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Three women hanged for poisoning their husbands in 1836: Harriet Tarver

29 September 2016Naomi Clifford

The first of a series of three posts looking at poisoning murders committed by women in 1836.

HARRIET TARVER

Hanged at Gloucester on 9 April 1836, for the poisoning murder of her husband Thomas.


noel arms chipping campden by stephengg on flickr
The Noel Arms, Chipping Campden. Thomas Tarver worked in the stables and fell ill here after eating cold rice pudding. © stephengg (flickr), published under a CC 2.0 Licence

Harriet, 21, and her 24-year-old husband Thomas, an ostler, lived in Chipping Campden, Gloucestershire. The marriage was bad. Thomas had deserted Harriet at least once, forcing her to apply to the parish for relief. They quarrelled frequently.

On Friday 11 December 1835, after eating a breakfast of cold rice pudding, Thomas set off from home, arriving at the stables of the Noel Arms at 4.30am in ‘perfect health’ and started to clean a horse. After ten minutes he started retching and vomiting.

‘How queer I am taken this few minutes,’ he said to his colleague George Cooper. Sweat was pouring off him and he was complained of acute stomach pain and a raging thirst.

How to make rice pudding, from Cookery and Domestic Economy for Young Housewives, Chambers, 1862.
How to make rice pudding, from Cookery and Domestic Economy for Young Housewives, Chambers, 1862.

He staggered home, stopping on the way at his friend William Holland’s house, where he declared that he was so thirsty that ‘if he did not alter he should soon die.’

Two days previously Thomas had swallowed two home-made pills made of laurel leaf (bay), sweet nitre (ethyl nitrite) and flour, which William had made to treat his own illness (probably a cold). Thomas declared that ‘he liked to try the virtue of everything.’ Now Thomas was clearly seriously ill so William rushed off to the pharmacist, described to him Thomas’s symptoms and asked for two ounces of ‘salts’. Thomas drank the mixture but threw it up. Someone must have fetched Harriet for at one-thirty, she went off to fetch John Franklin Irons, the local surgeon.

Flowering laurel, by J.J. or J.E.Haid, c.1750, after G.D.Ehret. Courtesy of Wellcome Library, London. Copyrighted work available under Commons Attribution only licence CC BY 4.0
Flowering laurel, by J.J. or J.E.Haid, c.1750, after G.D. Ehret. Courtesy of Wellcome Library, London. Copyrighted work available under Commons Attribution only licence CC BY 4.0

Irons found Thomas lying on the bed fully clothed. He was in deep pain, with a ‘heat in his stomach’ and a terrible thirst. His pupils were dilated and he dipped in and out of consciousness. Irons prescribed brandy and left. He was back half an hour later and Thomas died shortly afterwards.

Downstairs, a worried William, who feared people would think that he had killed his friend with his home-made cold remedy, had a conversation with Harriet.

‘It’s a very serious job,’ said William to Harriet, ‘and people seem as if they would get me in trouble through it.’

‘I hope to God they will find nothing in him, and then nobody will get into trouble,’ replied Harriet.

When Thomas’s sister Elizabeth arrived at the house she found Harriet sitting by the fire. ‘I hope he [Thomas’s body] will not be opened,’ said Harriet and told her that the neighbours were saying that William’s pills had killed him.

But having pushed the blame towards William, Harriet then could not object to Irons’ request to open Thomas’s body, which he did, at the house. Irons immediately noticed that the stomach was inflamed and removed it, along with its contents – half a pint of dark liquid – which he took to his surgery at home and tested. The results were inconclusive, so four days after Thomas died, he set off for Stratford to consult Dr Thomas Thompson.

The following April, at Harriet’s trial, Dr Thompson spent some time  describing the state of Thomas’s stomach and the extensive analysis he performed on its contents. His tests yielded 49 grains of ‘sulphuretted arsenic’, the equivalent of 28 grains of metallic arsenic.

Gloucester Crown Court, built 1816.   © Copyright Pauline E and licensed for reuse under this Commons Licence.
Gloucester Crown Court, built 1816.  ©  Pauline E and licensed for reuse under this Commons Licence.

Witnesses described seeing Harriet buy arsenic from Mr Cherry, the grocer in Campden, about a week or ten days before Thomas fell ill. She said she needed it to poison rats. Sarah Smith, a shopkeeper, told the court that Harriet had bought a rice pudding from her a couple of days before Thomas fell ill.

