, a wealthy London merchant. Everything points to a spoiled, petted childhood and to a familiar twentieth-century spectacle-well-meaning parents who are unable to cope with the teenaged Frankensteins they have created.

In 1863, when she was eighteen, Florence visited Montreal, and, to her, one of the greatest attractions of the brave new world was Captain Ricardo of Her Majesty’s Army. Captain Ricardo listed as assets a dashing uniform reminiscent of a Strauss operetta, a name with an evocative Latin ending, and a comfortable fortune. In 1864, two doom-ridden events took place: Maximilian, that harassed Hapsburg, became Emperor of Mexico; and Florence Campbell married her colorful captain. Some men accept marriage with stoicism, while others luxuriate in the matrimonial state. There are men who fight it-wifebeaters, etc., and there are men who avoid it, e.g., bachelors. Captain Ricardo by nature and inclination, belonged to the latter group. He had an inordinate liking for women, and he was an avid companion of the grape. Florence, at a dewy, well-developed eighteen certainly must have appealed to him, but marriage was the price for capitulation. So Captain Ricardo bartered bachelorhood for maidenhood.

Like most young brides, Florence embarked upon matrimony with high hopes. Perhaps she even subscribed to the age-old delusion that marriage changes a man. In any event, the honeymoon came to an abrupt end when it became apparent that “hearth and home” were just two rather unfamiliar words in the English language to Captain Ricardo. He was keeping mistresses and making a cult out of the empty bottle. To Florence, spoiled and petted, six years of violent scenes, pitying smiles from friends and relations, and a husband’s total lack of concern over her happiness were devastating blows to her ego. Captain Ricardo alternated between sessions with pink elephants and fits of black remorse, and in the middle of this emotional maelstrom, was Florence, her self-confidence shaken, her ego badly fractured. To help soften the ugly edges, she started drinking herself. If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em, seemed to be her attitude. Let there be no mistake that Florence’s drinking fell under the proscribed limits of social drinking for Victorian females. The sip of sherry or blackberry wine, the gulp of stronger spirits for medicinal reasons were not for Florence. She drank as she did everything else-whole heartedly, on the spur of the moment, and all the way. Any self-respecting AA would unabashedly tip his hat to the capacity of this frail Victorian belle.

By 1870, Florence was on the verge of what would now be called a nervous breakdown. Six years of marriage to Captain Ricardo plus the solace of the vine was just about all an emotionally weak woman could stand. Mr and Mrs Campbell suggested that Florence and her captain go to Malvern, a famous spa, to take the cure, but it was useless. Captain Ricardo had retired from the army and was now devoting his full time and energy to drinking, so Florence’s parents insisted upon a deed of separation. In the following April, Captain Ricardo died in Cologne as he had lived-with a transient mistress in his bed and the eternal bottle at his elbow. His will was unaltered, and Florence was now set to become a very merry widow with an income of £4,000 a year to be merry on and Dr Gully to be merry with.

In 1842, Dr William Gully had developed a water cure and offered it to an ailing public. Dr Gully was no quack. He was a thoroughly trained medical man, and his water cure put the town of Malvern on the map, so to speak. Applications of water were used in every form-packing in wet sheets, compresses, spinal washes, friction with dripping towels-and his patients included Tennyson, Carlyle, Charles Reade, Bulwer-Lytton, an all-star cast from the social register, and many other water-sodden Victorian greats and near greats. Dr Gully himself had literary aspirations. He wrote articles on medical subjects and wrote a play adapted from Dumas’s Mademoiselle de Belle-Isle, which was produced at Drury Lane in 1839. Dr Gully himself was sixty-two at the time Florence came to Malvern with her problem husband. He is described as handsome, if not tall, with clean-cut features and an erect bearing. He was also the possessor of a disastrous amount of personal magnetism, and a wife in her eighties whom his water cure could not help; she had been in an insane asylum for thirty years.

It was this man that Florence met when she came to Malvern. At the time she was emotionally ill, and Dr Gully’s warmth and sympathetic understanding must have been every bit as effective as his water treatments. Florence was headstrong but not self-reliant, and Captain Ricardo had proved a broken reed upon which to lean. Dr Gully, a pillar of strength by comparison, was a welcome change from Captain Ricardo’s highhanded, drunken treatment and groveling sober remorse. Florence recovered under his care. Today, when everyone nonchalantly tosses off the argot of psychoanalysis, transference is an every day word, and Gully’s age was no detriment after Florence’s experience with a young husband. Picture Dr Gully, well-to-do, attractive, respected, confronted with a rampant Florence seething with devotion and flattery.

Just when Dr Gully’s bedside manner began to assume personal overtones is not clear. Florence steadfastly maintained nothing improper had occurred during her marriage to Captain Ricardo. However, early during her widowhood her parents refused to see her because of her relations with Dr Gully and because of her continued drinking. For four years, Florence was cut off from her family and was beyond the possibility of a social circle, but she had Dr Gully, emotional security, and her wine.

