December 24, 1824 - Lydia Sherman
Over a span of years, Sherman used arsenic to eliminate three husbands and eight children under her care, operating within the domestic sphere in a way that made her crimes difficult to detect and easy to repeat. Her case drew widespread attention in the press and became one of the more closely examined American poisoning cases of the nineteenth century, partly because the victims were so numerous and so vulnerable. The 1872 conviction for second-degree murder left questions about the full extent of her actions that lingered long after sentencing.
From Wikipedia
Lydia Sherman (December 24, 1824 – May 16, 1878), née Danbury, also known as The Derby Poisoner, was an American serial killer. She poisoned eight children in her care (six of whom were her own) and her three husbands and was convicted of second-degree murder in 1872. Five years into her sentence, she escaped under the pretext of being sick and got a job as housekeeper to a rich widower in Providence. She was caught and imprisoned again before dying in Wethersfield State Prison on May 16, 1878, from cancer.
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