CRIME HUNTER: Murder most foul in the times of Queen Victoria
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Throughout Queen Victoria’s time, the solar actually by no means set on the British Empire.
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As we honour the famed queen this weekend, it’s value noting her occasions produced a plethora of lurid murders that set the stage for the true-crime explosion greater than 100 years after her 1901 loss of life.
Homicide in Victorian occasions coincided with a newly literate working class and the rise of the penny press that made newspapers inexpensive. Readers gorged on the arsenic-spiced tales of murderous mistresses, homicidal husbands, vile child farmers, and pioneering serial killers.
Given the tidal wave of press Jack The Ripper has acquired over time, we’ll give him a go this time.
AMELIA DYER
Dyer might be probably the most prolific killer in British historical past.
She had been educated as a nurse however when her husband died in 1869 leaving her a widow, she turned to the sinister follow of child farming.
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Child farmers adopted undesirable kids for a charge with the concept of finally adopting them out. However in lots of instances, that’s not what occurred. As a substitute, the helpless infants could be murdered.
In Dyer’s case, it was estimated she killed greater than 400 infants after ravenous them or drugging them. She would then toss their our bodies into the River Thames.
However Dyer killed too usually and have become careless. A jury took simply 4 minutes to seek out her responsible. And on June 10, 1896, she was hanged at Newgate Jail.
DR. NEILL CREAM
Cream was second banana to Jack The Ripper’s high canine in Victorian serial killing.
Known as the Lambeth Poisoner, Cream murdered no less than 10 folks, beginning with the chloroform homicide of Catharine Hutchinson Gardner in 1879 in London, Ont. She had been pregnant and Cream refused to carry out an abortion on her.
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The killer physician subsequent landed in Chicago the place he carried out abortions on working-class ladies and prostitutes. His favoured technique of killing was rat poison. He was nabbed within the Windy Metropolis and jailed however his brother later implored (bribed) the Illinois governor to spring the great physician.
Cream’s subsequent cease was England. Dying adopted for 19-year-old prostitute Ellen “Nellie” Donworth on Oct. 13, 1991. 4 extra murders adopted till the cops caught on to Cream, who fled by ship to Canada.
He was nabbed and returned to London the place he was tried, convicted and sentenced to loss of life. The Rx for Cream was the hangman’s noose and he swung on Nov. 15, 1892, at Newgate Jail.
RICHMOND MURDERESS
Irish immigrant Kate Webster was no stranger to crime.
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In 1879, Webster was employed as a home servant to twice-widowed Julia Martha Thomas in Richmond.
Thomas, who was in her 50s, had a poor opinion of Kate’s work ethic and shortly advised her wayward servant to hit the street. However when Thomas returned from church, Kate tossed her down a flight of stairs and for good measure, strangled her boss.
Webster then proceeded to dismember her tormentor’s physique earlier than boiling it within the laundry copper (NOTE: Thomas’s head wasn’t discovered till 2010). Kate then heaved the items into the soiled Thames.
She later advised cops: “At first I assumed her a pleasant outdated girl … however I discovered her very attempting, and she or he used to do many issues to bother me throughout my work.”
Kate Webster was hanged on July 28, 1879, at Wandsworth Jail.
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THAMES TORSO MURDERS
In October 1884, a lady’s dismembered physique components have been found floating within the Thames River.
In Might 1887, employees retrieved a bundle from the river, inside was the torso of a lady. Varied components of the identical physique started turning up round London over the subsequent few months. Within the fall of 1888, extra dismembered feminine stays have been discovered.
Lastly, in June 1889, the torso of homeless intercourse employee Elizabeth Jackson, who was pregnant, was discovered floating within the famed river. She was the one sufferer ever recognized. One other dismembered sufferer was found the next 12 months in Whitechapel.
The case stays unsolved.
THE BERMONDSEY HORROR
Husband and spouse Marie and Frederick Manning dedicated one in every of Victorian England’s most sensational homicides and even impressed Charles Dickens to create the character of Hortense in Bleak Home.
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Stunning Marie Manning was a Swiss maid who toiled in aristocratic houses however earlier than that she was the lover of “gauger” Patrick O’Connor. Later she married Frederick Manning and the 2 conspired to kill Patrick for his dough.
So, in 1849, they lured him to dinner and blew his brains out. They buried O’Connor below the ground, took his cash, and made a run for it. However the physique was discovered and the grotesque twosome was nabbed.
For the primary time in almost 200 years, a husband and spouse have been hanged collectively. On Nov. 13, 1849, at Horsemonger Lane Gaol the Mannings received the massive adios.
bhunter@postmedia.com
