Lydia Sherman was convicted at New Haven, Connecticut, in 1872 of the second-degree murder of her third husband, Horatio N. Sherman, a widower from Derby who had died in 1871. The case rested on chemistry. A local doctor, uneasy about the way Sherman died, ordered an autopsy, and George Frederick Barker, the professor of toxicology at the Yale Medical School, found arsenic. Barker then found arsenic in the cases of Sherman's two children, who had died in the months before their father, and of Lydia's second husband, Dennis Hurlburt.
The jury's verdict of second-degree murder spared her the gallows. Judge Sanford sentenced her to life in Wethersfield State Prison on January 11, 1873. In the same month she confessed to poisoning her first husband, a New York policeman named Edward Struck, and several of their children during the Civil War years, and to poisoning the Sherman children. She was tried for one death only. The other deaths remained confessed or attributed, never tried, and her own account and the later histories do not agree on how many there were. She escaped from Wethersfield in 1877, was retaken after about a week, and died in the prison on May 16, 1878.
She was born Lydia Danbury in New Jersey in 1824, according to Connecticut History, the online publication of the state's humanities council. The account of her life she gave in her 1873 confession, as summarized in a newspaper report at her death, put her birthplace at Burlington, New Jersey. She was orphaned as an infant and raised by an uncle, and at 16 she began working as a tailor. The report of her death says she worked as a tailoress in New Brunswick, New Jersey, and joined the Methodist church there.
At 17 she met Edward Struck at a Methodist church, Connecticut History says, and married him. Howard Fischer, a professor of pediatrics at Wayne State University School of Medicine, writing in the medical humanities journal Hektoen International in 2024, dates the marriage to 1841. Struck was a widower with two children. He became a police officer in New York City; Connecticut History places him in Yorkville, then a suburb, while the report of her death says he served at Manhattanville. The couple had six children together within seven years, Connecticut History says, and by the confession's account the marriage lasted about eighteen years.
Struck lost his police job. In the account summarized at her death, he was discharged for alleged cowardice. Fischer writes that he was accused of cowardice after an incident in which a detective was killed, and was reprimanded, disgraced and dismissed. He fell into a deep depression, could not find other work and took to his bed. The report of her death says that, by her confession, he had also tried to take his own life.
What she said happened next comes from her confession. According to that report's summary, a police captain advised that Struck be sent to an asylum, and she said a police sergeant had suggested poison instead. She bought arsenic and gave it to him, and he died the next day. Connecticut History says that rather than have him committed, she poisoned him. Fischer dates his death to 1864.
The deaths of the Struck children are known chiefly through her confession, and the accounts of them differ. Fischer writes that about six weeks after Struck's death she poisoned three of the children and that three more died in 1865, and that their death certificates gave typhoid fever as the cause. Connecticut History says she poisoned the three youngest children soon after their father's death, and that the three remaining children then fell ill and died while she worked as a nurse.
The summary in the report of her death of the confession names one of the boys, George Whitfield, who was 14, and describes the deaths of a girl of six, a boy of four and another young daughter, each of which she admitted causing with arsenic. The doctors who attended them, the same report says, put the deaths down to ordinary illnesses. The eldest daughter also died; in the confession, as summarized at her death, Lydia said that death was natural. After the deaths she supported herself by nursing.
After the deaths in New York she moved to Connecticut. In 1867, Connecticut History says, she took a nursing job in Stratford. There she met and married Dennis Hurlburt, whom Connecticut History describes as a wealthy farmer and fisherman from Litchfield, many years older than she was. The report of her death places the old man at Huntington, Connecticut, says she first kept house for him, and gives the wedding as November 1868. Three months after the wedding, by the account in the report of her death, he made a will in her favor; Connecticut History says he changed his will to leave her everything. Few people suspected anything when he fell ill and died, Connecticut History says. He lived about fourteen months after the marriage, according to the report of her death.
Fischer writes that she inherited about $10,000 in cash and $20,000 in real estate from her second husband. He dates the marriage to 1865, which does not agree with the November 1868 date in the report of her death.
In her confession she denied causing Hurlburt's death. Her version, as the report of her death gives it, was that he had been drinking cider with saleratus in it, and that she had nothing to do with his death. The arsenic that Barker later found in his case was the evidence against that version, and the question was never tried.
She next became housekeeper to Horatio N. Sherman of Derby, a recent widower with two children, Ada and Frankie, according to Connecticut History, and married him within a few months. The report of her death describes him as a painter and gives the wedding as September 1870. Fischer also dates the marriage to 1870.
By her later account, the household was troubled. The summary in the report of her death of her confession says Sherman quarreled with his late wife's mother, spent money freely, drank heavily, and sold her piano before going off on a long spell of drinking.
