‘...a terrific story.’
– Ken Loach, TV and film director, twice winner of the Palme D’Or at the Cannes Film Festival
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.
With her five surviving children all reaching adulthood, The Undoing of Polly Button also includes details of unique research to trace and connect more than 1000 of Polly Button’s living descendants – worldwide, but with concentrations in Leicestershire, Nuneaton, Walsall and London.
- ISBN10 1789018838
- ISBN13 9781789018837
- Publish Date 28 August 2019
- Publish Status Out of Print
- Out of Print 26 May 2021
- Publish Country GB
- Imprint Troubador Publishing
- Format Paperback
- Pages 216
- Language English