The Chilling Case of François Courvoisier the Valet Who Slit His Master's Throat 1840

The video details the horrifying true crime case of François Benjamin Courvoisier — a twenty-three-year-old Swiss valet who slit his elderly master's throat while he slept in one of Mayfair's finest houses, staged a fake burglary, then went back to bed. On May 6, 1840, Lord William Russell — a seventy-two-year-old aristocrat and uncle to the Prime Minister — was found in his Mayfair bed with his throat cut to the spine. The house had been staged to resemble a burglary, but police saw through it immediately. His valet, François Courvoisier, had been systematically stealing silverware since his first day, and when Lord Russell's suspicions grew too close, the young Swiss servant decided murder was the only way out. Convicted at the Old Bailey, he confessed simply: "I thought it was the only way I could cover my faults." He was hanged at Newgate on July 6, 1840, before forty thousand spectators — among them Charles Dickens and William Makepeace Thackeray, both so horrified they became lifelong campaigners against public execution.