Murder by Poison E-Book

Nicola Sly

• Herausgeber: The History Press
• Kategorie: Sachliteratur, Reportagen, Biografien
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2011

Beschreibung

Murder by poison is often thought of as a crime mainly committed by women, usually to despatch an unwanted spouse or children. While there are indeed many infamous female poisoners, such as Mary Ann Cotton, who is believed to have claimed at least twenty victims between 1860 and 1872, and Mary Wilson, who killed her husbands and lovers in the 1950s for the proceeds of their insurance policies, there are also many men who chose poison as their preferred means to a deadly end. Dr. Thomas Neil Cream poisoned five people between 1881 and 1892 and was connected with several earlier suspicious deaths, while Staffordshire doctor William Palmer murdered at least ten victims between 1842 and 1856. Readily obtainable and almost undetectable prior to advances in forensic science during the twentieth century, poison was considered the ideal method of murder and many of its exponents failed to stop at just one victim. Along with the most notorious cases of murder by poison in the country, this book also features many of the cases that did not make national headlines, examining not only the methods and motives but also the real stories of the perpetrators and their victims.

Leseprobe

Contents

Title Page

Introduction and Acknowledgements

1.‘You hussy! You have murdered your baby!’

Buckfastleigh, Devon, 1817

2.‘Why should Emery be hanged?’

White Notley, near Chelmsford, Essex, 1821

3.‘There you go, you varmints!’

Burnham Market, Norfolk, 1835

4.‘What have I done that I must be suffering this way?’

Bolton, Lancashire, 1842

5.‘My station in society places me above or beyond suspicion’

Slough, Berkshire, 1845

6.‘It’s dumpling night’

Acton, near Sudbury, Suffolk, 1846

7.‘Take that devil away from me!’

Rugeley, Staffordshire, various dates

8.‘I wish you were dead and out of the way’

Burley, near Leeds, Yorkshire, 1856

9.‘I won’t be troubled long’

South Hetton/Hendon/Pallion/West Auckland, County Durham, 1860–1872

10.‘Don’t cry, you hypocrite’

Glasgow, 1865

11.‘I don’t like it. It tastes nasty’

Brighton, Sussex, 1870–1871

12.‘See how easily they can be swallowed’

Wimbledon, London, 1881

13.‘It’s nauseous stuff, and as sour as vinegar’

Plumstead, London, 1882

14.‘Can they tell if she has had mouse powder?’

Ashton-under-Lyne, Lancashire, 1886

15.‘Oh, mama, I cannot drink it’

Oldham, Lancashire, 1887

16.‘I will not die with a lie on my lips’

Whitechapel, London, 1887

17.‘But all doctors are fools’

Liverpool, 1889

18.‘I have evidence strong enough to ruin you forever’

London, 1891–1892

19.‘I never murdered the dear’

Finchley, London, 1902

20.‘If I had not got all this bastard lot to keep, I could get on better by myself’

Harlesden, London, 1905

21.‘I am innocent and some day evidence will prove it’

North London, 1910

22.‘If you interfere with her money you will be in a rough corner’

Islington, London, 1911

23.‘Excuse my fingers’

Hay-on-Wye, Herefordshire, 1921

24.‘They will blame one of us’

Bude, Cornwall, 1930

25.‘It looks very black against me’

Kirkby-on-Bain, Lincolnshire, 1934

26.‘I’ve been a good wife to him and nobody can say I haven’t’

Coombe, Dorset, 1935

27.‘You need not worry about me as everything is all right’

Nottingham, 1935

28.‘She was ill, ill, ill on many occasions’

Greenford, Middlesex, 1941

29.‘I am looking after them that look after me’

Blackpool, Lancashire, 1953

30.‘Nothing to say’

Gosport, Hampshire, 1955

31.‘Has the old bugger got any money?’

Hebburn / Felling, County Durham, 1956–1957

32.‘What I feel is the emptiness of my soul’

Various locations, 1961–1971

Bibliography and References

About the Author

Copyright

Introduction and Acknowledgements

The modern crime dramas of film and television have largely sanitised our view of the poisoner and his or her victim, who is often depicted lying in a clean bed, with crisp, white sheets, looking pale and wan and occasionally groaning weakly. In order to truly appreciate the horror of this method of murder, we must go back in time to a period when poisons were freely available at every corner shop for the purposes of killing mice, flies and bedbugs; for treating illnesses such as venereal diseases; for quietening crying children; for agricultural, veterinary and garden use; and even for beauty treatments, sexual stimulants and aphrodisiacs. The symptoms of the majority of poisonings involved copious sickness and diarrhoea, all of which had to be disposed of and, in the days before modern sanitation, must have been extremely unpleasant to deal with to say the least. There were no flushing toilets, no hot water on tap and no automatic washing machines for dealing with fouled bedding and clothing and homes were frequently overcrowded, often with several people sharing a small cottage, half a house, or even a single room.

Poison bottles from the turn of the century. (© Nicola Sly)

By the 1840s, concerns were growing about the number of deaths from poisoning – either by accident, suicide or murder – almost a third of which were caused by arsenic, a poison which is virtually tasteless. The Arsenic Act of 1851 was an attempt to control sales of the poison and, hopefully, reduce deaths resulting from its ingestion. Following the introduction of this Act, all arsenic sold had to be coloured with soot or indigo in order to distinguish it from common household substances such as flour and sugar. Sellers were obliged to keep records of every sale and could only sell the poison if they personally knew the prospective purchaser. However, accidental and deliberate poisonings continued almost unabated.

