It was a murder which shocked the country, most of all because it involved one of the nation’s favourite foods - corned beef.
On May 22, 1934, Ethel Major made her husband Arthur his customary tea of corned beef, bread and butter at their home in Kirkby-on-Bain, Lincolnshire.
But the vengeful wife had a secret reason for not preparing the meal as lovingly as she had once done.
At first complaining that the corned beef “looked off”, Arthur started to feel unwell soon after his first mouthful.
Before long he was unable to stand or speak, and began frothing at the mouth.
He got worst over the next two days, and on May 24 had a seizure and died just before midnight.
Police first believed the doctors’ verdict that Arthur had died of epilepsy.
But soon a more sinister explanation for his sudden death emerged - and the case would fill newspapers and grip corned beef-loving Brits everywhere.
Just six months later, Ethel was hanged at Hull prison, in such a state of distress she had to be carried to the gallows.
Before the scandal, Ethel and Arthur had seemed like just a normal couple living an ordinary life in rural Lincolnshire.
They had met during the closing months of World War I, after Arthur had been sent home wounded from the Front, and married in the summer of 1918.
They went on to have a son, Lawrence.
But behind the scenes their marriage was one of frequent quarrels and bitter disputes.
Things reportedly came to a head when gossip began to circulate in their village about Ethel’s youngest sister, Auriol, who was actually Ethel’s daughter born of of wedlock.
To avoid a scandal, her parents had raised her as if she were their daughter and Ethel’s sister.
When Arthur confronted her about it and she admitted the rumours were true, Arthur began to have temper fits and turn to to drink.
As the marriage turned nasty, the pair went to great lengths to attack each other.
Arthur once took out an ad in a local newspaper, saying he refused to be held responsible for any debts his wife ran up.
In turn Ethel contacted the firm where Arthur worked as a truck driver, telling them he was too drunk to be driving.
Then, shortly before he died, Ethel received anonymous letters telling her that her husband was having an affair with their neighbour, Rose Kettleworth.
It was the last straw and Ethel began to plan getting rid of her tiresome husband once and for all.
After eating the corned beef, a doctor was called to see Arthur, who was in pain and suffering from muscle contractions that caused his limbs to jerk.
The doctor gave him some opium and he seemed recover, even turning up for work the next morning.
But his state quickly deteriorated and by May 23, 1934, he was sweating, having fits and unable to speak, and this time the doctor concluded that Arthur was suffering from epilepsy.
The next day Ethel calmly turned up at the doctor’s surgery and told him her husband had died, then briskly began to organise his funeral.
She might have got away with it, if police hadn’t got an anonymous letter, on the day of Arthur’s funeral, telling them Ethel had poisoned Arthur’s corned beef.
As mourners assembled at the parish church, St Mary’s, police arrived and halted the ceremony.
Arthur, it emerged, had already told of his fears that his wife was trying to poison his food, on one occasion throwing his sandwiches away at lunchtime, telling a colleague: “I’m damned sure that woman is trying to poison me”.
On another occasion he had given his food to a neighbour’s dog, which promptly died. Police ordered that the dog be exhumed and its organs sent for chemical investigation.
Tests on Arthur’s body showed he had died from two doses of strychnine, a rat poison, totalling two or three grains.
Brought in for questioning by police, Ethel protested her innocence - but made a fatal wrong move when she told detectives “I did not know my husband died from strychnine poisoning”.
No-one had told her about the test results showing Arthur had been killed by strychnine.
Although no evidence of strychnine was found in the Major’s home, police decided to search the house of Ethel’s father Tom Brown, and found a bottle of strychnine in a wooden chest in his room.
He told officers that he had lost the key to the chest ten years earlier and never found it again. Police then found the key among Ethel’s belongings.
In a statement made on May 28, Ethel told police that Arthur had told her she was going to kick her and their son out of his house.
She said: “He had been drinking heavily for seven weeks. For several nights my son and I had left the house and gone to my father’s, where we had slept in an outhouse.
“Over a period of years I have had a very miserable existence with my husband, who continually quarrelled and threatened to beat me.
“He led me a terrible. life. I was terrified of him and of late I was afraid of stay in the house with him as I thought he might kill me.”
The court case, which began on July 10, gripped the country, with many sympathetic to the actions of a woman who claimed she was the victim of a violent husband.
During the hearing, love letters from neighbour Rose Kettleborough, which had been found among Arthur’s possessions in his bedroom, were presented to the jury.
Water Holmes, a solicitor, also confirmed he had written a letter on behalf of Arthur, at the request of Ethel, to Rose, which read: “I request you to stop hiding any more letters to me and that I shall not write to you any more, as I do not wish to speak to you or have any further trouble with you in the future. Final note, Arthur Major.”
He said when Arthur had seen the letter he claimed his wife shouldn’t have asked him to send it, saying “I’ll wring her bloody neck!”
A jury took one hour and ten minutes to find Ethel guilty of her husband’s murder. The foreman added: “I also wish to express the jury’s wish that a strong recommendation for mercy should be given to the prisoner.
The judge asked Ethel whether she had anything to say and she said, “Yes, I am innocent”.
When the judge passed the sentence of death by hanging, Ethel collapsed into the arms of a police officer, sobbing violently as she was carried away.
Despite a petition from the people of Kirkby-on-Bain and a telegram sent to the Prime Minister from Hull’s Lord Mayor, imploring him to grant a reprieve, Ethel was hanged on December 19, 1934, a few days before Christmas Day, by Britain's most famous executioner, Albert Pierrepoint.
According to reports, she spent the last 48 hours of her life in a state of total emotional collapse, and had to be half-carried to the scaffold. Hundreds gathered at the prison door to witness the posting of the execution notice at 9.05am.
The only woman ever to be executed at Hull Prison, she left behind her 15-year-old son Lawrence and her 19-year-old illegitimate daughter, Auriol.
