Louisa May Merrifield
Louisa May Merrifield (3 December 1906 – 18 September 1953, née Highway) was a British murderer and the third-last woman to be hanged in the United Kingdom.
She lost custody of all four of her surviving two daughters and two sons when she was sent to prison for 84 days in 1946, having been found guilty of ration book fraud and refusing to pay the £10 fine.
She had been frequently fired or forced to leave owing to her poor attitude to her work and her alleged pilfering.
Soon after the Merrifields took up their jobs, Ricketts was complaining about their lack of care towards her, the shortage of food and that they were spending a lot of her money in the local public houses[12] where Louisa "drank excessively and habitually became severely inebriated".
"[13] Although this evidence is only circumstantial, it does lead to the conclusion that Merrifield was already trying to prove that the elderly Mrs Ricketts was dying of natural causes.
"[11] On reading of the death in the local newspaper, Mrs Brewer reported her conversation with Merrifield to the police.
The police immediately ordered a post-mortem, which discovered that Ricketts had died of phosphorus poisoning, attributed to the rodenticide Rodine.
When the police searched the bungalow, they did not find any poison, but inquiries at a local chemist's revealed that Louisa Merrifield had recently purchased Rodine.
[8][11] Following the police investigation, the Merrifields were arrested and were jointly charged with murder before being committed to the Manchester Assizes for trial.
During the trial, the largely deaf Alfred Merrifield appeared to be confused by the proceedings while his wife, who was confident that she would be acquitted, seemed to be revelling in the attention.
"[16] Professor J. N. Webster was called as an expert witness on behalf of the Merrifields and he stated that, in his opinion, Ricketts had not died from poisoning but from the necrosis of the liver.
The jury were unable to reach a verdict on Alfred Merrifield, whom the judge described as a "tragic simpleton"[17] and he was acquitted and eventually released from prison.
[8] The evidence against the Merrifields was largely circumstantial, but what little there was had been exacerbated by Louisa's actions and her boasts of an inheritance while Ricketts was still living.
When Louisa accused Ricketts of bedding Alfred, the judge called her "a vulgar and stupid woman with a very dirty mind."
[10] The anti-death penalty campaigner Violet Van der Elst petitioned the Home Secretary David Maxwell Fyfe by letter to commute Louisa's death sentence to life in prison.
[18] Days before her execution, Louisa and Alfred were reconciled and she was visited in her cell by her husband to whom she said: "Goodbye, Alfie.
[8] As was the practice, her body was buried in an unmarked grave alongside other executed felons within the prison walls of Strangeways.
[23] Following his wife's execution, the "tragic simpleton" Alfred Merrifield suddenly became very astute and continued to live at the bungalow while he fought a legal battle with Ricketts' daughters for a share of its value, gaining one sixth in 1956.
He then lived in a caravan and became a regular attraction at Blackpool’s Golden Mile beachfront side-shows billed as 'The Murderess's Husband' talking about his wife and the murder of Mrs Ricketts.
[27][11] He always maintained that he was unaware of his wife's activities and told crime writer Richard Whittington-Egan that "the old bugger" would have poisoned him next for his share of the bungalow.