Frankie, the infant, died first. In her confession she said she gave the boy arsenic about two months after the wedding, according to that report's summary. Ada, a teenager, died next; the confession, as summarized, says Lydia gave her arsenic while she was ill. Then Horatio Sherman himself fell ill and died, in 1871. Connecticut History reports that Lydia later said she had meant to kill only the children, and that her husband might have taken the arsenic believing it was saleratus. The report of her death gives a slightly different version from the confession: that she gave him arsenic intending only to make him sick of liquor, and that he took more of it the next day and died within twenty-four hours.
Sherman's death did not pass unnoticed. Dr. J. C. Beardsley, a local physician, grew suspicious and ordered an autopsy, Fischer writes. Connecticut History says the doctor found poison and then had the deaths of the two Sherman children and of Dennis Hurlburt examined as well, and that all of them proved to have been poisoned.
The chemical work was done by George Frederick Barker. According to a memoir by the chemist Edgar F. Smith, published in The American Journal of Science in 1910 and reprinted in the National Academy of Sciences' Biographical Memoirs, Barker had trained at the Sheffield Scientific School and in the autumn of 1869 became professor of physiological chemistry and toxicology at the Yale Medical School, a chair created for him. While at Yale he served as an expert for the state in several poison cases, Smith wrote, "the most noted being the Lydia Sherman case in New Haven." In 1872 Barker moved to the University of Pennsylvania as professor of physics.
Fischer writes that Barker found arsenic in samples from Horatio Sherman and from both children, and that arsenic was also found in the case of Dennis Hurlburt. The National Museum of American History, which holds a board of Barker's poisoning evidence from the case, says his analyses showed arsenic in four of the eleven people Lydia Sherman was suspected of poisoning.
Barker was thorough to a degree that was unusual at the time. He ran several different kinds of arsenic test on the samples, although one would have been enough to identify the poison, according to Smithsonian Magazine. The museum's curator, Kristen Frederick-Frost, told the magazine that Barker "threw everything and the kitchen sink at the Sherman evidence." In a 2025 interview on the museum's blog she said he used up to seven different analyses per sample, and that every one of them detected arsenic.
His reason was a recent defeat for poison evidence in another court. In 1871 Elizabeth Wharton, a wealthy Baltimore widow, was tried for poisoning General W. Scott Ketchum and was found not guilty after her defense brought in leading medical experts who attacked the tests used against her as outdated, Smithsonian Magazine reports. Barker later acknowledged that the Wharton case was why he multiplied his tests in the Sherman case, the magazine says.
By the time the results were known, Lydia Sherman had left Connecticut. Police arrested her at New Brunswick, New Jersey, in June 1871 and charged her with the murder of Horatio Sherman, Connecticut History says. She was brought back to Connecticut to await trial at New Haven.
She was tried at New Haven in the spring of 1872 for the murder of Horatio Sherman alone. The trial lasted eight days, Fischer writes. The Sherman children's deaths and Hurlburt's death were part of the investigation, but the charge before the jury concerned her husband.
Her conviction, the report of her death said, rested mainly on Barker's toxicological evidence. The jury found her guilty of murder in the second degree, Connecticut History says. The report of her death explains the verdict by a Connecticut statute under which a jury could return a second-degree verdict when the evidence was entirely circumstantial, as it was in her case. A second-degree conviction meant a life sentence rather than death.
The same report says that the presiding judge, Foster, who it noted had been acting vice president of the United States during Andrew Johnson's presidency, said from the bench that he regretted he could not send her to the gallows.
On January 11, 1873, Judge Sanford at New Haven sentenced her to life imprisonment in Wethersfield State Prison, according to Connecticut History. In the same month she made a confession. Connecticut History quotes it as an admission that she had poisoned "three husbands and four children." The newspaper summary at her death of the confession, however, says she denied any part in Dennis Hurlburt's death, and it describes admissions concerning several of the Struck children and both Sherman children. The two accounts cannot both be exact, and the difference has never been settled.
Fischer writes that she could scarcely write, and that a 96-page book of the trial testimony appeared under her name. Connecticut History says her confession was published by two companies, in 1873 and in 1878. An 1873 book by George Lippard Barclay, published in Philadelphia by Barclay and Company, carried a long title that called her a modern Lucretia Borgia and described her as tried in New Haven for poisoning three husbands and eight of her children. The comparison with the Borgias stuck: the report of her death ran under the heading "Death of a Modern Borgia."
In prison she was quiet, said she had found religion and was given many privileges, the report of her death says. Her health was poor.
In 1877 she escaped. The report of her death dates the escape to the night of May 20, 1877; Connecticut History says June 1877. She got away while in the care of the women's matron, whom Connecticut History, quoting the press of the day, calls "careless"; the report of her death suggested the matron's only fault may have been believing too readily in Lydia's professed repentance. With help from friends, Connecticut History says, she reached Providence, Rhode Island; the report of her death says she traveled there by way of Hartford.
