Augusta Fullam

Augusta Fullam
Born	1876
Died	1914
Cause of death	heatstroke
Nationality	British
Known for	double murderer
Spouse(s)	Lieutenant Edward Fullam
Partner(s)	Dr Henry Lovell William Clark
Children	one

Augusta Fairfield Fullam (1876 – 1914) was a British Raj woman implicated in a double murder in Agra in India.

Life

Fullam was born in England in 1876. She was the wife of Lieutenant Edward McKean Fullam and she lived in Agra in India. She came to notice when she was interviewed as an alibi for Dr Clark whose wife had been hacked to death on 12 November 1912. Dr Clark had told the police that he knew nothing of the death and he had been having dinner that night with Fullam.

It appeared that Fullam had been a long admirer of Dr Clark who she had met at a ball in 1911. The police searched Fullam's residence and found a box containing over 400 love letters that she had written to him. The letters confirmed that they were good friends but they also discussed how Fullam might dispose of her husband using poison. Fullam's husband had died a year before and the death certificate, signed by Clark, said "heatstroke". The letters explained that the doctor had advised and supplied her with arsenic which left symptoms similar to heatstroke. Fullam's husband had drank poisoned tonics and poisoned soup but refused to die. She had summoned her lover who had injected a coup de grace on 11 October 1911. Her husband's exhumed body revealed the presence of arsenic.

Fullam turned King's Evidence and provided a confession. They had planned to marry once their spouses had died. Fullam and the doctor had hired a team of killers to attack his wife with swords. Dr Clark was sentenced to hang as were three of the hired killers. Fullam was spared her life because of her confession, her evidence and because she was pregnant. Fullam began a long prison sentence but died about a year later, ironically, from heatstroke on 12 November 1914