Boy, 13, spent just weeks in jail after stabbing and killing teen girl

Miles Myres, the Preston coroner, journeyed to Kirkham on the second Thursday of May 1857 to open an inquest at Kirkham police station following the death of Betsy Titterington, aged 14, on the previous Tuesday.

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It was heard the girl had died from a wound inflicted by a clasp knife and that Thomas Elliott, aged 13, was suspected of the killing that had taken place in Little Lane at around seven o'clock in the evening when the local teenagers were gathered together.

The only witness called was the mother of the girl who said half an hour before the incident her daughter was at home getting her supper, in good health, laughing and talking before going back out to see her friends. The next thing she knew her daughter was being carried home by her friends having fainted and in a dying state and she expired minutes later.