Elizabeth Peers murdered in 1905

[lizziepeers]

Hello everyone and thanks once again. Especially to you Marky, the information is just great and the photos are amazing. What a shame there is no headstone. I would love to be able to put one up, then I saw your post saying that there are 10 other people in the grave. I didn't know that is what they did back then, I wonder how deep it is? My mother is going to visit the cemetery soon and thanks to you she won't be searching everywhere. The Toxteth Park Cemetery website is very good and so helpful to people like me.

Have a good weekend and thank you so much from Lizzie's Great Niece.

[lizzieG]

Hello Liverpool! I was very happy to discover this super website and have since sent it on to all my family and friends that have connections with Liverpool.
I have been seaching the web for some years trying to find out about my Great Aunt Elizabeth Peers who lived in Wendell Street and was murdered aged 10. Just last night I came across a writer called Tom Slemen whose article (paragraph below) gave me the following information:


"For years I received reports of a little girl in beret, cloak and kilt who haunted the alleyways of Smithdown Road, and finally decided to find out who she was. I knew the ghost always went to ground in Wendell Street and Toxteth Park Cemetery, and I spent months sifting through records at the Central Library until I found a murder case in which the victim matched the description of the ghost and had connections with the places she haunted. Late one evening around Halloween in1905, a 10-year-old girl named Elizabeth Peers was sent on an errand from her home at 64 Wendell Street (off Smithdown Road) to a butcher?s shop on Lodge Lane. She wore a tam-o?-shanter beret, a cape, and a kilt ? and she never returned from the trip. On the next morning her body was found in an alleyway behind Cullen Street ? she?d been raped and strangled. Her killer was never brought to justice and Lizzie Peers was buried in Toxteth Park Cemetery after a funeral service attended by 30,000 people. I believe the man who murdered Lizzie also assaulted and killed 7-year-old Madge Kirby of Kensington a few years later; once again the killer was never caught."


I was happy to find this information but I am still trying to get more. I live in France so it isn't easy to get to the records office. If anyone knows any information or how to get records from the internet I would be very grateful. My mother who is now 76, lives in Wales and is hopefully going to visit the cemetery ( I found the amazing Toxteth cemetery website including grave numbers and map). This was so sad to read as the whole story has had an effect on my family all this time - constant reminders not to talk to strangers and not to go out alone etc. It would have been better if they had caught the man and made him swing. Sorry, not too much sympathy for child abusers and killers. I have sent an email to the Bluecoat Press to ask for Mr Slemens contact details.

My father who died along with my brother in 1972 was called William Serridge born 1931 and lived in Leta Street, and later Alderville Road with the Goodier Family, ring any bells with anyone??? They later moved to Vandyke Street in 1951.

Thanks to anyone for reading this and I would love to hear anything!

your father (Billy Serridge)was my husband (Keith Goodier)s cousin. My father-in-law and your grandmother (Ivy) were brother and sister. We rememer your father very well,also your mother Olga