At the time of his first encounter with Harriet he was twenty-three years old and involved in a relationship with a fifteen-year-old girl named Alice Rhodes.

Staunton's younger brother, Patrick, was married to Alice Rhodes' older sister Elizabeth.

Louis Staunton met Harriet through Alice Rhodes' stepfather Thomas Hinksman, a relative of the Richardson family.

Harriet's mother Mrs Butterfield (she had remarried) was strongly opposed to the marriage and made an unsuccessful attempt to have her daughter declared a lunatic[3] and placed under the protection of the Court of Chancery.

Mother and child were confined to a small upstairs room with no curtains, washing facilities or proper furniture.

Mrs Butterfield made efforts to contact her daughter, but when she travelled to Little Grays she was turned away by Louis.

The case attracted great interest, with fashionable ladies scrutinising the accused through opera glasses and refreshing themselves with champagne.

In passing sentence, Hawkins said that the crime was one of the most "black and hideous" on record and commented on the incredible "barbarity" and cruelty involved.

[8] Following the verdict a letter was published in The Lancet, signed by seven hundred physicians protesting about the way that expert medical evidence had been ignored.

[7] In 1934 Elizabeth Jenkins published the novel Harriet based on the case, supporting the view of the presiding judge, Hawkins.

The novel won the Femina - Vie Heureuse Prize in 1935, beating Evelyn Waugh's A Handful of Dust,[10] and was republished in 2012 by Persephone Books.