It was during this isolated, if not celibate, widowhood that Mrs Cox entered the scene. Florence was visiting her solicitor, Mr Brooks, and there she met Mrs Jane Cannon Cox. Mrs Cox was the down-at-the-heel widow of a Jamaican engineer with three sons, and through the kind offices and advice of a Mr Joseph Bravo, who had interests in Jamaica, she had bought a small house in Lancaster Road, Notting Hill, as an investment, had placed her sons in a school for destitute gentlefolk, and obtained the post of governess to Mr Brooks’s children. Mrs Cox, with her solid figure inclined to dumpiness, heavy-featured face, glittering spectacles, and skintight hairdo was no beauty, but she made up for it by relentless efficiency, an air of unassailable respectability, and a grim desire to please.

It wasn’t long before the pretty but lonesome widow appropriated Mrs Cox as her companion. And it was, at the time, an ideal arrangement for sheltered, beautiful Florence and plain, unsheltered Mrs Cox. Mrs Cox ran Florence’s house, controlled the servants, and understood perfectly the comfort and elegance that Florence wished to enjoy, without exerting any effort. And Mrs Cox had it made. She had exchanged the life of uncertainty, drudgery, and poor pay of a governess for the role of “friend of the bosom” to Florence Ricardo. They were on the footing of social equals; it was “Florence” and “Janie”. She received a salary of £100 a year, clothes, and incidental expenses, and her three boys could spend all their school holidays with her.

In 1872, Dr Gully sold his practice amid testimonials and demonstrations from the citizens of Malvern, and, wherever Mrs Ricardo lived, Dr Gully’s home was sure to be within spitting distance, and their friendship continued. In 1873, the pair made a trip to Kissingen, and the tangible result was a miscarriage. During this illness, Mrs Cox attended Florence, but claimed she did not know the real nature of the trouble.

In 1874, Mrs Ricardo moved into what was to be her permanent home, the Priory. It was a pale-tinted structure with arched windows and doorways, winding walks, flower beds, melon pits, a greenhouse, and the house was luxurious with a sparkling Venetian glass collection, a lush conservatory with ferns that cost twenty guineas each, and every expensive horror of Victorian decoration. Here Florence Ricardo settled down, with the perpetual Mrs Cox, to enjoy life’s three greatest pleasures-gardening, horses, and drinking. And Dr Gully, whom one is tempted to nickname Johnny-on-the-spot, bought a house just a few minutes from the Priory. There were lunches, dinners, drives, and several nights of illicit bliss when Mrs Cox was away. Dr Gully had a key to the Priory. Then, one day in 1875, Mrs Cox wished to call on her benefactor, Mrs Joseph Bravo, and Mrs Ricardo went with her. There she met Charles Bravo, the spoiled son of the house. The meeting itself was without incident, but its repercussions are now called the Balham Mystery.

In October 1875, Mrs Ricardo and Mrs Cox went to Brighton and there again met Charles Bravo, a sulky handsome young man with a weak chin. He was a young man her own age and of her social position, and when Florence returned to the Priory she told Dr Gully that she was going to break off their “friendship” and reconcile with her family because of her mother’s health. Actually, Florence was, in all probability, weary of her “back street” existence. She had snapped her garter at the world, and, instead of being told she was cute, was knuckle-rapped by social ostracism. What she did not tell Dr Gully was that she was also going to marry Charles Bravo. Dr Gully was hurt when he found out about the engagement, but later wished Florence happiness. Perhaps the demands of a young capricious mistress had begun to tell on the sixty-seven-year-old doctor, and the prospect of placid days and monastic nights had an attraction.

But in spite of Florence’s injunction that they must never see each other again, they did. According to British law at that time, every possession and all property of a woman marrying automatically became the property of her husband, unless specifically secured to her by settlement. Florence wanted the Priory and its furnishings secured to her, but Charles sulked and muttered he wanted to sit in his own chairs or he’d call the marriage off. Florence arranged a meeting with Dr Gully to discuss the impasse, and they met at one of the Priory lodges. Dr Gully advised her to give in on the matter and wished her luck. As usual, Florence backed down, and “Charlie” won the moral victory of “sitting in his own chairs”.

Charles Bravo was not a wealthy man in his own right and was mostly dependent on his father’s spasmodic handouts, since his law practice only netted him £200 in the last year of his life. However, his future was bright. He was his stepfather’s heir, and his prospects for becoming a member of Parliament were good, and here was a young, infatuated, wealthy widow, with a belated yearning for respectability and security, palpitating on his door-step.

