H is also for Holiest I couldn’t resist this one. If Edward Hardman lived up to his name, then consider the case of the Reverend Mr Holiest, Perpetual Curate of Frimley Grove. Holy, he might have been, but that did not stop his murderers for the poor reverend was murdered on the 27th September, 1850 …
I is for Isaac
The story of the murder of Isaac Jermy and his son, the shooting of his wife and a servant, by James Rush is worthy of Dickens and Wilkie Collins. It’s a story of disguise, forged deeds, secret rooms, a hidden closet, and even a shallow well under the floorboards where the forged papers were found. …
J is for Jarley.
Mrs Jarley is the touring waxworks proprietor in The Old Curiosity Shop. Her chamber of horrors include ‘the woman who poisoned fourteen families with pickled walnuts’ and ‘Jasper Packlemerton of atrocious memory, who courted and married fourteen wives and destroyed them all by tickling the soles of their feet.’ Dickens probably had Madame Tussaud in …
K is for Kent
Constance Kent was the half-sister of Francis Saville Kent aged four whose body was found in a disused privy at his home, Road Hill House, in Wiltshire in 1860. The child’s throat was cut. Inspector Whicher of Scotland Yard was sent for to investigate. His enquiries led to the arrest of sixteen year old Constance …
L is for Lambeth
‘What he liked to talk about was … especially the latest murder.’ So wrote the journalist, George Augustus Sala about Dickens. April 1852 seems to have been a bonanza month for murder in the Household Narrative of Current Events, the sister publication of Dickens’s Household Words. No doubt he read all the cases. The Household …
M is for Morton
Here’s a tale of intrigue, adultery, jealousy, duels, an illegitimate child, a supposed Spanish dancer who was mistress of a king, revenge and madness. No wonder Dickens wanted to know all about it as he writes in a letter from Paris in October, 1852 to his secretary at Household Words, Harry Wills: ‘I recollect Morton …
N is for Newgate.
In October 1835, Dickens visited Newgate Prison. He was planning a piece for his Sketches by Boz to be published in 1836 – the work which would begin his years of fame. Dickens describes the last moments of the condemned man in ‘the stone dungeon’ which is his last home, only ‘eight feet long by …
N is also for Noon
The Household Narrative of Current Events, the sister publication of Household Words gave me Elijah Noon. The name alone made him worthwhile including. He was a plasterer in Oxford and on July 16th, 1852, he was indicted for the murder of his wife, the crime being witnessed by their daughter, aged twelve. Elijah Noon came …
O is for O’Connor
Patrick O’Connor was the victim in the notorious case of the Mannings, husband and wife. Maria Manning was a Swiss who had been a lady’s maid. She married Frederick Manning in 1847, and she had chosen him over Patrick O’Connor who was a wealthy man – not a particularly savoury character - who had made …
P is for Palmer
Strychnine was the poison of choice for William Palmer whom Dickens called ‘the greatest villain that ever stood in the Old Bailey Dock.’ The case of William Palmer was the first in which the accusation was poisoning by strychnine. In 1856, Professor Alfred Swaine Taylor gave evidence at the inquest on the death of John …
