His uncle Michael Maybrick was organist at St Peter's, wrote sacred music, and conducted the Liverpool Choral Society.

[3] On the advice of his godfather, Alfred Mellon, in 1865 Maybrick went to Leipzig to study keyboard and harmony with Carl Reinecke, Ignaz Moscheles, and Louis Plaidy, but later decided to train as a baritone with Gaetano Nava in Milan.

Further success came as Telramund in Wagner's Lohengrin led to appearances with Charlotte Sainton-Dolby, including her farewell concert on 6 June 1870, and to regular engagements at the English festivals and with the Carl Rosa Opera Company.

[3] He composed one of the earliest musical settings of A. E. Housman, 'When I was one-and-twenty' in 1904, the same year Arthur Somervell published his A Shropshire Lad song cycle.

They were joined there by the two children of his brother, James Maybrick, later a suspect in the Jack the Ripper case, and whose wife Florence was convicted of his murder in 1889.