Local girl Fanny Adams savagely and tragically murdered

The admission was the sole entry in the diary of Frederick Baker on Saturday, 24th August, 1867. And those few words, renowned in British casebook history, condemned the Hampshire solicitor's clerk.

At 8am on Christmas Eve, Baker was executed in front of a bawdy crowd of some 5,000 people, mostly women, in what transpired to be Hampshire's last public hanging.

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The murderer today would have been classified as insane and sent to Broadmoor but then the law took its inevitable course.

His tragic victim was innocent Fanny Adams, just eight-years-old and the fourth eldest of six children of George Adams, an honest and industrious bricklayer in Alton, and his wife, Harriett.

Fanny had set off with her younger sister, Elizabeth and seven-year-old Minnie Warner to play in The Hollow - now known as Flood Meadow - at the rear of a tan-yard, about 400 yards from their homes in Tanhouse Lane.

It was about 1pm when the trio were accosted by Baker, conspicuously dressed in a black frock coat, tall black hat, light waistcoat and trousers, befitting a copying and engrossing clerk with the local firm of Clement and Son. His breath however reeked of alcohol.

Baker, who had a sallow complexion and looked younger than his 29 years, tried to bribe Fanny with a halfpenny to accompany him up The Hollow, an old road or bridleway leading to Shalden by the side of a hop garden. He then persuaded Minnie with three halfpence to leave with Elizabeth.

Fanny refused to accompany him but Baker grabbed her by the hand and led her away crying. The other girls remained in the area, playing until about 5pm.

When Fanny did not return home, a search party was set up. Her mother, frantic with worry, rushed to the Butts where her husband was playing cricket, but collapsed on the way from exhaustion and had to be carried home by friends who alerted him.

She however summoned the energy to join the group who had not ventured far when they encountered Baker.

"What have you done with Fanny?" she demanded.

"Nothing," he replied.

"You gave Minnie three halfpence to leave you with Fanny," she persisted.

"No, I did not," he insisted. "I gave her three halfpence to buy sweets which I often do with children."

She snapped: "I have a great mind to give you in charge of the police."

Baker nodded: "Mrs Adams, you may do as you like." and with that, walked on.

His quiet demeanour and respectable position appeared to soothe Mrs Adams who returned home but Fanny was not there. The reason soon became horrifyingly evident. Entering the hop garden, the party found a pool of blood and then 60 yards on, under a high hedge, they discovered Fanny's head, lying on two hop poles. The remainder of her dismembered body was discovered strewn around the fields.

Friends told the father who instantly returned home and arming himself with a shotgun, went in search of the clerk but could not locate him and heartbroken returned to Tanhouse Lane where the weapon was taken away from him.

Supt. Cheyney arrested Baker the same evening at work and asked if he had heard about the gruesome killing, coolly replied: "Yes, they say it's me. I am innocent." But spots of blood were plainly visible on both his wristbands and trousers.

Baker was held in custody over the weekend and then appearing before Edward Knight, one of Hampshire's senior magistrates, was remanded in custody for a further four days. In the interim, police discovered the incriminating diary. Confronted by the evidence, he admitted it was his handwriting but protested: "I didn't mean to write it down like that. I was intoxicated at the time after I saw the woman."

The identity of 'the woman' has never been resolved but he probably saw her in his imagination. He explained that after six years as a teetotaller, he had succumbed to the temptation of alcohol and when in a state of semi-drunkenness, had displayed signs of insanity.

At Fanny's inquest, conducted at the Duke's Head, the handcuffed Baker sat on a sofa, showing complete indifference to the proceedings, though he continually moved his fingers and perspired.

The hearing heard from witness after witness who testified they had seen him either at or near the scene of the murder and after retiring for 15 minutes, jurors returned a verdict of wilful murder. Two days later, he reappeared at the magistrates court where he asserted: "I am not anxious to answer the charge at present. I am innocent as the day I was born."

