Murder of Fanny Adams

On the afternoon of 24 August 1867, eight-year-old Fanny Adams went with her sister Lizzie and her friend Minnie Warner to Flood Meadow on the northern edge of Alton, Hampshire. The girls encountered Frederick Baker, a 29-year-old solicitor's clerk employed locally, who gave the children small sums of money and picked blackberries for them. When Lizzie and Minnie left for home, Baker approached Fanny, and after she refused to accompany him, he carried her into a nearby hop garden. Lizzie and Minnie's account of the day was initially dismissed by adults, and it was not until evening, when Fanny had failed to return home, that a search began.

A labourer, Thomas Gates, discovered Fanny's head placed on hop poles while working in the garden. Further searching recovered her dismembered remains scattered across the field; injuries described at the time included severed limbs, removal of internal organs, and other extensive mutilation. Police Superintendent William Cheyney was alerted and, after learning Baker had been seen with the children, arrested him at his employer's office that evening. Baker was found with two small knives and bloodstains on his clothing. A diary entry attributed to Baker for that date read, "Killed a young girl. It was fine and hot."

An inquest opened on 27 August 1867 at the Dukes Head Inn in Alton under Deputy County Coroner Robert Harfield, with testimony from Minnie Warner, Fanny's mother Harriet, and a neighbour, Mrs. Gardner. The inquest concluded Baker was responsible, and he was committed to Winchester gaol. Subsequent forensic examination, including testing by A. S. Taylor at Guy's Hospital, found human blood on Baker's knives and clothing, though experts later concluded the small knives alone would have been insufficient to cause all of the injuries and that another weapon must have been used. A local surgeon, Lewis Leslie, who examined the remains, suggested the likely cause of death was a blow to the head with a stone.

Baker's trial took place at Winchester on 5 December 1867. The defence disputed witness identification and the sufficiency of the knives as a murder weapon, and argued a defence of insanity citing family history of mental illness. The judge, Justice Mellor, invited the jury to consider a verdict of not guilty by reason of insanity, but the jury returned a guilty verdict after fifteen minutes of deliberation. Baker was hanged outside Winchester Prison on 24 December 1867, before a crowd estimated at 5,000 people, in what was the last public execution held at that prison. Before his death, Baker wrote to the Adams family expressing sorrow for what he described as an act committed "in an unguarded hour."

Fanny Adams was buried in Alton cemetery, with a headstone raised by public subscription. The case gained lasting cultural notoriety in Britain, contributing to slang usage of her name in later decades.