Author’s Note & Acknowledgements
1. ‘Nothing but skin and bone’
Bradford-on-Avon, 1811
Purton Stoke, 1819
3. ‘May I be damned to everlasting if I had anything to do with the hatchet’
Sutton Benger, 1820
4. ‘I did it in a passion, seeing my wife and children ill-used’
Littleton Drew, 1828
5. ‘Thee will be hanged if thee hast a hundred necks’
Lacock, 1828
6. ‘You may as well let me poison it’
Warminster, 1830
7. ‘Oh, my God! I am a ruined woman!’
Highworth, 1835
8. ‘Damn your eyes, get up, or I’ll kill you directly’
Box, 1841
9. ‘They say I murdered my baby?’
Westbury, 1849
10. ‘Beat the old bastard’s brains out!’
Trowbridge, 1854
Tollard Royal, 1859
12. ‘I have done it. You had better lock me up’
Devizes, 1881
13. ‘I intended no harm to my old father’
Lower Westbrook, 1885
14. ‘What was the dispute as to the child about?’
Devizes, 1889
Melksham, 1892
Swindon, 1903
17. ‘I have told you the truth. He is where I have taken him to’
Burbage, 1907
18. ‘Stop that man; he has murdered my Teddy’
Salisbury, 1908
19. ‘I will make this county ring!’
Enford, 1913
Sutton Veny, 1917
21. ‘I done the job and am prepared to stand the consequences’
Long Newnton, 1924
22. ‘You have got me, you rotter’
Trowbridge, 1925
23. ‘I’ll see she shan’t live to have the laugh over me’
Durrington, 1939
24. ‘Either you do what I want you to do or you die’
Marlborough, 1943
Swindon, 1953
26. ‘Everyone said she was too perfect to live’
Salisbury, 1953