Saturday 23 October at 2.30pm

The Bloomsbury Festival is now underway and continues until 24 October. We’re proud that again Friends of St George’s Gardens are putting on a festival event. On Saturday 23 October at 2.30 pm, the third of our presentations about people buried in the Gardens takes place. This year it’s the turn of Eliza Fenning. The Festival programme says: Eliza Fenning was a cook, aged 20, accused of attempting to poison her employers with arsenic. She was sentenced to death. There was a public outcry about the verdict which was based entirely on circumstantial evidence. Thousands were in her funeral procession after she was hanged at Newgate Prison in 1815. A book was written in the same year by William Hone (1780 -1842) who has been called the father of investigative journalism. Our presentation will be largely based on Hone’s research but with themes that resonate today – fake news, press distortion, processes that favour the privileged and disadvantage the poor. This is a terrible story. Come along and hear the awful detail.

This is a ticketed event, tickets £8 (or £6 as a concession for full-time students, unemployed or disabled people). To avoid crowding, ticket numbers are limited so book soon. Bring a chair or rug if you would rather not stand for 50 minutes or so.

The presentation is directed by FoSGG Committee member Ian Brown and performed by local actors Debbie Radcliffe and Jules Date. Co Chair Diana Scarrott wrote the script.