Charlotte Winsor – Torquay Child Murderess 1865

Here is a case I have been researching for a great many years. The appalling although not uncommon activity of women who would ‘look after’ children for a fee (and we are not talking about nannies here). Now a lot of archive (including news reports) relating to the case of Mrs Winsor is transcribed and […]

Waltham Abbey Murder – 1797

Ann Gray was the proprietor of a public-house at the market town of Waltham Abbey in Essex.  Late one evening in May 1797 after serving two men in her bar she was trying to close up.  She had already been a little nervous of these two and asked for one of her lodgers who was […]

Alleged Murder by Strychnine – 1863

The deaths of two children in Edgware London caused suspicion during proceedings in 1863.  The parents were separated – the father sometime before had ran off following an offence of which he was wanted, the mother had sold most of her possessions and had left the neighbourhood.  When an expert examined the stomach contents of […]

Robert Allen Coombes – Mother murderer – 1895

During the early hours, at about 4.00 AM, on July 8, 1895, 13 year old Robert Allen Coombes entered his mother’s bedroom and stabbed Emily Harriet Coombes to death. It happened at their house at 35 Cave Road, Plaistow in East London. The weapon he had used had been a knife that he had bought […]

Annie Robinson – Mercury Poisoner 1895

Annie Robinson, the woman who poisoned her husband in 1895 by administering him with mercury (if you are slightly squeamish you are advised that some of this report contains material that you might find distressing). Annie Robinson (38), it turns out, had constantly lied in court, claiming her father was recently deceased and of course […]