LIFE AND CONFESSION OF ANN WALTERS, The Female Murderess!! ALSO, THE EXECUTION OF ENOS G. DUDLEY, AT HAVERHILL, N. H., MAY 23D, 1849. TO WHICH IS ADDED THE CONFESSION OF MARY RUNKLE, WHO WAS EXECUTED FOR MURDER. PRINTED FOR THE PROPRIETOR. 1850. CONFESSION OF ANN WALTERS, A FEMALE MURDERESS! It has probably never fallen to the lot of man to record a list of more cruel, heart-rending, atrocious, cold-blooded and horrible crimes and murders, than have been perpetrated by the subject of this narrative, and that too in the midst of a highly civilized and Christian community; and deeds, too, which for the depravity of every human feeling seems scarcely to have found a parallel in the annals of crime. And it seems doubly shocking and atrocious, when we find them committed by one of the Female sex, which sex have always been esteemed as having a higher regard for virtue and a far greater aversion to acts of barbarity, even in the most abandoned of their sex, than is generally found in men of the same class, and we may truly say that we have never seen recorded a greater instance of moral depravity, or one so perfectly regardless of every virtuous feeling which should inhabit the human breast, as the one it becomes our painful lot to lay before our readers, in the account of Ann Walters, the subject of this thrilling and interesting narrative. And we will now endeavor to state the facts as they have actually transpired; and our readers may rely upon the account here given of her parentage, as they have been selected from the most authentic sources, which no pains were spared to obtain. S. P. Smith the father of the subject of this narrative was the son of a wealthy nobleman residing in Yorkshire county, in the northern part of England. He had in the early part of his life received a liberal education, as we learn from the pen of one of his youthful companions, from which we principally quote so far as regards his career, but was regardless of the endeavors of his kind parents to plant in him that youthful impression of morality and obedience, for in vain did they labor to bend his stiff neck. As we learn, by his father’s refusal to comply with his request in marrying the object of his first love, he fell a prey to that soul-destroying monster, intemperance. He then secretly married a woman, who, by her intrigue and artfulness, had succeeded in drawing his affections towards her, and was also very remarkable for the influence she exercised over the minds of men as will be seen by referring to circumstances which occurred subsequently; for by her great artfulness she succeeded in marrying her daughters, four in number, to persons of respectability, although they were every one of them prostitutes of the most common character. On this and many other similar accounts, she was considered by many superstitious persons a witch.