Last updated 14:08, Sunday, 23 March 2008

MARY Anne Finley died in 1886. For the last few days of her life she’d been nursed by her 31-year-old daughter, Elizabeth Berry.

She’d quit her nursing job to look after her. Mrs Finley went into a rapid decline. She died, just eight days later. Her doctor certified that she’d died of a stroke.

Elizabeth Berry, then jobless, went along to the Wesleyan Insurance Society to collect the £100 insurance payout. She also collected £13 from another burial society.

These details were revealed during the inquest on Mrs Finley, which was held in Rochdale in 1887 – a year later.

And there was more. Her own doctor told the court that Mrs Finley had been reasonably healthy, before her daughter arrived.

It was also came out that, the day before her mother’s death, Elizabeth Berry had purchased two quantities of atropia, a poison extracted from deadly nightshade, from local chemists.

The chemists didn’t know her name, but they did remember that she had been a hospital nurse.

The local doctor agreed with the two experts’ conclusion that Mrs Finley had been poisoned. “A verdict was returned of wilful murder against Elizabeth Berry.”

So what did Elizabeth Berry make of this verdict?

We don’t know. Because she was languishing in Liverpool’s Walton Gaol, waiting to be hanged for the murder, by poisoning, of Edith Annie Berry, her 11-year-old daughter.

She’d first married Mr Welch, father of Edith Annie. He died on active service in Afghanistan. She then married a Mr Berry. At the time of the trial, he was dead. He’d died rather suddenly. One paper commented, rather acidly, that “it is not certain whether he was insured.”

And her young son? He was also dead. He’d passed away after a three day illness, caused, she claimed, “after his sleeping in a damp bed in Blackpool.”

After Berry’s death, she trained as a nurse at Manchester Infirmary. She was, so the press reported, “a very clever, accomplished, fascinating woman, who can play and sing.”

After Berry’s death she’d got her claws into an unnamed curate - who didn’t fancy matrimony. So she sued him for breach of promise. He, wishing to keep his name out of the papers, coughed up £150.

She was a socially outgoing young woman. She’d even gone along to a Policemen’s Ball! Some nerve!

The murdered girl had been living in Manchester with a Mrs Sanderson. This arrangement cost Berry £12 per annum. Quite a financial commitment, as she was only being paid £25 pa for her nursing job at Oldham Infirmary.

She took her daughter away to live with her at the Infirmary on November 29, 1886. By January 4, 1887, she was dead.

Elizabeth Berry was alone with Edith in the surgery, where drugs were kept, on New Year’s Day. They were later seen in the “sitting room.” Edith was vomiting and crying out “Oh, mamma, I cannot drink it!” At the time, Elizabeth Berry had a tumbler in her hand.

Dr Paterson, the workhouse surgeon, prescribed a mixture of iron and quinine and ordered Annie to be put to bed. He looked in later that evening, but she was no better.

She was so much improved the next morning that he’d commented on it to her mother, telling her “that there was every prospect of her recovery.” Later that afternoon, the vomiting returned and, rather ominously, “a blister was noticed on the upper lip.”

Edith died – in agony. The inquest found that “death was the result of some irritant or corrosive poison being administered a day or two before death.”

Elizabeth Berry claimed Edith was not insured. She lied! Two days later, she collected £10 from the insurance company. She’d expected a payout of £100 – but, and she didn’t know this, the insurers hadn’t agreed to her proposal.

She was executed on March 14, 1887. Dressed in black silk, she was led to the scaffold by two female warders.

It was there she met James Berry, the hangman. They had met each other before, many years earlier. Indeed, they’d danced together. Remember the Policemen’s Ball!

Their second meeting was brief. At 8am exactly, James Berry pulled the lever and Elizabeth Berry was launched into eternity.

It was just another job for James Berry, who, was responsible for the execution of Rudge, Martin and Baker, the Netherby trio. He was well known in Cumberland.

He was, after all, a media celebrity. His every morbid achievement was recorded in the papers. But “Mr Berry hangs Mrs Berry!”- it was a caption writer’s dream.