Page 10 - Gen Mag Online November 2020

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She held the girl’s face down in the stream and drowned her in less than a foot of water.

Frances’ father and her husband who had come to collect his wife and daughter started searching
for them. Frances got back to her parent’s house just before William returned and he immediately
noticed that Louisa was not with her. Neither William nor his mother could get a satisfactory
explanation from Frances as to Louisa’s whereabouts. She ran upstairs to her bedroom and was
discovered by her father, having changed into dry clothes. He found her previous clothes which
were very wet and muddy but could get nothing out of her regarding Louisa. In view of the history of
violence towards the girl, he and William decided to go to the police. Constable Aspinall returned
with her father and husband and took Frances into custody on suspicion of Louisa’s murder. The
constable questioned her and she told him that Louisa had fallen into a ditch after being frightened
by passing horses near Cobb’s Bridge.

A search was organised and little girl’s body was soon discovered. It was removed to the Ship Inn
to await an inquest and Frances was charged with murder. The coroner’s inquest opened the next
day and heard various witness testimonies which led to a verdict that Louisa had been murdered by
her mother. She was thus taken before the magistrates for a committal hearing who remanded her
in custody to appear at the Kent Spring Assizes at Maidstone. She was transported to Maidstone
prison the following day, suffering fits during the journey and having to stop at Ashford Police Station
until they subsided. She remained on remand for over six months and was ministered to by the
chaplain, Reverend W. Fraser, who managed to teach her to read and get some grasp of religion.
William did not visit her on remand and it was rumoured that he had started a new relationship with
Frances’ younger sister who had been helping him look after Emma.

Frances’ trial took place at Maidstone on the 12th of March 1868, before Mr. Justice Byles and
was to last six hours. She had a court appointed barrister, Mr. Channell, to defend her. The

prosecution brought in evidence of
the widespread abuses of Louisa
and of previous threats to kill her.

A local doctor who had examined
Louisa at the Ship Inn told the court
that the girl had died from drowning
but that he had found no marks of
violence on her body.

Mr. Channell suggested to the jury
that some of the witness evidence
against Louisa, whilst not actually
lies, may well have been
exaggerated, but made little of the
injuries sustained in the accident
Maidstone Gaol, Kent. One of the oldest with the horse and cart and the
prisons in Britain having been in operation for effect of them on her.
over 200 years. Originally the county gaol it
Frances clung to her defence of the
was converted to a prison in 1740. two of them being frightened by the

horse and of Louisa falling into the water, from where she claimed she had tried to rescue her.

Mr. Justice Byles made a careful summing up and told the jury that they were to give Francis the
benefit of the doubt if they were not wholly satisfied with the largely circumstantial evidence against
her. All of this was rejected by the jury, after just twelve minutes of deliberation.

Francis had shown an interest in the proceedings and particularly in the judge’s summing up, but
was calm when she was sentenced to death and walked unaided from the dock. He was hung by
William Calcraft, the then ‘Official Hangman’ on the 2nd April 1868.