Twenty-year-old Miss Evelyn Skinner lost her job as a childrens governess when her furious mistress discovered that she was having an affair with the master of the house, Dr. Philip Cross, 63. But the doctor wasnt put off by his wifes precipitate action he went right on with the affair, meeting Evelyn in Dublin when he went there on business.
In June 1887, Mrs. Cross died suddenly. Her husband diagnosed typhoid fever and signed the death certificate. As soon as she was buried he went off to Dublin and married Evelyn.
This caused such a scandal in his home village of Dripsey, in County Cork, that the police, acting under public pressure, exhumed Mrs. Crosss body and found it heavily dosed with arsenic. At Cork Assizes, where Dr. Cross was charged with her murder, he protested that his wife used arsenic to help her complexion, this being a time when pale complexions were all the vogue.
The jury didnt believe him, and he was hanged on Tuesday, January 10th, 1888, at Cork Prison, protesting his innocence to the last.