Kate Dover

Felicia Dorothea Kate Dover (1855 – 26 March 1925) was an English woman who was tried for murder and convicted of manslaughter in 1882 following the death of Thomas Skinner from arsenic poisoning. She was trained as an artist at Sheffield School of Art and was skilled in drawing flowers. She was popularly known as the Queen of Heeley due to her artistic interests and her standard of dress.

Kate Dover
Born
Felicia Dorothea Kate Dover[1]

1855 (1855)
Sheffield, United Kingdom
Died (aged 69)
Rotherham, United Kingdom
NationalityBritish
OccupationHousekeeper
EmployerThomas Skinner
Known forArsenic poisoning of employer
TermLife
Conviction(s)Manslaughter
Criminal chargeMurder
PenaltyPenal servitude for life
Details
VictimsThomas Skinner
Date6 December 1881
Date apprehended
18 December 1881
Imprisoned atWoking Female Prison
11 February 1882
Released before 1901.

In 1880, at age 25, she become the housekeeper of etcher Thomas Skinner, aged 61. Despite the difference in age, he was considered her "sweetheart" and said to be courting her "with a view to marrying her".[2] In 1882, Kate Dover was tried for murder and convicted of manslaughter following the death of Skinner from arsenic poisoning.[3] Her trial was a major event at the criminal court in Leeds Town Hall; it was attended by many people and attracted significant newspaper coverage.

Dover's counsel for the defence, Frank Lockwood, employed the "clever defence"[4][5] of stating that she had given Skinner arsenic, but had not done so with a clear intent to kill him. Instead of being hanged for murder, she was sentenced to penal servitude for life.[5][4] Her sentencing was in line with a trend against the use of the death penalty, in which the defendant's character was seen as relevant in determining sentences.[6][7] Kate Dover served her sentence at Woking Female Prison, and was released by 1901. In her remaining years, she lived with her sisters at Rotherham, dying unmarried.

Family background
The trees on the right mark the former site of 4 Thirwell Terrace, Kate's home
A bread platter of the type made in Sheffield in the 19th century

Kate's paternal grandparents were gardener George Dover (born Norwich ca.1798), and his wife Sarah (born Norwich ca.1802). Kate's father was Charles Dover (St Paul's, Norwich, 1826 – Eccleshall, 1891), the third of 10 siblings.[1]

Charles was a wood carver[1] and joiner who specialised in wooden platters.[nb 1][8][9][10][11] He was possibly associated with the wood carver, and bread and butter platter maker, Frederick William Dover (St Paul's, Norwich, ca. 1834 – Ecclesall, 1917) of Burgess Street, Ecclesall Bierlow, who shared the same trade and origins.[12][13][14][15] The making of carved sycamore bread and butter platters and wooden knives had been introduced to Sheffield around 1851 by Prince Albert.[16][17]

The Dover family, then, fit a pattern common to the Sheffield area. In 19th-century Sheffield, manufacturing in skilled trades such as wood carving was family-based: most family businesses were 'born small and remained small' and often employed both sons and daughters.[18] The main industries of Sheffield focused around the production of iron and steel. Sheffield was a primary centre for cutlery, plate,[19] and specialised tools, including woodworking tools.[20] Sheffield also supported a well-established woodworking and furniture industry.[20] By the end of the 19th century, however, carvers and gilders were losing work to mechanisation.[18]

Charles Dover's place of business was Oak Street in Heeley in 1865.[nb 2][21] The Sheffield Daily Telegraph said of him that "there was not a more respectable man in the neighbourhood." Around 1880 Charles Dover published a "small volume of prose and poetry – not a little of it very meritorious indeed."[1][22]

Kate's mother was Catharine Nunn (Snape, Suffolk, 1827 – Rotherham, 1894), daughter of Jonathan Nunn (Snape, ca. 1791 – Norwich, 1866),[23] a candle rush manufacturer and later a grocer.[11][24][25][26][27] Charles and Catharine married in Haslingden on 5 May 1846.[28] Kate had two elder sisters: Mary Ann Sarah (Knightsbridge, 1848 – Rotherham, 1923)[29][30] and Amelia Henrietta Charlotte (Sheffield 1851 – Rotherham 1918).[11][27][31][32]