Charles and Florence told each other “all”. He had had a purple passage with a young and willing woman in Maidenhead but had made a final settlement with her before breaking off. Florence told him about her idyll with the autumnal Dr Gully, and Charles seems to have accepted it with equanimity. Charles was what might be called “rotten spoiled”. He was charming when things went his way, extremely conscious of money, probably because he had been around it so much, yet had so little of his own. And the prospect of marrying a wealthy widow-even one with a sexual slip-up in her past-was attractive. Certainly he was not consumed with jealousy. When he went to see Florence’s attorney about the settlement, he received the lawyer’s congratulations with the remark, “to hell with the congratulations, it’s the money I’m interested in!”

Mr Bravo, Sr, settled £20,000 on Charles as a wedding present, but Mrs Bravo refused to attend the wedding. She didn’t like Florence. For that matter, she probably wouldn’t have liked any girl her son married. And so Florence and Charles Bravo were married and settled down at the Priory, and they might have lived happily ever after if Charles Bravo hadn’t been so stingy.

They seemed like an average, happy couple. Charles brought his business associates to dinner and heartily endorsed the institution of marriage. The servants all thought the Bravos a happy, devoted couple, but Mrs Cox was worried. Charles was cutting down on the overhead. He wanted Florence to give up her horses and her personal maid which she did, and he wanted her to dispense with Mrs Cox. He had put together a pound here and a pound there and figured out that the genteel companionship of the widow was costing £400 a year-enough to keep a pair of horses. And Florence, who operated on an anything-for-the-sake-of-peace basis and who was charmed by her young attractive husband, decided to give up her horses and maid, and Mrs Cox could see the handwriting on the wall. Her relatives in Jamaica had been pressing her to return, and now Mr Joseph Bravo and his son were urging the same thing.

During this period of surface serenity, several curious events occurred. Mrs Cox had several meetings with Dr Gully; whether they were planned or accidental, they have all the aspects of Mrs Cox trying to stir something up. Mrs Bravo had had a miscarriage, and Mrs Cox, at one encounter, asked Dr Gully, who knew Florence couldn’t take regular opiates, to send something to her house on Lancaster Road. The doctor sent some laurel water and thus laid himself open to later insinuations that he was supplying Mrs Bravo with abortive medicines, a rather empty charge in view of the fact that a child would have been just what Florence Bravo needed to cement her newly established respectability and reconcile Charles’s mother to the marriage. And then, just after Charles Bravo figured out the cost of Mrs Cox’s companionship, he was taken suddenly and mysteriously ill one morning on his way to his chambers in Essex Court. So ill, in fact, that he reported to his father he was afraid people might think he was drunk from the night before, and Charles Bravo had the digestion of an ox.

That was the situation at the Priory Easter weekend, 1876. Charles Bravo had his attractive wife and her equally attractive fortune. Florence was recovering from her miscarriage and appeared devoted to her husband, and Mrs Cox was brooding about the imminence of a trip to Jamaica. Charles Bravo laid out a tennis court, played with Mrs Cox’s boys, who were down for the Easter vacation, and wrote to his mother that he had “loafed vigorously and thoroughly enjoyed the weekend”.

Tuesday, 18 April, Mrs Cox set out to look at houses in Worthing where the Bravos were planning to go for Florence to recuperate from her miscarriage and with her she took a flask of sherry to fortify herself. Mr and Mrs Bravo drove into town, and he went to his club at St James Hall for lunch, while Florence returned to the Priory, after doing some shopping, for lunch, which she polished off with a bottle of champagne. Mrs Bravo understandably spent the afternoon resting. Late in the afternoon Mr Bravo returned home and went riding. The horse threw him, and he returned home with his dignity and himself rather badly bruised. Mrs Bravo suggested a warm bath before dinner, and then went upstairs herself to change. Mrs Cox returned from her house hunting with a photograph of the house, and, it is presumed, an empty sherry flask. She did not have time to change for dinner, she did go upstairs to clean up a bit.

Dinner, consisting of whiting, roast lamb, a dish of eggs, and anchovy bloater was not a sparkling meal. Mr Bravo was still smarting, both literally and figuratively, from his fall. Mrs Bravo had dry pipes from the champagne and was trying to put out the fire with sherry, and Mrs Cox had things to think about. Mr Bravo drank his three customary glasses of burgundy, but the ladies put him to shame. Between them, Mrs Bravo and Mrs Cox polished off two bottles of sherry, and the butler later testified that he had decanted the usual amount of wine that evening.

