Who killed Harry Larkyns?

  Nowadays the average twentysomething works their way through temporary though deep relationships before permanence happens in the shape of marriage (or something like it). For 19th century women it wasn’t so easy. So we can forgive, if that is the appropriate word, San Francisco shop worker Flora Shallcross Stone. To not appear ‘flighty’ it… Continue reading Who killed Harry Larkyns?

Murder in Acton; the final act

My search for more information — truth if you will — about a local murder from nearly 200 years ago is ended. I wanted to find out about why a girl who once lived just yards from where I am writing should take it into her head to marry and then to kill her husband… Continue reading Murder in Acton; the final act

Catherine Foster; the trial

The morning the Lent Assizes opened in Bury St Edmunds on Saturday March 27th 1847, 17-year-old Catherine Foster, dressed in deep mourning and ‘evincing little alarm at the awful position she stood in’, replied in a firm voice “not guilty” to the charge of poisoning her husband. By ten past seven that evening, the prosecution… Continue reading Catherine Foster; the trial

5000 Spirits of a village, or the Layers of The Onion

Not a 100 yards from where I write this, in this sleepiest of sleepy Suffolk villages, a murder has been committed. The local paper, the East Anglian Daily Times, to which I am ever grateful for being a newspaper of the old school, wrote it up over Christmas. It would be churlish not to point… Continue reading 5000 Spirits of a village, or the Layers of The Onion

How to get attention; name your war after body parts

It’s an anniversary of sorts. It’s 200 years since the end of a war with a dull name and seven more years since the death that may have started it. The death was that of British Royal Navy sailor Jenkin Ratford. He was hanged from the yard arm. The circumstances of Ratford’s capture precipitated popular… Continue reading How to get attention; name your war after body parts