Kitty Byron

Emma 'Kitty' Byron (1878 – after 1908) was a British murderer found guilty in 1902 of stabbing to death her lover Arthur Reginald Baker, for which crime she received the death sentence. This was subsequently commuted to life imprisonment.

The daughter of a brewer, Byron came from a respectable family who originally lived in Pimlico, but on the death of her father the family moved to Leytonstone, where, at the time of the murder, Byron's mother continued to live in a villa in Napier Road with her married son and his wife and their three children, as well as Byron's 14-year-old sister. In early 1902 'Kitty' Byron had been employed as a milliner's assistant at Mme. Timorey's Court dressmaking establishment in Old Burlington Street, but she was sacked because of her poor time keeping.

At the time of the murder Byron was unemployed and had lived for several weeks in lodgings with her lover Arthur Reginald Baker, a , in the home of Madam Adrienne Liard (born 1841 in France), a widowed mantle maker at 18 Duke Street, Portland Place in London. Originally they had rented two rooms but after a few weeks they had difficulty paying for these and subsequently moved into a bed-sitting room at the same address.

Arthur Reginald Baker was born in Crawley in Sussex in 1857, the son of John Baker, a solicitor and partner in the firm of Baker, Blaker and Hoare of London. Baker married Alexandrina Mabel Turner (born 1861) in Marylebone in 1880. Their daughter Aileen Mabel Marguerite Baker was born in 1898; she died in 1969. Alexandrina was the step-daughter of Alderman Thomas Harrison, a former Mayor of Torquay from 1897 to 1898 and the owner of the Queen's Hotel in Torquay. Baker had not lived with his wife since January 1902, and on 4 November 1902 he was served with a divorce petition from her in which Byron was named as co-respondent. The divorce papers were served on Baker by former Detective Chief Inspector John Littlechild, at this time working as a private investigator.

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