After dinner, they retired to the morning room where again conversations languished. In about a half hour, Florence announced she was going to bed and asked Mrs Cox to bring her a glass of wine. Since her miscarriage Mrs Cox had been sleeping with her, and Mr Bravo had been relegated to a guest room. Mrs Bravo went upstairs and was followed by the obliging Mrs Cox with a glass of wine. Mary Anne Keeber, a maid, came in to help Mrs Bravo undress and was asked by Mrs Bravo to bring her some wine. Mary Anne brought a tumbler of marsala and was still in Mrs Bravo’s room when Mr Bravo entered to make the understatement of the Balham Mystery. He accused his wife of drinking too much wine and stormed off to bed. Mary Anne withdrew and saw as she left the room that three-bottle Florence had taken the count and was asleep, while Mrs Cox sat by her bed fully dressed. As Mary Anne started downstairs, the door to Mr Bravo’s room flew open and he cried, “Florence, Florence. Water!”

And Mrs Cox, who sat fully dressed and wide awake by Mrs Bravo’s bedside, heard nothing until Mary Anne called her. From the time of Mr Bravo’s cries for water, there began a procession of doctors and a progression of statements by Mrs Cox. Mary Anne and Mrs Cox rushed into Mr Bravo’s bedroom, where they found him standing by the window vomiting. Mrs Cox ordered Mary Anne to rush for an emetic and Dr Harrison. When Dr Harrison arrived Mrs Cox told him Mr Bravo had taken chloroform to ease a toothache, but the doctor said there was no smell of chloroform.

Mrs Bravo was by this time aroused and sent for Dr Moore and Royes Bell, a Harley Street surgeon and friend of the Bravo family. Mrs Bravo threw herself down by her husband, spoke to him fondly, and promptly fell asleep and finally had to be carried to her own room. Obviously, she hadn’t had time to sleep it off.

Dr George Johnson arrived with Royes Bell, and they are told by Mr Bravo that he has rubbed his gums with laudanum for his toothache.

“But laudanum,” Dr Johnson tells him “will not account for your symptoms.” But Mr Bravo stubbornly insisted that he had taken nothing else, no other drug.

At this point, Mrs Cox takes Mr Bell aside and confides to him that, while “Charlie” was vomiting at the window, he told her, “I have taken poison. Don’t tell Florence.”

Mr Bravo’s reply to this is “I don’t remember having spoken of taking poison,” and again insisted he had only rubbed his gums with laudanum. Dr Harrison was annoyed with Mrs Cox for not telling him about the poison. “You told me,” he said petulantly, “that he had taken chloroform.”

Mr Bravo by now was in a bad way. He was frequently sick and had intense stomach pains, but he kept his wife by him, drew up a will leaving everything to her, and sent word to his mother to “be kind to Florence”. Again he swears to the growing assembly of doctors that he had taken nothing but laudanum and with a trace of his old money consciousness says: “Why the devil should I send for you, if I knew what was the matter with me?”

Mr and Mrs Joseph Bravo arrived, and the elder Mrs Bravo took charge of the sick room. However, when the doctors had declared the case hopeless, Florence roused herself from her despair and her hangover to take action. “They have had their way, and I as his wife will have mine.” And proceeded to try water treatments and small doses of arsenicum, both approved of by the doctors, as harmless.

Then Florence calls in Sir William Gull, a physician who wore as a crown the credit for having cured the Prince of Wales of typhoid fever.

“This is not a disease,” Sir William tells Bravo. “You have been poisoned. Pray tell me how you came by it.”

But Bravo persists that he has taken nothing but laudanum and on Friday morning, April twenty-first, the much harassed, much questioned Charles Bravo mercifully died.

The inquest had more of the air of a family tea than anything else. Mr Carter, the coroner for East Surrey was informed in a note written for Mrs Bravo by Mrs Cox that “refreshments will be prepared for the jury”, and the inquest was held in the dining room of the Priory. Mr Carter, an experienced official, had the idea that there was something amiss and out of deference to two respectable families did not even send notices of the inquest to the papers. Test of specimens and organs revealed that Mr Bravo had died from a large, economy-sized dose of antimony administered in the form of tartar emetic, which is easily soluble in water and tasteless. Mr Joseph Bravo went to Scotland Yard and Inspector Clark, an expert on poisoning cases, was instructed to make inquiries to see if antimony could be traced to the Priory, because the senior Bravo suspected the story of death by accident. Both Mrs Bravo and Mrs Cox had medicine chests and the house contained innumerable bottles of medicine, but nothing lethal. But Mr Joseph Bravo refused to believe Mrs Cox’s story that his son had committed suicide.

The coroner felt it was an embarrasing case of suicide, however, and closed the hearing without allowing Drs Johnson or Moore to testify and without calling Mrs Bravo, who was suffering from shock. Mr Bravo even admitted to the coroner’s direct question, he did not suspect foul play, but there were a lot of drugs in the house. The verdict was “that the deceased died from the effects of the poison antimony, but there was no evidence as to the circumstances in which it had come into his body.”

