In the beginning of the year 1925, you probably could not have found a more charming couple in all of England than 32-year-old Arthur Valentine Flathers, a traveling salesman for a firm of cloth merchants, and his 26-year-old wife Hilda Nancy. The Bradford pair, who had been married nearly four years, were well-to-do, by all accounts deeply, sweetly in love with each other, and, to make their happiness complete, Mrs. Flathers was expecting their first child within a few days. The tall, good-looking Mr. Flathers was an excellent and highly successful employee who seemed to be liked by all. Mrs. Flathers was extremely pretty, level-headed, and amiable, “just that type of girl who would have made any good man a good wife,” as a friend put it. Everyone from their friends to their household servant described them both as cheerful and utterly content with their lot. Several months before, Mrs. Flathers had been very sick with kidney trouble, and her husband was known to be extremely concerned by this, but she seemed to have recovered nicely. This bout of illness was the closest thing anyone knew of any shadow on their lives..
read more Strange Company: The Flathers Tragedy.
