Murder
Cases - Female M
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M'Lachlan, Jessie
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Maybrick Florence
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Malcolm, Sarah
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Manning, Maria
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Major, Mrs Ethel
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Mason, Elizabeth
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Masset, Louise
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Metyard, Sarah
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Miss Reynolds
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M'Lachlan, Jessie
John Fleming was a Glasgow accountant who liked to get away at the weekends
to his villa retreat at Dunoon. He would leave his town house at Sandyford
Place in the care of his ageing father, James, and a servant. On returning
to the house on the 7 July 1862 it was to find the house was locked, when
he spoke to the neighbours they told him that they hadn't seen his father
since the previous Friday. Worried they managed to gain entry by way of
the servant's quarters and they found the semi-naked body of Jessie M'Pherson,
the servant girl, lying dead on the bed. The girl had been brutally attacked
with a meat cleaver and some of her clothes, along with some of the family's
silver, was missing. The room was covered in blood and there were bloody
footprints around the bed and a couple of James Flemings' shirts, which
were kept in a chest in the basement, were found to have blood on them.
Suspicion fell on the old man and he was arrested.
Two days later the missing silver was found at a pawnbrokers. The shopkeeper
told the authorities that it had been pledged by Jessie M'Lachlan, who
was a 28-year-old former servant at the Fleming house. When she was arrested
she immediately told the police that she had pawned the silver at the request
of James Fleming, who said he needed the money. When the police compared
the footprints by the bed to those of Jessie they were found to match.
Some bloodstained clothing was also found which belonged to her. James
Fleming was released and Jessie was charged with murder.
At her trial at Glasgow in September 1862 there was plenty of circumstantial
evidence. There was also plenty of evidence that Fleming Snr was a frisky
old man, who was certainly not above trying in on with the servants, but
the judge did his best to suppress this and preserve the old man's integrity.
The jury retired and returned a guilty verdict. Before the judge passed
sentence Jessie made a statement from the dock. She admitted trying to
tend the girl as she lay dying. She said that the dying girl had told her
that James Fleming had tried to force his attentions on her and she had
resisted.
Jessie M'Lachlan was sentenced to hang. Public disquiet caused several
petitions to be raised and her sentence was commuted to penal servitude
for life. She was released on 5th October 1877, after serving fifteen years,
and emigrated to America. She died there on 1st January 1899 having never
confessing to the murder.
Maybrick, Florence
James Maybrick was a 42-year-old cotton-broker and lifelong hypochondriac
when he married Florence Elizabeth
Chandler in London on 27th July 1881. She was American and just eighteen.
In 1884 they moved to Liverpool and
bought Battlecrease House, a mansion in the southern suburb of Aigburth.
They employed a cook, two maids and a
nanny to look after their two children. As Florence's housekeeping
allowance was only £7 a week, she soon ran into debt.
In 1887 Florence discovered that James was keeping a mistress and found
some solace in the company of Alfred Brierley, one of her husband's friends.
In March 1889 she spent the weekend with Brierley in a London hotel. They
had planned to spend a week together but, after Brierley revealed that
he was in love with someone else, she told him that they must finish. She
spent the rest of the week with friends and returned to Liverpool on Friday
28th March. The next day was Grand National day at Aintree and Florence
accompanied her husband to the races. She bumped into Brierley and, much
to her husband's disgust, walked up the course with him. They returned
home separately. James was absolutely furious that his wife had shown him
up and the couple rowed, with Maybrick striking his wife.
The next day James drew up a new will, excluding his wife. Florence
paid a visit to the family doctor, Dr Hopper, and
complained of feeling unwell. He noticed her black eye and she told
him that her husband had hit her and that she wanted a divorce. The doctor
managed to reconcile the couple and James agreed to pay of his wife's housekeeping
debts.
Florence had previously expressed her concern to the doctor over her
husband's habit of taking poisons. He regularly took arsenic in a cup of
beef tea and dosed himself with a tonic containing the same poison. He
also regularly consumed a preparation containing strychnine though, according
to Florence, he always seemed worse after doing so. The doctor had warned
Maybrick against taking such preparations but it failed to deter him.
