Kate Dover

The trees on the right mark the former site of 4 Thirwell Terrace, Kate's home

A bread platter of the type made in Sheffield in the 19th century

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.[1]

Charles was a wood carver[1] and joiner who specialised in wooden platters.[nb 1][8][9][10][11] 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.[12][13][14][15] The making of carved sycamore bread and butter platters and wooden knives had been introduced to Sheffield around 1851 by Prince Albert.[16][17]

The Dover family, then, fit a pattern common to the Sheffield area. In 19th-century Sheffield, manufacturing in skilled trades such as wood carving was family-based: most family businesses were 'born small and remained small' and often employed both sons and daughters.[18] The main industries of Sheffield focused around the production of iron and steel. Sheffield was a primary centre for cutlery, plate,[19] and specialised tools, including woodworking tools.[20] Sheffield also supported a well-established woodworking and furniture industry.[20] By the end of the 19th century, however, carvers and gilders were losing work to mechanisation.[18]

Charles Dover's place of business was Oak Street in Heeley in 1865.[nb 2][21] 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."[1][22]

Kate's mother was Catharine Nunn (Snape, Suffolk, 1827 – Rotherham, 1894), daughter of Jonathan Nunn (Snape, ca. 1791 – Norwich, 1866),[23] a candle rush manufacturer and later a grocer.[11][24][25][26][27] Charles and Catharine married in Haslingden on 5 May 1846.[28] Kate had two elder sisters: Mary Ann Sarah (Knightsbridge, 1848 – Rotherham, 1923)[29][30] and Amelia Henrietta Charlotte (Sheffield 1851 – Rotherham 1918).[11][27][31][32]

In 1851, before Kate was born, the family was living at 29 Jessop Street, Sheffield.[33] Kate Dover was born in Sheffield in 1855.[27][34] From at least 1861 until 1883 the family was living at 4 Thirlwell Terrace, Heeley, Nether Hallam, Sheffield.[nb 3][35][36] At the age of nine years, she wrote a "small book called God's Love."[37]

As an adult, Kate was 5 ft 1.5 in (1.56 m) tall.[38] She was a student of Sheffield School of Art, and many of her flower pictures showed "considerable merit".[37] She professed herself to be a vegetarian and teetotaller.[39] She was "a prominent member of the Good Templars", at the Excelsior Lodge, Sheffield.[37]

She was known as the "Queen of Heeley", due to her taste in cosmetics and paints,[40] and her liking for fashionable clothes.[41] "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".[42]

In 1880, Dover was managing a confectioner's shop,[11] or a spice shop, in London Road, Sheffield.[2]

In autumn 1880, she became housekeeper to widower Thomas Skinner (1819–1881) of Sheffield, who was a well-to-do inventor, etcher, and painter.[11] Skinner may have taught her his trade, as he had done with his previous housekeeper.[11] 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.[43][44]

24 Glover Place, where the crime occurred

On 6 December 1881, Dover killed her employer and "sweetheart",[39] Skinner, by cooking him a roast dinner with arsenic in the stuffing.[11] Dover and Skinner had had a turbulent relationship,[41] and Skinner's former housekeeper Jane Jones disapproved of Dover's behaviour in the house,[2] and may also have disapproved of their plans to marry.[11]

At her trial, which took place in Leeds Town Hall before Mr Justice Cave, Dover's counsel for the defence, Frank Lockwood, employed a "clever defence".[4][5] He argued that Dover had nothing to gain, but, on the contrary, everything to lose by the death of Skinner.[7] He suggested that Dover's motive for the poisoning might not have been to kill, but to make Skinner ill and blame Jones for it, thereby undoing the influence of the objector to the marriage.[11]

Dover served her sentence at Woking Female prison.[51] She was released some time after 1895. After leaving prison, or at least by 1901,[52] Kate lived with her sister Mary and her brother-in-law Edwin Sissons, a baker-confectioner, at 19 Carlton Avenue, Rotherham.[52] By 1911, Kate had moved and was living at 423 Bardsley Moor Lane, Rotherham, with her widowed sister Amelia H.C. Eden.[53]

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.[9] She was buried on 29 March 1925 at Masbrough Cemetery, Kimberworth, West Riding of Yorkshire.[54]

• Dignity: Masborough Cemetery details

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