History of Trondheim

 I wrote a little history of Trondheim, Norway. 

Corporal Punishment

 On 22 July 1986, the British Parliament voted to end corporal punishment in state schools. The new law received royal assent on 7 November 1986. Corporal punishment became illegal in state schools on 15 August 1987. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qs35t2xFqdU

Fanny Adams

 Fanny Adams was an 8-year-old girl who was murdered in Alton, Hampshire, in 1867. Fanny was born on 30 April 1859. Her father was a bricklayer named George. Her mother was named Harriett. Fanny was the fourth of six children. She had three sisters and two brothers.

Fanny was tall for her age. She looked, it was said, older than her age. She was also a bright girl. People who knew Fanny described her as a happy and talkative child.

In the mid-19th century, Alton was a small town with a population of about 4,000. There was a brewing industry in the town and fields of hops. Fanny lived in Tanhouse Lane. Near her house was an open place named Flood Meadow, through which the River Wey flowed. The river sometimes flooded, giving the meadow its name. Next to it was a hop garden.

On 24 August 1867, Fanny asked her mother for permission to go and play in Flood Meadow with her 5-year-old sister Lizzie and her best friend, Minnie Warner, aged 8. Her mother agreed. There was little crime in Alton, and Mrs Adams was not worried.

Between 1 pm and 2 pm, the girls had the misfortune to meet a 29-year-old solicitor’s clerk named Frederick Baker. He was from Guildford but had recently moved to Alton, where he worked for a solicitor named William Clements in the High Street. The girls had seen the man before. 

Frederick Baker gave Minnie and Lizzie three half pennies to buy some sweets. He also gave Fanny a half penny. 

For a time, the girls played while Baker watched the girls playing while he smoked his pipe. He also picked some blackberries for them.

Minnie and Lizzie eventually decided to go home. Baker then asked Fanny to come with him on her own along the Hollow, a road that led to the nearby village of Shalden. Fanny refused. 

Baker then grabbed the child and carried her off. Minnie and Lizzie ran and told Mrs Warner, Minnie’s mother. But she was unconcerned, and the girls went off to play again. 

It may seem incredible that Mrs Warner did not immediately raise the alarm, but attitudes were very different then. Mrs Warner may have thought it was some sort of game.

About 5 pm, the two girls, Minnie and Lizzie, went home again. A neighbour, Mrs Gardener, saw them and asked where Fanny was. The two girls told her what had happened. Mrs Gardener was worried, and she told Fanny’s mother, Mrs Adams. The two women went off in search of the missing child.

Within a short time, they met Baker near a gate separating the hop garden from the Meadow. Mrs Gardener asked him, ‘What have you done with the child?’. Baker replied ‘nothing’. Mrs Gardener then asked if he had given Minnie Warner money. Baker admitted he had given her money. But he claimed that he often gave money to children. Not surprisingly, Mrs Gardener was suspicious. She told Baker ‘I have a great mind to give you in charge of the police’. Baker replied, ‘You may do as you like’.

The two women went home, no doubt hoping Fanny would turn up. But, of course, she didn’t. By 7 pm, her mother was growing very worried, and she and a group of neighbours went in search of her. 

A man named Thomas Gates found the head of a child stuck on two hop poles. The eyes had been cut out, and the right ear was missing. It was the head of Fanny Adams.

More of the remains of Fanny Adams were found that evening. But as it was growing dark, the search had to be called off until the next morning. The next day, searchers found one of Fanny’s arms, a foot, and her intestines. Her eyes were eventually found in the river.

At the trial of Frederick Baker, Dr Leslie said: The remains were that of a female child, the head, arms, and legs were separated from the trunk’. The doctor also said: ‘A deep incision divided the chest between the ribs. The right leg was torn from the trunk, and the whole contents of the pelvis and chest were completely removed. Five incisions had been made on the liver, the heart cut out and missing’.

A man named William Henry Walker found a stone with flesh and hair sticking to it. He thought it might be the murder weapon. At the murder trial, Dr Leslie said that in his opinion it was.

Meanwhile, Fanny’s mother, Harriet Adams, was naturally very distraught. She went to tell her husband, George, who had been playing cricket. He got his shotgun and was going to shoot the murderer but was persuaded not to.

At 9 pm on Sunday, 25 August 1867, the police went to the office of Clements, the solicitor. Superintendent Cheney asked Baker if he had heard of the murder. Baker replied, ‘Yes, they say it’s me’. The Superintendent told him, ‘Well, you are suspected’. Baker replied, ‘I am innocent’. 

Despite his denials, Baker was arrested on suspicion of the murder of Fanny Adams. An angry crowd had gathered outside the office, so the police had to smuggle him out the back door.

Baker was found to be carrying two small knives (they were too small to have carried out the mutilation. It was believed a larger knife was used, but it was never found). Baker’s trousers were wet, presumably from an attempt to wash off blood stains. The police also found bloodstains on Baker’s shirt cuffs. Baker could not account for them. He said ‘Well, I don’t see a scratch or cut on my hands to account for the blood’.

