Murder on the Bluff: Carew Poisoning Case

In a small white house by a remote Welsh cove, a 90-year-old woman died, full of secrets, on June 27, 1958. What no one ever guessed was that the dignified and distant old lady, who kept a liveried chauffeur and bred Bedlington terriers, was a convicted murdress. More than half a century before, in Yokohama, Japan, she had been sentenced to death by hanging for the murder of her husband. Molly Whittington-Egan attempts to uncover the answers to such puzzles as the identity of the “woman in black” who bought arsenic from the Japanese chemist; the “mysterious visitor”, who stood crying at the door of the House on the Bluff, and would not give her name; of who wrote the strangely-worded anonymous letters which said that “dead men tell no tales, nor dead women either”. The author has succeeded not only in obtaining rare documentation from Japan, providing full data about the arrest and trial in Yokohama, but has also traced the hitherto hidden aftermath history of the murderess. She also presents Edith Carew’s diary for 1896, the year of the murder.