The jury took an hour to find Harriet guilty and sentence of death was passed on her. Out of kindness, the judge refrained from admonishing her but encouraged her to use the rest of her time to pray and to ask for God’s mercy.

Awaiting execution, Harriet was penitent, ‘attentive to her religious duties’ and owned up to the crime. At 10am on the morning of her death, she took the sacrament. The hanging was scheduled for 11.30 but Harriet did not emerge from Gloucester gaol until 11.55. A large crowd had gathered to watch her die (it was market day). On the scaffold she appeared to be faint and was seen moving lips as if in silent prayer.

The noose was not aligned correctly so ‘her struggles were excessively violent for several minutes.’

The couple left a baby daughter, aged about 12 months.

References

Gloucestershire Chronicle, 9 April 1836

diagram of childbirth (cross-section), 1821.

“Is she or isn’t she?” How an age-old plea of pregnancy saved women from execution

Women and the Gallows review: Ripperologist

Beatrice Parvin on Women and the Gallows

My guest blog for Geri Walton: Women on trial for infanticide

Basic Instincts: The art of Joseph Highmore at the Foundling Museum

1814: Murder or manslaughter? The trial of Mary Ann Adlam

Horace Cotton: The extraordinary Ordinary of Newgate

Three women hanged for poisoning their husbands in 1836: Sophia Edney

Three women hanged for poisoning their husbands in 1836: Betty Rowland

Recipe for rice pudding (19th century)

Three women hanged for poisoning their husbands in 1836: Harriet Tarver

black and white etching (?) of an 18th century in a mob cap.

The bloody career of Maria Theresa Phipoe

Monochrome (sepia) photograph of the writer George Eliot - middle-aged Victorian woman with bad teeth, hair centre parted

The confession of Mary Voce, who inspired George Eliot

Gangs of Market Drayton: Ann Harris (1828)

Charlotte Newman and Mary Ann James

The end of Frances Thompson, a dealer in false banknotes

The Coffee Grinder Bernard de Hoog (1867–1943) McLean Museum and Art Gallery

Susannah Holroyd: Serial killer

Ann Hurle’s story: The execution of “a young woman of education”

The birth of the pound note and the fate of Sarah Bailey

The hazards of hiring: Melinda Mapson

‘Frenzied despair’: Sarah Pugh murders her daughter

Ann Mead: The life and death of a nursemaid

Pregnant and condemned: Pleading the belly and the jury of matrons

William Hone on the case against Elizabeth Miller, who mistook arsenic for oatmeal

The Norfolk Murders, Part 2: Catherine Frarey and Frances Billing

The Norfolk Murders, Part 1: Mary Wright

Sarah Chandler: The one that got away (1814)

Ann Baker, hanged for stealing sheep (1801)

Mary Thorpe: First woman to be executed in the 19th century

Mary Morgan: “A Provincial Tragedy” (1805)

1802: Maria Davis and Charlotte Bobbett, who dropped a baby on Brandon Hill, Bristol

Ann Heytrey: hanged at Warwick for murdering her mistress

Charlotte Long, hanged in 1833, for setting fire to haystacks

Hannah Palmer: Executed with her brother for the murder of his wife (1801)

illustration of hanging outside newgate prison

Mother of 8 Ann Woodman, condemned to death for uttering forged banknotes

old print of elizabeth fry reading to prisoners in newgate

Harriet Skelton’s letter to the Bank of England

courting couple 1802

“A Warning to Thousands”: Sarah Lloyd

old print of elizabeth fry reading to prisoners in newgate

Harriet Skelton – “Chosen for death”

Child-stripping and child stealing in the Regency

47 cases of infanticide at the Old Bailey

inquest on margaret hawse

The death of Frances Colpitts – Part 2

sir richard birnie

The death of Frances Colpitts

keelmans hospital newcastle

1829: The cost of executing Jane Jameson

eliza fenning broadside detail

Eliza Fenning: Guest post at All Things Georgian

murder of mr steele from newgate calendar

1807: The execution of Holloway and Haggerty: tragedy upon tragedy

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Simeon Morris says

    13 August 2018 at 8:23pm

    Can you tell me where you found reference to the conversations between Harriet and other persons concerned please? Harriet is a relative of mine, and I couldn’t find much about her.

    Reply

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