Mr Bravo was buried on 29 April, and Mrs Bravo and Mrs Cox, probably fortified by several flasks of sherry, departed for Brighton. But the end was not in sight. Charles Bravo had been popular in his circle of friends and colleagues, and they were dissatisfied with the summary verdict from the coroner’s inquest. A week later, The World ran a provocative paragraph titled “A Tragedy?” It was done in the gossip-column style of today with no names mentioned but easily identifiable. Charles Bravo was referred to as “a rising young barrister recently married”.

The following day, 11 May, the gathering storm continued, in which the Daily Telegraph became more explicit, naming names and premiering the sobriquet, “The Balham Mystery”. The Telegraph also commented on the secret and unsatisfactory inquest and called for a reopening of the investigation. The case aroused great interest, and journals and newspapers were deluged with suggestions as to how Mr Bravo clashed head on with the antimony. Two schools of thought emerged. Either the fatal dose had been administered in his burgundy at dinner or in the water bottle which sat on his night stand and from which he was in the habit of drinking before he went to bed. Because of the time element the water jug was a 2-to-l favorite. The doctors in the case were bitten by the literary bug. Drs Moore and Harrison wrote for the Daily Telegraph, and Dr Johnson gave a medical history in Lancet.

Mrs Bravo was aware of the drift of public sentiment. She was receiving anonymous letters, and, on the advice of her father, offered a reward of £500 to anyone who could prove the sale of antimony or tartar emetic “in such a matter as would throw a satisfactory light on the mode by which Mr Bravo came to his death”.

The Home Secretary (afterwards Lord Cross) issued a statement that his office was “entirely dissatisfied with the way the inquiry had been conducted”. Mrs Bravo’s consent was obtained for a thorough search of the Priory. The investigation lasted two days and every medicine in the house was tested. Nothing was discovered that Charles Bravo could have taken, but five weeks between Bravo’s death and the investigation were ample time to get anything incriminating out of the way.

On 27 May a private inquiry was called, and, although Mrs Bravo and Mrs Cox were not asked to give evidence, they both asked to make statements. Mrs Cox’s statement, made after consultation with Mr Brooks, her former employer and Mrs Bravo’s solicitor, dropped a bombshell. She deposed that through a misguided effort to shield Mrs Bravo’s character, she had not given full particulars at the inquest. What Mr Bravo had actually said was, “I have taken poison for Gully-don’t tell Florence.” However, Mrs Cox had to admit that Mrs Bravo had had no contact with Dr Gully since her marriage and characterized Dr Gully’s relations as “very imprudent” but of an innocent character. Mr Bravo had a hasty and violent temper and four days before his death had had a violent quarrel with his wife in which he called her a selfish pig, wished he were dead, and said “let her go back to Gully”. He constantly stated he hated Gully.

Mrs Bravo’s statement said that Bravo had pressed her constantly to cut down on expenses and turn away Mrs Cox. That he was short tempered and had once struck her, that his mother was always interfering, and that he read all her mail. She had told him about her attachment to Gully, and he had told her of his kept woman at Maidenhead, and they agreed never to mention these names. Florence, in this statement, described her relationship with Gully as innocent. “Nothing improper had ever passed between us.” Mrs Bravo said that her husband had constantly harped on Gully after their marriage. The day he had taken ill they had had a fight about Gully on the way to town. Florence refused to make up. “You will see what I do when I get home.” He thought she drank too much sherry, but she had given it up to please him. (Certainly one glaring untruth in Mrs Bravo’s statement.)

On the strength of this private inquiry, Mr Clark was ordered to hold a new inquiry with a fresh jury. It opened on 11 July 1876, in the billiard room of the Bedford Hotel next to Balham Station. And if the first inquiry had been a furtive affair, the second was a field day for the public. The room was crowded with newspaper reporters and the curious, of which there were many. After the jury had viewed the exhumed body through a small piece of glass in the coffin, a grim legal formality, Mr Joseph Bravo testified that Charles was full of life, that he was interested in forensic medicine, and that they were on intimate terms. He had never heard Charles mention Gully’s name. The last three letters Charles had written to his family, just before his illness, were in the best of spirits.

Mr Bravo said that Charles had discussed Mrs Cox with him, that he had nothing against her, but that she cost too much. Mr Joseph Bravo had agreed and advised Mrs Cox himself to return to Jamaica. She said she would not return. Mr Bravo also commented that while her husband was dying Mrs Bravo did not “appear much grieved” in any way at the state of affairs. He did admit that his son was quick tempered.

The doctors presented a solid antisuicide wall. They said they had never heard of a case of suicide by antimony, that the time of action was variable, and they positively stated that antimony could be administered without any taste in either water or burgundy. Several of the doctors testified to drinking out of the water bottle; but admitted that in the confusion it would have been easy to either switch or clean out the water jug. Dr Johnson testified that Mrs Bravo overheard him mention poison to Mrs Cox. Mrs Bravo asked: “Did he say he had taken poison?” “Yes, he did,” replied Mrs Cox. And that was the end of the conversation.

