How Scotland Yard finally nailed a teenage serial killer

An extraordinary tale from the Met Police archives reveals how a 15-year-old nanny was able to murder at least five children and even a series of family pets...

- Simon Read

0N WEDNESDAY, April 19, 1871, the Morning Advertiser informed its readers that Detective Sergeant Henry Mullard of L (Lambeth) Division, while testifying at an inquest into the death of a toddler, "stated a series of facts so startling as almost to exceed the bare possibility of belief".

On the afternoon of April 7, John Beer and his wife went out to dine with friends and left their three children in the care of 15-year-old nursemaid Agnes Norman, whom they'd hired three days earlier. The couple returned home at midnight to hear screaming upstairs.

Rushing to investigate, "they found a child undressed on the floor and another dead between the bedstead and the wall". The dead child was 14-month-old Jessie Beer.

The family's physician was of the opinion she had suffocated but could make no determination as to the cause.

Mullard elicited a collective gasp from the coroner's court when he said police inquiries suggested Agnes had killed at least four other children, along with "three dogs, a cat, a parrot, a number of goldfish and nearly a dozen fancy birds".

Given the age of the accused, the press were sceptical.

The Morning Advertiser, which was a daily paper in the capital, proclaimed: "We do not wish for one moment to assert our belief in this catalogue of horrors. In the last instance, the child might have fallen out of bed and been suffocated between the bed and the wall. Such things do occur.

"But either Detective Sergeant Mullard has been listening to a number of romances and cruel groundless scandals, or the tragic suggestiveness of his story is of a nature to curdle the blood with horror and take away the breath."

The coroner's jury also dismissed DS Mullard's claims and returned a verdict "that the deceased died, accidentally caused".