Christiana Edmunds was one of the first famous killers to walk the corridors of Broadmoor. She was called the Chocolate Cream Poisoner, but she never considered herself one of the Broadmoor prisoners. Despite this, she remained a patient until her death, some thirty-five years after her incarceration.
Christiana Edmunds was described as a tall, handsome woman with a highly prepossessing demeanour. Unlike many of the poor women at Broadmoor, Edmunds came from an educated, middle-class background.
Some will argue that Edmunds was not mad but rather a cold, sadistic killer. This marks a sharp contrast with earlier historical poisoners like Mary Bateman, the notorious “Yorkshire Witch” who used arsenic to systematically defraud and murder vulnerable clients under the guise of magic.
While Bateman operated out of crude, calculated financial greed, Edmunds was driven by an altogether different force: an unhinged, obsessive romantic delusion. Whatever the truth, Edmunds’s criminal career started because of a man, a married man to be more precise, who was also her neighbour in Brighton.
