Victorian England - Female murderers.

Lucy Worsley did a series about Victorian murders late last year. But I can't remember what it was called. If you can find a website, it may have some good sources.

Hold on, let me look

It was called A Very British Murder. And it lead me to this website. But I don't know how much help it will be.

I found this which says that the Ancestry website has details of Victorian prisoners. It also has contemporary reports attached to the photos

http://www.theguardian.com/society/2011/feb/25/victorian-female-prisoners-records-genealogy

This is very interesting! From a website called Wayward Women.

http://waywardwomen.wordpress.com/

mirandashell said:

This is very interesting! From a website called Wayward Women.

http://waywardwomen.wordpress.com/

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Oh, that's a find! What a bunch of ne'er do wells.

I found this -- Victorian poisoners.

ETA: I didn't see the last comment. Have you got Amelia Dyer?

Anninyn said:

I am especially interested in the baby farmers and brothel madams, as well as cases where a woman may have abused or murdered her staff.

I've already found a few baby farmer cases that have gone in my research folder, but the others are proving harder to track down with my GCSE-level knowledge of history.

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I just found this about Lucy Emms but some of the facts may need checking.

http://www.holme-next-the-sea.co.uk/ryderarc/lucyemms/lucyemmsstory.htm

This Google page has a document about half way down with an interesting view of Magaret Waters and the reaction of press and society to her crime, trial and execution.

https://www.google.co.uk/webhp?sour...v=2&es_th=1&ie=UTF-8#q=victorian baby farmers

Might be good for background.

I would love a job as a researcher but can't find anyone to pay me enough!

What about http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Pearcey ?

This might be a good site to try as well - http://scandalouswoman.blogspot.ca/

On the right hand side if you scroll down, there are links to other Historical blogs as well.

Maybe look for True Crime books written in the 1920s or earlier - I used to have a really good one that included dozens of cases including plenty of women, but can't find it on my bookshelf right now - closer to that era will convey contemporary attitudes more accurately as well.

James Berry was an executioner in the 1880s who wrote down a lot of his experiences. He hung five women, so it might be worth searching up his writing relating to those cases if you haven't already. If I recall correctly, he sometimes put down his thoughts about the people and the crimes, as well as details on the execution.

Ramshackle said:

James Berry was an executioner in the 1880s who wrote down a lot of his experiences. He hung five women, so it might be worth searching up his writing relating to those cases if you haven't already. If I recall correctly, he sometimes put down his thoughts about the people and the crimes, as well as details on the execution.

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Things out of copyright can be found on archive.org. It's a bit awkward to search, you might want to use Google instead of their search engine, but they have an astonishing number of books and other documents that are out of copyright.

Do you have this book? http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/07/29/pleasant-thoughts-of-murder-in-the-victorian-era.html This looks so good, I think I'm going to get it for myself!

We had a lot of pretty evil women here in America, too, so if you kind of just want to get the mindset, you might look at some of them. Delphine LaLaurie of New Orleans was earlier than you're thinking (1830s) but holy cow, she was sadistic. Belle Gunness, a bit later (1890s) who murdered at least 40 people, mostly men she used for money. There was also a woman in Chicago about the same time who was thought to have murdered several men, and of course the Bender family, who murdered at least 21 victims in Kansas in the late 1800s.

If you have access to JSTOR or another journal catalog, that might yield some more scholarly articles with some good primary source material.

Here's a PDF I saved off a while back about Baby Farmers.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/12422258/The Baby Farmers.pdf

This is a bit earlier - 1829 - but the way in which the women are described may be of use as a pointer to attitudes at the time. There is also quite a bit of detail.

ESTHER HIBNER THE ELDER, ESTHER HIBNER THE YOUNGER, AND ANN ROBINSON Tried for the Murder of a Parish Apprentice, who died as the Result of Inhuman Treatment, 10th of April, 1829
http://www.britishexecutions.co.uk/execution-content.php?key=2368

RN Hill said:

Do you have this book? http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/07/29/pleasant-thoughts-of-murder-in-the-victorian-era.html This looks so good, I think I'm going to get it for myself!

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I read this book (thanks for the link, I could not remember the title!) and I thought it was fascinating-- lots on the media presentations of various murder cases, but also a lot of detail on the murders themselves and the prosecution etc. I don't remember all the details but there were a lot of female murders, the media looooved stories of female murderers.

The British Newspaper Archive might be worth a subscription.