A Unique Execution Elizabeth Berry has the odd distinctions of being the first woman to be hanged at Walton Prison in Liverpool which had facilities for female inmates and, as far as I know, the only woman to be hanged by a man with the same surname as herself. She was executed by James Berry in 1887 and … Read more
We can find plenty of cases of abusive men killing their wives, but very few of abusive women killing their husbands. Early Life and Marriage At the age of 48, Margaret Murray married 50-year-old John Walber in 1889. They kept a grocery shop at 6 Gildart Street in Liverpool. This was quite a large building, … Read more
Tuesday the 30th of December 1890 could be reasonably said to be the date of the first modern hanging in England and Wales. 34 year old Thomas Macdonald had been convicted of the murder of Miss Alice Holt, a young school teacher at the National schools in Bolton on the 10th of November 1890. Miss Holt’s mother lived in a house … Read more
“The Invincibles” as they called themselves were a previously unknown Irish Nationalist group who had stabbed to death the Permanent Under-secretary for Ireland, Thomas Henry Burke and Lord Frederick Cavendish, the Chief Secretary for Ireland, as they walked through Dublin’s Phoenix Park on the evening of Saturday 6 May 1882. This high profile case was put … Read more
The Crime Louisa Jane Taylor was convicted of the murder by poisoning of Mrs. Mary Ann Tregellis at Plumstead in the Borough of Greenwich. Louisa’s husband and Ann’s husband had been work colleagues, both working for HM Customs. The two couples had become acquainted, although there was a substantial age difference—the Tregellises were in their … Read more
