Hello all-- Well, we just can't get enough of a nasty subject, can we? I found the song "Sweet Fanny Adams" many years ago in a folksong book at the Berkeley, California main public library and haven't been able to identify that book again since. However, I had copied and learned the 1867 ballad, a particularly naive piece as to lyrics and melody, but rich in graphic detail. For all the particulars on the murder of little Fanny Adams by Frederick Baker, visit:
As the English do cherish their murderers, Baker has been duly celebrated by inclusion in wax museum displays, though with his single dismemberment of a small child he couldn't achieve the wider fame of the still-unidentified Jack the Ripper, who at least attacked only grown women. Both of these charming fellows are included in the chapter on Lust Murders in Krafft-Ebing's late Victorian compendium of aberrant urges, "Psychopathia Sexualis". As a folklorist, I was gratified at finding Baker's case history included therein and thus enlarging my understanding of the song, which I duly shared with my audiences, though let it be said that not all listeners had a sufficient appreciation of such a morbid subject; this is the only ballad I've ever been requested NOT to sing. I quite understand, and passed along a like aversion to Cap'n Collins.
An expression later arose; one could say "it doesn't mean Sweet Fanny Adams to me", as in it means nothing, later sometimes abbreviated to "sweet F.A.". The term 'fanny' refers to a more intimate portion of the female anatomy in British usage than in American, and evidently the 'naughty bits' were not among the body parts recovered, the surmise being that Baker had eaten them. This may have given rise to the British definition of 'fanny', or it may derive from the earlier bawdy novel "Fanny Hill" as is often stated. Herewith, the song:
SWEET FANNY ADAMS
You parents dear who love your little children, Pray listen a while unto me: I once had a daughter like an angel, But now from all trouble she is free.
Chorus: Shall I never see thee more, my dearest Fanny? That child that I so fondly did love Was slain and cut to pieces by a villain, But now she's in Heaven above.
'Twas on Saturday the twenty-fourth of August, My fanny and her sister went to play With another little girl, Minnie Warren, Little thinking of danger on their way.
But soon they met with young Frederick Baker, Who is a clerk in solitude we hear, His parents well-to-do and much respected At Alton in the county of Hampshire.
Three halfpence the monster gave the children, To go sweetmeats for to buy; My Fanny by the hand he dragged bewildered To the Hollow as she bitterly did cry.
When the children came home without my Fanny, The neighbors searched the fields all around; In the hop-yard the head with the eyes out, And the left ear cut off upon the ground.
Both arms and one leg cut from the body, All scattered about on the ground, But far worse than this the fiend committed, For some parts have never yet been found.
To think that he so cruelly misuse her, My child, scarce eight years of age Was slain and cut to pieces by a villain, But now he's lying in the silent grave.