In 1856, The Times reported indignantly on two apprentices, aged eighteen and thirteen years, who were left in charge of a pharmacy while the owner was out. A customer produced an order, in writing, for a bottle of ‘black draught’ – a mild laxative preparation. The older apprentice, Mr Lundie, asked the younger, Master Barrett, to fill a bottle with ‘black draught’, which Lundie then labelled ‘aperient draught’ and sold to the customer. However, the young apprentice either misheard the instructions or mistook the bottle of ‘black draught’ for one of ‘black drop’ – a powerful opium preparation. The medicine was given to an eleven-year-old boy by his mother and ‘in less than an hour, he was a corpse’.

The newspaper bemoaned the fact that deadly poisons were often known by familiar names. Arsenic was frequently referred to as ‘mercury’, for example, while tartarised antimony was commonly called ‘quietness’. Deadly poisons were routinely kept on shelves next to harmless chemicals, rather than under lock and key, and few apprentices were properly trained to understand the dangers of the compounds they were freely dispensing. ‘Why, at Ashton only the other day, we had a lad scarcely older than Barrett selling arsenic by the pound as if it had been so much meal!’ stated The Times.

Poisons were still used as ingredients in many patent medicines, such as Godfrey’s Cordial, Dr J. Collis Browne’s Chlorodyne and Fowler’s Solution, which could be bought over the counter and usually cost less than a visit to the doctor. Across Britain people rushed to embrace the practices of those foreigners who regularly took small doses of arsenic to promote ‘…a blooming complexion, a brilliant eye, and an appearance of embonpoint.’ Chambers Journal of July 1856 contained an article written by a Dr Inman on arsenic eating, which recommended anyone wishing to adopt the practice:

To use only a preparation whose real strength they know; Fowler’s solution contains 1-120th of a grain in every drop. Very few indeed can bear to take five drops three times in a day. It is best borne on a full stomach. It soon produces griping, sickness, and purging. It is well to remember the Styrian rule, and invariably suspend its use every alternate fortnight. The dose cannot be increased indefinitely or with impunity. When once the full dose which can be borne is ascertained, it is better to begin with that, and go on diminishing it to the end of the fortnight, than to begin with a small dose, and go on increasing it daily.

The article ended with a dire warning: ‘Lastly, let me urge upon all who adopt the Styrian system, to make some written memorandum that they have done so, lest, in case of accident, some of their friends may be hanged in mistake’ [sic].

More stringent regulations were obviously needed and The Pharmacy and Poisons Act of 1868 covered not only arsenic but also the twenty most commonly used poisons, such as strychnine and Prussic acid, restricting the selling of poisons to authorised retailers, as determined by the Pharmaceutical Society. Yet drugs like opium and cocaine were still freely available without prescription. On 12 October 1895, The Nursing Record and Hospital World called for more stringent legislation on the sale of laudanum (a tincture of opium), saying, ‘In many country places…audanum is sold wholesale by local grocers and agricultural folk not only take it in somewhat large quantities themselves, but they dose their children – especially the babies in the teething stage – to a very deleterious effect.’ As little as two drops of laudanum could prove fatal for a baby and many mothers (and sometimes fathers or nursemaids) were charged with either murder or manslaughter as a result. Yet, by and large, the final verdict in such cases tended to be one of acquittal for the defendant, since it was recognised that accidental overdoses were all too easy to administer and it was difficult to prove any malice aforethought.

It wasn’t until the Pharmacy Act of 1908 that it became a requisite for purchasers of opiates to be known to the seller and for the Poisons Register to be signed. Even so, drugs like heroin, morphine and cocaine were still freely available, with ‘gift sets’ sold at shops such as Harrods, for sending to soldiers fighting on the front in the First World War. It took the Dangerous Drugs Act of 1920 to restrict the sale of drugs to medical and legitimate users only.

Poisons were also heavily used in household and industrial capacities, the prime example of this being arsenic, which was used to provide green colouring in wallpapers, clothing dyes, food wrappers, and even in actual foodstuffs. In Greenock, Scotland, a nineteenth-century cake decoration was found to contain seven times the fatal dose of arsenic and, even as recently as 1954, the associations of green colouring with arsenic was reputed to make Scottish people the lowest consumers of green sweets in the Western World.

So, historically, poisons were freely available and had the added advantage of being very difficult to detect, particularly since the symptoms of their misuse mimicked the symptoms of diseases like cholera and dysentery, which were endemic at the time. Busy doctors, treating a succession of cases of genuine illness, were unlikely to spot the rare cases of deliberate poisoning among them and, even if they did, testing for poisoning was unreliable, making it difficult to prove in a court of law. Advances in medical science saw the development of the Marsh Test in October 1836, the first diagnostic test for arsenic. In 1832, chemist James Marsh was called by the prosecution in the trial of John Bodie, who was accused of poisoning his grandfather with arsenic in coffee. The jury was not convinced by the scientific evidence and acquitted Bodie, who subsequently confessed his guilt. Marsh was so incensed by this that he developed his own test, first used in 1836 and still occasionally used today. Tests for other poisons quickly followed, with inventive and intrepid scientists often administering samples suspected of containing poison to animals and frequently resorting to tasting samples such as urine and stomach contents themselves.

Having examined how people poisoned, the next question to be addressed is why they did. Every murder has its own individual motive but, in the case of poisonings, a number of common threads are observed.

The near impossibility of obtaining a divorce meant that poisoning an unloved partner was often believed preferable to spending the rest of one’s life trapped in an unhappy marriage, particularly if there was a prospective alternative partner in the equation. Until 1949, when Legal Aid was granted for those seeking a divorce, the legal dissolution of a marriage was for the very rich only and was heavily biased towards the interests of men. The nineteenth century also saw the growth of Life Assurance in the United Kingdom, with companies like Prudential deliberately targeting the working classes from 1854 onwards and providing penny policies for infants from 1856. The lack of reliable contraception meant that many families produced more children than they had the money to feed and the bonus of a cash sum from a life assurance policy or a payout from a friendly society or a work-based scheme ensured that many children and partners received ‘a helping hand’ to hasten their death.

