Margaret Walber – for the brutal murder of husband.
Margaret Walber – for the brutal murder of husband. We can find plenty of cases of abusive men killing their wives and girlfriends, but very few of abusive women killing their husbands. Margaret had married James John Walber in 1889 and they kept a grocery shop at 6 Gildart Street in Liverpool. This was quite a large building and the rooms on the upper floors were occupied by John Murray, Margaret’s son by her first husband, and their lodgers James Pearson and his girlfriend Mary Vouse. Both the Walbers were heavy drinkers but John was not violent or abusive when drunk, according to John Murray. At the time of his death on the 16th of November 1893, John was 55 and Margaret was 53. The marriage was not a happy one and would soon take a major turn for the worse. Seventeen years earlier, in the summer of 1876, John Walber had had a relationship with Annie Connolly which had ended but which he had not forgotten. In the Spring of 1893 Annie took lodgings at a house in Oakes Street,