Early life and education

In 1851, before Kate was born, the family was living in at 29 Jessop Street, Sheffield.[33] Kate Dover was born in Sheffield in 1855.[27][34] From at least 1861 until 1883 the family was living at 4 Thirlwell Terrace, Heeley, Nether Hallam, Sheffield.[nb 3][35][36] At the age of nine years, she wrote a "small book called God's Love."[37]

As an adult, Kate was 5 ft 1.5 in (1.56 m) tall.[38] She was a student of Sheffield School of Art, and many of her flower pictures showed "considerable merit".[37] She professed herself to be a vegetarian and teetotaller.[39] She was "a prominent member of the Good Templars", at the Excelsior Lodge, Sheffield.[37]

She was known as the "Queen of Heeley", due to her taste in cosmetics and paints,[40] and her liking for fashionable clothes.[41] "The keynote to her character [was] extreme excitability ..." Before her appointment with Skinner, "she was accustomed to dress well, and sometimes with a good deal of taste; and she came to be popularly known as the Heeley Queen," but by the end of their acquaintance her clothes had "become very shabby".[42]

Employment

In 1880, Dover was managing a confectioner's shop,[11] or a spice shop, in London Road, Sheffield.[2]

In 1882, she became housekeeper to widower Thomas Skinner (1819–1881) of Sheffield, who was a well-to-do inventor, etcher, and painter.[11] Skinner may have taught her his trade, as he had done with his previous housekeeper.[11] It is not known whether he used her drawing talent as an asset in his designing processes, although etched flower designs were used on cutlery.[43][44]

Crime and trial
Main article: Crown vs Kate Dover
24 Glover Place, where the crime occurred

On 6 December 1881, Dover killed her employer and "sweetheart",[39] Skinner, by cooking him a roast dinner with arsenic in the stuffing.[11] Dover and Skinner had had a turbulent relationship,[41] and Skinner's former housekeeper Jane Jones disapproved of Dover's behaviour in the house,[2] and may also have disapproved of their plans to marry.[11]

At her trial, which took place in Leeds Town Hall before justice Lewis Cave, Dover's counsel for the defence, Frank Lockwood, employed a "clever defence".[4][5] He argued that Dover had nothing to gain, but, on the contrary, everything to lose by the death of Skinner.[7] He suggested that Dover's motive for the poisoning might not have been to kill, but to make Skinner ill and blame Jones for it, thereby undoing the influence of the objector to the marriage.[11]

The importance of character

Her sentencing was contentious,[3][45] but it was also in line with a trend against the use of the death penalty, in which the defendant's character was often taken into account in determining sentences.[6][7]

She was a working-class but well-educated artist in an industrial town, with the virtues of regular employment, temperance and an attractive and fashionable appearance.[42][11] Her demonstrated artistic[46] and letter-writing skills suggested that she was intelligent.[47]

At the same time, she was apparently ignorant of the potential effect of up to an ounce of arsenic in a dish of onion stuffing, and ignorant of the amount of arsenic which might safely produce only harmless symptoms. Moreover, she did not attempt to find out either of these things.[11] No evidence was shown regarding any plans for the outcome of her use of arsenic, should Thomas Skinner become ill or should he die, and when Skinner appeared to be dying she panicked. The Court case did offer explanations and gave a pronouncement on some of these matters.[11]

Other aspects of her character were also described in ways that were inconsistent or contradictory. Before the crime, she was a regular member of a temperance society and there is no suggestion that she ever drank alcohol.[37] Yet she was apparently content to obey her employer's instructions to supply his daily requirement of ale,[11] and to meet him willingly in a public house,[39] a type of place which respectable women did not enter alone at that time.[48]

She went home from the house of her "old sweetheart",[39] Skinner, to her parents every night, apparently leading a socially respectable life.[11] Yet others criticised actions such as "sitting on Mr Skinner's knee" as lewd and inappropriate.[2]