Rowe, the Butler, testified that Mr Bravo drank three glasses of burgundy at his last meal and that the half-full decanter was put away. On 19 April he opened another bottle of burgundy. He did not remember who drank it, but the other half bottle must have been gone. With Florence around it’s not surprising. He had never heard quarreling and called Charles Bravo “one of the kindest gentlemen I ever knew”.

Mary Anne Keeber, the maid, said she thought Mr and Mrs Bravo were very fond of each other and saw no signs of jealousy or ever heard Dr Gully’s name mentioned. She had emptied and cleaned the basin Mr Bravo had been vomiting in at Mrs Cox’s request.

Amelia Bushnell, Mrs Joseph Bravo’s maid, had heard Mr Bravo say he had taken nothing but laudanum and testified that Mrs Charles Bravo had been blaming his illness on something he ate at the club, cooked in a coppery pan.

John Pritchard, Dr Gully’s butler said there had been a great attachment between Dr Gully and Mrs Ricardo, but that, in November of the previous year, Dr Gully had given him instructions not to admit Mrs Ricardo or Mrs Cox. Dr Gully had returned pictures, presents, and key to the Priory, and Mrs Ricardo had done the same.

Colleagues testified that Charles Bravo had no worries or cares, that he had made a special study of forensic medicine, and would never knowingly take such a painful or uncertain medicine.

Mrs Campbell testified she was met by Mrs Cox when she arrived during Mr Bravo’s illness and was told it was poison, while Florence was still chattering about coppery pans at Charlie’s club.

Mrs Cox, spectacles glinting, looking middle-aged and dumpy in her black, said Charles Bravo had said she was welcome at the Priory, that he received an anonymous letter accusing him of marrying Gully’s mistress for her money. She had seen Dr Gully several times since Mrs Bravo’s marriage, had asked him for his remedy for ague and Jamaica fever, also something to make Mrs Bravo sleep after her miscarriage. Bravo had asked her, “Why did you tell them? Does Florence know I poisoned myself?”

“I was obliged to tell them. I could not let you die.”

Asked why she had not mentioned this conversation, Mrs Cox replied imperturbably, “He did not wish me to.” She had not mentioned Dr Gully’s name at the first inquest because it might have injured Mrs Bravo’s reputation. When she mentioned chloroform to Harrison, she was confused and meant poison. “Dr Gully was a very fascinating man-one who would be likely to interest women very much.” She said she had done everything she could to restrain Mrs Bravo from her habit of drinking, but without much success.

Mrs Bravo, immersed in grief and a voluminous mourning veil, testified that it was 26 April before she knew her husband was dying of poison. Bravo harped about Gully in spite of her 16 April letter to Mrs Bravo that Charles was happy as a king. At Brighton, after the first inquest, Mrs Cox told her Charles had poisoned himself on the account of Gully. She made a full admission of her “criminal relations” with Dr Gully, but even under a heavy barrage of insinuation, she maintained, under oath, that she was innocent of any extra-marital activities during her marriage to Captain Ricardo. But her protests of innocence were badly shaken when she was handed a letter, written by her to a woman named Laundon, who had been her maid. It was dated 17 November 1870, a date that preceded Captain Ricardo’s death by six months. In part the letter said: “I hope you will never allude in any way to anyone of what passed at Malvern.” Asked what she referred to, Mrs Bravo answered: “It was my attachment to Dr Gully, but not a criminal attachment then.” She burst into tears and appealed to the coroner to protect her. So much for semantics.

Then Griffiths, a former coachman to Dr Gully and Mrs Bravo, took the stand. He had worked for Mrs Bravo but had been fired by Mr Bravo for carelessness. He seems to have been a nineteenth-century hotrod and was accident prone. His testimony, however, established the presence of antimony in the form of tartar emetic at the Priory. He had bought a large amount to treat the horses. He had kept it locked in a cupboard in the stable and poured it all down the drain when he left. However, no inquiry was made as to what kind of lock was on the cupboard, and there is only Griffiths’s word that after being fired, he conscientiously poured a large âmount of medicine down the drain. It would seem more natural for him to go off in a huff, leaving the tartar emetic for the next coachman. But although Griffiths was called an “unreliable witness”, he did establish, for the first time in the case, the presence of the poison which killed Charles Bravo.

Dr Gully was the last witness to be called during the twenty-three-day inquest, which rivaled the Tichborne trial in public interest, if not length, when a 350-pound pretender consumed eight years and a total of 290 days trying to prove he was the long-lost Sir Roger Arthur Orton. Dr Gully’s testimony backed up Florence Bravo’s contention that there had been nothing improper pass between them during Captain Ricardo’s lifetime, but when asked about his relations with Captain Ricardo’s widow his rueful reply was “too true, sir; too true”. He swore he had nothing to do either directly or indirectly with Charles Bravo’s death and told of his chance meetings with Mrs Cox who told him repeatedly that Mr and Mrs Bravo were “getting along well”.

