The Charlotte Bryant Murder Case

Charlotte McHugh was born in Londonderry, Ireland, on 14 February 1903, to a labourer named John and his wife, Sarah. Known as Lottie in childhood, she was the eldest of four daughters. Although her mother could read and write, Charlotte remained illiterate—school attendance was compulsory by law, but rarely enforced. The family was Catholic, though Charlotte had little interest in religion. As a young woman, she was 5 feet tall, weighed 120 pounds, and frequently drew the attention of local men with her jet-black hair, dark eyes, and cheerful charisma.

By the time she was 19, Charlotte was well known to the British troops posted at Londonderry in the early 1920s. The city of Londonderry is now part of Northern Ireland, but at that time, Ireland had not yet been partitioned. There was fierce resentment towards British forces – particularly the Black and Tans, a paramilitary unit recruited into the Royal Irish Constabulary – who were deployed to suppress the Irish Republican Army’s armed campaign for independence. Nationalists often reacted with hostility to anyone seen fraternising with the British, and Charlotte was threatened with tarring and feathering for flirting with the men sent to quell the rebellion.

In 1922 she met Frederick John Bryant, a quiet Englishman from Dorset who was posted to the military police in Londonderry. In his earlier years, he had worked on his father’s farm but had later joined the army and fought in the First World War as a sergeant of the Dorset Regiment, where a bullet wound in the leg had left him with a slight limp. Charlotte and Frederick left Ireland together and were married in Somerset later that year.

Frederick found work as a cowhand in the village of Nether Compton, on the Dorset–Somerset border, earning 38 shillings a week. The job came with a modest farm cottage, and the couple moved in. While Frederick worked, Charlotte gained a reputation as a barfly, spending her days in local inns and taverns, often chatting up the men—a habit that didn’t endear her to the women of the close-knit village.

To supplement Frederick’s low wages, Charlotte began selling sex. Britain’s postwar economy in the 1920s was bleak: by 1921, two million people were unemployed, and wages were falling across the country. In such times, Charlotte may have seen prostitution as a way to support the family. Locals knew her by a string of colourful aliases—‘Compton Liz’, ‘Black Bess’, and ‘Killarney Kate’. That last one was curious. Killarney lies over 300 miles from her hometown of Londonderry, but to villagers unfamiliar with Irish geography, it may have simply been a nod to her accent and heritage.

By 1923, Charlotte had given birth to a son, Ernest, followed by a daughter, Lily, in 1925. Three more children would soon arrive, but it’s unknown how many were Frederick’s. He seemed unconcerned by his wife’s activities, largely because she was doubling his wage every week through casual prostitution. ‘£4 a week is better than 30 bob,’ he told a neighbour, adding, ‘I don’t care a damn what she does.’ Her earnings allowed them to live in relative comfort, buying fruit tarts and salmon and, on occasion, hiring a car at a cost of 30 shillings – almost an entire weekly wage for Frederick’s farm work.

In December 1933, Frederick and Charlotte attended a Christmas party in the village, where they met a man who would play a pivotal role in their future. Leonard Edward Parsons was a tall, grey-haired, blue-eyed travelling salesman who sometimes went by the alias ‘Bill Moss’, visiting fairs and markets to peddle household items and trade horses. He had been in trouble with the law the previous year for getting into a fight and had reappeared in the dock shortly afterwards for selling cows which were unable to produce milk for £25, when they were only worth £3.

He began visiting the Bryants’ home regularly and even joined them for Christmas dinner. During one conversation, Parsons mentioned that he was unsatisfied with his current lodgings, so Frederick suggested he move into their cottage as a paying guest. There were no spare bedrooms, so Parsons slept on a couch in the kitchen, even sharing Frederick’s shaving kit. It wasn’t long before he was also  sharing his wife.

Charlotte quickly fell for Leonard Parsons, and the two began a relationship right under Frederick’s nose. Not long after, Frederick’s employer decided he could no longer tolerate the gossip about Charlotte’s behaviour and dismissed him. The job had included their cottage, so the Bryants were forced to move. Frederick found work as a farmhand for a Mr Aubrey Priddle in the nearby hamlet of Coombe, near Sherborne in Dorset. The family, now with four young children, moved into a smaller, bleaker stone cottage beside the farm, with just two rooms upstairs and two downstairs. Parsons went with them, still lodging on the sofa in the cramped kitchen-living room—and still involved with Charlotte. She neglected the housework and spent most of her time with Leonard, while after work, her lover would even join Frederick at the pub—both men seemingly at ease with the situation.

