Career
Her motive was asserted to be to obtain £11.5s from a life insurance policy which she had taken out on Caroline. At 18 or 22 years old (reports differ), she was the youngest woman to be hanged in the United Kingdom in the "modern era" (after the 1868 reform act, so non-public, and also by the "long drop" method). The Metropolitan Asylums Board passed a resolution calling for clemency.
Some newspapers, including the Daily Mail under the headline "A One-sided Investigation", asked for a reprieve.
Three questions were asked in the House of Commons in relation to her case, and more than 100 MPs signed a petition that her life be spared. However, the Home Office was unwilling to reprieve a poisoner, this murder being considered a premeditated act, and poisoning an especially heinous crime under English law.
In 1900, her case was cited in an academic study of the limits to criminal responsibility.