Bio

Mary Ann Barry was born in 1852. Records and reports give her several similar names. She is also called Mary Anne Barry, Mary Anne Berry, Mary Ann Barry, and Anne Salmond in different sources.

She lived and worked in Bristol. She was employed to clean a shoe shop in the Clifton area of the city. The shop was run by a man named Edwin Bailey. Some reports say she became Bailey’s common‑law wife after her husband was sent to prison.

After Christmas 1872 she began to visit a family who lived in Stapleton, on the outskirts of Bristol. She brought small gifts and said that a local Dorcas Society had taken an interest in the child. She often went by the name “Ann” during these visits.

Sources note that she recommended Steedman’s Soothing Powders when the child was teething. Other records say she lived in lodgings in Bristol and that she was about thirty‑one years old in 1873.

Murder Story

On August 17, 1873, in Stapleton, Bristol, ten-month-old Sarah Jenkins was given a packet labelled as Steedman’s Soothing Powders. She went into convulsions and died in her mother’s arms the same day.

The family kept the two remaining packets. A doctor who saw the packets was suspicious. The county analyst tested the powders and found they contained strychnine.

Constable Critchley took the powders, the letter and the envelope to the police. A handwriting expert, Mr. Charles Chabot, gave evidence that the letter matched the handwriting of Edwin Bailey. The paper of the letter was also traced to Bailey.

Mary Anne Barry was arrested at her lodgings in Bristol on September 14, 1873. Edwin Bailey was arrested at his shop after returning to Bristol from London. Mary Anne later said she had been sent by Bailey on errands that included visiting the Jenkins family.

Edwin Bailey, aged 32, and Mary Anne Barry, aged 31 and born in 1852, were tried together before Mr. Justice Archibald at Gloucester Assizes on December 23, 1873. The judge said Bailey had been committed as the principal and Mary Anne as an accessory before the fact. The jury found both guilty after about an hour. They were condemned to death, despite a recommendation to mercy.

The executions took place at Gloucester Prison on January 12, 1874. The hangman was Robert Anderson (Evans). Mary Anne Barry was hanged along with Edwin Bailey and Edward Butt. The gallows platform was mounted over a pit for a short drop. The two men became still almost immediately. Mary Anne reportedly struggled on the rope and the hangman had to press down on her shoulders to quicken her death. Their bodies were buried in unmarked graves in the prison yard, with quicklime thrown into the coffins. Mary Anne Barry was the last woman in Britain to suffer the short drop method of hanging and the last woman executed at Gloucester Gaol.