The next day, the police searched the solicitor’s office. They found Baker’s diary in his desk. An entry read: ‘Killed a young girl. It was fine and hot’. Baker admitted it was his handwriting but claimed he was intoxicated at the time.

Baker made another very incriminating remark on the day of the murder. At 7 p.m., he went to a pub with a colleague. An employee of the pub said he was moving and claimed he could turn his hand to anything. Baker said he might join him, but admitted there were only a very limited number of jobs he could do. But he then added, ‘I could turn butcher’.

An inquest into the death of Fanny Adams was held at the Duke’s Head Inn in Alton on 27 August 1867. Minnie Warner gave evidence. So did Mrs Gardner. In 1867, the jury at an inquest could not only find that a person was a victim of murder, but they could also name the person who they believed had committed the murder, even though that person had not been tried. The jury found that Frederick Baker murdered Fanny Adams. The law was changed in 1977.

The trial of Frederick Baker for murder began on 5 December 1867. The defence claimed that it could not be proved that Baker killed Fanny. But at the same time, they tried to argue that if he did do it, he was insane.

Minnie Warner and Mrs Gardener gave evidence. Other witnesses said Baker had left the solicitor’s office after 1 p.m. (Shortly before the murder was committed). He returned at 3.25 p.m. Baker left the office again at 4.30 p.m. (At which time he met Mrs Adams and Mrs Gardener near the murder scene).

More witnesses described seeing Baker in the vicinity of the murder on the afternoon of 26 August. A woman named Eliza White said she saw a man with three children at about 2 p.m. She identified Baker as the man. Mrs White said that afterwards, she heard ‘a girl cry out, not a cry of pain, as in play, trying to get away from someone’. A witness named William Alder was walking back from the nearby village of Lasham at about 2 p.m. He also saw Baker, who he knew. He also saw three children.

Both Mrs Gardener and Mrs Adams saw Baker after 5 p.m. A woman named Mary Ann Porter also said she saw Baker in the area between 5 and 6 p.m.

 There was also the fact that Baker wrote in his diary, ‘Killed a young girl. It was fine and hot”. The defence claimed that what he meant was ‘a young girl was killed’ not ‘I killed a young girl’. They also tried to cast doubt on Minnie Warner’s identification of Baker, and they said the two knives found on Baker were too small to have carried out the mutilations. (They may very well be true, but it doesn’t rule out the possibility that Baker had a larger knife that was never found).

The defence also tried to argue that even if Baker did do it then he was insane. They claimed that Baker’s father was violent and had once tried to kill his son and daughter with a poker. They also claimed that Baker had tried to commit suicide after his fiancée broke off their engagement in 1865. Baker’s sister had died of a ‘brain fever’. Also, Baker’s cousin was in a lunatic asylum and was violent. But none of this impressed the jury.

The judge advised the jury that three verdicts were possible – guilty, not guilty or not guilty on the grounds of insanity. The jury took only 15 minutes to find Baker guilty of murder. The judge then sentenced him to death. While awaiting execution, Baker confessed to killing Fanny.

At that time, executions were carried out in public. Frederick Baker was hanged outside Winchester prison, in front of a crowd of about 5,000 people at 8 a.m. on 24 December 1867. His body was buried within the precincts of the prison.

Meanwhile, Fanny Adams was laid to rest in Alton Cemetery on 28 August 1867. In 1868, a gravestone was erected, paid for by public subscription. An inscription on the gravestone reads ‘Sacred to the memory of Fanny Adams, aged eight years and four months, who was cruelly murdered on Saturday, August 24, 1867’ and ‘Fear not them which kill the body are not able to kill the soul but rather fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in Hell Matthew 10 v28’.

John George Haigh - the acid bath murderer

Haigh murdered people for money, then dissolved the bodies in acid. He was born on 24 July 1909 in Lincolnshire, but his family moved to Yorkshire.

Haigh’s parents belonged to the Plymouth Brethren, a strict religious sect, although it is unknown whether this had anything to do with his later behaviour. Haigh won a scholarship to attend Wakefield Grammar School, which meant he was a choirboy in Wakefield Cathedral. 

After leaving school, Haigh did clerical jobs. He also married in 1934, but the marriage was short-lived. Haigh turned to fraud, but he was not very good at it. He kept getting caught. His first prison sentence was in November 1934. He was released in December 1935. In 1936, he moved to London, hoping for a fresh start. For a time, he worked as a chauffeur for a young man named William McSwan. Haigh was convicted of fraud again in November 1937. He was released in 1940. He then worked as a fire watcher, alerting the fire brigade when necessary. However, in 1941 he was sent to prison again. He was released in 1943.

It has been suggested that Haigh may have been affected by his experiences during the German bombing, and that is what turned him to murder. Or maybe the third time he was sent to prison, he was determined not to get caught again. This time, Haigh obtained acid from the prison workshop. He also obtained dead mice that prisoners caught. He carried out experiments by dissolving dead mice in acid. It had obviously occurred to him that you could destroy a human body that way.