Prudential Assurance Company, 1904. (Author’s collection)

Some people poisoned for love – or lack of it – and some poisoned for financial gain. Others resorted to poison in the course of robbery, some to rid themselves of a person or persons who had become a nuisance to them. And some people poisoned just to see what it would be like.

In compiling this collection of nineteenth- and twentieth-century poisonings from the United Kingdom, I have tried as far as possible to include a wide variety of methods, motives and geographical locations. Some cases, such as that of Hawley Harvey Crippen, who poisoned his wife in 1910 and William Palmer, who poisoned a number of people in the Rugeley area, were notorious throughout the country while others, such as the case of Christiana Edmunds who randomly poisoned people in Brighton in the early 1870s, are less well known but hopefully just as intriguing.

It may help readers to understand two common terms of measurement used throughout the book. A ‘grain’ of poison is a measurement of weight roughly equivalent to the weight of a grain of barley. There are 437.5 grains to the ounce and 15 grains equal one gram. Another measurement of weight is the drachm, which equals approximately 28.8 grams.

‘The man from the Pru’. A Prudential Insurance Agent in the 1920s. (Author’s collection)

Eagle Star Insurance advertisement from 1907. (Author’s collection)

As usual, there are numerous people to be thanked for their assistance in writing this book. I drew heavily on contemporary newspaper reports in compiling this collection. These, and any books consulted, are listed in detail in the bibliography at the rear of the book. I was particularly privileged to be able to study the original notes made during his apprenticeship by my father, John Higginson, who spent his entire working life as a pharmacist and dispensing chemist. Author Linda Stratmann very kindly supplied a picture of Dr Palmer and Scotsman Publications and the Daily Echo, Bournemouth generously gave permission for me to use their pictures of Dr Cream and Charlotte Bryant.

My husband, Richard, acted as a general sounding board for which cases to include and which to leave out. As usual, he read every chapter and, surprisingly, having read them all, he still continues to eat my cooking, although perhaps a little more warily than before.

Finally, I must thank my editor at The History Press, Matilda Richards, for her continued help and support.

Every effort has been made to clear copyright, however my apologies to anyone I may have inadvertently missed; I can assure you it was not deliberate but an oversight on my part.

Nicola Sly, 2009

1

‘You hussy! You have murdered your baby!’

BUCKFASTLEIGH, DEVON, 1817

In 1817, Frances Clarke, also known as Frances Puttavin, went before the parish at Buckfastleigh in Devon, homeless and about to give birth to an illegitimate baby. She was placed in lodgings with labourer William Vesey and his wife Susannah and, at the beginning of October, gave birth to a healthy baby boy, whom she named after his father, a gentleman farmer called George Lakeman.

On 24 October, Frances spent most of the morning sitting by the fire, her child asleep in her lap. At about two o’clock in the afternoon, Susannah Vesey suggested that she should put the baby upstairs. This Frances did, laying the child on the bed and going downstairs, returning to the baby a minute or so later with an apron over her arm.

Buckfastleigh, Devon, 1909. (Author’s collection)

Seconds later, William Vesey heard choking sounds coming from the room in which the baby had been put down. He called out to ask Frances what the matter was and was horrified when Frances calmly replied that the baby was dying.

Frances then snatched up her baby and ran downstairs with him, where she met Susannah. The boy was now ‘strangling’ – coughing and choking and struggling to breathe. Frances told Susannah that the infant was dying too.

Susannah asked how the baby could possibly be dying when he had been so well just minutes earlier. ‘Let me have it,’ she asked Frances, but Frances refused, clutching her baby tightly to her breast and rushing upstairs again with him. Susannah followed, and Frances promptly went back downstairs to avoid her, still clinging desperately to baby George.

Eventually, Susannah Vesey managed to catch up with her and took the screaming baby from her grasp, carrying him over to the window for more light. The baby’s mouth was open and Susannah was later to describe ‘…stuff boiling in its mouth’. There was what looked like a bloodstain on the baby’s garments but when Susannah touched it with her finger and then placed the finger in her mouth, her tongue burned unbearably. ‘You hussy! You have murdered your baby!’ she screamed at Frances, who showed no reaction and made no denial of the accusation.

Susannah sent for surgeon Mr Nicholas Churchill, who, having heard that a child had been poisoned, rushed straight to the Vesey’s home. There he found the baby being held by Susannah, blue in the face and struggling to breathe, its lips, tongue and mouth burned as if by some kind of acid. Unable to help the child, Churchill called in another local surgeon, Thomas Rowe, and between them the two men battled to save the baby’s life. However their efforts were in vain and baby George died at midday the following day.

Both doctors were of the opinion that the child had died as a result of being given oil of vitriol (sulphuric acid). There was a small mark on the side of the baby’s nose, which was bluish in colour and, according to Churchill, this was characteristic of the application of sulphuric acid to skin. To support his theory, Churchill applied a little oil of vitriol to his own finger and compared the resulting injury with that on the child’s nose. While other acids caused white or yellowish burn marks on the skin, Churchill maintained that only oil of vitriol cast a bluish stain, which corresponded exactly to the burns both on his own finger and the baby’s nose.

An inquest was held before coroner Mr Joseph Gribble and the cause of death given as poisoning by oil of vitriol. Frances Clarke was indicted for the wilful murder of her baby and brought for trial before Mr Justice Holroyd at the next Assizes in Exeter.

