Rebecca Smith was about 44 years old. She moved to Westbury in Wiltshire with her husband, Philip, whom she married on the 5th of May 1831 and would give birth to eleven children by him. She was described as “undernourished and in poor health, living in abject poverty and almost illiterate”. Her husband, Phillip, was … Read more
20-year-old Mary Reeder and 25 year old farm labourer, Elias Lucas were publicly hanged at Cambridge on Saturday the 13th of April 1850. They had been convicted of the murder of Elias’ wife, Susan Lucas who was Mary’s sister whom they had poisoned with arsenic on the 21st of February 1850. Elias and Susan had been married for some … 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
Background Domestic Situation On Monday the 28th of December 1863, Alice Holt became the last woman to be executed at Chester. 27 year old widow, Alice Hewitt, was co-habiting with her boyfriend, George Holt, in a two-up, two-down slum house in Great Egerton Street in Stockport in Cheshire. She had adopted his surname and called … Read more