Haigh foolishly believed that he could not be convicted of murder if there was no body. He was wrong. English law does not require a body to prove murder. Haigh often said that murder could not be proved without a corpus delicti. But he misunderstood the Latin phrase. It does not mean a human body; it means a body of evidence.

This time, after being released from prison, Haigh turned to murder. His first victim was William McSwan, who had employed him previously. The two met, apparently by accident, and renewed their friendship. On 6 September 1944, Haigh lured William to a basement and hit him over the head with an iron bar. He finished off McSwan and placed his body in an oil drum. He then filled it with acid. After two days, William's body had dissolved into sludge, which Haigh poured down a drain.

Haigh told William McSwan's parents that their son had disappeared to avoid conscription. Haigh then persuaded them to employ him as a rent collector. On 2 July 1945, he lured William's father to a basement, where he killed him. His wife arrived about an hour later, and Haigh killed her too. He had two oil drums prepared to dissolve the bodies in.

Afterward, Haigh forged their signatures. He sold their property, and he persuaded people that they had emigrated to Australia. However, Haigh spent huge amounts on gambling and by 1948 he was beginning to run short of money. His next two victims were Dr Archibald Henderson and his wife Rosalie.

On 13 February 1948, Haigh persuaded Dr Henderson to come to a workshop he rented in Crawley, Sussex, by telling him he had an invention to show him. Haigh shot Dr Henderson and placed him in an acid bath. Later, he lured Rosalie Henderson to his workshop. He shot her and dissolved her in acid too. Once again, Haigh forged signatures, allowing him to sell their property. He managed to convince people that the Hendersons had gone to live in South Africa. But Haigh continued his lavish spending, and before long he was running short of money again.

His last victim was Olive Durand-Deacon. In 1949, Haigh was living at the Onslow Hotel in London. Mrs Durand-Deacon was a fellow guest. She was a wealthy widow, and befriended Haigh. She had a scheme to manufacture false fingernails, and Haigh feigned interest. He invited her to come to his workshop in Crawley. On 18 February 1949, Haigh gave her a lift there in his car. When she entered the workshop, he shot her in the back of the head. Haigh placed the body in an acid bath. He then sold Olive's jewellery. He took her Persian lamb skin coat to a dry cleaner.

Haigh then drove back to London. Later, he went back to the workshop and poured out the dissolved body on the ground. But Haigh was becoming careless. The body had not been completely destroyed, and traces of it remained on the ground. Meanwhile, the other residents of the hotel noticed Olive was missing and became concerned. A woman named Constance Lane told the police. They spoke to other hotel residents, and a policewoman, Alexandra Lambourne, was immediately suspicious of Haigh. She persuaded her superiors to check if he had a criminal record. They then found that Haigh had convictions for fraud.

They also discovered that Haigh had a workshop in Crawley. They searched it and found a receipt for Olive's lamb skin coat from a dry cleaner. They also found a recently fired revolver. And they found that Haigh had sold the missing woman's jewellery. Haigh realised the game was up and he confessed to the murder of Olive Durand-Deacon. He also told police about the other murders he committed. However, Haigh hoped he could escape execution by pretending to be insane. He claimed to be a vampire and that he drank the blood of his victims.

The police searched the ground around Haigh's workshop in Crawley. Despite his boast that he had destroyed the body of Mrs Durand-Deacon, traces of it were found, including animal fat, which does not dissolve in acid. Olive had been suffering from gallstones, and a layer of fat surrounded them and protected them from the acid. There were also fragments of foot bones (they probably survived because the body was not completely immersed). Most telling, the police found a denture, which a dentist identified as belonging to Olive.

Haigh went on trial on 18 July 1949. Haigh pleaded not guilty due to insanity. But the jury was most unlikely to accept his plea since he obviously killed people for their money. Nevertheless, the defence called Dr Henry Yellowlees, who said that Haigh was a 'paranoaic'. However, the prosecution lawyer asked Dr Yellowlees if Haigh knew he was doing something punishable by law. Yellowlees was forced to admit that he did. The prosecution lawyer then added 'Punishable by law and therefore wrong?'. Yellowlees had to say yes.

The jury found Haigh guilty of murder, and he was sentenced to death. John George Haigh was hanged on 10 August 1949.

Infamous Last Words

 I quite often read that an infamous murderer said something just before they were hanged, only to find out later that it almost certainly isn't true. Before he was hanged the poisoner William Palmer is supposed to have said 'Are you sure this thing is safe?'. But nobody who was present at his execution ever mentioned him saying that. The story that he did first appeared long after he was dead. Another poisoner called Thomas Neill Cream is supposed to have said 'I am Jack the ...' just before someone pulled the lever and he was hanged. Again, the same applies. The story first appeared in a magazine long after he was dead and nobody who was actually there ever mentioned him saying that. (In any case, he was in prison at the time of the Jack the Ripper murders).

A Video about Blossom Alley, 1923

 I also made a video about an unsolved murder in Blossom Alley, Portsmouth, in 1923.

Last Juvenile Hanged

 In Britain, the last person under the age of 18 to be hanged for murder was 17-year-old Charles Dobel on 2 January 1889. In 1933, the minimum age for hanging was raised from 16 to 18.