The court heard first from William and Susannah Vesey, followed by their maid, eleven-year-old Sarah Maddock. Having established that young Sarah could fully understand the importance of speaking the truth, the court heard her testimony that about six weeks before the baby’s death, Frances had sent her on an errand to Richard Butcher’s shop in the village. Frances had asked Sarah to buy a penny’s worth of oil of vitriol, instructing her to say that it was for the Veseys if she was asked. Sarah was sold the oil of vitriol by Butcher and given a strict warning that, if she drank the liquid, it would kill her. Sarah swore that she had relayed this warning to Frances Clarke when she handed over her purchase. Shopkeeper Richard Butcher corroborated her account of the purchase of oil of vitriol from his shop, although he stated that the girl had told him at the time that the acid was for Fan Clarke.

The court next heard from Mr Churchill and Mr Rowe, the surgeons involved in trying to save the baby. An apron and a spoon were produced in court and Churchill agreed that burns on the apron had been produced by some kind of acid. However, he was not prepared to state that the spoon had last held oil of vitriol, saying that this was outside his experience as a medical man. Two empty bottles had been found at the Vesey’s house after Frances Clarke’s arrest, one in a box belonging to her and the other on the fire. It was thought that either might once have contained the dose of oil of vitriol administered to baby George and both Sarah Maddock and Richard Butcher testified that they were similar to the one bought by Sarah on Frances Clarke’s behalf, although neither could be sure that they were that particular bottle.

By chance, William Hallett was in court. A wholesale druggist and chemist for more than thirty years, he was called to give his opinion. He too told the court that it was impossible to be certain just what the bottles had contained. Had they contained oil of vitriol and if they had not been washed then they would retain the pungent smell of the acid, which would corrode anything it came into contact with. The bottle being burned in a fire would not have affected any residue of its contents.

Turning his attention to the spoon, Hallett pointed out that vitriolic acid applied to iron produced a black discolouration. The spoon in question was iron, which had been plated with lead and it showed a white rather than a black discolouration. Hallett stated that it was impossible for him to swear that oil of vitriol was the last thing put into the spoon, saying that all acids would produce whiteness. Finally Hallett examined the baby’s clothes and Frances Clarke’s apron, saying that both appeared to have been burned by acid, although he was unable to state precisely what type.

Mr Justice Holroyd then summed up the evidence for the jury who did not even find it necessary to retire for deliberation, finding Frances Clarke ‘Guilty’ as charged. It was then that the judge dropped a bombshell.

Assize Court and County Council offices, Exeter, 1909. (Author’s collection)

The judge told the court that Miss Clarke had been indicted for the wilful murder of her son, George Lakeman Clarke. However, the boy had officially been christened just George Lakeman and he was therefore doubtful of the legitimacy of the entire trial. He had thought fit to proceed in order to establish the defendant’s guilt or innocence but now found himself unable to pass sentence and would be forwarding the case to the appropriate authorities for their consideration

This resulted in a retrial for Frances Clarke, who was eventually acquitted on the grounds that the new indictment against her specified that baby George Lakeman had died as a result of oil of vitriol passing into his stomach. However, the medical witnesses disagreed, stating that the oil of vitriol had not reached the child’s stomach and that his death had occurred as a result of damage to his throat, which had caused him to suffocate. This left the court no alternative but to acquit Frances Clarke of the wilful murder of her son.

Yet, even after two appearances in court, the officials had not finished with Frances, who in August 1819 found herself back at the Assizes in Exeter before Mr Justice Best. This time the indictment against her was most specific – she was charged with the wilful murder of George Lakeman ‘…by compelling the infant to take a large quantity of oil of vitriol, by means whereof he became disordered in his mouth and throat and by the disorder choking, suffocating and strangling occasioned thereby, died on the following day.’ A second count stated that the baby had ‘…died of a certain acid called oil of vitriol administered by the prisoner and taken into his mouth and throat whereby he became incapable of swallowing his food and that his death was the consequence of the inflammation, injury and disorder occasioned thereby.’

Asked to plead, Frances Clarke evoked her former acquittal. Mr Justice Best could not accept this plea, telling the court that the defendant must plead either ‘Guilty’ or ‘Not Guilty’. If she pleaded not guilty, then ‘…she may have a writ of error to the Court of the King’s Bench’, the supreme court in England. Otherwise, he would submit the case for the opinion of twelve judges. In other words, Best stressed that, regardless of the result of the court case, Frances Clarke would be allowed to appeal.

Frances immediately pleaded ‘Not Guilty’ and the prosecution, led by Mr Selwyn, opened the case by calling William Vesey as a witness. This time, Mr Tonkin and Mr Merewether were in court to act as defence counsels.

As in the original trial, the court heard from the Veseys and Sarah Maddock. This time however, the Vesey’s married daughter, Sarah Tupper, was called to testify. At the time of the death of baby George, Sarah Tupper had had a young baby of her own and, on the morning of the alleged murder, the two mothers had sat together breastfeeding their respective infants.

Sarah Tupper’s child had been a sickly baby, unlike George who was thriving. Understandably, Sarah had been somewhat upset about the health of her own child but Frances had assured her that she didn’t believe that her own baby would be a ‘long-lived child’. The two women had talked about the fact that Frances had a ‘nice bosom of milk to go wet nursing’ but Frances said that if her baby should die she would allow her milk to dry up and move away from the area, somewhere in the countryside.

At that, Sarah Tupper had to leave to go to work but when she returned to her parents’ house at about half-past twelve in the afternoon, she found Frances sitting in the same place, her child still not dressed. Frances told her that the baby had been asleep all morning and that she had not wanted to disturb him.

Sarah had witnessed the drama of Frances Clarke running around the house with her choking son in her arms and had observed the damage to the child’s mouth and throat, watching in horror as ‘liquor’ ran from the baby’s mouth and burned his clothes. She told the court that both she and Frances had later tried to breastfeed George but that he had been unable to suckle. She added that Frances had not seemed at all upset at her son’s distress.

Cross-examined by the counsel for the defence, Sarah was asked about the medicine bottle subsequently found in Frances Clarke’s box. Sarah admitted that the box concerned did not specifically belong to Frances but was an open box, into which any member of the family might put things.