 

After a while, Frederick told Parsons to leave. Charlotte insisted on accompanying her boyfriend to Dorchester along with two of her children, and the four spent two uncomfortably cramped nights together in a single room. Two days later, Charlotte returned to Coombe Farm with the children but Frederick didn’t even ask where she’d been. Not long afterwards, he changed his mind and told Parsons he was welcome to return, likely because they needed the rent money, and his presence kept Charlotte at home with the children. Parsons sometimes disappeared for days on end as he travelled from village to village selling pots, pans, and linoleum. During these periods, he often visited a 33-year-old woman from the traveller community named Priscilla Loveridge. The pair had known each other for 10 years and had four children together, with Priscilla referring to Leonard as her ‘fancy man’. When Charlotte found out, she was filled with jealousy and insisted on accompanying Leonard on his travels in future, describing herself as his wife. Meanwhile, Frederick was left to look after the children at the farm, but when the lovers returned, he did not complain and even continued sharing his shaving kit with Leonard and drinking with him at the pub.

On 14 May 1935, Charlotte Bryant and Leonard Parsons went to visit a market on business. While they were out, a neighbour heard Frederick Bryant calling out in pain and ran next door to find him shivering and clutching his stomach in agony after eating something his wife had left in the oven for dinner. The neighbour helped him into bed and sent for the doctor, who diagnosed him with gastroenteritis. After four days, Frederick felt better and returned to work. Less than three months later, on 7 August, Frederick suffered another painful bout of gastroenteritis but recovered after a few days.

Around this time, it became apparent that Leonard Parsons was growing tired of his mistress. By now, Charlotte had given birth to a fifth child, most likely fathered by Parsons, but nothing would induce him to stay. One morning in November 1935, Leonard announced he was moving out for good. Charlotte was distraught and spent hours searching the nearby villages for him, but he had completely vanished from her life. Missing the income from Parsons, Mr and Mrs Bryant took in another paying lodger, this time 34-year-old widow Lucy Malvena Ostler. Lucy had seven children, so she and Charlotte took turns babysitting for each other. The tiny cottage was now more claustrophobic than ever, housing 12 children and three adults.

On Wednesday 11 December 1935, Frederick suffered a third bout of agonising stomach pain. Around this time, Charlotte had enquired about life insurance, and an agent named Edward Tuck called at the cottage while Frederick was unwell. Tuck refused to issue an insurance policy as he looked so ill that he was not considered a fair risk. Tuck would later say, ‘He looked like a man who had not much longer to live. His eyes were bulgy and he looked wasting and thin.’

At 8:00 a.m. on Sunday 15 December, Frederick’s employer, the farmer Mr Priddle, was walking past the cottage and complained about the noise coming from all the children. ‘Can’t you keep those children quiet? How many families do you have?’ he asked Mrs Bryant irritably. She replied aggressively, ‘Three dozen if I had the chance. If I had a gun I’d shoot you.’

A few days before Christmas, Charlotte hired a car and drove with her newborn baby 40 miles to Weston-super-Mare, to the travellers’ encampment where Priscilla Loveridge lived. She may have hoped to find Leonard Parsons there, but he was nowhere to be seen. Instead, she confronted Priscilla with the baby and told her that Parsons was the father. Priscilla was forced to admit that the baby bore a strong resemblance to Leonard, but it made no difference – the nomadic salesman was a law unto himself, and even Priscilla had no idea of his whereabouts. He was a man who came and went as he pleased.

Charlotte Bryant returned to Coombe Farm in disappointment. A few days later, her husband Frederick, now 38, endured his final, most torturous bout of illness, describing the pain in his stomach as like a red-hot poker inside him. By the morning of Saturday 21 December 1935, he lay in bed unable to speak, immobilised by the intense, searing pain. Charlotte returned home later that day from a shopping trip to find Frederick vomiting, but she simply stood with her arms folded, offering no care or comfort – a scene witnessed by farmer Aubrey Priddle.

That night, Frederick and Charlotte slept in their bed as usual with the youngest child in the cot by their side, while lodger Lucy Ostler slept in a chair in the corner. At 3:00 a.m., Lucy Ostler awoke and noticed that Charlotte was coaxing her husband to drink some Oxo – a meat extract like a thin broth. In the dim light, she couldn’t see if he drank it or not, but a few minutes later he was vomiting again. Charlotte sent her eldest son to farmer Priddle’s house to ask him to call the hospital. An ambulance arrived to transport Frederick Bryant to Yeatman Hospital, Sherborne, but by the afternoon, Frederick was dead.

The following day, insurance agent Edward Tuck visited the cottage again, unaware that Mr Bryant had died. Charlotte told him, ‘Well, he has gone. I have been a good wife to him, nobody can say I have not, and nobody can say I have poisoned him.’ Taken aback by this remark, Mr Tuck asked, ‘Why would they?’, to which Charlotte replied ominously, ‘Well, you never know what will come of these things.’ On the same day, Charlotte was seen at the railway station asking about the price of a fare to Wellington, Somerset, where she believed Leonard Parsons was now living.