During the short hearing, virtually everyone was in tears, unlike Baker who was committed to stand trial at Hampshire Assizes. A large crowd had gathered outside Winchester station to meet the evening train but realised they had been outwitted by the police who had feared for Baker's safety. He had been transported by cab which they chased up Romsey Road, pelting it with stones.

No sooner had he been placed in his cell at the new prison, he wrote a letter to Fanny's parents expressing his deep sorrow at his actions but denying he had violated her.

His trial opened on Thursday, December 5. Arraigned in an atmosphere of "breathless anxiety," he pleaded not guilty in a firm, though not very clear voice.

Montague Bere, appearing for the Crown, made a short opening address, urging jurors to forget what they had previously heard or read about "the brutal circumstances" of her demise. His case ended on the afternoon of the second day with nothing startlingly new for the press corps who had attended the committal proceedings.

The defence submitted at the time Baker was suffering from an uncontrollable impulse, a hereditary taint of the family. In a two-hour speech, Mr Carter alluded to the illness that afflicted his father, a Guildford tailor, which had once caused him to attempt to kill his son and daughter with a poker. His cousin was insane and his sister had died from a brain fever. Baker was "a weak, puny, excitable character" who had tried to kill himself by drowning after an unsuccessful love affair.

Former police Sgt John Davis said Baker would often accompany him on his beat. "He would make peculiar faces. Sometimes all of a sudden, he would make a grim face, break off the conversation and go off."

Carter's efforts were in vain. It took the jury just 15 minutes before the foreman announced "guilty." Baker listened with apparent concern as Mr Justice Mellor passed the sentence of death for "this dreadful crime, committed under circumstances and in a manner rarely heard of in this country."

In the condemned cell, Baker finally confessed, explaining he had been angered by Fanny's crying, revealing how in a desperate bid to escape, she had been hanging with her head downwards over his right shoulder when he stabbed her in the throat with a penknife. Dropping her onto the ground, he immediately decapitated her "without consideration" and washed the blade in the river.

On the eve of his execution, he wrote to a friend: 'It is with a trembling hand heart overcharged with grief that I take up my pen to address you by the endearing name of a friend for the last time in this world. 'What am I now? A wretched culprit condemned to a death of shame with tomorrow's sun by the hands of a common hangman for a crime which renders me an outcast from both God and man - for murder, for sending a poor defenceless little girl before her Creator.

'I have prayed to God for pardon and I trust I shall be forgiven. Thanks to the worthy authorities of the gaol for their kind attention to me. Dear friend, I wish this letter to be made public.

'From a guilty but repentant culprit, Frederick Baker.'

Baker met his final moments in front of the country jail with composure, unlike the ghouls who sang with gusto from printed broadsheets.

'You tender mothers pray give attention. To these lines words which I will relate. From a dreary cell, now I'll mention. A wicked murderer has now met his fate.

'This villain's name it is Frederick Baker. His trial is over and his time has come!

'On the gallows high, he has met his Maker, to answer for that cruel deed he has done

'Prepare for death, wicked Frederick Baker, for on the scaffold, you will shortly die.

'Your victim waits for you to meet your Maker - she dwells with Angels and her father on high

'On that Saturday, little Fanny Adams, near the hop garden with her sister played

''With hearts so light they were filled with gladness, when that monster Baker towards them strayed

'In that heart of stone not a spark of pity, when he to those halfpence to the children gave

'But now in gaol in Winchester city, he soon must die and fill a murderer's grave.'

After the hanging conducted by William Calcraft, Baker's body was cut down and he was buried within the precinct of the prison.

Fanny herself was buried four days after her death, the service carried out by the Rev W Wilkins, Curate of Thedden and attended by hundreds of people. Her gravestone, erected by public subscription, reads: 'Sacred to the memory of Fanny Adams, aged eight years and four months, who was cruelly murdered on Saturday, August 24, 1867.'

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