Wearing her best Sunday clothes and carrying two Bibles, Mary Ann Hall, 23, was on her way home from church when she saw the stalker. He was George Gilbert, 30, and he had been following her for several days making indecent suggestions as to improper intercourse. Mary quickened her pace, but the stalker was fired
I got tired of the child and I wanted to be rid of it, explained Joseph Hirst, 26, when asked why he killed his one-month-old daughter Maud. The babys body was found in a canal in Ashton Road, Stockport. It had been strangled with a cord. Hirst and his girl friend Martha Goddard, 20, who
Let the bitch burn! Joseph Tucker, a 32-year-old shoemaker, shouted as neighbours tried desperately to put out the fire in his home in Trumpet Street, Nottingham. The bitch was his girl friend, Elizabeth Williams, 32, over whom he had just poured paraffin before setting her alight. Tucker and Elizabeth had lived together for nine years
A 26-year-old Irishman was hanged on Tuesday, August 27th, 1861, in Chester City Prison for a crime that wasnt a capital offence. On August 6th that year a new Act became law in England, Wales and Ireland, abolishing capital punishment for all crimes except murder. The reason why Martin Doyle was hanged three weeks later
There were two interests in the short life of James Burrows, 18 drinking and fighting. Strapped for cash to indulge the first, he asked one of his fathers employees, Irish farm labourer John Brennan, 45, for a loan. Brennan refused, so Burrows hit him with a crowbar and left his body in a barn.
Neighbours heard a terrible story when an agitated Mrs. Elizabeth Brown confronted them at 5 a.m. on the morning of July 6th, 1856. Elizabeths husband John lay dead in the living-room, his head beaten in, brain matter everywhere, and a clump of his long hair in his wifes handkerchief. I heard footsteps at two oclock
Factory worker by day and barmaid by night, Mary Ann Britland, 39, was also an ardent lover. She had set her sights on her next-door neighbour Thomas Dixon, with whom she was having an affair, and had decided that if she was to get him for keeps she must clear the decks of anyone who
Youre always drunk when youre working, and furthermore, youve been stealing from me. Youre fired! So it was that the elderly widow of an army officer, Mrs. Ann Anderson, dismissed her servant Mrs. Mary Cooney at the beginning of March 1837. But Mrs. Cooney was more than just a drunken thief she was also
As a landlord, magistrate, and loyalist in republican South Armagh, Meredith Chambre was flirting with death. Two armed bodyguards accompanied him wherever he went, for his way of life put him in constant danger. On January 20th, 1852, he presided over the magistrates court, then set off for his home at Hawthorn Hill. At Drumintee,
I blame it all on drink, John Brooks, a 31-year-old factory worker, told the court at his trial for the murder of his girl friend, Mrs. Caroline Woodhead, a 23-year-old divorc?e. The couple had eloped together and roamed the country before settling in Nottingham. Finally, disaffected with Brooks, Caroline went to live with her mother,