Her honesty was questionable. She told untruths when purchasing the arsenic, saying that she planned to use it for colouring artificial flowers.[7] She may also have allowed her mother to perjure herself in court on her behalf.[49]

Verdict and sentence

Lockwood was successful in convincing the jury to view Kate Dover sympathetically. The jury returned a verdict convicting Dover of manslaughter because intention to murder could not be proved, rather than murder. This result was considered to be "surprising".[50]

The jury was criticized in Gideon's Law Notes for its "extraordinary conduct"; both the "influence of the eloquence of counsel" and the attractiveness of the defendant were suggested to have "blind[ed] the jury as to their duty". It was stated that Kate Dover "was goodlooking and young, and the jury, taking a merciful view of a very strong case of poisoning, found her guilty of manslaughter only."[45]

When determining her sentence, Justice Cave expressed his clear disagreement with the jury's decision, by giving her the most severe possible sentence, penal servitude for life. It was stated in the British Medical Journal that "Coupling the sentence with the verdict, the conclusion is irresistible, that the judge thought the jury had taken a very lenient view of the matter."[50] He described her actions in as follows:[3]

Kate Dover, the jury adopted a view which was presented to them by your learned counsel, and they found you guilty of manslaughter; but the circumstances of your offence are so grave and so atrocious that they are separated but by a very thin line from the offence of murder. In such circumstances I must pass upon you the heaviest sentence in my power, and that is that you be kept in penal servitude for the term of your natural life."[3]

Imprisonment and remaining years

Dover served her sentence at Woking Female prison.[51] She was released some time after 1895. After leaving prison, or at least by 1901,[52] Kate lived with her sister Mary and her brother-in-law Edwin Sissons, a baker-confectioner, at 19 Carlton Avenue, Rotherham.[52] By 1911, Kate had moved and was living at 423 Bardsley Moor Lane, Rotherham, with her widowed sister Amelia H.C. Eden.[53]

Kate Dover never married. She died aged 69 years on 26 March 1925, of bronchitis and heart failure, at 25 St Ann's Road, Rotherham. She had been living there with her widowed brother-in-law Edward Sissons, who was in attendance at her death.[9] She was buried on 29 March 1925 at Masbrough Cemetery, Kimberworth, West Riding of Yorkshire.[54]

Notes
  1. A bread and butter platter is a decorative antique version of a cutting board for bread, but was used primarily for offering bread and butter at table, and not so much for cutting it in the kitchen.
  2. All 19th-century buildings in Oak Street, where Charles Dover might have worked, have since been demolished.
  3. Thirlwell Terrace was on Plantation Road, postcode S8 9TF. The side of the road containing no.4 was demolished, that side is now trees and grass, but the Wesleyan church on the other side of Plantation Road survives as a mosque. Plantation Road runs from Thirlwell Road to Albert Road, Heeley, Sheffield.

