TODAY marks the 150th anniversary of one of Alton’s most brutal murders, the killing of eight-year-old Fanny Adams on August 24 1867, and whose name was to become known worldwide but for macabre reasons.

Fanny, who lived with her family on Townhouse Lane, had been playing with her younger sister, Lizzie, and her friend, Minnie, near the town tannery, where her grandfather worked, when they were approached by 29-year-old solicitor’s clerk Frederick Baker.

He persuaded them to walk to Flood Meadow where he watched them play before giving the two younger girls money and sent them off home. Fanny was asked by Baker to go with him but when she refused he picked her up and carried her into a hop field.

Soon after, Fanny’s body was discovered in the hop field in Flood Meadow and it is thought Baker killed her by hitting her with a large stone, but he returned to mutilate the body.

That afternoon he was found by the police drinking with an office colleague in The Swan in Alton and arrested. There were only a few spots of blood on his clothing.

While in prison Baker, who it is said wrote an apology to Fanny’s father George, a skilled bricklayer working for Dyers, the local builders, for killing his daughter. Dyers made the headstone for Fanny’s grave after the money was raised by public subscription.

At his trial, Baker’s defence tried for an insanity plea citing their client’s terrible childhood at the hands of a violent father, but the jury took just five minutes to find him guilty.

He was hanged outside Winchester Prison on Christmas Eve, 1867. It was the last public hanging outside the prison and 5,000 people came to watch.

Fanny was buried in Alton cemetery and her family then moved away from the town, her mother refusing to ever come back but her father, in his old age, came back at a time when he was living in Farnham Workhouse.

Her name became famous in a macabre way when sailors, who had been issued with revolting tinned mutton, after hearing of the murder, began referring to it as the remains of Sweet Fanny Adams. However, in the Second World War soldiers used her initials in a derogatory way “Sweet F*** All”.

Peter Trowell, from Four Marks, who has carried out some research into the incident, is currently working on a screenplay. In the process, he has discovered that some of what has been written is incorrect, and there is additional information that rarely gets mentioned.

For example, following Baker’s execution, an artist from Madame Tussauds attended Winchester gaol, took a death mask, and within 10 days his likeness was put on display in Madame Tussauds’ Chamber of Horrors in Baker Street – item 223 in their 1868 catalogue.