by Bernard Phillips
Part Four

The Final Chapter

The Trial and Execution
of Frances Billings aged 46 and Catherine Frary aged 40

Elizabeth Southgate had gone to the Taylors' house to pay her last respects to her dead friend.  She found Kate Frary talking to Peter Taylor.

"I thought we should have got on," Kate was saying, "But now I don't know."  "I hope we shall," Peter Taylor replied.  He turned to Mrs. Southgate.  "Have you heard anything about the coroner coming?"   "No," she lied.  "Why do you ask?"  "Why?   Because they talk about opening my wife."  "Opening your wife?   Why should they want to do such a thing?"

And open her they did.  Francis Church, the Burnham surgeon, slit her swollen abdomen, pointing out to an uneasy Mr. Cremer (the doctor who had attended Bob Frary and Mary Taylor) signs of inflammation on the stomach and bowels.  The stomach was removed and carried across to the chemist's shop where Henry Nash was waiting to conduct tests which showed that the stomach and its contents "were heavily impregnated with arsenic, quite sufficient to destroy life."  The flour from the Taylors' cottage was also tested, as was a dumpling retrieved from the privy.  There was arsenic everywhere, in everything.

Meanwhile, on the Sunday morning, with Mary's body scarcely cold next door, Jim Billing came home from church to find that Fanny had a savoury dumpling waiting for him on the hob.  Somehow, he said, he couldn't fancy it.  He didn't seem to be hungry.   But he did take some tea in which he noticed a white powder.

Conversation turned to the recent deaths next door.  Jim repeated village gossip and Fanny flew at him.  They wouldn't harm her Pete!  She's made sure of that.  She'd "swear the peace" against her husband and she'd "do his business" for him "before twelve months to an end."

She nearly "did his business" that night.  As he sat in chapel during the evening service, waves of pain, sickness and diarrhoea swept over him and he staggered home.  Fanny was unsympathetic;  the next morning she went to the magistrates to carry out her threat, prepared to "swear the peace" against him.

But the Burnham magistrates - Archdeacon Bathurst, Henry Blyth and F. Hare - had other things on their mind that morning.  The Coroner, Francis Quarles, was on his way from Foulsham.  A jury had to be found and sworn.

Later that night, the jury returned a verdict that Mary Taylor had been poisoned by persons unknown.  Her body was buried next to Bob Frary's and the magistrates enquiry began in earnest - with the arrest of Fanny Billing who was on her way to South Creake where Mrs. Webster (for whom she had been buying arsenic) lived.

As Peter Taylor was led through the crowded public room of the Hoste Arms, blacksmith John Claxton heard Kate Frary call out:  "There you go, Pete!   Good luck!  Hold your own and they can't hurt you!"  And as Fanny Billing climbed into the carriage to Walsingham, Kate cried:  "Hold your own, mor, and they can't hurt us!"

That, at least, was the remark which reached the local press.  It was never substantiated in court.  but it was enough for the magistrates who now turned their attentions to the circumstances surrounding Bob Frary's recent death.  Hannah Shorten, the "cunning woman" from Wells was also taken into custody and questioned.

As soon as she heard of the arrests, Kate Frary hurried into the Billings' cottage where she found Fanny's sons Joseph and Samuel.  She begged them to hire a pony and gig to drive her across the county to Salle, to ask the famous "wise woman of Salle" to tie the prison keeper's tongue so that he could not question their mother.

The Billing boys asked Kate whether their mother had been implicated in any crime.  Kate swore Fanny was innocent.  "So why shouldn't she be questioned?" they replied, refusing to help.

Kate Frary's distrust of Fanny Billing's lively tongue was well justified:   Fanny had already concocted a complicated story which threw all the blame for all the deaths on Kate.  It was a preposterous tale but it threw the wheels of justice out of true for a while.

Kate, too, was soon in custody, her husband's body exhumed from its grave in Burnham Westgate churchyard.  Francis Church reported that it looked "as fresh as if buried but a day".  There was inflammation and ulceration of the stomach.   Mr. Nash's arsenic tests again proved positive.  Later, all his experiments were corroborated by Mr. R. Griffin, the  equivalent of today's Home Office pathologist.

It was at this stage that an attempt seems to have been made on Kate Frary's life.  Her symptoms certainly resembled poisoning.  At any rate, when Peter Taylor and Fanny Billing were brought before Mr. Justice Vaughan at the April Assizes in Norwich, he was told that she was too ill to be moved from Walsingham prison.  The official "visitors" to the prison - Sir Henry Blyth, Archdeacon Bathurst and the novelist Captain Marryat from Langham - regretted the increase in expenditure the delay had caused.

Mr. Justice Vaughan agreed to a postponement, "although I am one of those who consider that punishment should follow hard on the heels of guilt."   Not," he hastened to add, "that I am offering an opinion as to the guilt or innocence of the accused - that would be quite improper - but I do feel justified in remitting the trial".

The postponement of a trial on a capital charge was indeed a rare occurrence at a time when a rush to judgement was normal.  It led to a curious legend still current in Burnham Market, that Kate was pregnant and could not be hanged.  So it was not until August 7th 1835 that Fanny and Kate stepped into the dock at Norwich.  The Grand Jury had "ignored the bill" against Peter Taylor.  The defence lawyers were encouraged by the disorder into which the prosecution team had been thrown by this surprise verdict which was probably due to Fanny's elaborate "confession."   In fact, most of the damning evidence against Taylor was produced after his two lady friends - the only witnesses who might have refuted it - had been hanged.

The trial was soon over, the inevitable verdicts returned.  Phoebe Taylor, Edward Spark, William Powell, Ann Webster, Henry Nash, Samuel Salmon, Albert Cremer, Francis Church, Joseph Billing, John Claxton, Mary Lake and Hannah Shorten all testified, giving their version of events in Burnham six moths earlier.

"There is little doubt that these poor infatuated creatures expected to be acquitted," said the Norfolk Chronicle.  "In all probability they placed considerable dependence on the power of witchcraft and its influence, even on the trial."

"An ignominious end"

The learned judge seemed deeply affected while putting on the black cap to pass sentence.  Billing seemed earnestly praying, Frary had to be held up.  "You have both been leading profligate, abandoned and vicious lives," he told them.  "And for the gratification of your guilty lusts hesitated not to make a sacrifice of human life.   This wicked course which is sure to be overtaken sooner or later by the hand of justice has at last brought you to an untimely and ignominious end."

The death sentence was passed and the widow Frary was dragged screaming from the dock.  "Her shrieks, soon after her removal from the court, were of the most distressing nature."  But Fanny seemed calmer.  "She left the bar unassisted, with thoughts deeply fixed on external things."

The rest of the story - the execution of the two women by Calcraft; the arrest, trial and death of Peter Taylor - has been told on previous pages of these 'Annals of Crime'.

Burnham Market's hour of notoriety was over.  Let the final word go to an anonymous pamphleteer of the time:  "In drawing the curtain upon this awful tragedy, the author hopes that it may operate as a serious and powerful warning against the indulgence of similar profligacies;  he trusts that its publication will enable parents widely to hand it down to their children, as a beacon to future generations, to avoid the evils which brought the above unhappy culprits to such an ignominious end."

©  Bernard Phillips