On Monday 23rd April Florence purchased a dozen fly-papers from a local
chemist and left them soaking in a bowl on the bedroom wash-stand. This,
she said, was to make a cosmetic preparation to clear up some skin problems.
The following Saturday, the 27th, James complained of feeling sick. By
the next morning his condition had worsened sufficiently for Dr Humphreys,
the children's doctor, to be summoned. The doctor prescribed for him and,
after further visits on the Monday and Tuesday, diagnosed Maybrick as having
chronic dyspepsia and put him on a strict diet. On Wednesday he was well
enough to go to work but on Friday he was ill again, complaining of pains
in his legs. On Saturday he was constantly vomiting and his hands felt
numb. He continued to vomit Sunday and Monday and was visited each day
by Dr Humphreys.
On Tuesday he started to feel better again but Edwin, James' brother
who was staying at Battlecrease House after a visit
to the States, decided that they should seek a second opinion. Accordingly,
Dr Carter arrived at the house about 5pm.
After examining James he concluded that he was suffering from acute
dyspepsia and, like Dr Humphreys, prescribed a
strict diet.
On Wednesday Maybrick's condition had worsened again. He was visited
by two friends, Mrs Briggs and Mrs Hughes.
Once she heard of the soaking fly-papers and she had spoken to Edwin,
she sent a telegram to Maybrick's other brother,
Michael, who lived in London. She also told Florence to send for a
trained nurse to look after James. The nurse arrived shortly after 2pm
and at about 3pm Florence gave the nanny, Alice Yapp, a letter to post.
According to the nanny, she happened to drop the letter and she happened
to read the letter as she was changing the envelope. Instead of posting
the letter she gave it to Edwin Maybrick. 'Dearest, Since my return I have
been nursing M day and night - he is sick unto death!' Florence was forbidden
to tend to her husband virtually placed under house arrest by the family.
Thursday saw James' condition worsen. Samples of his urine and faeces
were taken to be analysed for arsenic, but none
was found. By Saturday Maybrick's condition had deteriorated to the
point where the doctors warned the family that he would not recover. His
children were taken in to him at 5pm and he died shortly after 8pm. The
house was searched and a packet marked 'Arsenic: Poison', with the words
'for cats' added, was found in Florence's room.
A post mortem was carried out on Monday 13h May with the doctors determining
that death was due to an irritant poison.
The body was buried but was exhumed for re-examination on 30th May.
Toxic analysis of the liver, intestines and spleen
found less than half a grain of arsenic with none in the heart, lungs
or stomach. Traces of strychnine, hyoscine, morphia and prussic acid were
found but the latter two were to be expected as they had been contained
in the medicines administered to the dead man.
Meanwhile, Florence had been arrested and was being detained in Walton
Jail hospital. Her trial began at Liverpool Summer Assizes on 31st July
1889. All medical testimony agreed that Maybrick had died of gastro-enteritis
but disputed whether it had been caused by a chill, arsenic or bad food.
Despite the lack of any evidence that Florence had administered any poison
to her husband the judge's summing up, which lasted two days, rambled on
making point after point against her, making much of her affair with Brierley
and her letter to him. After retiring for 45 minutes the all-male jury
returned a guilty verdict and she was sentenced to death.
Meetings were held and petitions were sent. On 22nd August, four days
before her execution, Florence was reprieved and her sentence commuted
to life imprisonment. She served 15 years before being released on 25th
January 1904. She returned to America and died in squalor and surrounded
by cats, in Connecticut, on 223rd October 1941.
Malcolm, Sarah
Sarah was a powerfully built 22-year-old Irish laundress employed in the
Fleet street home of Mrs Lydia Dunscomb, a wealthy widow. On the night
of 5 February 1733 she entered the bedroom of her 80-year-old employer
and strangled her as she slept. To ensure that there would be no one to
point the finger she also strangled 60-year-old Elizabeth Harrison and
cut the throat of 17-year-old Ann Price, the other servants in the house
that night.