The verdict turned out to be the most damaging aspect of the inquest. It concluded that “Charles Bravo was willfully murdered by the administration of tartar emetic, but there is not sufficient evidence to fix the guilt upon any person or persons.” The jury significantly declined to use the standard, more familiar wording, “administered by some person or persons unknown”.

And by the verdict of the jury, the Balham Mystery remains an official cipher. The suicide theory, with a nod of admiration in the direction of a lurking Mrs Cox, does not hold up. Against the unsupported word of Mrs Cox, there is a parade of friends, colleagues, and family who picture Charles Bravo as a happy man, contented with his career and marriage. His letters both to Florence and his family reflect Bravo’s unsuicidal, rather complacent state of mind. As for Mrs Cox’s statement that “he took poison for Gully”, he had known of Dr Gully’s relationship to Florence before he married her, and, according to every witness, Mrs Bravo never saw Dr Gully after her marriage. The only other possibility for suicide would be delayed-action remorse and jealousy, and Charles Bravo just wasn’t the brooding type. His repeated denials to the doctors that he had not taken poison and his affectionate attitude toward his wife at his sick bed also lower the boom on the suicide theory. The accident theory can quickly be eliminated. The only place that antimony in the form of tartar emetic was kept at Priory was in the stables, and it is hardly conceivable that Mr Bravo would ever dose himself in the stable on horse physic, while all medicines found in the house tested out as harmless.

Sir John Hall, considered the leading authority on the Bravo case, claims that it had to be both Mrs Bravo and Mrs Cox because they supported each other consistently in their statements, so at variance with all the other witnesses. But consider, Florence Bravo’s actions after her husband is taken ill. Still befuddled by wine, she sends for the nearest doctor and later for specialists. She talks of food poisoning from the coppery pans at his club. The conversation between the doctor and Mrs Cox, which she claims not to have heard, could also be the result of combined hysteria and hangover.

Mrs Bravo said she first heard of poison and suicide when Mrs Cox broke the news to her after they were settled at Brighton. Since Mrs Bravo was in a state of shock and did not appear at the first inquest, she begins backing up Mrs Cox only after the Brighton sojourn. So, Mrs Bravo emerges as an upset, concerned wife, extremely fond, talking of food poisoning, and then after the trip to Brighton with Mrs Cox she accepts and, by testimony, backs up the suicide theory and fortifies Mrs Cox’s position.

Something happened at Brighton, and everything points to a little genteel blackmail. Mrs Cox knew her relationship with Dr Gully was more than a harmless infatuation. She knew of her heavy drinking. She knew of the post-Kissengen illness-not hard for a woman with three sons and sickroom experience to diagnose as a miscarriage. And Florence Bravo, must above all, be considered within a specific frame of reference, that of nineteenth-century morals and manners. Within this frame, you have a woman who has made a slip and bounced from the category of “pure” to “fallen” woman. She had made an attempt at being respectable again, and Mrs Cox knew intimately the details of the transition. Her knowledge could bounce Florence right back into the latter category. In an age when women blushingly asked for a “slice of bosom” when being served chicken and female legs were as unmentionable as four letter Anglo-Saxon words, public disgrace could assume more importance than suspected murder; and, in Florence Bravo’s case, it did.

At Brighton, Mrs Cox probably told Florence that her husband said, “I have taken poison for Gully.” She told the young widow that if she would follow her lead, Mrs Cox would protect her reputation. In view of all the public agitation, they would have to make statements. The arrangement was that Mrs Cox would tell of Bravo’s “Gully statement” but would testify that relations between Florence and Dr Gully were imprudent but innocent and Charles Bravo was jealous of his wife’s past. Florence, in turn, would tell her story of her husband’s baseless jealousy of Dr Gully. This way Florence’s character would stay comparatively blameless, while Mrs Cox’s suicide theory would be reinforced. And how could Florence say no to perpetrating this half-truth, when the entire truth would mean ruin. Besides, she probably believed Mrs Cox’s story of Charlie’s suicide.

So, Florence Bravo became an ex post facto accessory. By the time Mrs Cox threw her to the wolves at the second inquest in the interest of self-preservation, Mrs Bravo had gone so far in her statements that she was irrevocably implicated. During the second inquest, Mrs Cox had begun to panic. She could bolster the suicide theory by admitting that Mrs Bravo had told her of her intimate relations with Dr Gully and that Charles Bravo knew and brooded over his wife’s past sins, or she could protect Mrs Bravo’s reputation. Mrs Cox couldn’t afford to let the suicide theory languish, or she would be in a most suspicious position. So Florence’s reputation had to go by the boards, and, too late to do anything, Florence realized with growing horror, that Mrs Cox was not the friend she pretended to be, but a blackmailer consumed with some dark purpose of her own. Florence was left with no alternative but to admit her “criminal relationship” with Dr Gully, which gave the illusion that she was still “backing up” Mrs Cox, while in actuality these two sherry-sipping ladies had come to a parting of the ways.

