Courtroom Ghosts

Harriet Richardson, later Harriet Staunton Harriet Richardson likely had learning difficulties. She had inherited £5000 from a great-aunt, equivalent to around £500,000 in today's money, and lived a comfortable lifestyle with her mother. In 1873, things became rather complicated. Harriet had a cousin named Thomas who had married a widow and gained two step-daughters. The elder step-daughter, Elizabeth, had married a man named Patrick Staunton and Patrick Staunton had a brother, Louis. Elizabeth's younger sister was fifteen-year-old Alice Rhodes and twenty-three year old Louis was in love with her. Thus there were in effect two couples/ pairs of siblings - Patrick and Elizabeth Staunton, and their respective brother and sister, Louis Staunton and Alice Rhodes. But when Louis Staunton met Harriet Richardson through Harriet cousin, Alice Rhodes' step-father, he began to form a plan. Harriet's mother, who had remarried after the death of her husband and now went by the name...

Amelia Dyer was tried before Justice Henry Hawkins at the Old Bailey in 1896, just two years before the judge retired. His judicial career spanned more than twenty years and he himself is an interesting topic to explore, not least because he gained a reputation as a ‘hanging judge’ - in other words, disinclined to recommend mercy in capital cases. When Hawkins died in 1907, the  Times ran an extensive obituary, which informed the reader that 'it cannot be said that Hawkins was a great judge [...] and he was sometimes charged with undue severity in criminal cases'. The obituary continued in somewhat more generous terms by describing Hawkins as 'acute and penetrating', before remarking that the memoirs Hawkins had had published in 1904 were 'two bulky volumes' which could not be said to 'constitute a valuable contribution to legal literature'. It continues that, 'the book, in fact, hardly deserves to be called amusing, for many of the stories, told at...