Shopkeeper Richard Butcher took the stand to tell the court that he had sold oil of vitriol to Sarah Maddock and that the amount she had purchased was sufficient to cause death.

Next the two doctors were called and both Churchill and Rowe told the court that the child had been given acid and that his symptoms were consistent with drinking oil of vitriol, which had caused inflammation and swelling of the his throat and prevented him from breathing. They had not conducted a post-mortem examination.

Finally, Frances Clarke submitted a written statement in which she denied her guilt. She insisted that she had, in the past, raised other children ‘tenderly’ and spoke of three former masters who had given her a good character reference at her previous trial. Throughout the proceedings, Frances Clarke frequently fainted and had to be revived by prison warders so that the trial could continue.

It was left to Mr Justice Best to summarise the case. He told the jury that it was for them to decide if the child had died as a result of an act by the prisoner, and then carefully dealt with all the evidence that had been presented in court, pointing out that even things that might appear insignificant acquired weight when considered cumulatively.

The jury retired for a few minutes before returning with a verdict of ‘Guilty’. Frances Clarke was promptly sentenced to death for the wilful murder of her son but, as soon as the verdict was returned, the counsel for the defence objected to the indictment. As promised, Mr Justice Best agreed to forward the case for appeal.

In the event, Frances Clarke did not hang for the murder of her son. King George III, who was the reigning monarch at the time of the murder of baby George Lakeman, died on 29 January 1820 and was succeeded by his son, who became George IV. One of his first acts as King was to issue a statement marked for the attention of ‘Our Trusty and Wellbeloved Justices of Gaol Delivery for the Western Circuit’ [sic]. The King made it known that, having considered a report on the case, he was ‘graciously pleased to Extend Our Grace and Mercy unto her and to Grant her Our Free Pardon for her said Crime’ [sic].

Note: Cotemporary accounts of the case show some variation in spelling of the names of those concerned. Frances Clarke is also referred to as Frances Clark and, on one occasion, Elizabeth Clark. Sarah Maddock is alternatively named Sarah Moddick; the surgeon is named as both Mr Rowe and Mr Row and the chemist William Hallett and Hallet. I have used the most common variations for this account.

2

‘Why should Emery be hanged?’

WHITE NOTLEY, NEAR CHELMSFORD, ESSEX, 1821

In 1821, Sarah King lived in a cottage in White Notley near Chelmsford in Essex with her father and her younger siblings. Like many a teenager before and since, she allowed herself to be seduced by an older man, a twenty-five-year-old servant from the neighbouring parish. James Emery was described in the contemporary newspapers as ‘a well-looking man’ and before long, Sarah almost inevitably found herself pregnant.

She steeled herself to break the news of her condition to Emery and eventually told him when he came to visit her at home. Her younger sister, to whom Sarah had confided her predicament, shamelessly eavesdropped on the conversation between the lovers and heard her sister say, ‘Emery, I am with child by you.’

White Notley, Essex, 1904. (Author’s collection)

White Notley, Essex, 1904. (Author’s collection)

‘If you like anybody better than me, you may swear the child to him,’ Emery replied but Sarah assured him, ‘I have not been with any other person but yourself and therefore I shall swear it to you.’

When James Emery left that evening, he and Sarah were apparently on good terms and indeed Emery returned to the cottage to visit Sarah again on 29 May at about six o’clock in the evening. Once again, as the couple sat together in the parlour, Sarah’s sister listened intently to their conversation.

‘How do you do?’ he asked her, to which Sarah replied, ‘I am worse.’

At that, James Emery apparently produced a small box from the pocket of his coat. ‘Oh, you are worse, are you? I have brought you a box of pills and I will give you a £1 note if you will take them.’

James then went home, leaving Sarah and her family to eat a hearty dinner of boiled cabbage, after which Sarah went to her bed, first taking seven of the pills that her lover had left for her. Soon afterwards, she awoke ‘in great torture’ and was violently sick.

Her agonising stomach pains gradually increased in intensity until, in desperation, she sent her sister to the nearby public house to purchase a measure of gin with which she hoped to ease her suffering. However the gin just made things worse and merely increased the frequency of her vomiting and diarrhoea and the intensity of the pain.

In spite of her illness, Sarah remained conscious and lucid. She expressed concern for her boyfriend and begged her younger sister to hide the remaining pills in the field behind the house, along with two small phials that had contained medicine previously brought for her by Emery, which she had been taking for the past week. ‘Why should Emery be hanged?’ she asked.

The girl did as she was asked, returning minutes later to find that her sister’s agony appeared to have worsened. Now Sarah thought that she might try some beer to alleviate her symptoms and her sister was once again dispatched to the pub. By the time she got back, Sarah was dead.

A surgeon, Mr Tonkin, was called and he performed a post-mortem examination on the body of Sarah King at which he determined that she had died as a result of arsenical poisoning. The remaining pills were sent for analysis by chemist Mr Baker, who found that each tablet contained about six grains of arsenic and gave his opinion that taking just half of a single tablet would have been sufficient to cause Sarah’s death.

As soon as he heard about Sarah’s fate, James Emery remarked to a colleague, ‘Then I shall be had up before the magistrates.’ Telling the man that he had taken some ‘stuff’ to Sarah, he went on to sell him some of his clothes and personal possessions, using the money he obtained to hurriedly leave the area. Yet even though he was fleeing the law, he was hardly discreet. In conversation with a man in a public house in Boxwell, he told him, ‘I dare say you have heard what I have come away for. I dare say you heard that I have come away on account of that cursed wench who was poisoned at Notley.’ He admitted to another acquaintance that he had got some ‘stuff’ but insisted that he had never intended for it to cause Sarah any harm.

