I WENT looking for something else, but the book just fell open and the story simply leapt out. It's too good to close the covers and put the book back on the library shelf, so here, apropos of nothing, it is.

It is set in late 1798. At nine one night the Ord family of Archdeacon Newton - a dot of a settlement to the north-west of Darlington - heard a rap at their kitchen door. A young girl stood there. She'd been lost for days, rambling the countryside, her mind in turmoil. "Starved with cold", she sought sanctuary for the night.

They let her in, gave her a bed and gently questioned her.

Her name, she said, was Mary Nicholson. She was an orphan, "of weak intellect", who had found employment as the servant of John Atkinson of Little Stainton (a slightly bigger dot of a settlement to the north-east of Darlington).

Oh, but recently Mr Atkinson had been away for the day, expected back that evening. He had "taken very great liberties with her and treated her in a cruel way".

So in his absence, she had planned his destruction. She had stolen to Darlington and bought some arsenic. She'd returned to Little Stainton, and mixed it with the flour.

Old Mrs Atkinson - her master's mother - had made the mixture into a pudding ready for her son's return that evening.

But when he arrived, Mr Atkinson refused to partake - he'd eaten and now all he wanted was his bed.

So in he turned and - horror of horrors - the frugal old woman turned the pudding into a large family cake for breakfast.

Next morning, all the Atkinsons came downstairs to eat. The cake was before them all on the table. They all took a slice. We can only imagine the torment of Mary, perhaps watching through a crack in the door, wondering what would become of her poisonous plan.

All the Atkinsons fell quickly - and terribly - ill. A doctor was called. He applied his remedies. Recovery began. Except for old Mrs Atkinson. She lingered for some weeks in great pain and then died.

The family knew that Mary was to blame. They presumably also knew of the "very great liberties" that the master of the house had taken with her. So they turned her out of their door, telling her never to return to Stainton, and hoping to draw a discreet line under the sorry story.

Wracked by guilt and without a roof, the orphan roamed the district until she knocked on the Ords' door. She stayed the night, and next day returned to Stainton. She flung herself upon the Atkinsons, telling them she could find no rest and that they must decide her fate.

They turned her in. She was tried at the Assizes in Durham "She stood in court alone, without a friend, without a soul to speak in her behalf, and was condemned to die."

A huge crowd gathered on Framwellgate Moor on July 22, 1799, to witness her end. She was launched from the executioner's cart towards eternity. The rope held her weight for "some little time" and then snapped, slinging her to the floor still very much alive.

One account says that she was able to "converse with her relatives" for an hour; another that she was "in a horrible state... to the great distress of the lookers on, some of whom had come a great distance".

At length, another rope was procured.

"And so ended the butchery of poor unfortunate Mary Nicholson".

The story is now told and the book is now back on the shelf.

Published: 17/12/2005