Fanny Adams

Crime:

On 24 August 1867 at about 1.30pm, Fanny's mother Harriet Adams let Fanny and her friend Millie Warner, both 8 years old, and Fanny's sister Lizzie aged 7, go up Tanhouse Lane towards Flood Meadow. In the lane they met Frederick Baker, a 24-year-old solicitor's clerk. Baker offered Millie and Lizzie a three halfpence to go and spend and offered Fanny a halfpenny to accompany him towards Shalden, a couple of miles north of Alton. She took the coin but refused to go. He carried her into a hop field, out of sight of the other girls.
At about 5pm, Millie and Lizzie returned home. Neighbour Mrs Gardiner asked them where Fanny was and they told her what happened. Mrs Gardiner told Mrs Adams and they went up the lane where they came upon Baker coming back. They questioned him, he said he gave the girls money for sweets, but that was all. His respectability meant the women let him go on his way.
At about 7pm Fanny was still missing and neighbours went searching. They found Fanny's body in the hop field, horribly butchered. Her head and legs had been severed and her eyes put out. Her torso had been emptied and her organs scattered. It would take several days for all of her remains to be found.
Mrs Adams ran to The Butts field where her husband, bricklayer George Adams, was playing cricket. She told him what had happened then collapsed. Adams got his shotgun from home and set off to find the perpetrator but neighbours stopped him.

That evening Police Superintendent William Cheyney arrested Baker where he worked at the offices of solicitor William Clement in the High Street and led him through an angry mob to the police station. There was blood on his shirt and trousers, which he could not explain, but he protested his innocence. He was searched and found to have two small blood-stained knives on him.

Witnesses put Baker in the area and returning to his office at about 3pm then going out again. Baker's workmate, fellow clerk Maurice Biddle, reported that, when drinking in the Swan that evening, Baker had said he might leave town. When Biddle replied that he might have trouble getting another job, Baker said, chillingly with hindsight, "I could go as a butcher". On the 26th August, the police found Baker's diary in his office. It contained a damning entry:
24th August, Saturday — killed a young girl. It was fine and hot.
On Tuesday the 27th, Deputy County Coroner Robert Harfield held an inquest. Painter William Walker had found a stone with blood, long hair and flesh; police surgeon Dr Louis Leslie had carried out a post mortem and concluded death was by a blow to the head and the stone was the murder weapon. Baker said nothing, except that he was innocent. The jury returned a verdict of willful murder. On the 29th the local magistrates committed Baker for trial at the Winchester County Assizes. The police had difficulty protecting him from the mob.

At his trial on the 5th of December, the defence contested Millie Warner's identification of Baker and claimed the knives found were too small for the crime anyway. They also argued insanity: Baker's father had been violent, a cousin had been in asylums, his sister had died of a brain fever and he himself had attempted suicide after a love affair.

Justice Mellor invited the jury to consider a verdict of not responsible by reason of insanity, but they returned a guilty verdict after just fifteen minutes. On the 24th of December, Christmas eve, Baker was hanged outside Winchester Gaol. The crime had become notorious and a crowd of 5,000 attended the execution. Before his death, Baker wrote to the Adamses expressing his sorrow for what he had done "in an unguarded hour" and seeking their forgiveness. Baker's execution was the last to take place at Winchester.

Fanny was buried in Alton cemetery. Her grave is still there today. The headstone reads:
Sacred to the memory of Fanny Adams aged 8 years and 4 months who was cruelly murdered August 24th, 1867