Fanny Adams - Murder

Murder

On 24 August 1867 at about 1.30 pm, Fanny's mother, Harriet Adams, let the eight-year-old Fanny, her friend Minnie Warner (aged 8) and Fanny's sister Lizzie (aged 7) go up Tanhouse Lane towards Flood Meadow.

In the lane they met Frederick Baker, a 29-year-old solicitor's clerk. Baker offered Minnie and Lizzie 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 hops field, out of sight of the other girls.

At about 5 pm, Millie and Lizzie returned home. Neighbour Mrs Gardiner asked them where Fanny was, and they told her what had happened. Mrs Gardiner told Harriet, and they went up the lane, where they came upon Baker coming back. They questioned him and he said he had given the girls money for sweets, but that was all. His respectability meant the women let him go on his way.

At about 7 pm 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 removed. Her eyes had been thrown into the nearby river. Her torso had been emptied and her organs scattered (it took several days for all her remains to be found). Her remains were taken to a nearby doctor's surgery at 16 Amery Street, where the body was put back together; some claim the address to be haunted by the little girl.

Harriet ran to The Butts field where her husband, bricklayer George Adams, was playing cricket. She told him what had happened, then collapsed. George got his shotgun from home and set off to find the perpetrator, but neighbours stopped him.