In 1890 Charles Arthur Charlton came home to find his three children had been murdered.
As he opened the door to his terraced home on Garmoyle Road, close to Smithdown Road he was confronted with his wife Leah lying in a pool of her own blood. Her injuries were so severe the doctors who arrived on the scene didn't think Leah would survive.
Doctors were also to make another chilling discovery when they found the couple's two oldest children upstairs, in separate cots, with their throats cut. Leah in a note confessed to killing her children before turning the knife on herself.
READ MORE : Dad's final words after he murdered his two sons while they slept
Jane Roberts, who was a witness to the horrific events of May 8, testified that Charles said: "Mrs Roberts, I want you to come along with me I believe she has cut her throat." Despite the horrific nature of her own injuries, Leah Charlton is reported to have answered the door while her children Dorothy, Bob, and Barbara, were dead inside the house.
Mr and Mrs Charlton's eldest children has been dead for between two and three hours when their bodies were discovered. A police officer who was on the scene - Sergeant Hodgson - said Leah was conscious when he arrived.
He wrote on a piece of paper 'did you kill your two children? I am a police sergeant. What made you do it?' and handed it to her. She crossed out the figure two and replaced it with a three and wrote "afraid of the mob, they are all against us, we are strangers, keys of cashbox, moneybox in the bed where my boy lies."
The Sergeant ventured upstairs and uncovered the gruesome scene of the murdered bodies of the three children. Another witness claimed he saw Leah speak despite her horrific injuries and asked for a drink of water, making gestures that she wanted to write something.
She wrote: "Came from Southsea in November. Girl from Wavertree came to work for me in January. Mr Roberts, dairy people, spoke to sergeant of police about the girl. He said 'don't have her in the house'. Did not.
"Was seen talking to him. The Wavertree mob hate us, think I am a spy. People near to file or drill metal all day. I suspect they had something to do with robberies about here. They heard me draw Mr Charlton's attention to the noise last week.
"Mob stones at timber-yard to stone them last Saturday. Gentleman over there stop it tonight. I think from remarks made to me they would have drowned us in the clay-pit where the child was found today. I was so frightened with terror. Signed Leah Charlton."
She later added her confession of murdering her three children to the note and at one point wrote "little girl Dorothy first, boy Bob second, Barbara baby last, then myself." At the inquest into the killings in 1890, which was held in Toxteth Workhouse, a doctor who treated Leah after her suicide attempt said he did "not believe she was of sound mind. She has been suffering from melancholia."
He added that he didn't think she knew what she had done and that finding a dead body near her house previously would have sent her into a "low state." However, the coroner of the inquest said the jury could not comment on Leah's state of mind and "must not presume she was insane at the time."
A verdict of wilful murder against Leah was then recorded in respect of each of the three children.
