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Murder by Starvation: The gruesome Death of Harriet Staunton
“Can you tell me,” enquired Mr Louis Staunton of the local postmaster, “whether Forbes Road, Penge, is in the county of Surrey or Kent?”
It was a question that, later, he surely regretted asking, overheard as he was by a relative of his deceased wife, Harriet. Staunton needed to know where her death should be registered. He did not know that he would shortly be on trial, with three co-conspirators, for her murder.
It was a story that shocked the nation and roused the medical community to a passion.
On 16th June 1875 Harriet Richardson, as she had been born, was married to Louis Staunton. It was certainly not a love match on his part. Having met Harriet only a little while previously, and knowing that she had inherited a significant amount of money from a distant relative, Louis certainly knew that her money would become his. His new wife experienced intellectual challenges — learning difficulties — which at one point had led her mother to attempt to make her a ward of court and hence manage her daughters’ life, through a declaration of lunacy by the Court of Chancery. However, that effort failed, and so Harriet’s mother was unable to prevent the wedding.
Yet this was no regular marriage. The fact is that Louis Staunton had for some time been involved with a fifteen-year-old girl named Alice Rhodes. Staunton did live with Harriet in Brixton for a time but then bought a house near to his brother where he then lived with Alice. Harriet was secreted in an upstairs room with Patrick and Elizabeth and not allowed out. Notwithstanding this arrangement Harriet became pregnant and gave birth to a son. After a less than a year the child was admitted to hospital in London, malnourished and bruised, where he died.
Harriets’ mother was rebuffed in any efforts she made to see her daughter. Louis wrote insulting letters to her telling her to stay away.
A few days after the death of her son, Harriet was moved by the Stauntons to the house in Penge. The day after the move she died. The doctor said the cause of death was apoplexy. But the person who overhead Louis at the post office sent a telegram to Harriets’ mother telling her to visit the house in Forbes Road. When she did so she found a malnourished, decaying…
