"Many Photos" - Victorian poisoner 'Sally Arsenic' may have been hanged after unsafe conviction for attempted murder

An Essex woman infamously accused of killing her husband with arsenic may have been wrongly sentenced by poisoned words.

Sally Arsenic, real name Sarah Chesham, could have 'fallen victim to a miscarriage of justice' after legal and medical experts reviewed her conviction from 1851.

She was put to death in a public execution on March 25 in 1851 at Chelmsford jail after being found guilty of attempting to murder her husband Richard.

She was the last woman to be put to death in England for attempted murder. 

At the time it had been rumoured she was responsible for killing her two sons, whose bodies were found to contain poison.

Descendant of Sarah Chesham, Rosalind and Stephen Powell (pictured), pay their respects at her gravesite as her conviction is revisited

The case was one of hundreds during the Victorian poison panic which centred on  the village of Clavering in Essex.

But experts for a new TV investigation say that small traces of arsenic in her supposed victims were not uncommon in the human body at the time.

The case was re-examined by Jeremy Dein QC and will feature on BBC series Murder, Mystery and My Family.

In an interview on the programme, retired judge David Radford ruled the verdict from Chesham's trial 'cannot stand', because it was 'affected by prejudice and unproven allegations'.

The episode of Murder, Mystery and My Family which looks at 'Sally Arsenic' and the poison panic will air on BBC One this Wednesday.

She was put to death in a public execution on March 25 in 1851 at Chelmsford jail after being found guilty of attempting to murder her husband Richard. (Pictured) Clavering church in Essex where she was buried

Chesham's descendants have said they were inspired by the advice to pursue the case to clear her name. 

Rosalind Powell and her husband Stephen, from Hampshire said they have written to Justice Secretary David Gauke to ask about applying for a posthumous pardon.

'We were glad that we got an unsafe verdict and we now want a posthumous pardon for Sarah,' they told the Sunday Telegraph. 

'We had a gut feeling that we had enough evidence to get an unsafe verdict, but it was putting it in a way that would convince the judge that Jeremy so elegantly did.'

The episode also revealed that despite husband Richard's cause of death being marked as tuberculosis, Chesham reputation in the village was tarnished. 

During Victorian Britain's 'poison panic', 167 people were charged with murder or attempted murder by poison between 1840 and 1850. 

The 'Sally Arsenic' episode of Murder, Mystery and My Family will air on BBC One this Wednesday.

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News Photo Victorian poisoner 'Sally Arsenic' may have been hanged after unsafe conviction for attempted murder
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