Emery was soon apprehended by the police and charged with the wilful murder of Sarah King by poisoning. He was brought to trial at the Essex Assizes in Chelmsford before Mr Justice Burrough on 10 August 1821. Mr Knox and Mr Brodrick prosecuted the case and Emery, who pleaded ‘Not Guilty’, was not defended.

The court heard from Sarah King’s sister about the conversations between the couple that she had overheard and surgeon Mr Tonkin and analyst Mr Baker testified to the cause of Sarah King’s death. Witnesses were then called to testify to the fact that Emery had approached a local blacksmith about a fortnight before Sarah died, asking if he could recommend anything that might bring about a miscarriage. The blacksmith had refused to give him any information, so Emery had gone into Chelmsford, where he visited a horse doctor.

He persuaded the horse doctor that his bedroom was infested with mice, which gnawed his clothes hutch and ate his clothes. He was eventually able to purchase half an ounce of nux vomica and half an ounce of arsenic for the purpose of killing them. A fellow servant, who shared his bedroom, told the court that there was no evidence of mice in their room and neither had Emery’s clothes been damaged.

Shire Hall, Chelmsford, site of the Assizes. (Author’s collection)

Invited to speak in his own defence, Emery categorically denied any wrongdoing, saying, ‘I have nothing to say. I am quite innocent of what the girl says. I did not do it.’

In his summing up of the case for the jury, Mr Justice Burrough explained the legal position with regard to the administration of poison in order to bring about a miscarriage. He told them that, even if this had been the defendant’s intention rather than murder, the fact that Sarah had died meant that if Emery had administered the poison, he was guilty of murder and must take the consequences.

The jury didn’t even feel the need to retire, immediately finding James Emery ‘Guilty’ and leaving the judge to pronounce the death sentence. Emery, who by now seemed resigned to his fate, showed very little reaction.

He was hanged at Moulsham Gaol on 13 August 1831, just three days after the conclusion of his trial.

3

‘There you go, you varmints!’

BURNHAM MARKET, NORFOLK, 1835

On the evening of 4 March 1835, Mrs Talbot received a message to say that her sister, Mrs Mary Taylor, had been taken ill and she immediately set out to visit her at her home in Burnham Market, Norfolk. She found Mary sitting in a chair, with her concerned husband, Peter, by her side. Mary was screaming in agony, begging for water and shouting over and over again that her stomach was on fire. Yet as soon as she was given the water she craved, she vomited it straight back up again.

Mrs Talbot went to her sister’s next-door neighbour, Mrs Lake, where she met the lodger, Catherine Frarey, and asked her if she might have some gruel. There was a pot standing on the stove and Mrs Talbot was told to help herself. When she took the bowl in to her sister, Catherine followed her, protesting that it was too thick. She took the dish back to her house, returning minutes later with the watered-down gruel.

Market place, Burnham Market, 1914. (Author’s collection)

Burnham Market. (Author’s collection)

‘I hope, my dear, you’ll take some of it now from me and that it will do you all the good I wish,’ Catherine told Mary Taylor.

At that moment, Peter Taylor called Mrs Talbot out of the room and when she returned, she noticed that Mary had eaten some of the gruel. However, it didn’t appear to have helped her at all and indeed, she seemed much weaker than she had before eating it. Mrs Talbot asked Catherine Frarey to go for the doctor but Catherine didn’t seem willing. ‘She’s a dead woman,’ she protested, although she did reluctantly agree to fetch medical assistance when Peter Taylor asked her to. Sadly, Catherine’s prediction proved to be correct and Mary Taylor died before the doctor’s arrival.

Several neighbours gathered at Mrs Taylor’s house to help lay out her body and, according to the local newspaper accounts, they ‘…regaled themselves with copious streams of tea after the ceremony, in the very room in which the dead body lay.’

As soon as the unfortunate Mary Taylor breathed her last, tongues in the village of Burnham Market began wagging. Mary’s husband, Peter, had for some time been engaged in an illicit affair with a neighbour, Frances ‘Fanny’ Billing, a mother of fourteen children, nine of whom were still living. It was widely known that Mary Taylor had found out about her husband’s affair and was angry and very jealous. In addition, Mary Taylor’s was not the only suspicious sudden death that had recently occurred in the village – just a couple of weeks earlier, Catherine Frarey’s husband, Robert, had died in very similar circumstances. In view of the fact that Catherine Frarey had been closely connected with both deaths, it was decided to hold a post-mortem examination on the body of Mary Taylor and, when her remains were tested, they were found to contain large quantities of arsenic. Arsenic was also found in foodstuff taken from the Taylor’s home, including a bin of flour.

The police began investigating the recent activities of Catherine Frarey and their interviews with the villagers of Burnham Market soon proved fruitful. Peter Taylor acted as the village barber and, on the evening of Mary Taylor’s death, the blacksmith had called at his house for a haircut. He had seen Catherine Frarey raking out the ashes in the Taylor’s fireplace, after which she briefly left the house, returning with a small pan of gruel, which she placed on the embers. As the blacksmith watched, she unfolded a paper packet and removed nearly a teaspoonful of white powder, which she added to the gruel. The blacksmith had thought nothing of her actions at the time, assuming the powder to be either sugar or salt. However, soon afterwards, Fanny Billing came in and asked how Mrs Taylor was.

‘She’s very ill but the man will do,’ replied Catherine.

‘That’s just right,’ said Mrs Billing.

‘I’m boiling her a little gruel and I shall sit with her husband and keep him company in his lonesomeness for an hour or two. I hope it will settle her, poor thing.’

A second witness, Mrs Southgate, told the police that she had been drinking tea with Catherine and Robert Frarey when Fanny Billing had come to the house carrying a jug of porter. Fanny had asked Catherine for a teacup and, when Catherine gave her one, she poured some of the porter into it. Fanny then turned her back on the room and, when she turned around again, she was stirring the cup of porter with her finger. She passed it to Robert Frarey who drained its contents. Mrs Southgate noticed a powdery, white residue in the bottom of the cup and commented to Robert that she could never drink porter with sugar in it.