Mrs Bravo moved to Bus cot to live with her mother. Mrs Cox stopped in Manchester Street and planned to leave for Jamaica at the close of the inquiry. Florence was no intellectual giant, but she knew when she had been had.

It is the only theory that could account for Florence Bravo’s opposite actions before and after Brighton. Mrs Bravo, by herself, had neither sufficient character or motive to do the dirty deed. Nor did she have a strong enough reason to act in conjunction with Mrs Cox. She certainly wouldn’t condone the murder of her husband to keep Mrs Cox from returning to Jamaica. The weakness of Florence Bravo’s character forms the strength of her innocence. To complain, to pout, to shed a few tears was her course of action, not poison. There have been suggestions that the relationship between Mrs Bravo and Mrs Cox was of an unhealthy hue. But with Florence’s affinity for men, about the only unhealthy thing about their relationship was the amount of sherry they consumed.

Mrs Cox, too, falls with rigid delineation into this frame of reference. In our own era of the freewheeling career girl, it is difficult to remember that in Mrs Cox’s day a working woman was an unhappy exception, just a cut above serfdom. In most cases, a governess, a companion, or a poor relation who “earned her keep” was a step above the servants and a step below the lord and lady of the house, isolated on a lonely plateau without social contacts or standing.

When Charles Bravo showed unmistakable symptoms of snapping the purse shut and shipping her back to her Jamaican home and family, it was not simply a matter of a new job or surroundings. It was social and financial annihilation, and it was a motive. By removing Charles Bravo, she could relieve the pressure being exerted for her to return to Jamaica. She would be once again the dear friend of Florence, whom she could completely dominate, and return to the good old days when Dr Gully’s courtly charm caused a flutter under her formidable black bombazine exterior and Florence’s home and funds were at her disposal.

Mrs Cox, however, did not know her poisons as well as she knew the gentle art of conniving. By administering a large, economy-sized dose of poison, Mrs Cox was under the impression that Charles Bravo would die immediately. She did not realize that antimony was a variable and unpredictable poison. When it became apparent that Mr Bravo was going to linger awhile, Mrs Cox had to come up with some quick answers off the top of her chignon, and she was in a good position. Bravo was in an incoherent state, and Mrs Bravo, during those first chaotic hours, had a case of the hot-and-cold shakes and dry pipes, while the servants were trained to take orders unquestioningly from Mrs Cox. It is only after the doctors agreed that it was a case of irritant poisoning that Mrs Cox came up with the “I took poison-don’t tell Florence” statement. Only after there is a strong suspicion of murder and a second inquest is looming does Mrs Cox add Dr Gully’s name to the statement to give the suicide theory a strong motive. And only at the second inquest, when the jury and public were taking an increasingly dimmer view of the suicide theory, did she tell of the conversation when Bravo asks, “Why did you tell them?” Only Mrs Cox heard these three conversations with Charles Bravo. There were no witnesses except the necessarily mute Charles, and these words are the only indications of suicide. All the other testimony, all the other facts pointed to murder. Mrs Cox may not have been telling the truth, but she was a fast girl with a cue.

But in spite of Florence’s sex appeal and money, in spite of Mrs Cox’s strong, decisive character, things just didn’t work out as they did in Florence’s favorite romantic novels. Florence Bravo died within the year from a combination of emotional collapse, guilty knowledge, and hitting the bottle, never a healthy combination in her case. In Mrs Bravo’s will, the only mention of Jane Cannon Cox is a reference to her as the mother of three boys to whom Florence Bravo left bequests of £1,000 each. Dr Gully, his name removed from the rosters of all medical societies, dies seven years later, full of age, if not honor. And Mrs Cox was last heard of beside a sick bed in Jamaica, a bad place for her.

Of course, no one actually saw Mrs Cox sneak antimony from the stable. No one saw her toying with Mr Bravo’s burgundy decanter or water bottle, but she was the only person involved in the Balham Mystery who had the character, the opportunity, the motive, and an abiding faith that the Lord helps them that help themselves.

The jury at the inquest voiced their opinion in the damning phraseology of the verdict. The man in the street borrowed some meter from Oliver Goldsmith and circulated their own, less carefully phrased verdict.

When lovely woman stoops to folly

And finds her husband in the way,

What charm can soothe her melancholy?

What art can turn him into clay?

The only means her aims to cover,

And save herself from prison locks,

And repossess her ancient lover

Are burgundy and Mrs Cox.

It’s a little hard on Dr Gully and Florence Bravo but gratifying to see Mrs Cox getting public recognition for all her work and effort.