Edith Mary Porch-Carew: Murder By Arsenic

Edith Mary POrch was born 1 May 1868 in Langford, Somerset, England, to John Albert Porch Esq (1833-1914) & Margaret Bagehot (1843-1910).

She was tried and convicted in Yokohama, Japan, she was convicted of murder of her husband, and sentenced to death but later was commuted to life in prison, she was also moved several times and finally back to England. 

 

Walter Raymond Carew

(1853–1896) Married

21 Apr 1889 • Glastonbury, St John, Somerset, England

Children:

Marjorie Hallowell Carew

1891–1978

Benjamin Hallowell Carew

1893–1906

Maud Hallowell Carew

Here's a photo of Walter

Here is link to the case:

https://curiosity.lib.harvard.edu/studies-in-scarlet/catalog/41-990043837140203941

Here's also a link the the Lost Casebooks of Sherlock Holmes

https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Lost_Casebooks_of_Sherlock_Holmes/pJaFwyY4uQAC?hl=en&gbpv=0

Here are some lovely old newspaper articles on the sensational crime of national importance. 

https://www.newspapers.com/clip/46049834/edith-carew/

https://www.newspapers.com/clip/43620314/edith-may-carew/

https://www.newspapers.com/clip/46049953/edith-carew/

https://www.newspapers.com/clip/46050009/edith-carew/

Walter Carew was the manager of the Yokohama United Club in Japan. Edith was convicted after a trial by jury in the British Court for Japan. She was sentenced to death but the sentence was commuted to life imprisonment. She served 14 years in jail in England before her release. The story of the murder and trial is told in the book, Murder on the Bluff.

Below is an old post post from Japan during the time she was there.

Edith's father John Albert Porch

Here's a book written on Edith and the murder of her husband...Did she do it??? Or was it a mystery woman in black who had come for a visit?

https://www.google.com/books/edition/Murder_on_the_Bluff/rGJTxP1_LCIC?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=Walter+Raymond+Carew&pg=PT5&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q=Walter%20Raymond%20Carew&f=false

In a small white house by a remote Welsh cove, a 90-year-old woman died, full of secrets, on June 27, 1968. What no-one ever guessed was that the dignified and distant old lady, who kept a liveried chauffeur and bred Bedlington terriers, was a convicted murderess. More than half a century before, in Yokohama, Japan, she had been sentenced to death by hanging for the murder of her husband. Daughter of the Mayor of Glastonbury, and a relative of Winston Churchill, Edith Carew had married unwisely, and, reaching the end of her tether, the 28-year-old wife and mother of two rid herself of her swarthy diplomat husband (the “dirty dog” Walter) by poisoning him with arsenic. She was sentenced to death, but escaped the hangman. She was brought back to England and imprisoned alongside the celebrated Victorian murderess, Florence Maybrick. The Carew case has never been properly investigated before and Molly Whittington-Egan now reveals the answers to such puzzles as the identity of the 'woman in black' who bought arsenic from the Japanese chemist; the 'mysterious visitor', who stood crying at the door of the House on the Bluff, and would not give her name; of who wrote the strangely- anonymous letters which said that 'dead men tell no tales, nor dead women either'. Few such notable crimes remain untouched, and, until now it has been one about which no real information was available, and no book about it has been written. The author has succeeded not only in obtaining rare documentation from Japan, providing full data about the arrest and trial in Yokohama, but has also done a massive research job in tracing the hitherto hidden aftermath history of the murderess. She has, too, most unusually found Edith Carew's diary for 1896, the year of the murder. It is miraculously intact.

Walter Raymond Carew Find A Grave Memorial

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/104181219/walter-raymond_hallowell-carew

What a sad incredible story, she never remarried and she was of  a royal line. I didn't want to write too much I wanted to add the facts from the newspaper articles and end my story with the book which mentions her diary. I want you as the reader to come up with your own conclusions on her and her crime. Leave me comments would love to know your thoughts.