12 April

Henri Désiré Landru is born in Paris.

Henri Désiré Landru Executed

A fugitive swindler answered wartime France's lonely-hearts columns. Eleven people who went with him to rented villas outside Paris were never seen again.

The trial opens at the Old Bailey; the charge against Dyson is dropped.

Adelaide Bartlett Acquitted

A London grocer died on New Year's Day 1886 with liquid chloroform in his stomach and no burns in his throat. His wife was tried for murder and acquitted.

Alice Marsh and Emma Shrivell die at 118 Stamford Street.

Thomas Neill Cream Executed

A McGill-trained doctor gave strychnine to young women in south London in 1891-92, then wrote blackmail letters that led Scotland Yard straight to him.

Police arrest Landru, living as 'Lucien Guillet', at 76 rue de Rochechouart in Paris.

Henri Désiré Landru Executed

A fugitive swindler answered wartime France's lonely-hearts columns. Eleven people who went with him to rented villas outside Paris were never seen again.

She dies in New York at the age of 93.

Madeleine Smith Acquitted

A Glasgow architect's daughter, a secret lover, his bundle of letters and three purchases of arsenic. In 1857 the jury said: not proven.