Felicia Dorothea Kate Dover

Felicia Dorothea Kate Dover (1855 – 26 March 1925) was an English woman who was tried for murder and convicted of manslaughter in 1882 following the death of Thomas Skinner from arsenic poisoning. She was trained as an artist at Sheffield School of Art and was skilled in drawing flowers. She was popularly known as the Queen of Heeley due to her artistic interests and her standard of dress.

In 1880, at age 25, she become the housekeeper of etcher Thomas Skinner, age 61. Despite the difference in age, he was considered her "sweetheart" and said to be courting her "with a view to marrying her". In 1882, Kate Dover was tried for murder and convicted of manslaughter following the death of Skinner from arsenic poisoning. Her trial was a major event at the criminal court in Leeds Town Hall; it was attended by many people and attracted significant newspaper coverage.

Dover's counsel for the defence, Frank Lockwood, employed the "clever defence" of stating that she had given Skinner arsenic, but had not done so with a clear intent to kill him. Instead of being hanged for murder, she was sentenced to penal servitude for life.Her sentencing was in line with a trend against the use of the death penalty, in which the defendant's character was seen as relevant in determining sentences. Kate Dover served her sentence at Woking Female Prison, and was released by 1901. In her remaining years, she lived with her sisters at Rotherham, dying unmarried.

Kate's paternal grandparents were gardener George Dover (born Norwich ca.1798), and his wife Sarah (born Norwich ca.1802). Kate's father was Charles Dover (St Paul's, Norwich, 1826 – Eccleshall, 1891), the third of 10 siblings. Charles was a wood carver and joiner who specialised in wooden platters. He was possibly associated with the wood carver, and bread and butter platter maker, Frederick William Dover (St Paul's, Norwich, ca. 1834 – Ecclesall, 1917) of Burgess Street, Ecclesall Bierlow, who shared the same trade and origins. The making of carved sycamore bread and butter platters and wooden knives had been introduced to Sheffield around 1851 by Prince Albert. Charles' place of business was Oak Street in Heeley in 1865. The Sheffield Daily Telegraph said of him that "there was not a more respectable man in the neighbourhood." Around 1880 Charles Dover published a "small volume of prose and poetry – not a little of it very meritorious indeed."

Kate's mother was Catharine Nunn (Snape, Suffolk, 1827 – Rotherham, 1894), daughter of Jonathan Nunn (Snape, ca. 1791 – Norwich, 1866), a candle rush manufacturer and later a grocer. Charles and Catharine married in Haslingden on 5 May 1846. Kate had two elder sisters: Mary Ann Sarah (Knightsbridge, 1848 – Rotherham, 1923) and Amelia Henrietta Charlotte (Sheffield 1851 – Rotherham 1918).

In 1851, before Kate was born, the family was living in at 29 Jessop Street, Sheffield.Kate Dover was born in Sheffield in 1855.From at least 1861 until 1883 the family was living at 4 Thirlwell Terrace, Heeley, Nether Hallam, Sheffield. At the age of nine years, she wrote a "small book called God's Love."

As an adult, Kate was 5 ft 1.5 in (1.56 m) tall.She was a student of Sheffield School of Art, and many of her flower pictures showed "considerable merit". In the late 1890s she was "a prominent member of the Good Templars", at the Excelsior Lodge, Sheffield. She professed herself to be a vegetarian and teetotaller.

She was known as the "Queen of Heeley", due to her taste in cosmetics and paints, and her liking for fashionable clothes."The keynote to her character [was] extreme excitability ..." Before her appointment with Skinner, "she was accustomed to dress well, and sometimes with a good deal of taste; and she came to be popularly known as the Heeley Queen," but by the end of their acquaintance her clothes had "become very shabby".

Personality

As the 19th-century daughter of a woodcarver in an industrial city, the manager of a confectionery shop, and a housekeeper, she belonged to the working class. At the same time, she was sufficiently educated to be able to produce a "small book" at nine years of age. She was a working-class but educated artist in an industrial town, with the virtues of regular employment, temperance and fashionable appearance. Dover's accomplished artistic skill and her sophisticated letter-writing skills co-existed with her apparent ignorance of the potential effect of up to an ounce of arsenic in a dish of onion stuffing, her apparent ignorance of the amount of arsenic which might safely produce only harmless symptoms, and her apparent lack of any attempt to find out.

Before the crime, she was a regular member of a temperance society and there is no suggestion that she ever drank alcohol, yet she was content to obey her employer's instructions to supply his daily requirement of ale, and to meet him willingly in a public house. She was a dutiful daughter who went home from the house of her "old sweetheart", Skinner, to her parents every night, thus leading a socially respectable life, but she allowed her mother to possibly perjure herself in court on her behalf, and told untruths herself when purchasing the arsenic.

No evidence was shown regarding any plans for the outcome of her use of arsenic, should Thomas Skinner become ill or should he die, and when Skinner appeared to be dying she panicked. The Court case did offer explanations and gave a pronouncement on some of these matters.

Dover lived in an artistic environment, in that her father was a woodcarver, she herself had been an art school student who showed skill in drawing flowers, and her last employer was an etcher who began to teach her his trade, as he had done with his previous housekeeper. It is not known whether he used her drawing talent as an asset in his designing processes, although etched flower designs were used on cutlery.

In 1880, Dover was managing a confectioner's shop, or a spice shop, in London Road, Sheffield. In 1882, she became housekeeper to widower Thomas Skinner (1819–1881) of Sheffield, who was a well-to-do inventor, etcher, and painter.

On 6 December 1881, Dover killed her employer and "sweetheart", Skinner, by cooking him a roast dinner with arsenic in the stuffing. Dover and Skinner had had a turbulent relationship, and Skinner's former housekeeper Jane Jones disapproved of Dover's behaviour in the house, and may also have disapproved of their plans to marry.

At her trial, which took place in Leeds Town Hall before justice Lewis Cave, it was suggested that Dover's motive for the poisoning may not have been to kill, but to frame Jones for the poisoning by making Skinner ill, thereby undoing the influence of the objector to the marriage. Dover was convicted of manslaughter because intention to murder could not be proved, and she was sentenced to penal servitude for life.

Dover served her sentence at Woking Female prison. She was released some time after 1895. After leaving prison, or at least by 1901, Kate lived with her sister Mary and her brother-in-law Edwin Sissons, a baker-confectioner, at 19 Carlton Avenue, Rotherham. By 1911, Kate had moved and was living at 423 Bardsley Moor Lane, Rotherham, with her widowed sister Amelia H.C. Eden.

Kate Dover never married. She died aged 69 years on 26 March 1925, of bronchitis and heart failure, at 25 St Ann's Road, Rotherham. She had been living there with her widowed brother-in-law Edward Sissons, who was in attendance at her death. She was buried on 29 March 1925 at Masbrough Cemetery, Kimberworth, West Riding of Yorkshire.