The doctor was suspicious about the death of the previously healthy farmhand and refused to sign the death certificate. An inquest was scheduled for Christmas Eve, and Charlotte responded with confusion, asking what an inquest was, and saying indignantly, ‘Can’t see how they can say I poisoned my husband. If they can’t find anything, they won’t be able to put a rope around my neck.’ The police thought this was strange, as nobody had mentioned poison at this point. On 28 December, Senior Home Office Analyst Dr Gerald Roche Lynch reported a startling discovery – more than four grains of arsenic had been discovered in the dead man’s organs, when just two grains would have been fatal. The final dose had been administered somewhere between 12 and 36 hours prior to death. Arsenic, though once common in household products, was by then a known poison, regulated by law and easily concealed in food or drink due to its virtually odourless and tasteless nature.

Two Scotland Yard detectives arrived from London to aid the investigation, and they examined the cottage in Coombe while Charlotte and her children were moved to the Sturminster Newton Public Assistance Institution, which had once been a workhouse for the poor. The detectives collected 150 separate samples of dust, dirt, and rubbish from the Bryants’ home. After analysis, 32 of the samples were found to contain traces of arsenic.

Police officers diligently visited every chemist’s shop within a 50-mile radius and checked the poison registers to see who had purchased arsenic recently. They found a pharmacist in Yeovil, who remembered selling a tin of weedkiller to a woman who signed his register with a cross. Detectives found that Charlotte Bryant had signed her marriage certificate with a cross in 1922 as she couldn’t write. Could this be proof that Charlotte had bought weedkiller containing arsenic? Charlotte Bryant and lodger Lucy Ostler were both asked to take part in an identity parade for the Yeovil pharmacist, but he failed to recognise either of them as the woman who bought the weedkiller. 

Mrs Ostler’s witness statements about Charlotte were damning. She recalled seeing Charlotte urging her husband to drink some Oxo just hours before his death, and claimed Charlotte had once confided that she hated Frederick but stayed with him for the sake of the children. More troubling still, Ostler said she’d seen a tin of weedkiller at the cottage after Frederick died, and remembered Charlotte pointing to it and saying, ‘I must get rid of that.’ On Boxing Day, Charlotte had struggled to light the fire for the boiler. Mrs Ostler later discovered ashes beneath it and noticed the grate was clogged with bits of burnt clothing—and a scorched, dented tin. She swept up the mess and threw it all out onto the ash tip in the garden. Police recovered the tin during a search. It tested positive for arsenic. The brand? Eureka—the same weedkiller sold by the chemist in Yeovil.

Dorset Police, with the help of Scotland Yard, tracked down Leonard Parsons. He admitted to having an affair with Charlotte Bryant for two years but claimed to have nothing to do with her husband’s death, although he revealed that the previous summer, Charlotte had told him several times that she would soon be a widow. Charlotte, however, maintained that she had no relationship with Parsons and that she didn’t even like him.

The use of this work for artificial intelligence training, machine learning, or automated content generation is prohibited without prior written permission of the copyright holder.© 2025 Prash Ganendran. All Rights Reserved.

On Monday 10 February 1936, four days before her 33rd birthday, Charlotte Bryant was arrested and charged with the murder of her husband. Her children remained at the Public Assistance Institution and were told their mother had gone on holiday. As the family couldn’t afford a barrister, Charlotte was granted free legal aid under the Poor Prisoner’s Defence regulations, and Joshua David Casswell was appointed as her defence counsel. A seasoned criminal advocate with more than 25 years’ experience, Casswell supported capital punishment in principle but had deep reservations about women being sent to the gallows. He worked tirelessly to save the lives of those he represented. Yet he was less than impressed with his adulterous client, later describing her disparagingly as ‘an ugly Irish gypsy’ and adding ‘Charlotte Bryant was nothing like the conventional picture of the wronged heroine. She had neither charm nor any other attraction. By the time I saw her in the cells beneath the Assize court at Dorchester, her face was prematurely scarred with lines, her dark hair fell in rats’ tails, and a solitary tooth showed behind her lips.’

The trial opened at Dorchester on Wednesday 27 May 1936. Only the month before, nurse Dorothea Waddingham had been executed for poisoning disabled women, so the shadow of the noose undoubtedly loomed large in Casswell’s mind as he presented the case for the defence.

