Sweet Fanny Adams: Forgotten Victim of a Gruesome Victorian Murder

How a Girl Went from Murder Victim to Navy Slang

You may have heard the slang expression “sweet Fanny Adams” or “sweet F.A.” Few know it originated from a gruesome murder of a little girl in the town of Alton in the coastal county of Hampshire, England.

Alton is part of “Jane Austen country.” It’s near Chawton, the village where Jane Austen lived and wrote her books. Not the sort of place you would associate with a notorious murder.