Louisa May Merrifield

Louisa May Merrifield ( Highway; 3 December 1906 – 18 September 1953) was a British murderer and the third-last woman to be hanged in the United Kingdom. She was executed by Albert Pierrepoint at Strangeways Prison in Manchester for poisoning her elderly employer. She was notorious at the time as 'The Blackpool Poisoner'.

By the time of her execution, Merrifield had been married three times. She married her first husband, Joseph Ellison (1905–1949) in 1931 and with him had six children. Two of them, Horace Ellison (1932–1933) and Ernest Ellison (1943–1944), died in infancy. She lost custody of all four of her surviving two daughters and two sons when she was sent to prison for 84 days in 1946, having been found guilty of ration book fraud and refusing to pay the £10 fine.

Joseph Ellison died in 1949, aged 44, owing to sub-acute infective hepatitis. Merrifield subsequently married 78-year-old Richard Weston on 6 February 1950. He died 10 weeks later of a heart attack. Two of her husbands were older men, and she had been married three times in 10 months.

On 12 March 1953, Louisa and Alfred Merrifield were employed as house-keeper, handyman and live-in companions to 79-year-old Sarah Ann Ricketts. Ricketts lived in her bungalow at 339 Devonshire Road in Blackpool. Ricketts was a widow, whose two husbands had both committed suicide by gassing themselves in the kitchen. Ricketts was ), and was described as a difficult woman with a short temper. Ricketts had a habit of changing her will whenever a beneficiary annoyed or upset her. Soon after the Merrifields took up their jobs, Ricketts was complaining about their lack of care towards her, the shortage of food and that they were spending a lot of her money in the local public houses where Louisa "drank excessively and habitually became severely inebriated". Although this evidence is only circumstantial, it does lead to the conclusion that Merrifield was already trying to prove that the elderly Mrs Ricketts was dying of natural causes. However, the letter was dated two weeks before Ricketts had actually died. Merrifield's friend Jessie Brewer testified that three days before Ricketts died, Merrifield had told her: "We are landed. We went to live with an old lady and she died and she's left me a bungalow worth £4,000 ... It was all left to me, until that old bugger got talking to her and then it was left to us jointly ... I made everything all right. It cost me £2. 2. 0d to get a Doctor to prove she was in her right mind."

Elizabeth Barraclough, who "was a complete stranger" to Louisa, testified that, while waiting in a bus queue, Louisa had told her that "she was very worried because she was looking after an old lady who was very ill" and after returning the previous day had found "her husband in bed with the old lady, and was messing about with her and this had got her vexed". She is quoted as having said "if this goes on again, I'll poison the old bugger and him as well... She's leaving me the bungalow between me and my husband, but he's so greedy he wants it all on his own."

Professor J. N. Webster was called as an expert witness on behalf of the Merrifields and he stated that, in his opinion, Ricketts had not died from poisoning but from the necrosis of the liver. However, the damage was already done and, after deliberating for just six hours, the jury found Louisa Merrifield guilty of murder and the judge sentenced her to death by hanging. The judge described her crime "as wicked and cruel a murder as I ever heard tell of." On the other hand, the jury was unable to reach a verdict on Alfred Merrifield, whom the judge described as a "tragic simpleton" and he was acquitted and eventually released from prison.

The anti-death penalty campaigner Violet Van der Elst petitioned the Home Secretary David Maxwell Fyfe by letter to commute Louisa's death sentence to life in prison. She wrote: The husband ... posed as a kindly and simple old man, never spoke – and it seemed as if this old man had been made use of by his wife and had been made to do things under her stronger will. This was not true; he was a cunning old man acting a part in court, but if one could judge of the two people, I would consider that the old man was the most guilty ... He never troubles about his wife being condemned to death. He thinks, to look well he will take her a few flowers, but she can see through him and refused to see him.

Days before her execution, Louisa and Alfred were reconciled and she was visited in her cell by her husband to whom she said: "Goodbye, Alfie. Look after yourself and God bless." and the third-to-last woman to be hanged in the UK. As was the practice, her body was buried in an unmarked grave alongside other executed felons within the prison walls of Strangeways. Rebuilding work took place at Strangeways Prison in 1991, after the riot of the previous year; during this process, the remains of 63 executed prisoners (of which 45 were identifiable, including Merrifield) were exhumed from the prison cemetery and cremated at Blackley Crematorium in Manchester. The cremated remains were re-interred in two graves (plot C2710 and C2711) in the adjoining cemetery. In her will she left £45 13s 9d to her son Oswald Ellison, a brickworks labourer.

Following his wife's execution, Alfred Merrifield continued to live at the bungalow and fought a legal battle with Ricketts' daughters for a share of its value, gaining one sixth in 1956. He then lived in a caravan and became a regular attraction at Blackpool's Golden Mile beachfront side-shows billed as 'The Murderess's Husband' talking about his wife and the murder of Mrs Ricketts. and was paid £200 for his own waxwork to stand beside hers. Alfred Merrifield died on 24 June 1962 at the age of 79.

Merrifield's case featured in the television true-crime documentary series Murder by the Sea. It is also referenced on her neighbour Ian McKellen's episode of Inside the Actors Studio.