She did not stay free long. She gave a hotel proprietor's wife two different names, which led to her capture, Connecticut History reports, and she was taken back to Wethersfield. The report of her death says she was retaken about a week after the escape, largely through her own carelessness.
Lydia Sherman died in Wethersfield State Prison on May 16, 1878, after several weeks of illness, according to Connecticut History. A newspaper report datelined Hartford, May 16, said she had died that day in the state prison at Wethersfield while serving her life sentence for the murder of Horatio N. Sherman, and gave her age as fifty-four. No cause of death was given.
Fischer places the case in a period when poisons were easy to obtain. They were sold for cleaning, for killing vermin and for farm use, he writes, and by the 1820s many Americans feared secret poisoning and believed murder by poison was common. After the Civil War, he writes, poisoning was the country's "most common form of homicide." In her confession, as the report of her death summarized it, she said the arsenic she used in Derby had been kept in the house to kill rats.
Barker's evidence board survived. The National Museum of American History, part of the Smithsonian, keeps it in its medicine and science collections, and from June 28, 2024, to July 5, 2025, it was shown in the exhibition "Forensic Science on Trial" in the museum's Albert H. Small Documents Gallery. The Smithsonian's announcement of the exhibition listed "arsenic tests from the 1872 trial of Lydia Sherman" among the objects on view and described her as suspected of poisoning three of her husbands and eight of her children.
In the exhibition the Sherman board was placed beside a sexual assault evidence kit in a panel on misogyny in forensic science, the curator said in the 2025 interview.
The number of deaths connected to Lydia Sherman has been given differently since the 1870s, and the figures are not settled.
Convicted: one death, that of Horatio N. Sherman, by the 1872 jury verdict of second-degree murder.
Confessed: in January 1873, by Connecticut History's quotation, three husbands and four children. By the newspaper summary at her death, she admitted poisoning Edward Struck, several of their children and both Sherman children, said her eldest daughter died naturally, and denied causing Dennis Hurlburt's death.
Found by chemical tests: arsenic in four cases, Horatio Sherman, his two children and Dennis Hurlburt, according to Fischer and the National Museum of American History.
Attributed: three husbands and eight children in the title of the 1873 book and in the Smithsonian's 2024 announcement; eleven victims suspected in the museum's 2025 interview; "as high as ten" in Connecticut History. Fischer writes that one source gives seven children rather than eight.
None of the New York deaths was tried, and Hurlburt's death and those of the Sherman children were not separately prosecuted.
Hurlburt. The arsenic in his case was evidence against her, but she denied killing him in her confession and was never tried for his death. Connecticut History's quotation of her confession ("three husbands") and the summary in the report of her death (a denial of Hurlburt) conflict.
The dates of the second marriage. The report of her death gives November 1868; Fischer gives 1865.
Where Struck served and where Hurlburt lived. Connecticut History says Yorkville and Litchfield; the report of her death says Manhattanville and Huntington.
The escape. May 20, 1877, in the report of her death; June 1877 in Connecticut History.
The intent in Horatio Sherman's death. She said she meant only to make him sick of drink, or that he took the arsenic by mistake. The jury convicted her of murder in the second degree.
1824: Born Lydia Danbury in New Jersey (Burlington, by her own account).
About 1841: Marries Edward Struck, a widower, at 17.
1864: Edward Struck dies in New York; by her later confession she poisoned him with arsenic.
1864 to 1865: Deaths of the Struck children in New York (confessed in part; never charged).
1867: Takes a nursing job in Stratford, Connecticut.
November 1868: Marries Dennis Hurlburt (report of her death).
About fourteen months later: Hurlburt dies; she inherits his estate.
1870: Marries Horatio N. Sherman of Derby (September, per the report of her death).
1870 or 1871: Frankie Sherman, then Ada Sherman, die in Derby; their father dies soon after.
1871: Horatio N. Sherman dies; Dr. J. C. Beardsley orders an autopsy; George F. Barker finds arsenic.
June 1871: Arrested at New Brunswick, New Jersey.
Spring 1872: Eight-day trial at New Haven; convicted of murder in the second degree.
January 1873: Confesses.
January 11, 1873: Sentenced to life in Wethersfield State Prison by Judge Sanford.
1873 and 1878: Her confession published in book form.
May or June 1877: Escapes from Wethersfield; reaches Providence, Rhode Island; retaken after about a week.
May 16, 1878: Dies in Wethersfield State Prison.
June 28, 2024, to July 5, 2025: Barker's arsenic tests from the case shown in "Forensic Science on Trial" at the National Museum of American History.