by Stephen Moore 

In 1832, Mary Green (a.k.a. Polly Button) was brutally murdered by her lover John Danks in Nuneaton. Danks was tried, found guilty, hanged and then dissected. The two had one child together, and Polly was eight months pregnant with a second. So what precisely had caused their relationship to shatter and why was Danks set on a path to the gallows?

Referring to a wide range of original sources, fully indexed and with extensive use of illustration throughout, the tale of Polly Button's tragic life and bloody demise is recounted in full and graphic detail. Labelled in contemporary press reports as `the victim of her own gross immorality', the truth was found to be much more complicated, as the full tragedy of Polly Button's `undoing' is revealed.