Joseph King

Forty one year old Joseph King was a bricklayer, who shared a lodging house with several people, including one Annie Sutton and her young son Henry. Both King and Sutton were single and he asked her many times for a date but she repeatedly refused him. On 20 January he discovered that she had accepted a date from another lodger and during a jealous quarrel, he killed her and her son by cutting their throats with such force that he almost severed their heads. Tried before Mr Justice Hawkins at the Old Bailey, his defence was insanity based on the fact that he had suffered a severe head injury many years earlier. The jury found him guilty but recommended him to mercy. None was granted and he was hanged by Berry at Newgate on the 21st March 1887.