References
  1. "The Sheffield Poisoning Case". Lancaster Gazette. Lancaster, Lancashire, England. 31 December 1881. p. 6. Retrieved 4 October 2019.
  2. "The Skinner poisoning case: Kate Dover before the Stipendiary. Committal to the Assizes". Sheffield Daily Telegraph. British Newspaper Archive. 24 December 1881. p. 6 col6. Retrieved 1 August 2019.
  3. "The poisoning case at Sheffield, sentence on Kate Dover". The Dundee Advertiser. 10 February 1882. p. 10 col7. Retrieved 13 July 2019 – via British Newspaper Archive.
  4. Westley, F. C. (11 February 1882). "A Clever Defence". The Spectator. pp. 180–181. Retrieved 14 February 2020.
  5. Birrell, Augustine (1898). Sir Frank Lockwood: A Biographical Sketch (2nd ed.). London: Smith, Elder & Company. pp. 82-84. Retrieved 14 February 2020.
  6. "Punishment Sentences at the Old Bailey". The Proceedings of the Old Bailey. Retrieved 14 February 2020.
  7. The History of the year; a narrative of the chief events and topics of interest From October 1, 1881, to September 30, 1882. London, Paris & New York: Cassell, Petter, Galpin & Co. 1882. p. 48. Retrieved 25 March 2020. Surprise was expressed in some quarters at the lenient view taken by the jury, but there was compensating satisfaction at the sentence of penal servitude for life passed upon the accused.
  8. "Index entry". FreeBMD. ONS. Retrieved 13 July 2019. Deaths Dec 1891 Dover Charles 66 Ecclesall B. 9c 231
  9. "Index entry". FreeBMD. ONS. Retrieved 13 July 2019. Deaths Mar 1925 Dover Felicia D K 69 Rotherham 9c 801. The death certificate says; 26 March 1925, 25 St Anns Road Rotherham. Felicia Dorothea Kate Dover, female, 69 years. Spinster daughter of Charles Dover platter carver (wood). (1) Bronchitis. (2) Arterio sclerotic heart failure. No post mortem. (Informant) Edwin Sissons brother in law, in attendance, 20 St Anns Road, Rotherham. (Registered) twenty-sixth March 1925.
  10. Madeleine Neave (4 February 2019). "Guide to collecting antique breadboards". Antique Collecting. Retrieved 10 September 2019.
  11. "The Sheffield poisoning case, trial of Kate Dover". Supplement to the Sheffield and Rotherham Independent. Sheffield. 11 February 1882. p. 10 col1. Retrieved 13 July 2019 – via British Newspaper Archive.
  12. "Index entry". FreeBMD. ONS. Retrieved 10 September 2019. Deaths Sep 1917 Dover Frederick W. 83 Ecclesall B. 9c 421
  13. 1861 England Census F.W. Dover 3470/101 p.24
  14. "Important to silversmiths". Sheffield Independent. British Newspaper Archive. 4 March 1862. p. 4 col2. Retrieved 10 September 2019.
  15. "Wanted, a respectable lad". Sheffield Daily Telegraph. British Newspaper Archive. 8 May 1862. p. 2 col1. Retrieved 10 September 2019.
  16. "Conversatzione of the School of Art". Sheffield Independent. British Newspaper Archive. 25 January 1862. p. 11 col3. Retrieved 10 September 2019.
  17. "Large stock of sawn wood". Sheffield Independent. British Newspaper Archive. 25 May 1850. p. 4 col3. Retrieved 10 September 2019.
  18. Banham, Julie. "Materialising the domestic interior. Sheffield's nineteenth-century furniture industry". Materialising Sheffield: Place Culture Identity. University of Sheffield. Retrieved 25 March 2020.
  19. Jones, Richard (14 May 2017). "How Sheffield became Steel City: what local history can teach us about innovation". Soft Machines. Retrieved 25 March 2020.
  20. Gaynor, James M.; Hagedorn, Nancy L. (2002). Tools : working wood in eighteenth-century America. Colonial Williamsburg Foundation. pp. 1–7. ISBN 9780879350987. Retrieved 25 March 2020.
  21. Montgomery, Alan (March 1988). "Old Heeley: a few notes". oldheeley.org. Adult Education Heeley's history workshop. Retrieved 13 July 2019.
  22. "The poisoning at Lowfield: letters from the accused". Sheffield Daily Telegraph. British Newspaper Archive. 31 December 1881. p. 12 col3. Retrieved 28 July 2019.
  23. "Index entry". FreeBMD. ONS. Retrieved 4 September 2019. Deaths Sep 1866 Nunn Jonathan 76 Norwich 4b 89
