Background. Maria Manning was born in Switzerland in 1821, her maiden name being de Roux. She emigrated to Britain and worked in London as a lady’s maid to the wealthy Lady Blantyre, who was the daughter of the Duchess of Sutherland. Here she developed a taste for a luxurious life style, amid the elegance of her employer’s homes and general finery. She dreaded the … Read more
Background John Tawell was born in 1784, the second son of Thomas Tawell, a shopkeeper in Aldeby, Norfolk, where John grew up. Tawell attended the village school for about seven years and afterward entered service with a Quaker lady who ran a general store at Pakefield near Lowestoft in Suffolk. He spent the next five … Read more
The Crime Twenty-one-year-old Harriet Tarver was convicted of poisoning her husband, twenty-four-year-old Thomas, with arsenic at their home in Chipping Campden, Gloucestershire, on Friday, the 11th of December, 1835. No clear motive for the murder was ever established. Thomas had cold rice pudding for breakfast that Friday morning before going to work as usual as … Read more
Catherine was one of two teenage girls executed in the period from 1840 – 1868. She was just seventeen years old when she poisoned her twenty four year old husband, John Foster a farm labourer, to whom she had been married for only three weeks, at Acton near Sudbury in Suffolk. They were married by the Rev. Mr. L. Ottley on Wednesday the 20th of … Read more
Some 14 women were hanged for child murder during Queen Victoria’s long reign, this figure excludes “baby farmers” who are dealt with separately. Ann Wycherly was the first of these.The others are Harriet Parker, Eliza Joyce, Ann Lawrence, Frances Kidder, Mary Anne Barry, Frances Stewart, Elizabeth Berry and Louise Masset. 18th/19th century Index Page
