Frederick Baker

[IhartU]

Newspaper article from England 1867

The prettiest little 7-yerar old village girl, with long flaxen hair and cornflower blue eyes, was found by horrified villagers in the following pieces: Her bloody head stuck on a hop-pole with the eyes gouged out and one ear torn off. Her chest, severed at the diaphragm, with the heart scooped out. Her arm, deposited separately, with two copper ha'pence pieces clutched in one hand. One foot, dropped in a field of clover. Her eyes, recovered from the nearby River Wey. Her heart, lying on its own.

It is assumed the river has taken all other remains. Her missing lower abdomen makes it impossible to say whether she had actually been interfered with.

The man resposible was solicitor's clerk Frederick Baker. He used his tea break on a Saturday in August to walk through the meadows near the hop-field, and finding Fanny Adams playing with two friends, gave the girls ha'pence to run races for him; He sent the other two girls home while he took Fanny into the hop-field.

He appears to have battered the child with a laege stone, and then cut her apart with his penknife. After which he went and had some beer and returned to his office where he wrote in his diary: "killed a young girl. It was fine and hot."

He was unable to explain bloodstains on his cuffs. His suggestion that his knife was to small for butchering the child was counterred with the observation that Fanny was a very small child. He was hanged at Wincheser.

THANK GOD THIS PERSON WAS CAUGHT. HE PROBABLY WOULD HAVE CONTINUED TO KILL!

[crouton]

What was wrong with him??????

[coldethyl]

Just goes to show that horrific murderers aren't just a product of our times.

Awful.