Eleven-year-old Edith Berry was another Victorian child savagely put to death by a parent. This time the killer was her own mother, Mrs. Elizabeth Berry, 31, who poisoned little Edith by putting creosote into her tea.
The reason, the jury was told at Liverpool Assizes, where Mrs. Berry was tried in February 1887, was because she had insured the childs life for £10 and she wanted to collect the money.
Mrs. Berry, a nurse at the Oldham workhouse and hospital, vehemently denied killing her daughter, claiming that Edith died of natural causes, but she was convicted after a two-day trial. She was hanged by James Berry on Monday, March 14th, 1887, at Walton Prison the first execution held at Walton.
After the hanging it was claimed that she had killed her husband and her mother in a similar way for the same financial motive.