Aware that his affair with the local rat-catchers wife was causing a scandal and that there was no long-term future in it for him, William Seager, 40, a shoemaker of Otterden, Kent, killed his lover and left her dead in the snow.
She was Mrs. Hannah Giles, also 40. Her throat was cut and she had been shot. Her body was found by three children who she was supposed to be baby-sitting and who had gone to look for her. Terrified, the children ran back home and locked themselves in their house until their parents returned at 2 a.m.
Seager fled towards London but was arrested on the way. He was found guilty of murder and hanged on Thursday, March 28th, 1839, outside Maidstone Prison.