Phrases and Meanings: Sweet Fanny Adams

llracnodbeauthor
Jan 18
3 min read

Sadly, British expressions and phrases often originate from horrific circumstances, such as the expression "sweet Fanny Adams", or "sweet FA.”

Fanny Adams (30 April 1859 – 24 August 1867) was a young English girl murdered by solicitor's clerk, Frederick Baker, in Alton, Hampshire on a beautiful August summer’s day whilst she was out playing with her friends.

On Saturday, 24th August 1867, at around one thirty, Fanny's mother, Harriet Adams, let her eight-year-old daughter, Fanny, her friend Minnie Warner, also eight, and Fanny's five-year-old sister, Elizabeth, or Lizzie as she was known, go up Tanhouse Lane towards Flood Meadow.

In that lane, they met Frederick Baker, a 29-year-old solicitor's clerk. Baker offered the girls halfpenny each to spend on sweets, then he picked blackberries for them whilst they played in The Hollow—a lane beside a hop garden surrounded by a high hedge. As the girls knew of Baker from church meetings, the girls were oblivious to Baker’s possible intentions and did not feel uncomfortable accepting his money.

The abduction of Fanny Adams as shown in the Illustrated Police News. — The abduction of Fanny Adams as shown in the *Illustrated Police News*.

Witnesses who passed by that afternoon recalled seeing Baker laying in the meadow grass watching the girls at play, whilst smoking a cigarette, with one arm under the crook of his neck.

Sometime later, Baker told Minnie and Lizzie to leave, before scooping Fanny into his arms and saying, “Come with me, and I shall give you twopence more.” Fanny refused to go with Baker, but he carried her into a hops field, out of sight of the other girls who then left to go home. They returned home briefly around two o’clock but left quite soon, as it was such a nice day.

At about five o'clock, Minnie and Elizabeth returned home for the final time. Their neighbour, Mrs. Gardner, asked them where Fanny was, and they told her what had happened. Mrs. Gardner told the mother, Harriet, and they went up the lane, where they came upon Baker strolling back. They questioned him and he said he had given the girls money for sweets, but that was all. His respectability meant the women let him go on his way.

At about seven o'clock, Fanny was still missing, and neighbours went searching. Fanny's torso and head was discovered in the hop field by Thomas Gates, and the contents of her chest and pelvis had been torn out and scattered across the field.

Poor Harry Allen stumbled upon her heart, lungs and an arm in an adjoining field. Fanny’s eyes had been removed and thrown into the River Wey, and Thomas Swain, a local shoemaker, discovered her left foot still in its little shoe.

Harriet ran towards The Butts field where her husband, bricklayer George Adams, was playing cricket. She told him what had happened, then collapsed. George got his shotgun from home and set off to find the perpetrator, but neighbours stopped him.

Most body parts were located that day, but her other foot, an arm, and her intestines were not found until the following day—her vagina, which had also been removed, was never found. Her remains were then taken and sewn back together in a nearby doctor's surgery at 16 Amery Street.

Fanny Adam's grave in Alton cemetery, which was paid for by the public's voluntary subscription.

Baker professed his innocence despite blood on his clothing and a diary entry found in his property for that day, which simpy read, "Killed a girl. It was fine and hot."

He later wrote Fanny's parents a letter from his prison cell in which he expressed deep sorrow for killing her, but denied violating her.

A jury found Frederick Baker guilty of Fanny’s horrific murder in just fifteen minutes and, on the 24th December 1867, Baker was hanged outside Winchester Prison in front of a gathering of five thousand.

In 1869 new rations of tinned mutton were introduced for British seamen. They were unimpressed by it and suggested it might be the butchered remains of Fanny Adams.

"Fanny Adams" became slang for second-rate mutton or stew, and then for anything that was worthless, empty, or simply ‘nothing at all.’ The large tins the mutton were delivered in were also referred to as a “fanny” and this term extended to mess tins and cooking pots.

The term spread through the armed forces, becoming a common term for "sweet nothing" and, by the mid-20th century, the use of the term "sweet F.A." became a euphemism for “sweet f**k all,” and it’s such a shame that a sweet, innocent girl’s name is now used to mean something worthless or empty.