She was now able to ransack the house without fear of disturbance. Once
she had gathered all she wanted she fled from the house. When she was apprehended
she was still carrying the stolen goods. Although Sarah denied any knowledge
of the crimes the evidence was overwhelming and she was sentenced to death.
She was hanged on 7 March 1733 on a gallows erected in the middle of the
street between Mitre Court and Fetter Lane by John Hooper.
Mrs Ethel Major
No details listed for this case at this time
Mason, Elizabeth
Elizabeth was employed as a maid and worked for her own godmother. She
recognised an opportunity to rise out of service by poisoning her godmother
in the hope of inheriting her estate. When she served her employer with
coffee it was heavily laced with yellow arsenic. Mrs Jane Scoles died that
Easter 1712 just a few hours later. Worried that her close friend, Mrs
Cholwell, might inherit the property she poisoned her as well. Mrs Cholwell
became very ill but recovered after treatment by a local pharmacist. He
was the same pharmacist who had sold Elizabeth the arsenic, supposedly
to rid the house of rats. He quickly put two and two together and called
the authorities.
Elizabeth was arrested and was tried on 6th June 1712 after she had
confessed. She was hanged at Tyburn on 18th June 1712.
Masset, Louise
The naked body of a 4-year-old boy was found, wrapped in a shawl, on 27th
October 1899. The child had been suffocated before being dumped in the
women's toilet at a London station, where it was discovered. The child
was identified as Manfred Louis Masset, the illegitimate son of Louise
Masset, a children's governess. The body was identified by Miss Helen Gentle
who had looked after the child since shortly after his birth. She told
police that Louise regularly received money from the boy's father and that
she was of the opinion that the man was probably French.
Mrs Gentle had received a letter from Louise on 16th October. In it
she had told the woman that Manfred's father wanted to have the boy with
him in France. Accordingly Miss Gentle had taken the child to Stamford
Hill where she had handed over to his mother.
Louise Masset was apprehended later that day. She told the story that
she had handed her son, and £12, over to a Mrs Browning who was starting
a children's home. This had taken place at London Bridge Station. When
some of the child's clothes were found in Brighton, where she was to have
met her 19-year-old lover, Eudore Lucas, she was charged with murder. She
was found guilty and sentenced to hang for the murder of her own son. On
9th January 1900 thirty three year old Louise was hanged at Newgate Prison
by James Billington.
When you look at the case it is difficult to see a clear motive for
the crime. The child was illegitimate and Louise was planning to start
a new life with her 19 year old french lover Eudore Lucas. Perhaps she
wanted to be rid of the child and saw murder as the easy way out.
Metyard, Sarah
Sarah and her daughter, also named Sarah, were milliners in London. They
used to take on young apprentices that were sent to them from the workhouse.
If they did not work well then then Sarah Metyard and her daughter would
beat them severely. Sometimes they would go too far and the poor wretch
would die of the injuries.
One such victim was Anne Naylor, she was beaten to death and then her
body was stuffed into a trunk. When the body began to decompose it began
to smell, when the smell got too bad to ignore they decided to try and
burn it.
Eventually the daughter, perhaps a little afraid for her own life, informed
the authorities of her mother's sadistic tendencies and they were both
arrested. Whatever the reason had been for informing on her mother it seems
that it backfired on her because they were both hanged at Tyburn on 19th
July 1768.
Miss Reynolds
A rather unusual case in which a teenager who killed her 61 year old mother
with a Hammer and and had been originally sentenced to youth custody for
life had her sentence quashed in the appeal court. She was cleared of murder
on the grounds that pre-menstrual tension and post natal depression had
impaired her responsibility.
The prosecution had told the appeal judges that had the medical evidence
been available at the original hearing he would have accepted a plea of
guilty to manslaughter by reason of diminished responsibility. As her sentence
had been quashed she was allowed to walk free from the court.
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For more information contact:
Gregg Manning