  24. "Index entry". FreeBMD. ONS. Retrieved 13 July 2019. Deaths Sep 1894 Dover Catherine 69 Rotherham 9c 325
  25. 1841 Census Jonathan Nunn, Coslany 5/18 p29
  26. 1861 Census Jonathan Nunn, West Wymer 1218/136 p22
  27. "1861 England Census ref.3475/118 p.19". Ancestry.co.uk. 1861. Retrieved 13 July 2019.
  28. "Index entry". FreeBMD. ONS. Retrieved 14 July 2019. Marriages Jun 1846 Dover Charles and Nunn Catharine Haslingden XXI 330. The certificate says: At the Parochial Chapel, Haslingden, Lancaster. 5 May 1846. Charles Dover, woodcarver, and Catharine Nunn, both of full age, bachelor and spinster, both of Haslingden. George Dover, gardener, father of Charles Dover. Jonathan Nunn, Rush manufacturer, father of Catherine Nunn. Both signed the register. Witnesses James Wilding, George Dover.
  29. "Index entry". FreeBMD. ONS. Retrieved 13 July 2019. Births Sep 1848 Dover Mary Ann Sarah Westminster I 447
  30. "Index entry". FreeBMD. ONS. Retrieved 13 July 2019. Deaths Mar 192 Sissons Mary A.S. 74 Rotherham 9c 757
  31. "Index entry". FreeBMD. ONS. Retrieved 13 July 2019. Births Dec 1851 Dover Amelia Henrietta Charlotte Ecclesall B XXII 167
  32. "Index entry". FreeBMD. ONS. Retrieved 13 July 2019. Deaths Mar 1918 Eden Amelia H C 65 Rotherham 9c 872
  33. "1851 England Census ref.2337/280 p.29". Ancestry.co.uk. 1851. Retrieved 13 July 2019.
  34. "Index entry". FreeBMD. ONS. Retrieved 13 July 2019. Births Jun 1855 Dover Felicia Dorothea Kate Ecclesall B. 9c 234
  35. "1881 England Census ref.4640/147 p.41". Retrieved 13 July 2019.
  36. "Sale by order of mortgagees". Sheffield Independent. British Newspaper Archive. 22 September 1883. p. 4 col4. Retrieved 10 September 2019.
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  40. "The Sheffield poisoning case". The Scotsman. British Newspaper Archive. 24 December 1881. p. 7 col4. Retrieved 28 July 2019.
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  42. "The suspected poisoning at Highfield: opening of the inquest, further disclosures". Sheffield Independent. British Newspaper Archives. 10 December 1881. p. 2 col3. Retrieved 1 August 2019.
  43. Hoesch, Patricia (11 November 1999). "San Diegans who collect and sell antique silverware". San Diego Reader. Retrieved 24 September 2019.
  44. "Gorham antique engraved no.8". Sterling Flatware Fashions. Retrieved 24 September 2018.
  45. Gibson, Albert (1882). "Trial by jury". Gibson's Law Notes. Reeves & Turner. 1 (3): 84–86. Retrieved 28 March 2020.
  46. "The trial of Kate Dover, a true bill found". Sheffield Daily Telegraph. Sheffield. 4 February 1882. p. 12 col4. Retrieved 13 July 2019 – via British Newspaper Archive.
  47. "Kate Dover's vision". Liverpool Echo. Liverpool. 10 January 1882. p. 4 col7. Retrieved 13 July 2019 – via British Newspaper Archive.
  48. Harvey, Jarod (1999). "The Public House: Issues of Gender Differentiation and the Use of Social Space". arasite.org. ARA. Retrieved 25 March 2020.
  49. "The Sheffield poisoning case. The trial of Kate Dover at Leeds Assizes. The verdict, from our own reporters. Town Hall, Leeds, Tuesday". Sheffield Daily Telegraph. Sheffield. 8 February 1882. p. 4 col6. Retrieved 13 July 2019 – via British Newspaper Archive.
  50. "The Sheffield Poisoning Case". British Medical Journal. British Medical Association. I: 237–238. 12 February 1882. Retrieved 28 March 2020. Coupling the sentence with the verdict, the conclusion is irresistible, that the judge thought the jury had taken a very lenient view of the matter.
  51. "1891 England Census ref.556/138". Ancestry.co.uk. 1891. Retrieved 13 July 2019.
  52. "1901 England Census ref.4393/98 p.5". ancestry.co.uk. Retrieved 13 July 2019.
  53. "1911 England Census ref.511/10/28052". ancestry.co.uk. 1911. Retrieved 13 July 2019.
  54. "Record transcription. National Burial Index for England and wales". Genes Reunited. 29 March 1925. Retrieved 13 July 2019.
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