Fanny Billing left with the remains of the porter and, later that night, Robert Frarey was taken ill. He later died, after two days of agonising stomach pain and vomiting.

Catherine had buried her husband as soon as she possibly could and Mrs Southgate told the police that she had advised Catherine, ‘If I were you, I’d have my husband taken up again and examined for I’m sure the world will talk and I’d shut the world’s mouth.’

Catherine said she would not like to do that, asking Mrs Southgate, ‘Would you?’

‘Yes, I would like it, for if you don’t it will be a check upon you and your children after you.’

Once the police learned the story of the porter, they applied for the exhumation of Robert Frarey’s body and found that, like Mary Taylor’s remains, it too contained a large quantity of arsenic. Enquiries at the village chemist’s shop revealed that, prior to the deaths of Robert Frarey and Mary Taylor, Catherine Frarey and Fanny Billing had together purchased three pennyworth of white arsenic, telling the chemist that they had been sent by a Mrs Webster, the wife of a local tradesman, to purchase the arsenic on her behalf. The chemist had put the arsenic into two small paper packets, which he had clearly labelled ‘Poison’ but, when the police contacted Mrs Webster, she denied ever having requested any such purchase.

The police also discovered that Catherine Frarey had recently hired a horse and buggy and driven several miles to see a notorious ‘cunning woman’. She had asked the woman to ‘tie’ the tongue of Mr Curtis, the village policeman, and to ‘witch’ her mother (as she called her landlady, Mrs Lake) so that she would not be able to answer any questions about her. Having first extracted a fee from Catherine, the ‘cunning woman’ had promised to carry out her wishes straight away.

An inquest was opened into the death of Mary Taylor, which was attended by Fanny Billing, Catherine Frarey and Peter Taylor. At one point, Catherine was heard to say to Peter, ‘There you are, Peter dear; we should all have been done if it had not been for mother [Mrs Lake], God bless her. The gruel was made in her house.’ Catherine seemed to be under the impression that because the gruel had been made in Mrs Lake’s house, it could not be traced back to her.

The coroner’s jury determined that Mary Taylor had died from arsenic poisoning and at the end of the inquest, Fanny Billing, Catherine Frarey and Peter Taylor were arrested on suspicion of her murder. As they were transported to prison, Fanny was heard to whisper, ‘Hold your tongue, Peter, and then they can’t do nothing with you, I feel sure.’

All three were committed for trial at the next Norfolk Assizes, although the Grand Jury eventually decided that there was no case to answer against Peter Taylor and he was subsequently released. Hence only Catherine Frarey and Fanny Billing stood trial at Norwich on 7 August 1835, before Mr Baron Bolland. Mr Prendergast and Mr Cooper prosecuted the case while Mr Palmer appeared in defence of the two women, who both pleaded ‘Not Guilty’.

They were charged only with the murder by poison of Mary Taylor, although the prosecution counsel freely discussed the alleged murder of Robert Frarey from the outset of the trial. Mr Prendergast told the court that the two women had conspired together to murder Mary Taylor. Fanny Billing, who was having an affair with Peter Taylor, had an obvious motive, so, to divert any suspicion from herself, had recruited Catherine Frarey to actually commit the murder. In return for Catherine’s assistance, Fanny Billing had agreed to murder Robert Frarey, knowing that his wife would be the most likely suspect.

Although both defendants protested their innocence, their defence counsel had little to offer in response to the prosecution witnesses and, after a short consultation, the jury found them both guilty as charged.

Catherine Frarey and Fanny Billing were then immediately tried for the wilful murder by poison of Robert Frarey. The prosecution told the court about the cup of porter given to Robert before his death by Mrs Billing and produced Mrs Southgate as a witness to testify to the fact that Fanny appeared to have added some white powder to the porter and stirred it with her finger. The exhumation of Frarey’s body and the discovery of arsenic in his remains supported Mrs Southgate’s observation that he had apparently been given a white powder shortly before his death. The prosecution stressed that there was no apparent quarrel between Fanny Billing and Robert Frarey and neither had there been any ill feeling between Catherine Frarey and Mary Taylor. However, Catherine and Robert did not live happily together and she wanted him dead, while Fanny wanted Mary Taylor out of the way so that she could pursue her affair with Peter Taylor.

Once again, the jury needed little time for deliberation, pronouncing both defendants ‘Guilty’ of the wilful murder of Robert Frarey. The judge then donned his black cap and Catherine Frarey went into hysterics as he pronounced sentence of death on her and Fanny Billing, ordering that their bodies should be buried within the confines of the prison walls after their execution.

‘Thus ended an inquiry into one of the most atrocious deeds of violence ever perpetrated in this country,’ stated The Times at the conclusion of the trial. However, nothing could have been further from the truth.

Both Catherine Frarey and Fanny Billing were to make a full confession to the murders shortly before their executions, saying that they believed it was the best way to atone for the injuries they had done to society and that they hoped it would act as a warning to others. Fanny Billing, once a religious woman who regularly attended church, was driven from the path of righteousness when she ‘…admitted into her bosom a guilty passion for the profligate husband of a neighbour’. Peter Taylor was described as the ‘wicked paramour’, who had enticed her with promises of marriage, if his wife and her husband were not standing in the way. To this end, Fanny had recruited the assistance of Catherine Frarey and together the two women had placed arsenic in the gravy, flour and sugar at the Taylor’s house. Catherine had compounded the deed by mixing still more poison into some gruel and feeding it to Mary Taylor.