There were one or two weaknesses in the prosecution’s case, which Terence O’Connor, K.C, leading for the crown, freely admitted. They were unable to prove beyond doubt that Charlotte Bryant had purchased the poison, and the case hinged on the evidence of Lucy Ostler, who told the story of the Oxo drink and the tin of weedkiller. When Casswell rose to cross-examine the lodger, he tried to raise doubt in the jury’s minds about whether Lucy Ostler herself should be seated in the dock – after all, she was living in the cottage with the Bryants and would also have had access to the weedkiller. Casswell, however, was grasping at straws, as it was confirmed that Lucy had not been living there on the previous occasions that Frederick had been ill. Leonard Parsons also gave evidence, telling the court that Charlotte had asked him if he would marry her if her husband died.

The technical side of the prosecution rested on the testimony of Dr Roche Lynch and his analysis of the arsenic. He stated that the ashes under the boiler contained 149 parts per million of arsenic, which he stated was an abnormally large proportion, proving that something containing arsenic must have been burnt in the fire. He was forced to admit, under Casswell’s rigorous cross-examination, that it was possible for the victim to have had arsenic on his hands, then eaten without washing them, allowing traces of arsenic to enter the stomach, as there would be low levels of the element in the soil surrounding the cottage – but it was unlikely to be enough to prove fatal.

When Charlotte herself took the stand, she claimed to know nothing of the weedkiller and refuted having a sexual relationship with Leonard Parsons, denying that he was the father of her youngest child. She even stated that she hadn’t given her husband a drink of Oxo in his final hours, claiming that it was Mrs Ostler who had tended to Frederick that night.

After just an hour of deliberation, the jury found Charlotte Bryant guilty of murder. Justice MacKinnon’s voice reportedly shook as he delivered the death sentence. Charlotte wept and cried out, ‘No, no, my Lord – I am not guilty,’ as she was led from the dock by two wardresses. The distressing scene would echo in J.D. Casswell’s mind for years to come, particularly each time he defended a woman on a capital charge. He launched an immediate appeal.

When the two eldest children, 12-year-old Ernest and 10-year-old Lily, were informed that their mother was to be executed for murdering their father, Lily collapsed and was cared for by nurses, while the younger children remained unaware. While in the condemned cell, Charlotte dictated a letter to a friend, which the prison staff wrote on her behalf. It hinted at someone else’s involvement, saying, ‘It’s all […] fault I’m here’, but the prison authorities had censored the name.

A week later, J.D. Casswell was contacted by a Professor William Bone who disputed the evidence presented by Dr Roche Lynch, after reading about the trial in the papers. The hopeful defence barrister met with the Professor, who explained that the normal contents of house coal was in fact 140 parts arsenic per million, which was only just under the 149 parts per million found in the ashes under the Bryants’ boiler – indicating that the level wasn’t as excessive as Rosh Lynch had testified, potentially casting doubt on Charlotte’s guilt.

The appeal was held on 29 June but the judges refused to hear Bone’s evidence, arguing that it should have been presented at the trial. They were convinced that even with this information, the outcome would have been the same. The appeal was denied and the death sentence stood. The only hope now was that the Home Secretary would intervene and urge the King to grant a reprieve, but this, too, failed to materialise. Charlotte Bryant refused to see her children to spare them the ordeal of seeing her in prison, but she wrote them letters, having learnt to read and write a little while in the condemned cell. By now, it was said that her once black hair had turned completely white.

On the morning of Wednesday 15 July 1936, almost 1,000 people gathered outside Exeter Prison to be among the first to hear the news of the execution. Just after 8:00 a.m., Charlotte Byrant was hanged by Thomas Pierrepoint. Twenty minutes later, the gates creaked open, and the notice of death was pinned up for the onlookers to read. J.D. Casswell walked away with a heavy heart, but had he been granted a glimpse of his future record, he may have been cheered to know that Bryant was one of just five of his clients to be hanged out of 40 capital defence cases during his long career at the bar. As for Leonard Parsons, he was charged with car theft in 1938 but was cleared, after which he likely took another alias and quietly continued his life of travelling and philandering.

Charlotte Bryant was buried on prison grounds and her money, totalling 5s 9d, was divided among her children. They were adopted into new families through the Dorset Public Assistance Committee, and although not all of their paths can be traced, the eldest, Ernest, died in 2001 at the age of 77. The next eldest, Lily, also lived a long life, dying in 2005 at the age of 80, leaving behind children and grandchildren, though it is not known how much they were aware of their family’s painful history.

Researched and written by Prash Ganendran. Published on 15 May 2025.
© 2025 Prash Ganendran. All Rights Reserved.

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Sources

Daily Herald – Thursday 02 January 1936

Sheffield Independent – Friday 20 March 1936

Taunton Courier and Western Advertiser – Wednesday 04 March 1936

Coventry Evening Telegraph – Thursday 28 May 1936

Dundee Courier – Friday 29 May 1936

Gloucestershire Echo – Thursday 28 May 1936

Weekly Dispatch (London) – Sunday 31 May 1936

J.D. Casswell – A Lance for Liberty