Dark Valleys by Gary Dobbs

Author:Gary Dobbs [Dobbs, Gary]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781473861787
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: Pen and Sword
Published: 2016-11-22T00:00:00+00:00

The Baby Farmer

In August 1907 Rhoda Willis marked her forty-fourth birthday by becoming the first and only woman to be hanged at Cardiff Prison. A dubious honour indeed, but history also records her as the last woman to be hanged in Wales, and the last baby farmer to hanged anywhere in the United Kingdom. By all accounts she showed great fortitude and remained calm as Henry and Thomas Pierrepoint led her to the scaffold.

A few months earlier she had been going by the name of Leslie James and was employed as a live in housekeeper at 55 George Street in Pontypool. Her employer was David Evans, a cobbler who was estranged from his wife and had decided to employ Rhoda after finding that single-handedly managing both a business and home was too much for him. With someone to take care of domestic duties for he would be free to pursue his business interests. The woman he knew as Leslie James was an extremely attractive woman, with large expressive eyes and thick auburn hair, and the two became very close. Eventually they would become lovers but for the sake of propriety they kept their dalliance secret. To the outside world the relationship was that of employer and employee.

The truth about Rhoda Willis was that she had been born Rhoda Leselles in Sunderland on 14 August 1863, and had taken the name Willis when at the tender age of nineteen years, she had married a marine engineer named Thomas Willis. They had set up the marital home in Grangetown, Cardiff and by all accounts lived happily with a daughter blessing their union. That happiness though was to be shattered in 1895, when George Thomas fell in and died. Rhoda then met another marine engineer named Leslie James and they set up home together, though they were never married. In time the relationship developed and they had two children before problems arose and they separated.

For a while Rhoda brought up her children alone, but she found this increasingly difficult. The result of this was that she left the children with relatives and adopted the name of Leslie James, done so she claimed so as not to bring shame on her family, and moved onto Pontypool. This was where she met David Evans and started along the road that would lead her to the hangman. Rhoda decided early in March of 1907 that she needed to earn extra revenue and by using her feminine wiles on David Evans, she was able to persuade him to allow her to take in a child for a financial consideration. No doubt Evans was dubious about this but the woman was able to perfectly manipulate him and he agreed to the idea.

It was on 20 March of that year that the following advertisement appeared in the ‘Miscellaneous Wants’ section of the Evening Express:

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