The Mammoth Book of Unsolved Crimes (82 page)

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!”