Dorothea Puente ran a good boarding home. Despite being in her 50s, she was still sprightly enough to care for the men and women who paid the $350 per month to enjoy her food and custom. The people for whom she cared were recovering from certain socially-awkward afflictions, and there didn’t seem to be anyone in her tenants’ immediate families available to look after them.

Leonarda Cianciulli was a resourceful woman. She knew how to make use of any leftovers, knew how to stretch a lira. It was the 30s, and money was tight. In those times, you made do.

Surviving childhood was an achievement in itself in the early 1900s. Any number of illnesses periodically threatened to snatch away little ones at random. Parisian Jeanne Weber knew this well. A couple of these random illnesses had already taken her two youngest children by early 1905.

Martha Needle wanted nothing more than to be happy. You know, the kind of happiness that comes with a marriage and children. She had known that happiness when she had been married to her husband Henry Needle. Unfortunately it was not to be. Martha found herself burying not only her husband after he succumbed to a short illness, but also her three small children who became ill and died in quick succession.

Mary Ann Britland knew what she wanted, and how she was going to get it. She worked all day in a factory and moonlighted as a barmaid because she wanted to provide for her two daughters. She married Thomas Britland, a domestic servant, because she wanted a man who knew his way around a dish or two. And at the age of 39 she wanted her next door neighbour, Thomas Dixon. Unfortunately, she already had a husband and Thomas already had a wife.