Norwich Castle, c. 1911. (Author’s collection)

Catherine Frarey admitted to trying to poison her husband once before, saying that she had become frightened by reports in the newspapers of the arrest of a woman, Mary Wright, for a similar offence. Mary Wright and Catherine Frarey had both consulted Hannah Shorten, the ‘cunning woman’, for help in their respective quests to rid themselves of their spouses. On 19 February 1835, Fanny Billing had mixed arsenic with some pills that Robert Frarey had to take and, after taking two of them, he became very ill. Yet he didn’t die as expected, forcing the two women to give him a further four doses of arsenic, administered in either tea or porter.

The two women had planned to despatch Fanny’s husband by the same means had they not been apprehended. Catherine Frarey named some other people as accomplices to the murder, including a Mr Gridley, with whom she had been having a dalliance. She swore that she had never had a sexual relationship with Mr Gridley, although it emerged that she had previously boasted to Fanny Billing that the affair was a physical one.

Frances Billing, aged forty-six, and Catherine Frarey, aged forty, were executed on 10 August 1835 at Norwich Castle. Among the 10,000 spectators was Peter Taylor, who was heard to say, ‘There you go, you varmints!’ as the trapdoor fell.

Peter Taylor went back to Burnham Market after the execution and was taken in by one of his brothers. As soon as his whereabouts became generally known, an unruly crowd descended on the property, baying for his blood. Peter managed to escape unnoticed out of a back entrance and, once the lynch mob realised that he had evaded them, they stoned the cottage windows.

Such was the public feeling against him that the police reopened their investigations into the murder, now finding a witness who had heard Peter Taylor conspiring with Fanny Billing to murder his wife. A warrant was issued for Taylor’s arrest and he was eventually captured at his father’s house in Whissonsett and charged with being an accessory before the fact to the murder of Mary Taylor. He stood trial on 2 April 1836 before Mr Justice Gaselee. Mr Prendergast again prosecuted, assisted by Mr Cooper and Mr Palmer, and Mr O’Malley defended Taylor in a trial that lasted eleven hours.

The prosecution called a witness who had seen Peter Taylor at Robert Frarey’s house on the day of his death. Fanny Billing had also been present and had said to Peter, ‘Peter, the doctor has been but it is no use. It is all over for him in this world.’

Peter’s reply had been telling: ‘Well, go about her as soon as you like.’

On the day of his wife’s death Peter was at Fanny Billing’s house. At about noon, he visited the outside privy, where Fanny Billing soon joined him. She was seen to give him a small paper packet, saying, ‘Here’s enough for her.’ Later that day, Peter was also seen in earnest discussion with Catherine Frarey in the washhouse of her home.

Peter Taylor’s defence was that he and his wife had both been taken ill as a result of eating a lunchtime meal containing too many onions. Catherine Frarey had offered to make some gruel for them and he had accepted, not knowing what the gruel contained. However, the fact that Peter had not been too ill to visit Catherine Frarey’s home at five o’clock in the afternoon, coupled with his damning words at her husband’s deathbed, proved persuasive to the jury, who consulted for only a short time before finding Peter Taylor ‘Guilty’ as charged. He was executed on 23 April 1836 at Norwich Castle.

Note: There are some discrepancies in reports of the case in contemporary newspapers. Fanny Billing is frequently named as Fanny Billings and Robert Frarey is sometimes referred to as William Frarey. There are also anecdotal reports that a child was murdered, its body exhumed and found to contain traces of arsenic. The child is not mentioned in newspaper accounts of either of the two trials of the female defendants for the murders of first Mary Taylor and second Robert Frarey, neither is it mentioned at Peter Taylor’s trial.

4

‘What have I done that I must be suffering this way?’

BOLTON, LANCASHIRE, 1842

Fifteen-year-old William Eccles had worked for more than three years as a bleacher at Messrs Eden and Thwaites Mill, where he was known as a good, reliable worker who had never before been ill or needed to take any time off work. On 26 September 1842, William went to work as normal in the morning and worked until lunchtime, when he went home for his midday meal of potato hash. When he returned to work in the afternoon, he appeared to have been crying and complained of feeling terribly sick.

William vomited several times that afternoon and was so ill that it was decided to send him home. He left work at about three o’clock to walk the mile to his house. An hour later, Thomas Davenport, another bleacher from the works, was walking the same route when he came across William lying in the bottom of a ditch.

‘What made thee lie down there?’ Davenport asked Eccles, who replied that he couldn’t walk any further.

Davenport helped the young man to his feet. Eccles was complaining of a pain in his stomach and was constantly retching, throwing up a watery substance. Davenport supported William Eccles and began to walk him towards his home but they had not gone far when they met William’s stepmother, Elizabeth ‘Betty’ Eccles.

Davenport handed the sick boy over to his stepmother, who took him home. William’s stomach pains and sickness continued unabated throughout that night and into the next day. At one stage, William tearfully laid his head on his stepmother’s lap and asked her, ‘What have I done that I must be suffering this way?’ Betty reassured him that he would soon feel better but no doctor was summoned to attend him and he died in agony the following afternoon.

On the very afternoon of William’s death, Betty went to Eden and Thwaites to ask for the allowance of fifty shillings, normally made by the company towards the burial costs of anyone in their employ. She was no stranger to the bookkeeper there, having made another application for burial money just ten days earlier, after the sudden and unexpected death of ten-year-old Alice Haslam, her daughter from a previous marriage. It had been explained to Betty then that the money was only paid out in the event of the death of a child actually employed at the mill, or of the child of a current mill employee.

On William’s death, Betty’s neighbours had been keen for her to arrange a post-mortem examination in case the boy had died from an infectious disease. Betty had angrily refused, telling the neighbours that she had enough on her mind at the moment without adding more. Now the concerned bookkeeper at Eden and Thwaites communicated his suspicions to the police and Betty was left with no choice in the matter.