The Murder Of The Most Well Known Person You’ve Never Heard Of
Only 8 years old, abducted, murdered and dismembered — her name lives on but the crime is all-but forgotten
Have you ever heard the expression ‘Sweet Fanny Adams’? These days, it has come to mean ‘nothing’ or ‘nothing at all’ but it started with a different meaning and it relates to a little 8 year old English girl who was brutally murdered and whose body was dismembered, body parts scattered, in an unsophisticated but bloody and violent crime in 1867.
Her murderer, 24-year old Frederick Baker, was caught almost immediately and was to be dead himself before the end of the year, hanged outside the County Jail on Christmas Eve.
How it came about
August 24 1867 was a beautiful, warm summer day near the town of Alton in southern England.
Alton was a sleepy little town. It had already been in existence for more than 1,000 years when these events took place and it was a peaceful place with little crime and certainly no murder within living memory.
It is not unreasonable, then, that their mother Harriet let 8 year-old Fanny and her 7 year-old sister Lizzie go away from their house to play, meeting up with another friend, Minnie Warner…
